I wear my Orlando in Love baseball cap on every early morning run, and every sunset one. It feels like I’m taking a little slice of when things were golden with me. I’ve believed, since last June, that London was golden because of the city itself; I couldn’t possibly conceive that it was because I was.
Success has always been on the other side of fear, but so has joy.
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In the past month, I’ve somehow convinced myself, once again, that you can outrun unhappiness. That passport stamps and the thrill of being somewhere new would be enough to make the feelings subside. They often do, too–but not for very long.
Jumping up and down and singing at the top of my lungs at The O2 was something I’d been working towards for years, and never knew. Pure joy. Chasing that feeling had a monetary cost, but the highest cost was my comfortability. Had I stayed in my bubble of misery, there’s no way I would’ve believed there was a world out there for me that was worth the price of effortlessness.
If the best things in life are the hardest to obtain, what could’ve possibly made me believe that choosing to be an optimist would come without adversity? No, if anything, it’s even more difficult than being a pessimist–constantly holding out hope, choosing to trust in yourself and others, and the world–it’s bound to be difficult. Difficult does not mean unworthy.
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Just when I’ve convinced myself things are good, I remember my brain is predisposed to crush and obliterate the feeling with its usual methods of doubt and anxiety. So I find myself at a crossroads again: will I fall into my usual pattern of sadness, or will I choose to be happy?
Michelle Zauner wrote Psychopomp, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, and Jubilee as a trilogy, in her own words. The first, in pure anguish as her mother was dying, the second, after she had passed and was left with the grief, and the third, years in the aftermath, as a means to heal and feel joy again.
In her words, Jubilee is “a record about fighting to feel. I wanted to re-experience the pure, unadulterated joy of creation...The songs are about recalling the optimism of youth and applying it to adulthood. They’re about making difficult choices, fighting ignominious impulses and honouring commitments, confronting the constant struggle we have with ourselves to be better people.”
I want to be the better version of myself, and I am choosing to be! I want to be the version of me dancing in London again. Golden. On the other side of fear. Acknowledging that there is a constant struggle in choosing to do so, but that the matter of doing so would give me happiness again.
I am such a melancholy brunette. A sad woman!
And many, many, other things. It’s time to be other things, again.
–E
–E