Note to readers: I am posting a September 2023 recap post in November – I am perfectly aware that it’s a little bit too late. It’s a special time in my life: figuring out, feeling, leaving some things behind, and discovering some along the way. And I would hate for these things to get lost in all this so I will try my best to catch up.
“Taking Stock” is a series that encourages us to slow down and take stock of where and how are we right now.
It’s been months and it is still all I talk about – September is the same but also still very different, in hindsight. I I don’t know how the same places and the same activity could look very different when a different perspective and mindset was applied. It’s amazing.
At the very early stages of the aftermath, I was inspired by Annie Lord’s Notes on Heartbreak so I decided to make my own Breakup Diary (cheesy as it may seem, I know). I wrote a lot of stuff in there without looking back, with just the intention of flushing it out of my head. I think it did it’s job, somehow? It helped a lot. After not opening it in my phone app for a while, I finally opened it again this month and tried reading it. It broke my heart reading about that girl in those pages. But it also amazed me how far I’ve come. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it if I don’t have those records (which is partially the reason why I am insisting on having this). It just made me appreciate all the little things that sustained and gave me those little bits of sunshine in my life.
But (my) days wouldn’t really be complete without the random spells of loneliness. Sometimes, too crippling that it kept me up in the wee hours of the night, spiralling with thoughts that are not even part of my main dilemma. Thinking just for the sake of thinking, my brain didn’t stop. And so I sought help again. I contacted my therapist for a mental health check in. Perhaps this is the best thing I did this month: to actually openly and honestly talk to someone.
If you’ve been a follower of my more personal posts in this blog, you’ll know how much of a believer I am of therapy and counselling. It saved my life countless times, and it is saving me still. It’s funny because the things that she told me are things I already know myself but just found it hard to actually absorb fully. I needed someone from the outside to tell it to me straight, for me to believe and trust the words – that’s how my anxious brain works. I long accepted it, I learned to be okay with it. But really, what I was trying to say is that: the first step to actually heal is making yourself (truly) believe that you need it. And I suppose everything else would follow.
Here are a couple of things that I noted down during my session (and wanted to share in case it helps anyone who is reading this):
- You need to grieve this properly. Those stages of grief? You don’t have to undergo all of them. You can skip. You can stay in one place, longer than you expect. Grieving is not a linear process.
- Stop judging your feelings and reactions too much. Let yourself experience it. Then let it go.
- Let yourself feel. Do what you must to tide yourself over. Sure there are healthier ways to cope, but this is the way it is. Do what you have to do. Give yourself the space. Allow yourself this kindness.
- Everything you’re feeling right now? They are normal. It’s okay to be sad. It’s also okay to be happy. It’s okay to feel lonely and isolated sometimes.
I keep all of those written out in my notebook so my brain will be reminded all the time. 😊
And so here I was: Chasing the last days of summer. Welcoming a new (transitory) phase: my favourite season, Autumn. I’ve spent a lot of time with myself. Went for coffee walks during lunch breaks and even on early morning park walks. Stayed in bed – a lot. Read under the open sky. Went to book club meetings. Forced myself to go out and socialize. Experimented and cooked a lot for myself. Explored foreign places. All the little things to get myself through this. And I think it’s working out beautifully. ✧˖°.
I AM CURRENTLY
reading a couple of stuff still that I put off these past few weeks, namely: Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City and Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman. September has been a slow reading month for me, only finishing two books. The first one is Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, which I reviewed here. The second one is It’s Attachment: A New Way of Understanding Yourself and Your Relationships by Annette Kussin. A non fiction after a long while, I know. Reading this book was borne out of a conversation I had with my friends over wine. I basically just wanted to learn more about it, even if I already read one book about it before. I seriously think this book should come with a trigger warning, because it dealt so much about trauma and abusive childhoods and how it affected the adult attachment styles of certain subjects in this book. But even so, this is a very informative book and made me realize how I enjoyed reading books about mental health and psychology so much. The ability to make sense of things – that’s really what it is all about. Perhaps the best thing that I took away from reading this book is the idea of ‘earned security‘ – that you can have a very rough childhood upbringing and still end up a secure adult. (“The idea in remembering isn’t to be flooded by your past but to understand it differently as an adult.“) The trick is to honestly face and explore your early experiences, be aware of how it affected you, and to properly grieve “what you longed for and never had” – to heal by properly processing it. I used to get very paranoid of having kids or caring for someone and that I would eff them up unconsciously by some little things I might do or act as a result of the things I experienced in life. But a person can apparently go through the other side unscathed or, at least, equipped. This just shows the many ways therapy and counselling could save a life. It’s beautiful and it gives me so much hope.
writing my travel recap for my short trip to Madrid. I went in the last few days of September and started my October in a foreign place. It was a great couple of days. And liberating. I keep wondering when my travel bug for this year would end (partly because it’s becoming very expensive lol) but apparently I am still at it. I hope I could post it in the next couple of days.
listening to Amsterdam by Wilds Rivers. I’ve talked about discovering this indie folk band in my Spotify adventures last month. And while Thinking ‘About ‘Bout Love is my August song, Amsterdam dominated the whole of my September. That first line /It was always Amsterdam/, and the first note that dropped right at the beginning? I can’t describe the feeling I have every time my playlist is in shuffle and I hear this first few precious seconds. A song that narrates a coming-of-age love story. Amsterdam is a retelling of Khalid Yassein’s (1/3 of the trio) “friend’s breakup, who had big plans to move to Europe to be with her long-distance boyfriend” who, one day, called it all off over phone. I am absolutely in love with the lyrics of this song and the melody, which perfectly evoked that witfulness, heartbreak, and that feeling of looking back and that empty feeling of ‘where do I go from here?’.
Might have been a long shot
Bеtter that it’s gone if it’s gonna go
But, man, you kind of messed me up
‘Cause I don’t have a place to go back home
Is this just twenty-one and something’s gotta give?
Well, I still got a bill for a ticket that I’m stuck with
If you listen closely, you can even hear the sound of bells ringing – calling back the earlier /yellow bike, with a basket that didn’t match it, that I guess I’ll never get to ride/ in the song. It’s imagining the what-could-have-beens that hurts most times. And that feeling of helplessness that you can’t do anything about it because it was just dropped on you out of the blue, /calling it a change of plans, just a building on a postal stamp/ – dismissing it, as if it’s nothing, even if it was eating your whole world and the life you imagined around it. Ah, I love this song to bits! And it kinda makes me want to head to Amsterdam even if I associate it with sadness because of this song.
watching re-runs of Gilmore Girls (still, I know). Now, I am way past the seasons I’ve watched before so everything is new again. I am currently at Season 5 and I am dying for all the early 2000s wardrobe of Lorelai and Rory’s! It was also comforting af so watching this gives me so much cosy vibes when I need it. (Also, my favourite character is probably Emily – which I maintain is the best Gilmore Girl lol)
cooking a lot of stuff at home! I’ve put a couple of photos below but I am really enjoying whipping up stuff in my (so-called) home café with a customer of one (i.e., me).
feeling hopeful for the nth month. There is no harm in hoping and trying to manifest happiness in the coming days. I hope it arrives, even in little pockets. I’d be okay with that.
Pages and Coffee Cups 