do it scared, do it sad, do it anyway
"we can make this place beautiful" - maggie smith
I turned twenty-six six months ago and every birthday that I live to see is a miracle I never thought was possible. Before daylight savings ended, the world around me was flaming red - sunrises, sunsets and the autumnal brightness of nature. Sometimes I found myself laying on my bed, watching the clouds float away from the uninhibited view of my eighth floor window. Sometimes my body floated to the corner of my kitchen flooded by warm light. This once I read a book sitting on a bench in the forest lining campus while crisp winter air and sunlight brushed against my skin. Living alone is a journey in coming back to one’s body - the self within the self. Who else do you have to share this little life with in this lone, foreign world?
In one of my favourite scenes from Spider - Man: Far From Home, Peter (Tom Holland) laments to Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) on the weight of big responsibilities and the isolation of being different from your peers, of having to lead a different life. It’s a strange kind of isolation and loneliness I’m all too familiar with, the kind that comes with chasing a unique career path. Standing out in a crowd is rarely ever fun, for the most part. For the entirety of my undergrad years, I didn’t know where my life was heading, if all the pain and sleepless nights would amount to anything at all. Fazed, I decided to apply to grad school halfway into application season with several already closed. I ended up applying to two places across two continents. Anybody familiar with grad school applications will tell you that that’s an abysmal number of schools to apply to - it’s too many eggs in one basket, way too many. As Connor Storie (I’ve watched Heated Rivalry thrice onlty, I’m definitely okay) described himself in a recent interview, I too am an optimistic-nihilist. I accept the worst but expect the best, very cautiously.
A year ago today, I got into my dream grad school and a day later, I would graduate from medical school. These are the two most important days of my life - inflection points after which life has never been the same. The stairway to your dreams is built brick by brick over a lifetime, some of your own and some borrowed. I admire how audacious I was at ten. In my childhood home of a quarter of a decade, amidst several souvenirs from my father’s travels was a mini replica of Stockholm City Hall. I heard of the Blue Hall where the Nobel Prizes are awarded each year, how this city was home to the institute that awarded the prizes in medicine. It seemed like a forlorn place I never deserved to be near. Now, I walk past those buildings everyday and live in the century old brick walls of this beautiful place. I am not one to harp on reflected glory and do not think a singular institution is a reflection of one’s worth. They neither make you holy nor a lost cause. But this is now home and the road here was long and arduous. I must honour my tenacity and perseverence. My family would say that this was always meant to be but I’m not so sure I believe in the concept of destiny.
When I knew with certainty that I would indeed be leaving, I packed the entirety of my life up - everything I’d ever known - in merely four days. We spend entire years dreaming of an escape from our hometowns and yet when the time comes, all the little things that make up this home seem to swallow you whole. These days I find my heart pried open with missingness. I miss my sister so much, it brings me to tears in an instant. For years of our life, grief consumed us whole and I want nothing more than to hear the walls of our home sing back to us. I want nothing more than to live under the same sky as her for the rest of my days. I am not particularly enthused by the idea of rebirth but if it were to be true, I want her to be my baby sister in every single lifetime. Over and over and over again. Who would I be if her love wasn’t the ground I walked on? I never want to know that.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
- [i carry your heart with me (i carry it in], E. E. Cummings
In pursuit of making the last year what it was - big, wild and surprising - I had to forego myself. I forgot to read books and write and most importantly, I forgot that I can be my own company. These words you read have been marinating in my drafts for way over a year because the perfect ending seemed to elude me. For the first time in my life, I don’t know where the road ahead leads or which path I should trod upon. It keeps me awake at night, this not knowing, this tussle between hustle and calm. What if the allure of a slow life makes my career crash and burn someday? I try hard to think of what I want and I am torn by how, even at the precipice of my late twenties, I simply don’t know who I am devoid of anybody’s expectations.
I am seven thousand kilometres away from home and now, bright days overshadow the gloomier ones. Often times, I catch myself on the subway and can’t fathom the newness of this life. Perhaps for the first time in my life, my breath isn’t jagged and the sound of silence isn’t all that terrifying. I stay out past midnight and bake myself cakes at odd hours without any reason, just because I can. In its halo, I see myself as a chrysalis waiting to become. It is in this becoming that I am learning to show up for myself and do things. I do things scared. I do them sad. I do them anyway, especially when I’m sad. I’d rather be sad all alone in a bar on a Monday night watching friends groove and lovers fall into an embrace. I’m trying to save my life and someday maybe, just maybe, I could make this place beautiful.
Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.
- Good Bones, Maggie Smith
please be my didi in every single lifetime. there is no me without you and i💗