“Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.”
- “February” by Margaret
Atwood ***Every late February, during that final cold stretch of winter when all creatures yearn for the green hues of March, my birthday comes to pay a visit. I tend to be sitting at the window, awaiting springtime with mild impatience. I listen for the whistle of birdsong, search for the soft green buds on the trees, eye the bars on my windows in hopes that a squirrel will scamper past. But my birthday, when the groundhog feels like a cruel memory and all the red roses from the month’s great holiday have withered, must first make her pilgrimage to my doorstep. She comes bearing nothing but reminders of all that has passed and shows up shivering, ill-equipped for the late winter cold. As she knocks, I peer through the peephole hoping that maybe, if I remain silent long enough, she’ll walk away, cancel her visit for the year.
She wasn't always an unwelcome visitor. I once
Dear Readers,
hi. When you read this, this semester will be over. x.x
The last months of the spring semester always feels like an inescapable bender, but not in the usual, run-of-the-mill nightmarish way. No. It feels more like letting go, sitting back, stowing tray tables and one’s consciousness safely in preparation for autopilot. Sometimes it feels nice to be away for a while, out of body, out of mind, out of sight. It’s a season of frolics and meanders for the idyll of it all. Maybe it’s the cumulative sleep deprivation and constant stimulation talking, but now that it’s impossible to recall what I ate for lunch yesterday or plan further than my next dinner, it finally feels like I can live fully in the present.
excitedly awaited her arrival, celebrating her return, year after year. I loved how her presence would give me the power to choose what my family would eat, who to invite to my sleepover a week later, and what activity we would do that time around. After an afternoon at the movies or painting pottery or wandering around the mall, my friends and I would set up beds around my room and stay up whispering in the dark about the drama at school and all the boys we had crushes on. The next morning, we would wake up and make waffles smothered in syrup and powdered sugar in the kitchen, the weekend sunlight shining through the windows.
But as I grew older, the yearly visit from my birthday became less of a novelty. The combination of a string of not-so-great birthdays in middle school, my growing dislike of attention in high school, and the overall exhaustion of worrying about everyone else's needs all led to my hesitation surrounding my birthday’s yearly trip. While I didn’t avoid the celebration altogether, I scaled down, preferred festivities without all the fanfare.
Going into college, the apathy about Late February’s arrival grew, except this time it became replaced with mild dread. The dreariness of my first Providence winter combined with the loneliness of being a first-year made me terrified for the day that was meant to be joyful and perfect. I had no idea how to welcome my birthday into my new home, how to prepare for the arrival that everyone seemed to assume I eagerly expected. Where could I possibly find room for her to sleep in my forced triple? What would I feed her? How would I entertain her for the day?
It turned out okay in the end. I got to play in the snow with wonderful people and I took a walk to a bookstore and I shared cookies with the people on my floor. Yet the next year, as February rolled around once more, the anxiety over my birthday began to grow once again. I fretted about what to do. Why, I asked, would a day that sounds so good in theory make me feel so unenthusiastic? ***
Late February 2016. For the first time, my birthday
In Feature, the author reflects on the birthday blues. In Narrative, one writer talks about object im-permanence in the time of climate change through her experience of being a wildfire survivor; another writer reflects on her recent breakup and how it has forced her to learn how to fall in love with herself. In Arts and Culture, one writer discusses Chopin's Nocturne No. 13 and the anguish of chasing the emotion and perfection that Chopin intended to evoke. Another writer talks about how writing provides catharsis, journaling as a form of escapism, and using it as a gateway to embodying emotions and vulnerability. In Lifestyle, our very own Aditi reflects on her four years at Brown, and to her we wearily, tearily, drearily bid goodbye. Word of warning: There are many sentences that have *cue tears* craftily embedded in what I can only com-
prehend as subliminal messaging.
There’s something about starts and ends. It forces a kind of sobriety that feels like it doesn’t belong to the balm of early summer. But perhaps that’s none of our business just yet. I’m all for crossing bridges when I come to them, or when getting wet isn’t an option.
This Spring Weekend editor’s note sampled Zoë and Claire’s one from ten years ago when we hosted Kendrick Lamar on 420. (Which, by transitive properties, means that we are at the center of improbabilities, not just witnessing them. Make of that what you will.)
Giving
brought with her a harsh lesson of loss. On the day that I celebrated 13 years of my life, I learned that my father had to fly out that night to visit my dying grandfather halfway across the world. When my sister and I got home from school, my mother rushed us to take a family photo in front of our house as I hoisted up a brightly colored celebratory lawn sign. My shirt said “Happy.” I was anything but.
Four days later, I remarked on how great it was that Grandad made it through his 86th birthday in Northern Ireland.
