22 to 23

There are a myriad of excuses why I don’t consistently update this blog. I tell my self a different one each time and they usually range from “I’m busy!” to “After this next thing…” and the list goes on.

There are many reasons however, that I often want to keep up with this blog even though I never seem to physically be able to. A lot of this has to do with my mother, who chronicled my life from when I was a kid, to my therapist who really pushed me to journal all through college. I like this blog because I can see my life through all the pottery and all the art. Its has all my memories and contemplation, and its a bit like talking to a old friend – one that isn’t there all the time, but talk like no time has passed. And there’s a little part of me who also loves that there is a blog, somewhere floating in the ether with all my thoughts, life and pieces of me that have carried through.

But, sometimes, I read back and I can see this gloss that is all over the posts and all the artifice that seems to echo. Recently, I’ve been going back and forth.

“Its a light-hearted blog about pottery.”

and…

“Its a light-hearted blog about pottery that you can never keep up with because maybe – just maybe – your life is too interwoven with pottery to just talk about the lighthearted stuff”

So here I go – talking about pottery, and telling you how ceramics have shaped my life even in its absence.

“It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.”

A lot has changed in my life since I stopped doing pottery consistently.

I graduated! I got a job. The full time kind. I moved away. I said a lot of good-byes and see you soon. And I put the toolbox in my closet and let the guilty feelings brew for a bit.

There is a lot to be said about a hobby that you pour your life into. It brings so much joy, friendship and purpose into my life. It teaches me about discipline, working hard and letting things go. It teaches me how to move on and how to pick up the pieces.

And it teaches me how to cope. It teaches me how to cope a little to well.

When you pour your life into a hobby, you start to give up parts of you that you didn’t really know you had. When I took a breather for the first time, I thought that in a month I would be itching to get back into it.

Then a month went by. And then half a year flew by under my radar. The guilt grew and I couldn’t quite get back into a studio. I moved, found a studio and got off their waitlist, and yet, still could not quite get myself to commit.

It was the little things that I didn’t know I missed. The silence on the weekends knowing that I have nothing to do. The breather I could take when I got back from work/school/plans/friends. The blankness of my apartment without everything I needed to do for sales or Etsy right in front of my face.

But there were things, I also noticed, that I had leaned maybe a bit too hard on pottery that I had never noticed before.

The Nonexistent Judgement

When I first moved, I was really excited to be that person that I had always dreamed about. There is this section in my high school senior year scrapbook that required me to write a letter to myself and it says: “When you read this, you’ll be in your own apartment, living the dream we had always had.”

Uhh sure. But I am pretty sure that 18 year old me didn’t realize how bad the crippling social anxiety had gotten at the age of 22. I’m pretty sure I did something wrong because according to this letter, I should have fixed that by now.

And if you had asked me in college, I probably would’ve told you that I did fix the crippling social anxiety. I had friends and talked to strangers quite regularly and also just really didn’t think about normal interactions.

But then, last month, right before I walked into a bank, I thought “oh god, I’m not dressed nice enough”. And then again, I was trying to pick up a gym membership that I had just signed up for and spent the whole walk into the gym audibly talking myself through how to ask for the keyring barcode. Oh, and then last week, I tried to get a head massage and I was 5 minutes early, telling myself its ok to get one. No one cares and that the voice in my head was absurd. I’m paying people and I was nervous about getting judged. I think the hardest part is the voice that just says:

“Oh my god. Can you see that lost girl there masquerading as an adult? Can’t you just tell she has no clue what she is doing.”

For years, I had this confidence with pottery that just seeped through a lot of things. I always had it in my back pocket. It was a soothing thing: “If I am bad at this, at least I can make a wicked bowl”. But because pottery took up so much of my time, I had totally forgotten what it was like to anything new.

When I started college, I actually had my side gig already lined up. I was signed up to start teaching before I even started college. And then at the Mudfire, I don’t need to ask for help, I’m a pro, kinda. And I’ve never needed to ask for help when I probably should have. I never had time for the little things so I never over thought it.

But now, I’m new at a lot of things and I don’t have such a solid excuse to keep going all the time. I have all this time. Time to do things I have always wanted to try. And time to think deeply about all the things I wanted to try.

And simultaneously, there has never been so many new things in my life. DMVs are awful already, but when there is no dad or Caitlin standing next to me in line, I feel so self-conscious. And also, shockingly, I went through all of college taking friends to the grocery store that I think I could count on one hand the amount of times before I moved to California that I had shopped alone in a store.

To be honest, a lot of these are normal things that I rationally know everyone goes through. But for me, there was something I was good at that I used to be able to fall back on and now, it kind of felt like I was just floundering and flopping through life.

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living”

I can laugh at myself and cringe a little about my social anxiety, but for this one, I am a bit more vulnerable and a little more terrified, so please be patient.

Between 2020 and 2021, there was a lot of death around me. Besides COVID, which was rampant, I ended up losing people to totally non-COVID related issues which has impacted me deeply. For privacy issues, I’m going to keep some things vague, but do want to talk a little about grief and a pretty pivotal 2 years in my life.

I lost 2 family members which I had many complicated feelings around. My last living grandfather passed away due to persistent health issues and my uncle who I had been close with as a child had passed. It was hard to come to terms with their passing because although we had drifted in the years, My grandfather in a lot of ways symbolized the very rich heritage that I had grown up with was starting to fade- my other grandfather passed when I was young and I learned so much about him only after he was gone. This grandfather seemed to repeat that and in the years to come, there is a bittersweet feeling of knowing that his memory will live on, but I will have missed that connection once again.

