catastrophe is my fertilizer
I woke up and it was 2024...
I’m not going to spend a lot of time here writing about how I’ve managed to abandon this little thought inventory of mine for over an entire year now. Does it make me feel good? Of course not! Especially when I specifically told myself in 2022, the last time I hit ‘publish,’ that I’d make my ~wRiTiNg PrAcTiCe~ an actual, regular thing.
::insert audio of the gods laughing::
Every last one of my Virgo placements (especially that Black Moon Lilith bitch) have been shaking from my general inactivity from posting “meaningful” content online. Most of what I’ve had the capacity for is making TikToks with filters that tell me what my red flags are or my top three celebrity look-a-likes (for those interested, I got Ed Sheerhan, Jennifer Lawrence, and John Cena). Really thrilling stuff.
The thing is: a lot has happened. As they annoyingly tend to do. That’s life! 🥁💥
It took the Barbie movie to somewhat normalize talking about death and Scorpios everywhere (I’m speaking for all of us) were like, yeah…WE KNOW.
We bared witness to the evolution of Blue Ivy Carter and I do believe we are lucky to be alive because of it. (I experienced the Renaissance World Tour in Santa Clara where Beyoncé was named as Mayor for the day and my soulmate revealed themselves to me…you’ll know when you see them).
Paperback books had a moment (allegedly) which seems to happen whenever the sun makes its full round from the last time x celebrity of the moment decided that reading IS cool and the cycle repeats. I will never say no to gobbling up a Nicole Richie yearly book round-up, though.
Nicki Minaj tweeted this months ago and I decided it needed to be framed and displayed on my nightstand, though that has yet to happen, as with so many other things I told myself I wanted to do last year. Shocker!
My faith in humanity tank runneth low, as suspected. This collective grief and suffering from all that makes earth feel like an unbearable planet to live on persists. But seeing things like this help and give me a second of hope. I hang onto those seconds that feel ever so fleeting. They are real.
Every year feels more difficult than the last, but 2023 took the cake for me, personally. I’m finding ways to cultivate any remote sense of optimism, even if it’s like using a toothpick to dig myself out this grainy pit of never-ending chaos. The consistency is what’s saving me, regardless of how janky the toothpick is. It’s not about the tool itself, but how you use it, right?
Anyway. THAT should explain my MIA-ness, but not that it needed one, as per this quote I have hanging in my office to remind my people pleasing-ass why:
The thing I’ve come to learn about grief is that the learning never ends. Just as I’ve grown and matured, so has my relationship to all the grief I’ve held in my body since childhood. No day is ever the same when you’re allowing yourself the space and safety to sit in your grief, but it sure can be if you’re like the old me who defaulted to the ctrl + alt + delete of it all. For someone who used to find safety in being “in control,” grief was my ultimate archenemies because she does not give a single fuck about the steering wheel. She wants you to let go! To release! To f e e l !
And for all my “ew, feelings” girlies...I know, it’s hard, but it’s the only way. This is such a plain and simple concept, but everything you hold onto stays inside until you let it out — as told by my mentor in grief, Mangda, founder of BACII, during one of my 1:1 sessions with her (which I have and will always recommend to anyone needing support). 2023 presented endless ways my body and mind were able to withstand one life-altering transition after the next. It left me looking like that one Bratz doll half the time and my grief (years of it) with nowhere to go but out.
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
This line from Franny Choi’s poems in her latest book prompted me to audibly “whew” the second I read it. If I have to think back on the major changes in my life, each was prompted with a seemingly catastrophic event (whether externally or internally). They happen whether you want them to or not and that’s where acceptance enters the chat. The avoidance I’ve been mind-numbingly participating in so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the grief or the unpredictable only delayed my growth and my capacity for moving through these transitions with tenderness and compassion for myself. You need those things, babes! Every loss comes with a seed that will eventually grow into a new beginning — one that is truly meant for you. It just takes patience, trust, vulnerability, and surrender.
Aside from all the external catastrophes I’ve been processing, there’s a much deeper loss in the undercurrents of all I’m grieving which is: my sense of self. I’ve described the last 10+ of my life as being so dissociative that it’s been difficult for me to place a memory unless there was evidence or if it was stored in my body by way of trauma. It’s not a cute way to live, I confess! Nor was it fair to any of my relationships, either. The thing with grief is that you have to be so utterly present with yourself so that you can sit with it and let it run its course through you, in whatever way it needs to be released. None of that can happen in avoidance or with a tight ass grip for control.