Less than an hour later, we received a text that he had died.
I am not here to say that my grandfather’s death ruined my birthday. I still continued to celebrate every year with cake and candles and streamers and song. But every time the visit from my birthday rolls around again, I remember the truth of life, of the heartbreak that can occur on a day that’s meant to be perfect. Even a celebration of life cannot stop death.
***
Various reasons are cited for the “birthday blues.” One explanation is that there’s a societal expectation that birthdays have to be perfect, or at least, as psychologist Ash King writes, a “pressure to feel happy and joyful on this day that is routinely dedicated to celebrations.” And I think that’s a part of it for me. I’ve always had this image of my birthday as this perfect day, one where everything magically goes right, everyone is happy, you do all the things you love, and all your wishes magically come true. And maybe as a child, it feels that way. You get to wear your new blue dress and eat your favorite chocolate cake and your friends give you necklaces and coloring books and stuffed animals to cover your bed. It feels perfect because you can’t see all of life’s problems behind the festivities. Everything gets lost in the haze of sugar and materialism.
But as you get older and learn more about the world, you begin to realize that nothing is perfect. No day is sacred, isolated from pain. Sometimes the moments are smaller, like being stuck on a plane for the entire day. But as a kid, the flight attendants still bring you ice cream and the Muppet movie wins at the Oscars, so it’s all okay, in the end. But sometimes the imperfections are so large that you never can forget them. Sometimes they leave a stain, perpetually muddying the day. I learned that lesson the hard way when I turned 13, and I continued to learn it, over and over again. ***
Birthdays as we know them are a relatively recent phenomenon. Joe Pinsker writes that until the Industrial Revolution, the only people whose birthdays were celebrated were high-profile figures—kings and presidents and the like. But with industrialization creating more effective ways to measure time came also
a heightened awareness of the personal passage of time. Out of this awareness came the makings of the modern birthday celebration.
Part of my problem is similar to that of the early anti-birthday crowd, whom Pinsker notes “thought that the celebrations were self-centered and materialistic.”
I’m scared of attention, and I feel guilty asking people for their time on a normal day. Why shouldn’t I just treat the day like any other? Why should others put down their lives to celebrate an event that I played no part in making happen?
Yet my argument falls apart at the edges. I have no problem with anyone else’s birthday. I love planning events that others will love and hanging balloons and writing cards where I lavish my gratitude for their life on them. I love to celebrate others.
So why do I feel unworthy of celebrating myself?
***
This year, as the anxiety over the arrival of Late February drew near, I told my friend over our lunch of dining hall falafel and bagels that I had no idea what to do. I felt like I had to celebrate the day, but I also hated all the baggage that comes with it, the navigation of social dynamics and schedules, and the general lack of enthusiasm I feel about the day. I told her about the history of it all, the death of my grandfather when I turned 13, and the crippling loneliness of my freshman winter.
“This is the year we reclaim your birthday,” she said. Then we went back to our homework and chewy bagels and mildly wilted lettuce.
***
And so my birthday came knocking this year, just as it always does. I reluctantly opened the door to her, and she took off her shoes before coming in this time, sat patiently on the floor of my room in the slants of afternoon sunshine. I spent time with my friends and volunteered in the church nursery, cooking make-believe cakes and soups with the toddlers. I ate good food and walked in the winter air and skipped backward up uneven cobblestone stretches of College Hill. My cake got stolen out of the communal fridge and the thief was never uncovered, but it didn't phase me. No day is perfect. Expecting one to be just sets us up for disappointment.
So yes, my birthday is just another day out of three hundred and sixty-five of them. But it’s also a day to celebrate myself, my growth and my accomplishments, and the fact that I made it through another year. I deserve to be celebrated. I deserve to feel loved and seen and appreciated, however unworthy I may feel at times. It’s not selfish.
So next year, maybe I’ll welcome Late February with open arms. Even though she blows in a draft sometimes, she also serves as a reminder that there is life, even in the darkest days.
In seventh grade, we had a long-term substitute teacher for social studies because our teacher had fallen down the stairs. Besides his need to remind us he wasn’t strict (he was “just preparing us for the real world”), I only have one memory from his time as my teacher: He made me cry. No—he made me have an existential crisis, the first I can remember having, but certainly not the last. He told the class that whatever we chose to do in the future wouldn’t matter because the world was ending anyways.
My stomach churned for the rest of the day until I was able to go home, flop on my floor, and sob. This is the first time I can remember consciously breaking down about the climate crisis. Granted, I was also having an intense pubescent mood-swing—but I felt betrayed, fearful, dizzily confused, and sad. I was sitting in my room, surrounded by pictures to commemorate my life, stuffed animals I was gifted as a baby, various books I love, and the clothes that I wore to snuggly hug my body. I was secure, sheltered, but fearful of the innate uncertainty one experiences as a human in today’s world. I was as protected as anyone could be, and yet I found myself looking around my room, playing that game: “If you were only allowed to bring one thing with you to a deserted island, what would you bring?”
