Kiana

I once read a tweet that likened getting over someone to redecorating a room. Because I’m a person of pure melancholy, I twisted it to fit my own narrative; how that is so true in my life at present as we’re moving places and spaces, my grandmother and I.

The spaces that we once owned, occupied, and decorated to our content are now spaces for the carpenters to dig a drill into or put a wall over. Mere spaces, yet in our minds, these spaces are draped with memories. GAH, I guess this is getting too sluggish, and I wish I was the kind of smart who can pull a quote off the top of their heads to juxtapose their experiences with The Greats, but unfortunately I’m not, and thank you for bearing with me. (A note: I googled “great writers on spaces” and “great writers writing about spaces” to up the Schmarty Marty, but all I got was a peek into their workspaces and offices; now I’m disappointed @ Google.) Now I’m all feverish thinking of the person I was prior to this house rehauling situation; that maybe I lost it as the walls were being hammered down to the ground? That maybe the creative direction and hard work that I put into decorating my walls (three times annually) will never again be in my grasp; the handwritten Edgar Allan Poe poems are gone and that one photo of Lorde that I’d printed was lost. That maybe who I was at that point in my life will never return to me again, because Forever Young is a fickle promise and any effort aimed toward an expedition to The Fountain of Youth is futile, and I will never be absolved of the “sin” of not archiving. DON’T I JUST LOVE CASTIGATING MYSELF.

I know I have been writing constantly about spaces lately, but I guess writing about it is my way of understanding and accepting, a way for me to devise a concrete action plan, or maybe this is just for posterity’s sake. It’s so conflicting for me to want to have a space (physical or otherwise) for myself when all my life I have been deprived of it, forced to contort and twist my body in whichever way and direction in order to fit. The default for as long as I can remember is that my race restricts me from light, loose, open spaces, thus I wasn’t able to pry myself open, my interests and desires, and investigate or observe “what makes me tick.” Every self-help book I’ve read asked the same questions: “What makes you tick? What do you like to do in your spare time? Who are you when the whole world is not watching?” The answer to all that, I don’t know. And maybe I should stop reading self-help books.

From inside my journal/head this week:

Maybe bad days are similar to advertisements between TV shows—annoying at times and intrusive, but they come and go. It is my duty now, then, as a human being undergoing growth right at this very moment (surprise!) to embrace and accept that there will be sad, bad days, mean days, days when I can’t hold a conversation for more than three minutes, and stop seeing these days as of my own willful creation, or as a reflection of who I Really Am. ♦