Tag: beginnings

An Ode to Old Wes

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Five years ago to date, I graduated from Wesleyan. Who the hell was I even on that day? Petrified? Mentally exhausted? Hopeful? All of the above & more. Mostly, I was completely unaware of how much my life had been altered by those four years.

The first words I ever wrote about Wes were: “Day one has come and gone and I survived. Not only survived, I thrived. I absolutely love this place. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it’s completely true.” It’s funny how telling that became.

Wes became the second place I ever called home. It was a place that sparked a fire in me. A place I found a community of activists & artists, WOCO, a tribe, and a first love. I remember picking Wesleyan for all the most ridonkulous reasons (none of which I would recommend to people making big life decisions – or who cares, do what you want). After academics, my top reasons were:

  • It had the same name as one of my favorite characters (so you know, fate!)
  • The Gilmore Girls made a quaint town in the middle of Connecticut look pretty hilarious
  • It was different from the Bahamas in EVERY way possible (jackpot!)

These were my actual reasons. Literally, in that order. Why do we even let 17 year olds make life decisions? But no one could’ve told me different. When I realized Joss Whedon had gone there, there was no better stamp of approval. I had made the best decision possible using the most ridonkulous criteria possible.

And I’ve never regretted it. For all its pitfalls (poorly-veiled racism, losing classmates to terrible acts of violence, unbridled anxiety, loneliness, tears, and sooo many all nighters) it become home. Complicated, messy and difficult to love at times. But always home. The extraordinary people we survived and thrived with made it that way. Now that I reflect, I’ve realized that it’s incredible how much a place and its people can challenge and change you in a really good way.

Although I couldn’t be at our fifth year reunion this weekend, know that my heart is there.

“It’s interesting because that is the thing that you don’t realize. That there’s something completely artificial about the way college is; the way going away to some experience like that is. You’re together inside this pressure cooker situation for this period of time and under those conditions you get very, very close in ways that you wouldn’t have otherwise. And then it comes just to an end, like you come to a cliff. And it’s just like, okay now it’s over. And when that happens, it’s very powerful.” – Felicity

Grad2011 4

Photo credits: http://wesleying.org/2015/05/24/liveblog-wesleyan-commencement-2015/ and https://www.facebook.com/wesleyan.university/photos/?tab=album&album_id=342993924994

Taking Stock

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I had a great conversation with Marie-Eve a few weeks back. I am so grateful for the friendship we have cultivated. She is a best friend and family in so many ways. As we were talking she offhandedly praised me for really making the best of my time at home. For doing all the things I said I wanted to do: eating better, yoga, making a blog, my video journal, and going natural. It made my heart smile with gratitude. She said I was doing so much better and I looked happy.

That moment was unexpected but so deeply needed.

Truthfully, I’m working my way to happy, but I’m not there yet. I want to be joyful not in spite of anyone or anything, but simply because I am.

I cut my hair off because I needed to feel like I was walking towards change instead of being dragged, for once.

I started yoga because it touches a part of me that needs healing and strength.

I started a video journal because my spirit needs to remember the sweet moments and days as much as my tear ducts remember the hard ones.

I write because the writings of others have literally carried me to salvation.

I want to be a fuller version of myself. For too long I lay broken and shattered across the eastern seaboard, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from monuments to sand dollars. I left shards everywhere I went and I picked up new splinters along the way. Now I’m back in harbour, picking up the pieces, molding a new figure, and breathing life and light to that being. I want to love the person I will become. I want to love her fiercely. I want her to forgive me. And I want to forgive. I want her to set boundaries, healthy ones, and live true. I want her to feel powerful and worthy of all the sweetness this world has to offer. I want her to be imbued with strength, vulnerability, and most importantly, wholeness.

And I want the same for you, whoever you are reading this.

“Don’t let anyone take your magic away. Not even you.” – M 

Private Domain

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I’m a private person, to say the least. I’m not big on sharing my inner thoughts, experiences, and concerns beyond a handful of my closest friends. For me, talking about events and ideas are so much easier than talking about what’s going on in my heart. Even social media has become a space for me to share articles on what’s going on in the world and to muse about baby animals. So to share of myself in this way feels terrifying.

But I’ve been reading and meditating more and more these days. And the things that have helped me most through this year of heartbreak, difficulties, and transition, have been reading the words of others who have experienced similar moments, endured them, and became fuller versions of themselves because of it.

So with that, I share myself with this space, in hopes that someone finds a thread of familiarity in my experiences.

This has been a year of endings. The biggest of which are the painful end to a 5 and a half years, on-and-off relationship and the drawn out end to my time in the US, leaving behind incredible friends and a sense of unbounded freedom. Both endings have felt raw, unjust, and unforgiving in their march towards their inevitable conclusion. To say I wished for a different outcome would be an understatement. And yet…here I am. Still standing. My hope for this next stage of my life is to find meaning in those endings, to not be bitter, and to be grateful for beginnings.

I imagine this blog will be many things or perhaps nothing at all. If you keep reading, I’ll probably muse about issues of politics, race and gender, returning back to the Bahamas, heartbreak, letting go of who we thought we were supposed to be, meditation, and the inevitable lost-ness we feel in our mid-twenties (and probably beyond – ugh). It will be a map of where I’ve been and where I hope to go. Feel free to join along for the ride.

Cheers to a year filled with magic & meditation.

Peace,

K

“I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild…even in my darkest days, I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before.” – Cheryl Strayed, Wild