the end of an era but the start of an age

it'll pass...

“...i like her substack. She does write quite a bit about Big though.”

“what, the movie?”

-genuine quote from my friend and her boyfriend that did make me howl laughing.

however, as funny as this was, it did make me realise that i do write too much about men and dating and Big in particular. so i'm promising myself that this is the last one to mention this subject and then i’ll move onto something like politics or current events or doctor who, something that i actually know something about. i hardly ever wrote before i started this substack, not since i was a teenager really, if we don’t count journal entries. when i was younger it was mainly shitty poetry that barely left my wattpad drafts about whatever problem i had made up, i let it plague me until i had to get it out.

although i don’t always mention Big by name, his presence lingers. i hate thinking that my writing circles back to one man that i barely saw yet let influence my creativity like this. but not anymore, i’ve deleted all my title ideas relating to anything related to men or hinge. i’ve deleted some drafts even, others i leave until i can frankenstein the parts of them that i can turn into something else. something better, removed from men, centred on better things. this is my formal resignation from ‘relationship/dating/hinge-analysis’ substack. it’s been great but i’ve got better things to do.

i think i know what lesson i was supposed to learn from this. because now, after all this writing and spinning around in circles, i can finally admit that i don’t get it and don’t actually know anything. because i thought that i did know, i thought i’d learnt this lesson before, but on further inspection; there was actually a layer that i’d never considered before. i had always focused on my own feelings in these situations, partly because they were the only feelings that i could dissect and inspect; they were the only ones that i could be sure of. but this time around, i decided to look outwards in a way that i haven’t before. in the past, when i was in this situation of feeling ‘less than’ or as if one aspect of my life seemed to be going to shit, i always held one phrase in my mind “other things exist too”; this simply meant that outside of what my mind was doing, whatever direction it was spinning or what it was trying to convince me of…there were other things going on. the world would still spin, there would be a morning and an evening, the rivers would still run. other things exist too.

but i’d somehow never applied this to people. i’d always looked too far into the breadcrumbs that were given to me; as if i were practicing divination with tea leaves rather than just believing what i was told. this time around, i decided to just take things at face value rather than just make up things and decide that they must be true. i let people just exist.

‘sonder’ is the word used to describe the realisation that the strangers that you pass on the street have a life as complex and intricate as your own, a life that you will never see or understand. i think that sonder can apply to some of the people in our own lives, the people that are barely at arm's length, those who are so far from us but close enough that our fingertips may brush their silhouette when we are half desperate and half lucky. those whose shadow lingers at an ajar door, going but not gone. but more fool us for leaving the door ajar, more fool us for reaching out in the first place. the word ‘strangers’ doesn’t quite apply to them but you can’t think of any other way to describe them; you don’t even think to consider the word they’d describe you with.

but this is the way that they like it, i’m sure of it. their egos need to be tended to, cared for like a sick animal. they want to be wanted but not had. to be seen but not known and liked but not loved, to be an angel but never a god. the thrill of the open door, theres a certain vampiric aspect to it, standing in the shadows needing to be called in and then theres the pain that ensues. if i was a better writer, i could describe it to you but if i was a better person i wouldn’t have lived it at all. if i was stronger, i would put the crucifix on my wall to good use and i’d bolt my door but i’m a glutton for punishment who was raised on twilight. in some ways ,if we were to stick with the ‘supernatural’ comparisons, i’m my own cassandra; i talk boldly about my third eye but don’t talk about the dreams i have, the ones i’m convinced are delivered by the universe because then i’ll really sound like a lunatic. but how else do you explain the dreams where i knew my ex was cheating, the ones that told me to leave my other ex, and the one where big told me he still loves his ex (the only one i’ve ever had with him in actually). ex marks the spot in most of my dreams apparently. perhaps i’m just a lunatic for writing the way i do, but isn’t that part of my appeal? nothing strokes an ego like essays written like odes to a situation that exists more on substack than it ever did in the real world, even if he will never read the words. reams of writing eulogising something that never actually lived. is there anything more flattering? laying it on thick and digging my own grave with a small shovel.

and all that does is get them going even more. they can’t help but see us as dopamine rushes instead of people. our bootlicking just fuels their runners high, we butter them up just to watch them slip away like running water through our fingers. but that makes me sound bitter and angry, and i never mean to be those things, but intention and effect don’t always line up the way we want them to. i think we both know that now.

but i think there is another lesson here… not everything has to be great. there is not an epic to be made of everything that happens to you. small things can be important too. just because i only hear a song for the first and last time does not make it any less beautiful, if i only run my eyes over a painting doesn’t make it any less of a work of art. leaving with grace and decorum and knowing when it’s time to go is a lesson i’ve finally learned. i had such a habit of seeing galaxies in a cup of coffee, mountains out of molehills, i know i have a problem, i really did not intend on making it yours too.

i can’t complain too much about people like that because maybe i was just the same, just instead of attention, i was fiending for inspiration and wanted to finally write something halfway decent. try poetry again, fuck it maybe even a haiku. he could’ve been anyone, it’s just bad luck that it was him. “if he writes her a few sonnets, he loves her. if he writes her a few hundred sonnets, he loves sonnets,” there’s a large chance that i didn’t care for him specifically in such a deep wrenching way but i just cared for writing and he was just the right amount of tragic to be so inspiring. again i sound spiteful but i don’t mean to be, its hard to recount things without re-feeling them too. instead of looking back and thinking of anything i could’ve changed, i started looking forward.

i started looking outwards and i will continue looking at the world from this perspective, i’ll keep sonder in my mind. i will write about other things, because they exist too. i used to feel anger at these people who have one foot in my life and the other in a life that i’ll never see; now i pity those who can not stand still, who move from one life to another without falling through the ice. i will try not to be so harsh in the future, if they try not to be so brisk. i realise now that i did not know you at all, i probably never will. you will be the man i never knew and i’ll be that crazy girl that made this all up. so stand in the doorway all you want, linger when you should be leaving but my door being open does not mean that i will be waiting there. i will not be reaching for you but that doesn’t mean that you are being pushed away. it’s your choice, stranger.

otherwise, this is my goodbye.

song rec: scott street - phoebe bridgers