on relationships, being, and new beginnings
welcome to my pocketbook!
here’s the playlist for this newsletter, it’s a phenomenal soundtrack from an okay k-drama (“misiryung sunset” is my favorite track)
in august a couple of friends and i decided to start a shared journal, one that we would take turns filling out as we documented all the firsts, lasts, and in betweens of senior year - (first jobs, first college decisions, first dates, first relationships…, last high school classes, last school field trips, last club activities, last school dances/football games, last times seeing classmates and teachers). in my mind theres more “lasts” than anything else, or at least the “lasts” seem to pervade everything else that we do this year.
a couple weeks ago, a good friend of mine moved to toronto for his last year of hs. we didn’t get much of a chance to say our goodbyes properly, but his absence really pulled me out of the tunnel vision of college apps/schoolwork. i more or less buried myself in work to ignore the fact that the time i have left with those around me is limited, that soon we’ll take our separate paths. i was so caught up with myself and my work that i didn’t realize it was already happening, that the last conversation i had with him was our last. and maybe this is dramatic, the internet and phones exist, but like always it got me thinking…
on relationships. whether familial, platonic, or romantic, they all require mutual effort to maintain. and a shit ton of it at that, whether its properly communicating, making yourself emotionally available, being aware of each others needs, etc. etc.
last night, i had this exact conversation with karen & eunice. we were playing “we’re not really strangers” which basically gives u a bunch of intimate prompts to discuss about yourselves and each other. one of the cards said “define love in one word”. i struggled with it a lot until eunice said that the best kind of love is an easy love. i really liked this because for a long while, i conceptualized relationships as something that is built through communication and effort - this still rings true - but that relationship should be built on a easy love: easy doesn’t mean that you aren’t challenged to grow, it just means a love that you can easily fall into, genuine and comforting, it means no doubts or confusion, no games or leading on. and sometimes we give too much to relationships that give us less than what we deserve, but this shouldn’t be the case at all, relationships should not be emotionally draining.
it’s funny because karen and i played this about 2 years ago and hit the same question. we could not answer it to save ourselves, but yesterday we ended up having a really beautiful conversation. i have no real experience with romantic love, so perhaps this definition will change, but you live and you learn. in the meantime, i’m learning to navigate my relationships, putting in the effort to build closer ones and figuring out which ones are unproductive/draining.
i’m very lucky to have a lot of positive wholesome people in my life (@ all of you i just added). i don’t think i’ve ever said this and i’m still getting to know some of you, but i learn so much from you all, whether it’s simply in the way that you carry yourselves, your work ethic, or the way you treat those around you. i am admittedly really bad at making plans, but in the name of cherishing our limited time and building relationships, expect to get an invite to go out for a dinner/coffee date or library session with me sometime this year. alisha & gauri, this is so long overdue, but u guys are first (yay hotpot!).
on being, in Hallford, we are reading Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison through the lens of the hero’s journey. and this book has so many fucking layers bro. for context, it’s a novel set in the 1930s about a black man, whose name we never learn and who is seeking acceptance and success in a world that is completely against him. he goes through a variety of trials, going to a tuskegee-esque black college, moving to the more integrated North, becoming a figure head of a post-racial socialist brotherhood, becoming intimate with white women for the first time, etc. through all of this, we’ve been asking whether and to what extent does invisible man actually come closer to understanding himself? (in terms of both who he really is, and how others view him)
a big part of this discussion has been in the context of carl jung’s concepts of the persona vs. the self. for jung, the persona speaks to all the different roles that we play - as students, as athletes, as sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, etc. these are real roles that we embody, but to a certain degree they’re all masks. the issue arises when we identify too strongly with a singular persona. (like the people that make one thing their entire personality) this is problematic because when we fail to acknowledge the other parts of our identity, we lose ourselves. for none of these individual masks make up the self - who we truly are. who we are must come from asking ourselves questions like: what do we value? what do we truly love? and what are our deepest darkest fears?
for me finding the self inheres not merely in our own solitude, but also in the relationships we build and the company we keep. i can’t help but think of Florentino from Garcia-Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera whose one-sided relationship/love for Fermina Daza guided him through 50 plus years of his life in, instructed him his times of need, even while she was happily married to another man. - sounds insane because it is, but it’s a lovely book. the point is, despite appearances, the story was much more about Florentino as a character than his love for Fermina. ultimately, as we search for meaning in relationships, we also learn more about ourselves, who we really are and how we really behave.
on new beginnings, it’s mid september now. we’ve had heat waves, power outages, and it’s supposed to rain on monday, which always reminds me of seattle in the fall. last year, my whole family flew to seattle to help my brother move into college (he goes to udub). we found a nearby vietnamese restaurant where we stopped for a bowl of phở. from inside the restaurant you could see, through the rain-tapped window, a little street, covered in red and yellow leaves from the trees above, which filtered sunlight coming in. my brother is going back to college next week and im going to miss him a ton. maybe his departure and the change in seasons are part of the reasons why i associate rain with the feeling of both ends and beginnings.
i just passed the shared journal to eunice (happy reading and writing). in anticipation of rain and new beginnings, i think this newsletter will follow a similar concept. beyond a documentation of senior yr shenanigans though, it is going to be an ode to the workings of my brain/my new favorite topics to overthink, an effort to be more vulnerable and develop closer relationships, and an unending search for my self. welcome, i am happy to have you and i hope you stay for a while.
lots of love,
vi <3
p.s. for anyone new, you can read my first newsletter below! and i love hearing all your thoughts and responses, pls keep them coming