Dear Bigfoot,
It’s weird for me to believe the days when this outlet was just a place I came and kept my head above water from drowning in heartbreak, keeping a candle lit for a relationship. While going through it I always heard how one day it wouldn’t hurt so bad, wouldn’t be all i thought about every nano-second of the day, would move on from. and i remember how that reality felt absolutely impossible. I’d spend hours, hours, HOURS just writing about it. living my life for and around it. But today, I feel disbelief that it consumed so much of me. It seems like such a silly thing to have figuratively laid down my life for, for so long. I guess that’s growing older. To be fair it was growing from that exact all consumed, broken by love, naiive place thats given me this mindset of “wow how could i have spent so much time and energy focused on that?”. Two things have happened since then;
One: I learned to love myself more than anyone else. I don’t mean a conceded, narcissistic love, because there’s plenty of things i don't like about myself. But i mean I care about my place in the world, my light, my personhood more than anyone else’s. I don’t know if im explaining that right. but alas. I’ve become way more selfish -in that good and healthy way my mom always stressed about needing to be. (insert eye rolling about how mom is always right)
Two: I feel incapable of feeling the all-consuming, butterfly love anymore lol. lolol. or rather I see how love doesn’t need to be that type to be “right”. In some ways it feels like when you burn your fingerprints off and while you can still grip things the same, you don’t feel them the same. does that makes sense? I’m sure there’s all sorts of books on the subject, but recently I’ve been really questioning if that tiny little numb divide i have between me and the rest of my relationships (both friendships and romantic) is my bodies response to what i put it through for the better part of a 3 year long heartbreak/ or if it’s just part of the growing older and wiser. maybe there are so many different interpretations of “love” because its something that changes as you move through life. It becomes different because it is different. idk. i love sutton more than anything in this world, that’s obvious to me but i truthfully don’t know if i can say i’m “in love” with sutton. Not because anything’s wrong with him, but because i don’t feel capable of being “in love” with anyone. When he hurts, i hurt. When he’s celebrated, i celebrate. I love making him happy, can’t stand the idea of making him sad. …but i don’t feel the lay down my life, put my life on hold, sacrifice myself or my future for him feelings. But i don’t know if im supposed to? because maybe true love doesn’t ask you to, maybe true love doesn’t make you feel the need to.
it’s a loaded conversation to try to have, or explain i guess. People ask me about marriage all the time. The idea of living a full life with him, creating/raising life with him, it is something that makes me happy. but when people bring all the “soul mate” talk into it, i take pause. i guess what i’m avoiding admitting is that no, i don’t think he’s my “soul mate”, but i also don’t know if a “soul mate” is something you should aspire for. Because i’ve felt i found my “soul mate” in bestfriends and lovers prior and none have brought me to my best like he has. in fact all have at one point or another dragged me to places where i’m at my worst. So what’s that mean?
…..at the same time. I do miss that connection, the one the little tiny numb part i have on my heart doesn’t let spark these days. it’s like craving sugar, despite the alternative keeping you in the best shape of your life. …ha, forgive my lame analogies, i’m still trying to get better at the whole expression thing again.
talk soon x
Dear Bigfoot,
France. What a roller coaster i rode in my head for most of this trip. I’m in a place that’s familiar, but that doesn’t make it any easier to experience. It sneaks into my mood and makes me bitchy to the point where I’d think i was bipolar if i didn’t know any better. It makes me resent people I called my “bestfriends” out of pure just, jealousy/envy? I should be excited and proud, instead, I’m bitter and competitive from a dark place? It makes me annoyed and dismissive towards the boyfriend who showers me with much of the world. what’s the issue? I’m unhappy with my status. I want to be in a position of able to help others advance and take care of them. I want to be able to pay for expensive necessities for my grandma, and my mom. I want to be able to take Sutton traveling, or at least throw this birthday surprise without stressing about a few hundred dollars. I want to be able to introduce myself at events with real agency with something to offer, as someone who brings something to the table. I want so badly to be someone legit. good at what i do, but i don’t even know what it is that i “do”. I have all of these ideas, ideas, ideas, and no fruition in my bones. Sometimes i think its some kind of family curse. To not make waves. To be stuck behind a thick plastic wall next to the rest of the world. To be the forever +1. Like something in my fiber, my makeup, doesn’t allow for or support greatness. “moves”. I don’t mean to sound like I’m blaming some sort of elusive, imaginary, or greater than ‘other’ for my problems. That’s not my point at all.
