People keep calling me a "writer" lately, and like any writer, this makes me cringe and fight the urge to brush it off with an awkward thanks... I've always had a hard time calling myself one, despite my ideal and picturesque life looking like a heavy typewriter just to the right of a coffee cup and juuuust to the left of a messy but beloved stack of mistypes.
This entire year was full of mistypes. Sticky keys, stuck ribbons, jams, bends, and blocks. And here I am, still typing.
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I last wrote in September. I got laid off in October. Sick back to back in November. My uncle passed on Thanksgiving. I keep missing therapy, and now I've got to find health insurance. Rent is always due, I'm finally off my SSRI and the brain zaps have also finally stopped. It's Christmas Eve and my family is halfway across the country. Yet, after all of the haze and dizziness and sadness of this year, I feel (so very oddly) the happiest and least lonely I've ever felt in my life.
I always grew up wanting that GIRLS-esque life. Well. I think I got it. The indie sleaze coming-of-age story, with the matching 2000s apartment, The Strokes "Is This It" vinyl, and this unplaceable sense of longing. I've got the patio string lights up in the "living room" which is also the kitchen and the hallway and the entryway and...you get it. I've also got the accompanying existential crisis, but it's worth mentioning that it's much more riddled with wonder than it is with worry.
Maybe it was from Paloma being incredible over the last year, maybe it was the Zoloft, maybe it was my support system, maybe it was ME: but I have come to a point in my life where I can genuinely deal with uncertainty and loss in a way that is beautiful and gentle. We don't know the future, and we never will. The past has passed (its in the name), and the moment is always fleeting. So? We focus on the now.
When I think about the things that have happened over the last few months, I find myself also choosing to focus on the things that have gone right. And for the things that haven't–there's always SOME silver lining. Always. See below.
I'm jobless and I miss working in film = but how lucky am I to have experienced it? and loved it so much that I now know, with full certainty, know how much I am devoted to it. Despite a life full of uncertainty and rolling the dice to "make it" somehow, I know I'd be playing that game in any other industry and in any other job, but I wouldn't feel half as fulfilled or proud of my work.
I got sick and was on my ass for a month = well, good thing I didn't have a job I had to clock into. (lol) And good thing I have a loving partner to pick me up from the doctor when I smell like sick, take me to the worst CVS in Glendale, and laugh about whatever over Thai food.
I keep missing therapy & was dizzy for 3 full weeks due to stopping Zoloft = how. fucking. lucky. am. I? to be so mentally fortified and in such a better place that I can still be okay even when I had to cancel multiple sessions. And to have worked so goddamn hard that I could finally STOP driving to Glendale to pick up that damn prescription in the first place.
I am alone on Christmas = Home is not a house, it's people. And I might not be home on Christmas but I am always home when they're a phone call away.
My uncle passed, and I am missing him = Apple showed me a photo from 7 years ago, where we had herded my grandparents, my uncle, his sons, and his granddaughters into a photo, yelling "four generations!!! FOUR GENERATIONS!!" I am the luckiest girl on the planet to have experienced that. To have experienced as many Christmases with them as I have. With him. To have memories he and all my loved ones exist in–little places that I love to visit when I'm missing them.
Of course, it's never going to feel like it's enough when it comes to the time you spend and the memories you make with loved ones.
For so many holidays, I'd sit in my aunt's kitchen nook with them, and many more, and be overstimulated and mad about how many people were talking, the barking Chihuahua, the cat weaving through my legs under the table, how cold or hot it was, and how many sauces on were on the table. Why did we need that many sauces? Nobody wants to try all the sauces. FINE, I'll try it. Oh that's actually kinda good...you said got it from Costco?
I'd get annoyed when my mom was JUST about to go out the door but would inevitably get looped into another conversation about whatever. something. anything. Mel Gibson as director of Passion of The Christ. Just on and on and on and on and now that I'm an adult, I find myself lingering in the doorway, making excuses to come visit, picking up every phone call even though I know it's just about what my brother ate or what book he should buy next. Talking about whatever. Something. Anything.
Just linger for a bit. Just a little longer.
Even when it's a headache!
Even when there's too many sauces!
Even when you've taken enough pictures!
In seven years, Apple will remind you that there's no such thing as enough!
Because most of all, when you love someone, you're willing to suffer for them, and find the silver linings–even if only in hindsight.
So here I am, thankful for everything regardless, and even more thankful for the good things in between. Like friends. Like last-minute concert invites. Like people checking up on me. Like free museums, dinner on the couch, photo booths, French breakfasts, craft stores, Halloween Horror Nights, my new guitar, my old guitar, my old car that sometimes works, and shopping for my new car that will always work.
Like homemade chia jam. Like my roommate's friends saying all my apartment decor is "so coming-of-age". Like my new boots. Like being on set again!! Like going out in the freezing cold with my mom just to grab a Mexican coffee. Like my cat, and my new journal embroidered with other little studious cats.
Like the fucked-up but yummy Fantastic Mr. Fox cookies I made with Jen. Like my little brother driving me to the airport. Like the smile on mine and my partner's faces opening up presents over pineapple rice, egg rolls and Jingle All The Way. Like Larchmont sandwiches and my new tortoise glasses.
All these brilliant little moments and things have made me so happy and so optimistic and so very understanding that while there's a lot of sad and frustrating things that have happened these last few months, if I were to take all the negatives and positives and boil them down...my glass is still half full.
Sincerely,
Elena
Elena