My uncle had a complicated situation, but the hardest part was looking at the impact he had in my life and missing the person he was. “The modern day duke” he had once said was his ideal title. Hannibal Lecter in aesthetic only. He collected fine china patterns, boxed a lot, gave me my love for whiskey that have made many an ex tear up and just…jokes. There is a lot to miss about him and most of all, the feeling I have associated with his passing is guilt. Guilt that I didn’t do enough at the end, so maybe I don’t deserve to grieve him. But, him I see all the time. I went to friend of mine who had this amazing bottle of GlenLiviet and all I could think about was that Christmas when I was 13 or 14 and everyone yelled at him when he poured me a shot. So I guiltily grieve him and see him in everything.

Then I think, there is also guilt that I grieve for people that I didn’t really know or didn’t get to know. These are the deaths that probably left the biggest impact, which I know is weird but let me explain. For these, I am going to be even more vague and overly cautious because for the most part, I don’t think it is my story to tell.

The first one was a murder in my town which was very shocking as nothing ever happens in the town I grew up in. I had vaguely known them through school and they were close to my age – some older and some younger but I had known them. Though I mostly knew the others, she was the one haunted me. An artist, making it out of high school and pursuing her dream. Younger than me. In her, I grieve her dreams, for I know that they were bright and colorful as she was. And I look at her art and feel that the world is maybe a bit hollower without her.

Lastly, there was a college student that was only about a year older than me. We had met only in passing and only briefly. It was only after the fact that I learned a lot more about him. But I knew his friend as we had researched together. He was walking and there was a car that ran a stop light.

I don’t really know how to conclude that. But, I learned he was a bright researcher, an optimist and come a long way to study here. He was gifted in many things. While he has started to haunt me too, I grieve for his mother. I think of her constantly and know that however hollow my words are, I hope she is okay.

The effect of watching the how uncontrollable and unpredictable life can be is hard already, but losing people that are peers and my age made approach life differently. I started to feel my own mortality and feel lost in the vastness and chaos of it all. There is one thing to make lists, and plan everything. And its another thing to be haunted by the fact that nothing could matter. Or trying to find what matters. What is the meaning of life, or what do we do if nothing is really in our hands after all.

People told me, in my 20s, I’m going to feel invincible. Invincible and stupid and living life to the fullest. I had always told myself that I have one shot at my 20s and I was going to seize every opportunity and just go.

But instead, there has been a significant amount of my 20s in my bed, curled up, with the irrational fear of death, irrational fear of losing people close to me, losing my family and also maybe the fear of not getting to live my life before I lose it.

This fear manifests in many different ways. I went from being the person who could’ve told you that I wanted to be moving and going to suddenly becoming a person who after calling my parents, will sit and beat myself up about moving too far and missing too much. I went from loving spending time with my family to fearing that time is just flying by and contemplating what I will miss when they are gone and missing the moment altogether.

It seemed like I was grasping to what I thought was important before 2020 and then afterwards I learned that nothing mattered. My values had shifted overnight and I was spinning. I’m still kind of spinning. I’m not sure it will ever stop spinning, but I do know I should try to at least learn to cope with the spinning.

Maybe this is why I also picked up the blog. I need something to keep me grounded and just pause in the moment. Breathe and enjoy the moment and also just learn to take it one step at a time again. All I know is that if I keep fearing what I will miss, I’m going to miss it all.

My mom, the wisest person and the one who knows me best says, “It takes time, but you will move on someday.”

The End of the Taylor Swift year and finding “Someday”

So it as close to midnight as it can get on Nov. 17th – the last night of 22. There is a lot of 22 to reflect on, but I think I also better balance it with some forward looking 23.

22 was the year of looking forward. It was the year of looking for change, and adventure and optimism. It was a year of fun memories with college friends, fun dates with my boyfriend, celebrating with family and starting something new. It was the year my world started over and reality collided with my expectations. It was a year of tough goodbyes and not nearly enough hellos. It was a year of giving things up, taking a break, and learning to be more openminded. It was a year of being together with friends, and feeling fulfilled, while also a year of learning how to live alone, be alone and enjoy the silence. It year of fun and laughter; it was a year of a lot of bittersweet feelings and lots and lots of tears. It was a year of so much fear, and also so much enthusiasm for the what’s to come.

It was a year that felt like a decade, and a year that felt like it passed by in a blink of an eye.

So then, its really fitting that as much as I am not ready to move on to 23, I am ready to let go of 22.

Which leads me to think of what I think 23 will be like; what ideas and life will come at me in 23? If I could write 23…

I think I will probably be spinning for a little longer. I think its hard to find myself when it seems like a lot of what made me “Leila” doesn’t seem so ready at the finger tips anymore. 23, I would really like to pick up some of the pieces from the process of grief and live a bit, just for myself

I want to be grateful, 23. I want to cherish what I have; I want to give back to those who have always been here, even in the times where it was very evident I was lost. 23, I would like to embrace being lost and just see where life ends up with me. I want to relearn where my values are, what has become important and what I have learned to let go.

23, I would like to expand my horizons. I would like to look forward more, instead of always looking back. I would like to be able to take a deep breath and actually move, instead of taking a deep breath and standing still. My biggest wish would to flow with life, as if I was just kayaking along, rather than being the rock at the bottom of a busy stream, watching as all the life rushes by but not really participating. I want to be challenged in my beliefs, and understand the world I live in better. I want to see in color and not in black and white.

I want to learn how to be in the moment, to not worry so much about 24, or 25, or 30, or even 60. I want to learn to be in a room – see my friends and the moment in real time. I want to learn how to let that moment be a moment, instead of worrying about how it will be a memory before it is one.

So, cheers to 23. May you be a complex and worth it. Preferably less scary. And hopefully, someone 22 can look at and be proud of.

And, may you write it all down.

Here we go. 22 to 23.