Everything good takes time
And other musings on finding your place in the world.
Hello folks,
It is early Monday morning, and I am sitting at my desk watching the sunrise through the window. Last night it stormed here, one of those storms where the sky lights up green and you feel taken out of your body for a moment, as if you are witnessing something you are not meant to. I’m finding lately that the more I pay attention to the world, the more I seem to be having that experience, that I have stumbled into an existence that is separate and strange and something I was never meant to experience. Mostly, this happens in the good moments: when the light hits the trees just right, watching the moon rise over the highway, breathing in that first breath of crisp morning air, looking out at my apartment and realizing that I dreamt this thing and I believed in this thing and now I live this thing. There’s something almost surreal about those moments, ones where the gap between the life you wish to live and the life you currently do seems to close, even if it is only for a moment. It feels like the moment after waking from a dream, or perhaps it is more akin to stumbling into one— feeling as though you have found something beautiful and fleeting and meant only for you.
I’ve been having this feeling a lot lately, which I hope means that some of the healing process— long, difficult, and also incredibly worth it— that I chose to set out on a good five years ago is making a difference. A friend of mine recently remarked that me moving back to North Carolina was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m inclined to agree; moving here, to the small town where I first lived and knew no one, in many ways saved my life. I had my music on shuffle the other day when a song that I used to listen to incessantly at nineteen— when I thought I would always feel this way, when I couldn’t imagine anything other than the all-consuming numbness— came on, and I realized it had been a long time since I had felt that way. That’s not to say that healing is linear or that it has an end point; of course I sometimes do still feel this way. But where it used to be more or less the only thing I felt, it seems now to be only a momentous thing. I never could have imagined this five years ago.
That being said, I won’t pretend the process was easy, or instantaneous. When I hit a breaking point back then and realized that I had to fundamentally change everything about my life because living the way I was no longer felt worth living at all, I had this idea that I would start looking for good in the world and putting myself out there to receive it and it would all flow in. That, when I accepted myself for who I was, I would be able to finally build the authentic community I craved. I would write the kinds of things I knew I was capable of. I would fill my life with joy and purpose, and it would be easy for all of this to fall into place, like flipping a switch. The light would— to really push this metaphor— come on, and I would be awash in brightness, so much so that it would immediately push out anything that didn’t glow in its wake.
As anyone who has ever made a similar decision to try to live life differently, in a way that looks healthy for you, knows, it never happens like this. I think I’ve watched one too many YA films over the years, ones where something happens— even if it’s something dystopian, some kind of end-of-the-world action— and just like that, community is built. The lonely protagonist meets one person who changes their life, introducing them into a new community, building new networks of care and support. They move, and suddenly the world opens itself up to them. Someone who didn’t fit in in high school goes off to liberal arts college and suddenly is on Instagram living their best life and everyone back home is jealous and spiteful. A global pandemic wipes out civilization as we know it and strange new found families are formed. When we teach narrative structure, we talk about this as the rising action, which leads to the central conflict, which in all of these stories looks like someone finally finding their place. Of course, there’s always more drama that can stem off of that— the new friend turns out to be playing you (anyone else been watching Do Revenge???), the Instagram life is carefully curated and not at all like the real lived experience, the found families splinter and fight, the the core message is that community is incited through a single action. These narratives don’t drag often out the story of building that community; it is gone and then it is there, as if overnight.
We recorded a new podcast episode (dropping for you in a few weeks) last night about growth and gardens and community, and I’ve been ruminating on these topics in the hours since. I’ve been thinking about how much I appreciate the comparison of community to a garden, which of course cannot grow without care and support. A plant that grows tall alone does not make a garden. Imagine a forest with only a single tree. It might be the most impressive tree in the world. But if it stands alone, it has only a fraction of the power it would as part of a larger whole. Furthermore, whether it grows alone or not, nothing strong and stable can grow overnight. Everything good takes time. And I know we hate to hear that— god, when people used to say that to me when I was so lost that all I could do was cling on to my vision of the future and the idea of waiting years to even get close to it felt almost worse than living the way I was— but it really is true. I always thought my life would change if I could just get myself to a new place, one that aligned with the kind of live I saw myself living. But it’s been nearly three years back here and I’m still searching for my community and learning who I am in this place.
