letter to myself, half a year ago

oh what a journey it's been

did someone forward you this? you can sign up here – it’s free.

dear kora,

i’m writing to you from mirissa – a tiny beach town on the southern coast of sri lanka. the days are hot – like really hot, and sticky, especially in the afternoons, when the heat hangs off your skin like honey and all you want to do is melt into a puddle and die. but no matter: you’re back in the ocean after a 4-month surf hiatus, and you’re surfing, twice a day, at sunrise and sunset, in uncrowded lineups, rain or shine. you walk home with sand between your toes. life is good.

the past few months have been full of ups and downs, eh? on days like this i think, often, of who you are now and who you were half a year ago, before the big leap into the unknown. from the outside, you wouldn’t have guessed: you look pretty much the same, except for that scar on your arm from falling down the stairs in tokyo, though one friend did recently say that you look a little bit wiser, as if life has forced you to grow up a little. and they’re right: it’s still you on the outside, but everything inside has been completely realigned. you’ve been uncovering, replacing; rearranging, transforming, rebirthing.

7 months ago you questioned whether you even wanted to travel because it all felt so pointless. and you were angry at yourself for even feeling that way. you felt stupid, and shitty, and guilty, because traveling the world was supposed to be a dream come true, until it wasn’t.

6 months ago you cried for the first time in years. i still remember exactly where you were sitting at the time: on an empty staircase, above an overpass, somewhere in the japanese town of uno, tuning out to the faint wash of the ocean in the distance, waiting for the call to be over. you had, at 25, finally learned why loyalty is something people explicitly value – loyalty, something you’ve taken for granted your entire life, you poor naive bastard. when it’s finally over, you call mom on the phone, almost as a kind of gut reaction, something you haven’t done since you were just a kid in boarding school, and her voice makes you cry even more.

i can tell you now that the pain has dulled to a faint, nearly forgotten ache. but i will also tell you that the part that broke you the most – the realization that a sense of sadness will pervade every memory you had with these 2 people you spent so much time with, and the place that you spent it in – hasn’t gone away after all this time, and that i started writing this today because a song came on shuffle singing “don't you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow” and that ache flared up again. and it hurts me to tell you that this sorrow, because that really is the best way to describe it, is probably something you will feel for the rest of your life.

when you tell people that the journey has had its highs and lows, these were the lowest of lows. you will stumble more times than you care to count. sometimes you will wonder if it wasn’t a stumble but a hand that had pushed you to the ground, and you will wonder too if you had in some way invited that hand to do so, as a consequence of your ego, fragile chaos, and what an ex once called “bouts of unconscious self-centeredness”. but you’ve been learning, too, to forgive yourself, your many flaws, and moreover, that maybe you can acknowledge these flaws without also making yourself feel like crap.

i’m proud of you, by the way. for getting back up. every time. doing whatever you could to keep moving. this tenacity, this thing where you keep pushing through, that mom once said she admired most about you (you always remembered this), to move the mountains and heaven and earth. because you carried yourself to the highs, too.

5 months ago, you stepped out of a reef break in lombok, indonesia and for a few minutes you couldn’t even speak. it was the most beautiful wave you had ever surfed in your life, in perfect conditions, six feet of glass over a barreling right and a peeling left, and you surfed it at sunset, with an orange shimmer hovering above the crest of each wave. surrounded by the ocean and the mountains and distant islands, you feel as if the world is carrying you in her arms. you can’t speak because it’s impossible to put that sense of wonderment into words, that feeling of vast infinity, of awe at everything the world embodies, and the fullness of life and majesty within it.

you write five words in your journal that night: the world is so big.

4 months ago, you sat in the kitchen of a mountain hut in italy as an old couple played cards at the table next to you. the fireplace crackled by the door; the smell of potatoes and bacon drenched the air, and the couple’s laughter filled the room. suddenly you felt their love unfurl like a sail on the main mast – watching the way she smiled at him, the way he always kept one hand on top of hers – and it embraced, enveloped and covered you like a warm blanket over your own heart.

it’s a memory you will think about often. how does a scene, a moment that was not quite your own, still bring you so much joy?

3 months ago, you met someone. and when you think of her you think of soft grass, of nights spent dancing the hours away in berlin, of chickpea on toast, and of the sunlit forests on the western edge of the city. you surprise yourself because for the first time in years, you think not just This Is Good, but more importantly, This Is Worth Holding On To. i can hear you holding in a gasp already, because although you have always sworn – passionately – against distance relationships, you will, unbelievably, try long-distance to make it work.

and in less than a month, you will see her. and you will spend december, your favorite month of the year, with her, and with your sister, your family, and your cousins as you forge a new season together in the beautiful, beautiful time that is winter in hong kong.

and now, today, this morning. you step out of the waters at madiha as the rising sun glitters behind you, and you stop to watch the surf as your friends take their last waves in.

walking down the beach a hermit crab catches your eye. he’s battling a tiny sand hill, which to him must have seemed like a mountain; ever-so-cautiously, he begins a halting, adorable scurry up the grains. when you shift the weight on your feet (squatting is, after 2 weeks of surf, quite painful for you) the crab ducks back into his shell, and the momentum sends him on a floundering tumble all the way back down.

you can’t help but chuckle. sometimes, you are that hermit crab, you think. and you’re reminded of the story of sisyphos, who spent his life rolling a stone up a mountain only for it to roll back down to the bottom every time.

but then you look at the hermit crab again.

a set of spindly legs slowly emerge from the shell; two small eyes peek out furtively. brushing off the tragic fall, the amber-patterned mobile home whirs into motion once more.

and you watch as he tries again.

with love,
kora ♥

---

i haven’t written a vignette-style piece in a while, but for me these are the easiest to write; when the inspiration comes it flows. you can read my other vignette pieces here :)