Now I’m nine years past being thirteen and I can’t stop listening to “We’re All Gonna Die” by Joy Oladokun. I look back on this moment as one of the main epiphanies in my life. Clearly there was something in me aching for the fate of our Earth.
And I continue to ache. For an assignment in my class, “Narrating the Anthropocene,” I recently spoke with Jon Robertson, a survivor of the 2017 Thomas Wildfire that ate through Santa Barbara, California, and surrounding areas.
In 2017, the “island game” came to life for the Robertsons. Their life was deserted, but instead of sand, it was ash.
He told me about his daughter, about her plan to become a professional costume designer. Hours felt like too small a unit of time to correctly valorize her efforts—clippings of her fabric, design sketches, and complete costumes worn by actors with dreams just as big as hers.
Her portfolio was one of many casualties in the Robertson family household. They also lost Jon’s wife’s late mother’s paintings, three wardrobes they’d spent their lives building, and an entire home that they could barely afford but had housed them through retirement. Jon heard that the fire was moving one acre per second. He thinks this is why neighbors immediately next to him were left untouched—the
“You know synesthesia? I don’t have it. But right now it really feels like I can taste shapes.”
“I didn’t like hide-and-seek because I was scared people would forget about me.”
fire literally skipped over certain houses. It was so swiftly moving that his house, and the home within, were gone as quickly as a gas stove can ignite.
Each generation can remember an era of loss and struggle—anticipation of nuclear warfare, a rise in terrorist attacks, an economic crash, a constant flow of mass shootings, a mental health epidemic. But the climate crisis is unique in that it was heavily predicted, it is currently experienced, and its future implications are certain. Talking to my peers, it is clear that permanence becomes a harsh water to tread when imagining our futures. Rising sea levels, food shortages, extra high temperatures, and the natural disasters we may face will certainly factor into our visions of our futures, if they haven't already. Every generation has had to cope; it’s a fact of life. But we’re the generation of pre-coping. What’s worse: knowing now that we have to make these sacrifices and forever fearing lack of stability, or having already set down roots for yourself and having to start over?
Hearing Jon’s story, my mind went straight to the worst—I wondered if there was even a point of settling down. It's only a matter of time before we are all physically and spatially affected by the climate crisis. Whether that’s in the form of our home burning down, our streets flooding, breathing through masks, adjusting to staring at screens more than ever before, or eggs tripling in price again, sacrifices are already being made and the strides we make in building up our lives no longer feel permanent. Like building castles in the sand right before high tide, the impending waves waiting are guaranteed to erase our work. Nevermind the environmental harm of overproduction, even the emotional risk of working hard only to lose it all is frightening on its own.
But when I asked Jon whether he felt hesitant to rebuild his life as abundantly as he had before, he said no. In fact, he felt the opposite. Once all of his belongings were destroyed, he decided that everything he would buy would be an updated version of what he had before. If he was going to spend money, he wanted it to count. Being as fortunate as he was to have the means to do so, it was his way of coping. It
was his way of feeling human in the midst of something that he “could barely wrap his head around.”
The phrase “the new normal” jerks my body into fightor-flight. We’ve almost reached the three-year mark of being sent home from freshman year of college due to the pandemic (and how nice it feels to get further from that moment). But it seems like the new normal is something that is ever-evolving. The tippity top of a treadmill band that’s impossible to reach no matter how fast you run. It’s a concept, a mindset, that will be ingrained in young consciences. It has to be. There can simply be no more “out of sight, out of mind.” But how do you teach a child to prepare to lose what they’ve just received? How do you teach a being, new to this Earth, about a disappearing world? Object permanence—something we gain once we’re about eight months old—is also about when children begin to experience separation anxiety.
I am lucky to say I have felt a sense of placeness for the majority of my life. My family has never moved homes, and over the summer, I even had camp to act as a second one. I’ve had the same best friend since I was two. I’m close with my siblings.
And yet—
Maybe it’s growing up. Maybe the feeling that the rug can be ripped out from right under me is just the world saying, “This is 22!” Certainly, that’s part of it. But that can’t be all.
Why did it take 13 years for someone to tell me so nonchalantly what was coming? It’s time to start environmental education early and consistently. Because what we do does matter. Every being on this Earth deserves access to a place, a permanent home, and the opportunity to build a tangible life.
Like Jon said: It may have felt materialistic, but the objects that we surround ourselves with are critical to building our sense of self. It’s human to collect. It’s human to settle. It’s human to lay down roots.
