040-This is all we have
Monday Updates: Rushing through the week, and trying to understand love
Notes from my diary:
April 12
Today, I woke up from a strange dream. In this dream, I was with a friend, and we were discussing what happens after death. He told me of an afterlife he believes in and how he can’t wait to see his mother again one day.
Then he turned to me.
What do you believe in? He asked.
I smiled.
“This is all we have.”
I have been contemplating love and the different types we experience. How time changes things. The concoction of chemicals that are born in our brains to then be circulated through our bodies, at different velocities and in different amounts. The recipe changes everything.
We, with these thinking brains, suddenly fall victim to the illogic and are rendered hapless by primitive sensations. It is a glorious feeling.
But despite being in my 30s, I feel I still have a loose understanding of what it all means. And this week, I told someone I had never fallen in love.
I honestly don’t know the difference between loving someone and the trope of falling in love. People talk about it, but I have yet to have received full clarity on the definitions, and how they should feel when you experience it.
My German friend here in Mexico told me that it is a full release, you trust them completely with yourself, and fear is absent. Your nervous system relaxes around them. You are happy.
I have been in a constant struggle with how it works. I have been hearing too many jokes about keeping the high ground. About being jaded. About how one brings past relationships into new ones.
How we talk to ourselves doesn’t help either: Try not to care too much. Don’t look too desperate. Don’t get too excited.
Even protecting ourselves from pain is exhausting. After a while, we begin to confuse boundaries with walls.
The jacarandas are leaving us now. I am sad to see them go. As they make their exit, the rainy season will be joining us. While that season brings a certain type of joy as well, it also brings hesitancy. Change. It is hard to get used to change.
It has been 40 weeks now of Monday Updates, and I want to change a few things again. I removed the numbers in the beginning, but I think I want to put them back it. It feels more like field notes. Intentional.
Let me know if you like it.
Travel Writing:
FIND ME ON
Monday Updates is a section of this blog where I’m letting my hair down, figuratively. I am often preoccupied with getting things perfect, rather than simply sharing and enjoying the process while talking about life. Instead of the tradition of hating Mondays, I’m going to try to associate them with creative freedom and allow myself to speak my mind without the worry that a perfectionist usually has. Things here may be a bit disjointed, incomplete, and occasionally nonsensical, but they may also be playful, curious, and whimsical. I will do my best to make it more of the latter.
001-Bring em back. I agree about the intentionality it brings. And order. Always appreciate your slow tone and near vocal quality of your words. I think a man like me with the spirit of a bunny rabbit needs reminders of slowness and focus; addition through subtraction.
Love the part where you said that we can confuse boundaries with walls. Very true ❤️