I know things take time. I know this time last year I was still a city college student with no future. I know today I’m an LMU senior who’s going to live in Engand for a month to study at Oxford. I know part of me is just being impatient. But still, i can’t help but fight all this anxiety about my future. I can’t help but still feel fraudulent.
I feel like im loosing myself to some small grinder in my head. and i’m terrified to acknowledge that this fuzz and buzz my body is going through, emotionally, mentally, and physically, the one that keeps me from feeling the spaces and places i occupy; like a man’s undying love in the streets of Paris, to really feeling the ocean breeze and smell on my skin of the french riviera; is this lyme disease. It feels like it keeps me chained down to what would be a positive jumping off point. It’s like living half alive. and it’s maddening, it’s terrifying, its word’s i don’t have language for. at the worst level, it makes me feel like i’m incapable of learning new things. and that scares me most of all.
12b6:
me: I drank coffee, why am I still sleepy??
people: did you sleep
me: IRRELEVANT
(via cryystalized-teen)
Dear Bigfoot,
Los Angeles is many things but i find it most interesting how on one hand its a place that both belongs to and only loves the young; thus everyone has a “sell by” date, but at the same time it’s neverland where after a certain stage of notoriety, or money, your age becomes meaningless and its a huge society of 30-40something Peter and Wendy’s. One or the other, no in between.
I turn 25 in just over four months, so i’ve been plexing on my age and life and all that shit that one does when they realize they’re no longer in their early 20s. I was the first person to say that age is just a number. But I’ve learned that not even that is black and white. Somehow when it came to my romantic relationship; nine years could easily have been only nine months apart in age. …but when it came to my best friend; a two year age gap made a world of tumultuous difference. Thats a long story, i’m not feeling well enough to tell right now. I don’t mean hypothetically well.. like actually; I’ve been hit with this flu nightmare.
I think a lot about my lost week in New York, when i was…21(? fuck, that was so much longer ago than i thought haha) That girl had a million different realities she could have started that would have me writing this to you today in a million different scenario’s. Its wild, to think about that. I can’t say I’m at all ungrateful or unhappy to be where I’m at writing this to you. But I’m a little scared. In so many ways I’m more adult than all of the adults I know, but there’s an aspect to my life that feels very “failure to launch”.
In my low moments, I worry that I’m not meant to really succeed. Maybe its some kind of PTSD that i feel like I’m always just running in place or always four laps behind. I’m excited to finally be done with school in a year, I’m excited I get to put Oxford on my resume, but as excited and eager as I am to get to that finish line, and “start”; I feel really asldkfjawoef. I feel like a lot of the things and opportunities i have i’m just a guest to, i loose a lot of sleep over not feeling remarkable enough to eclipse them on my own, as just me, just breauna.
But all this countdown to finally not being a “student” and, countdown to entering my mid 20s, and countdown to that “next chapter”, has really given me a crazy clearer and different perspective on what i do and don’t like about myself. A way more honest one then i’ve ever had. I have a lot of feelings to address, habits to break, habits to make. fuck a resolution, i’m really swearing in to a self restitution. hope you’re ready Big.
talk soon
b
DI·CHOT·O·MY
(noun) A division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different; repeated branching into two equal parts.
My most recent, and favorite shoot with dear friends of mine. Throughout this whole shoot I was terrified they were going to come out like cheesy mall photoshoot shots. Almost nothing feels better than having your vision actually work out better than the way you saw it in your head. After this project, I gave myself permission to stay excited about what I want to do in this field.