But who are we when our need to be grounded by physicality is constantly being put to the test?
The last time I was supposed to write for post-, I got dumped. Just as I was about to start my piece, my world shattered, the future I imagined for myself came crumbling down, and the person I thought was the love of my life no longer wished to be in mine at all. Thoughts of writing or school work were lost amid my suffocating grief.
To those in my life who did not know about my breakup, let alone my then-boyfriend’s existence, this is probably a bit confusing. If I never mentioned him, it is because I did not wish to introduce someone who might not be in my life for the long haul. I now feel that I made the right choice, but I do wish for you to know me as a result of my recent experiences.
I do not write this with any ill will against my now ex-boyfriend, which is why I will refer to him as X instead of using his name. X, if you are reading this, hi. Thank you for everything, including breaking my heart.
Normally I am very good at coping with loss, especially because I like myself and am pretty damn good at cheering myself up. The problem with this breakup, though, was I felt like X was my perfect match. We are both nerdy, silly, obsessed with food and music and dogs, and we never failed to have the best time in each other’s presence. In six months of dating, we never even got into a single fight. When he ended things, I could not comprehend why someone so seemingly right for me was brought into my life just to be ripped away. I did not want our time together to come to an end; I never really thought it would. From my perspective, the signs were not there, and I still cannot really find them (other than him being a Saggittarius; his flighty and noncommittal
nature was written in the stars—if you are a Saggittarius reading this, no, I will not consider dating another Sag in the future). Unable to rationalize the breakup, I was in shambles, hoping for everything to somehow make sense so I could find peace and move on. It did help to realize that our seemingly “great communication” was one-sided—he never really communicated any of his worries, doubts, or changing feelings.
The hardest part of it all was knowing that while my world came to a screeching halt, life kept on going and I was expected to keep up. I am grateful to all of the understanding people in my life who helped me get back on track. I am grateful for their support as I focus on myself right now and on feeling better. I have spent the last month and a half doing everything I can to heal. I journal every morning and night, and have become quite the gym rat. Doing whatever I can for me has allowed me to feel like all the pain will be worthwhile in the end. Plus, the enjoyment and fulfillment I have recently found in exercise, especially weight lifting, has allowed me to discover a new part of myself. It feels liberating to learn new things about myself, because it means I am growing past him, and past the version of me that he knew.
I feel lucky that I never dealt with thoughts of being unlovable, not being good enough, or feeling incomplete without X. I had put so much effort into fostering a loving relationship with myself before I ever met him, so I never ceased to love myself even as he ceased to love me. I am beyond proud of myself for even writing that without sobbing. Time is healing me, my friends and family are healing me, and most importantly, I am healing me. I am glad X broke me and shattered my heart, so that I could build myself back up with an even higher sense of selfworth. I realize my selfless love has been awarded too generously—to those who accepted my love but didn’t value its worth. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for the people I love, and right now I am making sure I am at the top of my own list. Nobody deserves my love more than I do.
Upon a great deal of reflection, I realized that while I was sad to lose X for all the good times we shared, I would have grown apart from him at one point or another. Being with him, I was so willing to live a life that would have been safe. I would stay in New England,
settle down in my early 20s, and live happily ever after with X. But “safe” has never been never the prime descriptor of how I make my life choices. I like knowing that I can throw away my whole life’s plans on a whim, get on a one-way flight to who-knows-where, and follow whichever opportunities come my way to live, and to love. I am really glad X was one of those opportunities, but a lifetime together would have meant surrendering my maybe impulsive, but ever-alive self. A future with him surely had no room for my dreams of living in a school bus and traveling the country with only the sweet company of myself and the beautiful mutt I intend to adopt. I am destined for adventure, and I will not wait around for someone to show me the world when I can do so myself. I plan to navigate life and all the wonders it has to offer as the magnificent solo act that I am. I have so much love to give, and even more life to live. And the best part? This time, it will all be mine.
It hit me the other day that there is no reality in which I want him back. Of course, part of me wishes he never ended things. But now that we are over, there are only two possibilities:
1. he realizes he made a huge mistake and wants me back, to which I say that anyone good enough for me would have realized far sooner what they missed out on; or
2. he never realizes his mistake and how good he had it, to which I say, clearly I deserve someone who believes losing me would be the greatest tragedy he could ever possibly suffer.
I know I am probably being melodramatic. But as someone who cried every day because I was overwhelmed by my love for X while we were dating, I need someone who feels that way about me—because I love me like that. Anyone in my life better love me the way I love myself, if they are to be entrusted with my heart.