A year ago, I wrote down a list of ways I can create a home within myself as I was desperately trying to find ways to remember the things that motivate me to be an actual person, not someone just on auto-pilot. The second I decided I’ve had it, officially, I stopped denying all the parts about myself that prevented me from living my most authentic life and got serious about what my actual values were. I didn’t want to continue being this person who’d start projects only to never finish them or write down goals but never take action in pursuing them. I wanted to unblock me from me (hate her — the ego self, that is)!
One major factor of this self-expression-repression was rooted in a deep need to be perfect or as close to perfect as humanly possible, and a fear of what it would mean to show my imperfections and be truly vulnerable. This might be why I enjoyed Beef so much. The relatability of building a persona based on societal standards, capitalist notions of what success looks like, with a sprinkle of that immigrant-child pursuit of perfectionism just blaring on screen. There’s a lot of grief in letting those things you centered your life around go and in letting old parts of yourself go. The beauty is that it creates space for newer things that feel more like the real you. And that’s kind of a slay, is it not???
Speaking of vulnerability, I think that is more than enough…for now. I hope to be back here soon with a renewed sense for how I want to continue this thing because I really do, believe me!!! There are just some things that don’t feel in alignment anymore. For now, just take this entry as a crossroads à la Bone Thugs because, yes, this does feel like a death and rebirth in a lot of ways. When I started writing in here 3 years ago I was in a totally different place in my life, trudging along the murky, corporate waters of dread* during the height of the pandemic. Since I’ve gone freelance, my relationship to the work has changed but the passion for curating more avenues for representation has never left. She just needs a minute — because a whole year and some change wasn’t enough, tbh!!!
*A review on Glassdoor mentioned one of my previous employer’s “a place where dreams go to die” and it’s one of the truest thing ever written, next to anything penned by Thich Nhat Hanh or Sexxy Red. Is this perhaps the first time you’ve seen those names in the same sentence? You’re welcome.
🌱
As for how I’m spending my days in self recovery/discovery…it’s looked a lot like me taking a 3-month sabbatical of sorts to regulate my nervous system from allthethings™, going on my first solo trip internationally (more on that to come), learning how to DJ and read tarot (yes, I’m about to be so much more annoying), buying hella books and borrowing even more from the library (who is she), and lots of other things where the bottom line simply is: they make me feel good. Where all the weight of striving to be this perfect person once was, is now filled with space for more self love and the devotion to being so in love with myself I want to puke. It’s new. It’s foreign. It’s too much at times. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One last thing for whoever needs to hear it. In the words of Dr. Rosales Meza, “your life is not meant to be lived on colonial time.” Read that again. You’re allowed to rest.
some things that helped regulate my nervous system over the last year:
The Into The Woods 2022 Broadway Cast Recording. I’m not sure what it is about the Prologue that puts me into a meditative state but I’m also not here to question the things that bring me pleasure. They just do.
Mimi Zhu’s Be Not Afraid of Love was the first book I read in 2023 and I’m ever thankful for the healing trajectory it set me on.
Every last one of the Raven remixes Kelela has been dropping since October, with that initial Karen Nyame KG remix of “Contact” being my absolute favorite.
Watching old @joannethescammer videos. Don’t think that needs an explanation.
Regarding anything this man says as MY Bible!
Getting completely lost in Geena Rocero’s Horse Barbie which should be the exact kind of raw honesty every memoir should model after.
The Signs & Skymates deck by Dossé-Via Trenou (more famously known as @ScorpioMystique in the Scorpio community) that has forced me to intuitively explore aspects of my birth chart in ways I didn’t know were possible. She’s just trying to connect with her higher self, okay???
Being back on Spotify (as much as I hate their algo) and making playlists as though my life depended on it (all for the sake of getting a stupid Wrapped, which revealed to me that Bryson Tiller was my top artist, though I didn’t really need data to tell me that but here we are).
Whoever stuck around, I’m so thankful for you. Here’s to a far better year ahead for us all. We deserve it!
Appreciated your vulnerability on grief!
As usual, excellent Coy! Enjoyed reading it. Continue writing please ❤️