123. Humor me with this one.
A text about me wanting to die before my boyfriend does and a text about me giving myself a bad haircut, living in fear and crying my ass off. What a week!!!
Our bedtime routine usually goes like this:
I take my light blue, star shaped, blueberry flavoured melatonin gummy and turn off the kitchen lights. I close the door behind me and walk into our downstairs bathroom where I brush my teeth, rinse my retainer, wash my face, use my green Gua Sha, brush my hair and finally, pee.
Our bathroom is directly connected to our bedroom so while I stand by the sink I can see C laying in bed through the mirror in front of me. At night, we use candles in the bedroom to read and fall asleep so both rooms are covered in a golden nostalgic energy. I turn around, while my electric toothbrush does its job, to look at him covered up to his chin in the beige duvet with his hands peeking out holding a book waiting for me to also climb into bed.
Right then, a thought crosses my mind: A time will come when I’ll be getting ready to go to sleep and the bed will be empty, nobody will be waiting for me. My bed will be colder than it is now and feel bigger than it does at the moment.
As soon as I imagined this reality I thought “I hope I die first”, which is a strange thing to wish for but if you’ve been deeply in love, I think you’ll understand.
I’m a sucker for thinking out loud, so of course I climbed into bed and told C all of this I’m writing now. He looked at me with his eyes telling me he loves me. He’s better at speaking with his eyes than with words. He can’t control it or help it, which can be a curse sometimes but in this exact moment, it was a beautiful thing to witness.
Love yu too buddy.
We then began to talk about how mind blowing it is, as a human that lives while forgetting we’re going to die, to realise that there will be a day when we’ll no longer exist. My tower of books will remain on my bedside table until someone decides to move them. My favourite green Gua Sha will be left in my bathroom cabinet until someone decides to do something with it. My clothes will never be worn by me again. My Uggs will never have another chance to warm up my winter feet. My orange notebook will never reach being full. Everything will stay the same but so much will change.
As I stared into C’s eyes laying next to me in bed, the only way I could externalise and transform the deepest and most profound feeling I’d ever felt was by saying:
“Ojalá fueras eterno, pero eterno de verdad”
I said: “I wish you were eternal, but truly eternal.” What does truly eternal mean? I’m not sure either, but I wish I could be your life buddy until this floating planet ceases to exist. Until it’s swallowed by a black hole. Until it’s eaten by the sun’s lava. Until we’re attacked by aliens. Until no human is left. Until there’s no possibility of human life existing on this planet, that is when I’ll wave goodbye.
I know that we’re going to die buddy and I made peace with it a while ago. I know it’s coming and I know that I can’t do anything to stop it. But every single night I go to bed praying that the Universe will give us another morning to wake up to each other in the same bed with a new day ahead of us. And so far my prayers are being answered.
I’d say I’m level 6.5/10 on the spiritual person rating, which isn’t bad. I’m familiar with trusting the Universe, with understanding that control is an illusion, that life happens whether we like it or not, that we’re all divinely protected, that events are subjective, no experience is the same, emotions aren’t real… I’ve read a lot of self-help books, done a lot of therapy, tried different types of therapy, been hypnotised a good few times, enjoyed meditation, sometimes used reiki, used plants as medicine…You know what I mean. I said it, I’m a level 6.5 and I won’t say I’m a level 7 because of what’s coming next.
Even though I have a rucksack full of tools to whip out at any given moment, life still falls on top of me like a ton of bricks every so often. My rebound time has decreased, thanks to this almost level 7 title, but life still manages to surprise me and leave me planchada (translation: ironed over, sat on my ass, run over, in shock).
This week I was having stomach issues (my Achilles tendon, my weak point) and everything I ate was causing bloating and pain, level 3 pain. I was frustrated but didn’t think much of it until the bricks fell and forced me into clarity. I was living in fear.
That’s why going to the toilet at night felt so scary, that’s why I was having nightmares and waking up seeing people standing by the bedroom door frame, that’s why I felt watched through the dark windows once the sun had set, that’s why any small sudden sound would make me jump. I was trapped in fight or flight mode and I wasn’t fighting or flying.