There is something so beautiful about being broken. The fact that my pain comes from loving so hard and so naively with all my guards down is quite remarkable. Even better, I get to heal myself, and bounce back stronger, more confident, and with a better sense of self than ever before. I am grateful to experience all the highs and lows that come with being human. As the
lyrical genius Taylor Swift once wrote, “If you never bleed you’re never gonna grow.” The universe is keeping me on my toes, so that I never get too comfortable that I stop striving to be better and find better for myself.
Dear X, I am so glad to have met you, loved you, and lost you. Somewhere along the way, I found myself again. Thank you for showing me just how much I have to give, and for reminding me that I am the most worthy recipient of my love.
The first chord of Chopin’s Nocturne No. 13 is a low, resounding C that beckons you—slow, crashing waves meet your feet as the moon gazes at your form. Hands alternate between soft bass notes that sink into your core and a high-pitched melody that yearns. This dance drives you through the scene, a steady march toward some impending doom.
This Chopin piece occupies its own little room in my heart. My piano teacher introduced it to me when I was 16, and I quickly decided to take on the challenge of doing it justice. It is dark, angsty, and swimming with emotion too vast to convey with words, perfectly fit for the turbulent teenage mind.
When I play a piece, I conjure stories that go along with the mood and tone of the piece—a habit that began in early childhood. I have pictured bunnies hopping in fields, bells clanging in a small European town, and shimmery water that bounces in a fountain. Piano has allowed me to explore emotions and perspectives that do not belong to me, to occupy a new space or temporality by uniting myself with figures of the past, hidden objects, and neglected moments.
“It is dreadful when something weighs on your
mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”
- Frédéric ChopinChopin wrote dramatic compositions that bared his soul to pianists centuries later, and in the six minutes that I play his work, I latch onto a piece of it. I am the composer standing in the waves, contemplating the depths of my loneliness.
His words settle in the pit of my stomach. As I play through his composition, the melody pierces a still night sky—its arc feels like a call that dissipates into the rough edges of the shore. The nocturne tricks you into thinking you’ve reached its end, steady chromatic chords dragging the listener toward home, but your eyes scan the surrounding beach and meet the kindred gaze of the moon.
The piece continues. My fingers land on a soft yet resonant C major chord. I pause for a beat too long, feeling the sound waves in perfect harmony crash into my body. C major, commonly designated for joyful celebrations or grand openings, takes on a different tonality—a certain sorrow with a sliver of hope. This section is part funeral march, part serenade.
The moon glows on a pitch black backdrop. Eyes glued to the celestial body, you scale the jagged rocks of the shore, yet to be smoothed by the tides. The rich harmonies rush through the air as a gust of wind, encouraging your steady climb towards the precipice of the beach.
As I play through this section, I experience the exhilaration of immersion into a craft. I enter a flow state where my fingers coordinate closely with instructions from my brain, and I develop my musicality by noticing the exact turns of my wrist, the amount of weight from my back, all the way to the angle of my finger pads. Piano is algorithmic in the most mechanical sense, but there is beauty in the synergy between intangible sound and the physical human form. If you search for video recordings of professional classical musicians, their bodies sway
with the contours of the melody, syncing with the piece even up to the furrow of their eyebrows.
Here, playing music is pure bliss. It is standing on the edge of the rocky precipice, closing one’s eyes and accepting the touch of moon rays and the brush of the land-ward breeze.
But of course, achieving this near-perfect coordination is only attainable through practice. In learning this nocturne, I’ve sat at the piano for hours at a day drilling the first chord: a low C octave. The two notes must be played at exactly the same time so that the sound is crisp; the overall volume must be quiet, but it must evoke the sureness required to set the tone for the rest of the piece. The thumb must be more emphatic. I begin to slouch in my seat, repeatedly striking the keys in chase of just the correct color, each attempt faintly askew. This pattern of drilling continues for the rest of the piece until I map out the exact hue of sound, from crest to trough.
Thus begins the downward spiral of any artist dedicated to their craft—agonizing over an eight bar passage for endless hours a day. My piano at home has endured countless bouts of frustration, of slamming the plastic keys on the Yamaha. The chase for the perfect expression of Chopin’s pure anguish begins to feel like an impossible task. Something is terribly wrong.
A foot staggers on the slippery rocks, and you tumble into the sea.
It is an awful, awful feeling that mutates as you sink deeper into the dread, that you might never produce a worthwhile performance to an awestruck audience, or that your fingers are restricted in speed and finesse, and that you are incapable of tugging on a soul. The feeling swirls in torrents around you, mercilessly tossing you through the deep and percolating into your mouth, seizing the throat. Large octaves descend into endless triplets played in a flurry. The theme from the beginning reprises, but it is more turbulent and desperate—you gather all of your hurt, the masses of your shortcomings, and the lingering
tickle in the back of your head that you may only reach the lower edge of greatness, and pour it all into the waves around you. You gasp for air. It is exhausting.
Suddenly, the enormity of the ordeal is too much to bear.
You stop thrashing and numbly sink into the deep.
+++
When I am asked about why I decided to take a hiatus from piano in college, I cannot give a proper answer. To be honest, I’m not sure if one day I realized that I was tired, or if I could not muster any emotion other than resentment upon looking at the piano, or if I saw no future for myself in music, or if I simply got too busy. Regardless, in college, I have been forced to define myself outside of my piano ability. But who am I without my skills?
A whole person. In my quest to translate the agony of a 19th century composer, I unintentionally succumbed to the all-consuming mindset that classical music demands to be played only at an elite level, that my musical sensibility is cheap otherwise.
But my hiatus has made me calmer and less desiring of perfection. I appreciate the subtle harmonic clashes of missed notes in live performances, which I find to be a more authentic expression of human art. And while I still wince a little at old piano recordings, the distance has allowed me to view my playing more objectively. This year of rest has yielded proper reflection on my relationship with the art form—while never perfect, I used to carve melodies into the air with an intuition I never realized I had. The revelation feels like a gentle gust of wind on my cheek: the joy of simple piano, of tapping the keys playfully. My fingers itch in yearning.
+++
Against all odds, you wash up on the shore. The clashing of the waves fills your ears, and your back digs into the ground, the sand carried by the water gradually burying you. Your hair is drenched, and you’re gasping for air. There’s a rhythm—peaceful and right—that makes you close your eyes.
Monday, 4:33 p.m.: I am sitting at the McDonalds in the Barcelona airport and the world feels off-kilter.
This is what happened: I walk up to the desk and they tell me the gate closes in 10 minutes. Why didn’t I call the cab earlier? I should’ve done things differently, but I can always run, or beg them to reopen the door, or plead to cut the lines, so panic will wait until those things fail. They ask me if I have some sort of number. I spend five minutes looking for my grandparent's address, assuming that is what they want. I feel awkward and silly trying to locate it by looking up various buildings I know exist nearby, scrambling to quietly sound out and type the names using my Korean keyboard. I finally find it and, feeling accomplished, proudly hand my phone to the agent with their address written in clear text. He looks at it and asks me, No, do you have the visa number to enter Korea?
My gut wrenches. It is like forgetting about a bill, and then receiving the statement in the mail to see that it has significantly increased. My mom mentioned something about needing a visa once. Why did I wave it off, thinking it would resolve itself?
He turns his computer to me to show me: US CITIZENS MUST HAVE AN APPROVED VISA OR K-ETA PRIOR TO BOARDING IN ORDER TO ENTER KOREA.
I need to get to Korea so I can get to New Zealand to attend my orientation so I can then fly to the South Island where I will begin my study abroad semester. Missing this flight would catalyze a chain of unfavorable events. I don’t freak out, though. To do so seems useless, and I understand this is not the type of thing I can fight to win. Mostly, I am disappointed in myself. I deflate, my body shutting down and my brain switching to manual control: This is the situation. What’s the next step? Don’t waste time, don’t waste energy. Ask productive questions. Don’t ask the same thing twice hoping for a different answer.
Personality evaporates from me, and I become plain and straightforward. I ask my questions with no charm or hesitation: What are my options? Where do I go to do that? So this is my best option, correct? Can you repeat that please? My voice is calm; no strain or urgency when I talk, just an utter flatness. My eyebrows stay relaxed and low so if I have to look up, I do so with only my eyes and not my head. This way, I am direct and intentional. Even wandering eyes feel like a waste right now. I listen for full answers, nod only when I properly understand, and give genuine thank yous when I am done.
This is the expression of jadedness. Nothing entertains me; light and color dissipate. I am in a state that I won’t be able to shake. I won't be able to hide this, turn on the pep and positivity for someone on cue. This is me, dulled and spent, unamused and disappointed, with nobody to blame but myself. These are my emotions, ugly and crude, with no place to go.
And so, I am sitting at the McDonalds in the
Barcelona airport and waiting. I am waiting for approval of a visa, for the airline to call me back so I can change my flight, for my phone to charge so I can make another call, and most of all, for these intense feelings to simmer down. Give me an hour, and I’ll be fine. All this will have faded into memory, and I’ll be able to joke about it. I will talk casually as if I simply changed my flight and never lost an ounce of faith because I am positive and don’t let things bother me too easily! I am chill and can always bring good energy to stressful situations! I will reject people’s condolences for the trouble and say it was none at all. This will be condensed into a 30-second story with an intro, body, and conclusion. By the time I’ve reached New Zealand, this will hardly be a story at all, simply reduced to “some traveling complications.” I will be cool and collected and back to my energized self.
In the meantime, this is all I know to do: write. I don't mean poetically and reflectively, using this situation to find some profound meaning or as an experience to learn from. I mean writing furiously, recklessly, and emotionally because if I do not, I might cry, or vomit, or scream, or combust. This is where it is all going, in big emotional chunks onto the page.
This is how I cope, and this is me coping. Because when I write as I am now, I do not need to think. This is not a place for me to concisely retell the details of my day, to record so that I remember, and then mark the end of the day’s events with a period. I will not wait until the day I sit at my desk for the first time in New Zealand to open up a fresh page and begin writing with, I’ve finally arrived, and boy, was that some journey to get here! Let me explain… Instead, I will unravel here, lavishly and unabashedly with undeveloped and uncollected thoughts. In that way, this is the place where I can be vulnerable.
What I’ve realized is that there is a difference between being open with people and being vulnerable around them. I believe the former is how we offer the details and stories and sorted feelings of our lives as a way to extend a hand in solidarity or just for entertainment and padded conversation—something I am fantastic at. I will freely give because I am protected by the facts that
are true, the events that have transpired, and the conclusions I have firmly reached. I can be open that I didn’t get a visa, missed my flight, and need to get on tomorrow’s or else it means rescheduling two other ones. I can say that Mom told me once to get the visa and that I should have listened. And in conclusion, this was an irresponsible, disappointing, and very expensive mistake. Ask me what happened, and that is what you will receive.
On the other hand, vulnerability is putting pride on the line. It means admitting things I already know are selfish and irrational, and doing it anyway. It is saying that while I am often trying to prove my self-sufficiency to my parents and get annoyed when they undermine it, I still wanted Mom to tell me again and again that I needed a visa. Why didn’t you, shouldn’t you have told me twelve times? I’m still a kid. I love my independence, sighing when Mom and Dad start telling me again to be careful on the subway. I find it amusing to call them at work on a random Tuesday afternoon and show them my view at the top of a mountain I’ve just climbed, or from a hot air balloon, or on a boat with my snorkel gear on, and say, Look where I am! I’ve packed myself up for my study abroad semester by the time they come home from work, and when they ask if I’ve got everything ? I roll my eyes at their nondescript question because of course I do. Yup, and that’s the end of it. And yet, in situations like this, I will wish that Mom and Dad were the kind of painstakingly meticulous parents with a list of things to pack, making me bring everything out first to the living room to check off before going into the suitcase.
But who would I tell this to? How could I say that I want them to realize I can manage without them, but at the same time, I guess I can’t, and sometimes I don’t want to. I already know this is not how growing up works; independence is responsibility. Still, this is what I feel, despite knowing differently, despite wanting differently, despite saying differently. These are my feelings, despite, despite, despite. Sometimes, the safest place to reside in, and hide in, is one you must construct yourself. So here, onto this page, I will wish unreasonably, childishly, extravagantly. Here, I will write.
After four years at Brown, I have amassed a list of the must-do things that I credit with having made my time so special. Treat it like a bucket list, treat it like a guide, or treat it like a nostalgic senior’s reflection on her happiest years.
1. Against all odds, make your first friends. You’re moving continents to be here, and you don’t know it but you’ve hit the jackpot—the international orientation will hand you your first friends in this place.
2. Take any chance you get to swap words with someone that speaks a different language. What’s your word for “king”? What’s your word for “goddess”? For “beauty,” for “sorrow,” for “monster”? Don’t be surprised when you discover how many words your languages share. You have four years to find them all. You’ve met Aaron and together you’ll build your own language.
3. When the girl from a city you’ve never heard of wants to take you down to Waterfire, go with her. Walk in the warm yellow glow, magnified a million times by the folds on the river’s surface. Look, listen, and learn—you’ve met Khushi. You don’t know yet why you see each other so clearly, why this feels so much like talking and so little like translating. You don’t know yet how lucky you are.
4. Go to the class that lives at the intersection of everything you’ve ever loved. Your hands are shaky, sweaty. You expect too much, and you can’t be prepared for all there will be. The class is called “The Experiment,” and what could be more fitting? Let the science and poetry roll into the grooves in your mind and over the surface of your tongue.
5. When the pink haired girl asks to sit next to you in “The Experiment,” say yes. Ask her what classes she’s shopping and don’t be surprised when your carts match up, class for class. Get boba between “The Experiment” and Intro to Neuroscience. You’ve found Kyoko—and what are the odds of that?
6. Take “Lost Languages” with Aaron and fall for it everytime he reaches behind you to tap your right shoulder to trick you. When your first snow falls out the window, you both run out of class into the cold and catch the flakes on your eyelashes.
7. Go to your first college party. It’s at a bar downtown and it’s for a dance show you didn’t go to. Khushi introduces you to the sweet boy who stands between you and the group of tipsy men. He leans down to catch your nervous mutterings about the crowds and asks, Do you want to leave? And then he makes sure you get home safe. You’ve met Naveen—and through him you’ll meet countless others.
8. Turn 19 amongst friends. Learn that you’ve taught them well—they make you the perfect cup of birthday chai. Look up at the smiling face on the tall body—this is Aanchal, she’ll be around for the rest of it, and you’re so lucky to know her.
9. Climb to the top of Macmillan at 6 a.m. Watch the sun rise on the day the world ends, everyone scrambling to fly, drive, get home by any means as everything you have built crumbles around you.
10. Watch your best friend’s heart break. Stand helpless as she takes herself apart. Hold her as she cries herself back together.
11. Now do it three more times.
12. Read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets for a class and fall apart with your best friend who read it for another class. Run right through the deepest blue together. Long for the world in which you live.
13. Fall in love with Thursday nights. First, on the copy couch with the other nervous new copyeditors. Then, once the world has ended, slip a secret “you look lovely” to your friends through the Zoom chat. Soon, you’ll move to a different office. Same cramped table, same efficient silliness, same room stuffed with tummy-clutching laughter, beautiful people,
beautiful words, friends gone, friends fresh and new.
14. Steel yourself to say goodbye, to say thank you for all of it, to say it’s been so good to know you. Kimberly, Alice, Sam, Joe, Kathy, Tabitha, I feel so lucky. Eleanor, I trust you more than I trust myself. Kyoko, Olivia, Sienna, everyone, thank you for all the years.
15. Take a class from the other end of the world during the end of the world. Stare into the webcam at 4 a.m. Say what you think— tentatively at first, but then slowly become more sure of yourself—voice shaking from midnight coffee. Look to Aanchal’s Zoom window, watch her nod so you know you’ve made your point, watch the sun come up behind her. You’re in it together.
16. Take “Neural Systems” from across the globe. Remember that the brain is a beautiful thing. Hold onto the wonder of it, the magnificence of a million molecules that explain everything. Take every class Dr. M offers. Talk to Khushi and Kyoko in winding secret riddles littered with metaphor: Smooth my brain out, make her flat. Give me an amygdalectomy and give it to me now. It’s your basal ganglia, love. To me, you are Clathrin.
17. Fall in love. It’ll end, it’ll hurt. That’s what you’re scared of, that’s what’ll happen. Fall anyway— hard, fast, deeper than you thought you could, and fall back out. Your friends will try to hold you. Let them. Cling to them so tight you fear you’ll draw blood. You won’t draw blood.
18. Start to see how lucky you are.
19. Fill your living room with yellow light and friends. Look at how they smile, at how lovingly they joke; look at us, so happy. The Christmas tree is still up in April, we’re living the stories we’ll tell someday. Look around—they’re so beautiful. Tell them they’re beautiful.
20. When a friend comes to your birthday party in a slinky black dress and they look so lovely, tell them how lovely they look. When your friend asks to kiss you, say yes.
21. Sit on the floor with your best friends. End up on the floor of the hallway of the apartment you share. Put your bodies on the floor of your room when you’ve had enough wine to let the words come out all slick and slippery. Hold their hands cupped in yours, look right at them and say it all, say it out of you.
22. Watch your friends fall in love. Watch as you fall into comfortable friendships with the boyfriends and the girlfriends—you call them your friends-in-law. Watch everyone bloom, happy and warm, held like you knew they should be.
23. Go to every dance show you can. Scream your friends’ names till your voice is hoarse. Beg them to teach you to dance, pretend to blame them when you can’t make it look as good.
24. Learn that to you, love is the yellow-lit living room and couches stacked with friends. It is the midnight Baja’s run, the questions that make you think, the little things we each notice about the others. To you, forever is what’s already here.
25. Against all odds, the time has elapsed. The months passed even when you didn’t believe they would. The stories played out, and then got told over, and over, and over. You’ve lived it, it’s been so full of knowing, and you’ve been so, so lucky. Everyone you’ve learnt and loved is yours to keep.
Abbrieviations
post- mini crossword 11
by Will Hassett1 2 3
1 2 3 4 5 4
5
“I’d like to think that finding each other here and now makes our embrace warmer, more incredible, and even more undeserved. I’d like to think it was always supposed to be this way.”
—Kaitlan Bui, “Regret is a Four Letter Word” 4.29.22
“As the record spins, so do we. I smile into his shoulder as we sway in a Denver house, the mountains tall and silent above our basement shadowbox.”
—Siena Capone, “Oh, This Old Thing?”
4.9.21
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