"You took my sadness out of context"
I want my writing to be better. I want it to move you, wrench you, change you. More honestly, I want it to move me, wrench me, change me.
Something interesting is happening to me. My body is doing things it has never done before. My lymph nodes have been swollen for the past three weeks. As if I am standing on the precipice of sickness. Sometimes I audibly laugh on bus rides at how tall I am in this country. Other times I silently cry. My feelings are dialed up to 180%.
I feel like the monumental is happening in my life and I don't have the brains or desire to figure it out. Maybe I think everything has meaning but none of it does.
In India I move through honey, nothing holds weight. If I get lost, then I'm lost for a few hours. I take in the craziness, the lack of privacy, the eyes always watching and eventually I find my way back home. Everyday feels like something new, something I won't remember in a year. I want the days to start blending together, bleeding into each other, I long to forget details. This astronomical life I'm living is exhausting.
I came here to get as far as humanely possible from Costa Rica. I don't even know what I was looking for. Maybe to also get as far from myself as I could and I guess I'm succeeding. I'm a different person here, quieter and more shy in the house. Cool and calm on the streets and yet on high alert. I spend most of my days laying in my underwear on my bed, sweating profusely and letting the overhead fan whirr me to sleep. Life so far feels like a light shade of brown.
When I awaken I forget I'm on a different continent for a few seconds. For a moment I don't hear foreign words that I don't understand, all I hear are sounds. My brain tricks itself making me believe that it's Spanish that surrounds me and then the Marathi hits me in the face and an overwhelming pressure lifts off me, letting the rest of me drain out.
It's not sadness exactly. Not nostalgia. Not joy.
It's the smell of incense at 12 o'clock and then again at 4. It's my naked feet burning on the concrete terrace. It's my covered knees and shoulders. It's the brown roots of my hair that get longer everyday, revealing the cracks of the imperfect facade I once had. It's this overwhelming loneliness that I'm not sure I ever want gone.
Anyway. Here is a list of a songs I would listen to if I had wifi. And (possibly, if technology works in my favor) a photo of me taken by a host cousin.
Sad Movies by Still Corners
Mariner's Apartment Complex by Lana Del Rey
Candy May by Alex Cameron
Be Honest by Jorja Smith
Prophet by King Princess
Caught in the Dark by So Sensitive
Better Friends by Between Friends
Self by Noname
The Chihuahua by Alex Cameron
The Greatest by Lana (what an album)
Latinoamerica by Calle 13
Want You in my Room by Carly Rae Jepsen
Strange Torpedo by Lucy Dacus
After All by Dar Williams
Miss You by Foster the People
Al Norte by Silvana Estrada
Hasta la Raiz by Natalia LaFourcade
