it's november 22nd and this webpage is much too public for me to say anything i want, but i'm sat here still wanting to say so much, because i feel so much in a sense.

it feels like a lie sometimes when i say that change is everywhere, it feels like i'm saying it in spite of all the constants, the things that feel like they're too deep buried in me to let go of. some of those things i keep close on purpose, like my wonderful friends. how sweet it is to be loved at every moment of my life, and be loving, in that sense.

and yet too there are things that i carry with me because i don't yet know how to let them go. and i say "yet" but i've been thinking so much lately about forever. in a human context, anyway. i know i'm only 19, and my head should be in the present because when i look at the bigger picture of my life now, i'm terrified. it's so hard to justify myself sometimes, to say that healing is a process that can take literal years. to be healing and growing at the same time is such a strange feeling.

why does it look like this to be coming into my own? why does it feel like no matter how beautiful of a person i've become inside, the inherent nature of my insecurity makes it so that i will always feel wrong? and broken

to feel loved in a platonic way is one thing, and to have put so much effort and love into my journey of surrounding myself with people who make me feel genuinely happy has done wonders for my self esteem. i think i had to become this person too for that.

and yet some days i remember so physically what it was to be 16. even though my body no longer remembers the way it felt to call myself a new yorker and nothing more. i feel like i belong to nowhere and everywhere. which is a long way of saying that i'm always thinking about home.

and what that means, and will i ever find it? i think that home is everywhere. i think i place roots everywhere, and that used to feel like a flaw of mine

i used to be terrified of my empathy, and the huge amount of love in my heart, until i realized it was one if not my greatest strength, and it's the gift that keeps on giving

this website began as a letter to a treasured friend, and by extension the world. in times like this my only goal is for it to read as a manifesto of the current moment, a snapshot of a me

i love too many people still who are no longer in my life the way they were, to varying degrees. on the 30th of august as the relentless summer raged on in a new setting, i held that love close to me still. it is so strange how it all just replays, but its different everytime. i meet so many people in my moments, sometimes im terrified its for the wrong reasons.

its so hard to trust myself, to trust the universe too in its relentlessness, its cruelties (and they exist)

my therapist tells me i skip around the truth a lot, i think its a skill ive been building for a long time in order to protect myself. real vulnerability is terrifying, because you realize that the things we have to say can often be said in very few words.

in that sense a lot of this would be better off written in a diary, but i can't help but share my thoughts sometimes, even if they're only in whispers, in words, behind closed doors.

or shouted from rooftops, but that's for another time

i find today at 4 am, because i am awake writing about this instead of laying in bed thinking about it, that i want to hold change in my hands and let myself believe again, and god im so hopeful

i keep saying i dont care but i know i do, i know ive never felt anything like this before, and i cant keep calling myself dumb

my emotions have been in so many places as of late, some worse than others, but my beautiful moments are beautiful and i wish i wasn't so terrified.

the things i would do to stay warm in this coldest of seasons

cultica