We discussed this on last week’s podcast episode with artist and zine creator Skylar Simmons, who, when asked about her creative community, had a great response that she felt like she was still searching for it. It’s refreshing to hear someone say this, especially someone who might seem like they have it all together on the surface. I know how often people come to me saying that my life looks perfect on social media, and I never quite know what to say. I’ve spent most of my teenage and young adult life curating an external image of happiness in order to convince myself it’s true. And at some point along the way, it did shift to become true. But I never want to promote an image that it is always that way, or that I made these changes, and everything became better overnight. What you don’t see on Instagram is the growth and the setbacks and the amount of time— god, so much time— I have spent alone the last few years trying to figure out who I am so that I can share that person with others and with the world and not be so afraid of someone else seeing me for who I really am.
When I first moved back to North Carolina, I lived alone in a two-bedroom apartment on the top floor of an old house and I spent most of my free time walking around the woods and trying to write, things that I had always thought would make me feel happy but honestly just felt really fucking lonely at the time. I would ask myself why I had made this choice, and I would reflect on my time in New York, wondering how I could have been that lonely when I at least knew other people and had friends to hang out with. I would get mad at myself for not appreciating what I had, and then I would panic that I might never have it that good again, that adult life in America only gets lonelier the older you get. On the surface, I was doing fine; I was financially stable, financially independent, I had a job, I had a handful of new friends, I was physically healthy, I had an apartment that I was filling with things that made me happy, and it was all to myself. But I kept wondering if I had made the wrong choice, and what the lasting consequences of that choice might be. What I did not see back then was that I was planting the seeds for community that would grow into what I have now— which is still not a perfect thing, and I still spend most of my time alone, and it is still far from what I imagined, but it is growing into something lovely and beautiful and I am learning to simply trust that process instead of trying to force and control and morph it into something it is not, or at least something it is not yet.
That handful of friends I made in the small rural country where we all lived are now some of my best friends. One of them has become an integral part of this project, and has helped me grow it in new directions I never could have on my own. My life is better because of these people, who now feel deeply familiar. I am known by them. And what a wonderful thing to be known by people and still to be loved— something so beautiful and necessary to the core of our human existence that it feels it transcends all the other bullshit of day-to-day life.
The point to be made here, though, is that those people did not always know me. I mean, when we met, I didn’t even know myself. And I think the more beautiful part of this has been growing alongside other people and watching each one of us discover ourselves, and then get to introduce the rest of us to that person. That is what community means to me; a network of mutual support that leads to individual growth. In that way, we are like the garden or the forest— dependent on one another to reach our own heights of growth.
In my closest friendships, I have found the same comment coming up often lately, which is: you are not the same person you were when we met. Good! I hope to god I am not the same at twenty-four that I was at twenty-two. I don’t even feel like I am the same person I was six weeks ago! Every day I wake up and I open myself to change and I hold on to the Small Good Moments and I trust the world to lead me down the path to reach the Big Good Moments, too. I might not have found my place in the world yet, but I’m definitely finding my footing. I’ve tried out a hundred different versions of myself and I am finally putting down some roots— and, most of all, I am learning to stop being afraid of those roots.
I talk about it all the time, but if I could be like anything, I would like to be like the pines, who plant deep roots far beneath the surface so that they can grow tall and then spin out far without snapping. A friend told me this means being strong and stable and yet able to move in the wind. Yes. But for the first five to seven years of a pine tree’s life, they stay in tufts close to the ground, letting their roots weave into the earth. All that must happen before they can grow tall, up to a hundred and twenty feet. If you skip that process, the first minute a storm shakes through they will break; the roots are necessary to the ultimate growth.
Take your time. Plant your roots. And trust that community— like any good, strong thing— will reveal itself in the strangest of ways, in its own path, and in its own time.
Love you. Thanks for being here.
FIVE THINGS THAT BROUGHT ME JOY THIS WEEK
I had this song by Pip Blom on repeat the entire time I was writing today’s newsletter.
After years of trying to be a black coffee person because I thought fun lattes were not what ~serious writers~ drank, I’ve finally given in to my love of fun flavored coffee. This weekend I had a carrot cake latte at The Optimist in Raleigh that might have been one of the best (and most interesting!) coffees I’ve ever had.
This piece by Ada Calhoun in Vogue about creativity and domesticity (I mean, this one is less about joy, but this is a great piece).
I think Emily St. John Mandel is the author whose books most closely resemble what I wish to create. I just started The Glass Hotel, which I initially didn’t think sounded great based on back cover copy alone, but it is, as usual, beautiful.
I would be remiss not to mention the cooler temperatures we finally got this past weekend. I feel most myself in the months of October and November, and I for one, am ready to break out all the jackets I own. Same:
