#41 Surprise yourself

taste as many apples as you can

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

―Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

I want you to surprise yourself. You’ve done that your whole life, actually, even when you didn’t think you were. So many things happened this year — even when it felt weird, difficult, and sometimes sad. Time is bendable, that’s the thing. I spent all year time traveling. Nowadays, I do so more internally; just the other day, I did something I’d wanted to do for a really long time — I got really intensely scared of rejection and heard her, little me, cry. I held her for a while, told her we’ll always have each other. That I’ll never abandon her, that someone is allowed to decide whether something is for them. That it doesn’t mean it’s a rejection of who I am but a decision for someone else to make.

The past year I faced grief and loss and pain. My heart cracked open with the magnitude of it in March, continued to break in July, I walked through Barcelona with tears in my eyes. And then I understood nothing is forever when it comes to a feeling — if you just let it visit you, let it stay, it can always tell you something new. Like I hoped things were different or I’m disappointed or I really cared more than I thought I did.

I stopped beating myself up about feeling my feelings. I became certain I could take care of myself, emotionally. I trusted that feelings aren’t dangerous — how you choose to deal with them can be. I think I spent this year worrying a lot: about money, about purpose, about not knowing exactly where I was. But sometimes it is good to feel lost. Maybe even necessary. Learning to make peace with getting lost is probably the biggest thing I played at this year. Maybe it was also demonizing the feeling for ages and then learning it’s just a part of life itself. That it doesn’t mean that’s who I am.

Most importantly, I’m grateful to be alive. To get the chance to try again. To learn that on the other side of intense loss, there is immense love; from intense grief, there is intense joy. One cannot exist without the other. It’s the thing of life.

I learned to be a bit more present, to consider feelings as helpful teachers instead of stubborn, unwanted visitors who ruthlessly plot to destabilize me or ruin my life. I learned I still have a lot of fear of losing control, of surrendering, and I’m learning that if I try, if I allow myself, I can do it, I can try it, see how it goes. I can try it and feel safe and braver — somehow stronger — because I’ve allowed myself to lose a sense of control and trust that whatever may come, it’ll feel good. New. Foreign, maybe uncomfortable at first, but good.

I learned to work with Ana V. Martins, to think to myself — maybe two is better than one. Maybe sharing, co-creating, maybe it can add a lot to a life. Feeling seen is only possible if you allow yourself to be seen. If you open up those doors a crack, little by little, if you just allow yourself to try.

And sometimes, it might hurt. Sometimes I won’t get what I want. But maybe this year I love just what I need.

Getting older is about holding the joy and the grief hand in hand. On every hand, a different world. It’s about witnessing injustice and pain and destruction and allowing it to pain you. To change you. To let your heart grow in size and let it be occupied by more life, more of what you love, even if you’ve lost it. This year felt painful and confusing but maybe that’s what it can feel like when you expand. When I don’t feel certain of where I am or what I’m doing. When I think about how hard I’m willing to fight for what I have. For what I want.

Even when I thought I should want something different, even when I questioned myself — deep down I still wanted what I wanted.

Let the year ahead be the year where I ( where you, too) want things loudly. Where I let myself say what I want. Where I ask for what I want. Where I loudly, proudly dream again. Where I dream and work and meet other dreamers who think you’re never too late, never too old. Where I try to taste as many apples as I could.