Thanks to my level 6.5 in "knowing what the hell’s wrong with me in each given moment” I decided to face this feeling of fear head on and do something about it. Nobody wants to unbutton their jeans every time they eat, at least I don’t.
So I sat in front of the fireplace, put my earphones in, lit some sandalwood incense and listened to a twenty minute meditation about fear. I wanted to leave this current state and move into one I felt safe and strong in.
This guided meditation started off by saying that fear is an acronym for False Evidence Appearing Real. Did that blow your mind as much as it did mine? No? I’ll carry on then. The next thing I heard was “fear is always a distortion of perspective. It’s a narrowing of the sight. It’s a clouding of the lens. Its opinions should not be trusted.” There you have it. Blew your mind.
I had let my body be taken over by emotions that are only a response to my thoughts and perspective in that given moment. Life threw me a curveball and instead of using my (ginormous) level 6.5 spiritual toolbox to find a way to handle it all, I’d gone from seeing life in a positive, optimistic, hopeful way into an oh-my-god-this-is-going-to-kill-me way.
The curveball felt like a ton of bricks falling on top of me. Winding me. I was now in a state of fear and all external events that reached me were being interpreted through the lenses of fear, and it all appeared to be so real. When I was sent plummeting to the floor, I felt my stomach pain commence again and that’s when I knew its root was emotional. I’d not eaten anything yet and so the pain couldn’t be coming from food, it was coming from the feeling of fear.
I know I said I have a level 6.5 spiritual person badge on my jumper and that I’m pretty good at feeling, processing, digesting and transforming my emotions but sometimes I forget because I wasn’t paying any attention. I listened to the wrong voices in my head and ended up falling into a current of water I had no intention of flowing in. Before I’m able to realise where I’m heading, I find myself shipwrecked on an abandoned island with a stomach ache and anxiety telling me I’m going to die from a WhatsApp message I received that day.
The problem is, that abandoned island is the sofa in my living room and the current of water was the fearful part of myself after being given a microphone.
That same day, after the fear meditation, the spiralling and the stomach ache, I decided it would be a good idea to cut my own hair and slightly mess it up so as you can see, bricks didn’t fall on me but a whole concert grand piano did. Once I’d reached my peak, I finished the night off by crying my eyes out on the sofa, howling like a three year old having a tantrum underneath my chocolate brown fuzzy blanket while C cooked us my comfort food: pasta.
That’s just life sometimes, crying and pasta fixes a lot.
The meditation helped too.
STUFF I WANT TO SHARE ↓
As I watch videos of people online wearing the new Apple ski goggles, I think of what
wrote in her latest essay.Sustainability is a big deep dark tumultuous ocean and as I write this wearing my second hand Zara skirt from Vinted and my brand new boots, I say read this essay by
because nothing is as simple as yes/no. And nobody is as perfect as they may seem to be or think they are.- es para teletransportaros a la era de los blogs en 2006, a las amigas de internet que eran tus confidentes y a recordaros que estamos construyendo lo mismo aquí en Substack.
Me llegó un audio por Instagram de una persona desconocida y en cuanto escuché su voz angelical y dulce sentí una punzada en el corazón.
me escribía para decirme que le había encantado POMELO y que sentía mucha conexión con lo que yo escribía. Este detalle me alegró la semana (que si habéis leído este ensayo sabéis que ha sido extravagante) y me llevé un doble regalo al ver que ella también tiene una newsletter preciosa. Os dejo aquí su última carta.I’ve been vlogging and making YouTube videos, it’s a creative outlet that I currently loveeeeee doing. Check out January Diaries here:
P.D. El libro del Pomelo Book Club este mes (febrero) es Todo sobre el amor de Bell Hooks. Si te gustaría leer el libro y unirte al club de lectura, escríbeme por Instagram! Nos reunimos el último domingo del mes sobre las 8pm (hora España peninsular) por Google Meets :)
You’re so pure, me encanta 🩵
J'adore the vlog!!!