Splash No. 245 - An Anniversary
When this goes out, I'll be in Japan! So, I won't be able to send out a letter next week, but stay tuned to hear about my trip when I get back.
An Anniversary
Somehow, without much fanfare at all, it’s been three years since the first shelter-in-place orders went into place for the US in March of 2020. For whatever reason, three years feels more significant than two. It’s an awkward amount of time, and fittingly the length of middle school. And just like middle school, these past three years have been filled with confusion and distress and growth and cringe and sorrow and desolation. We discovered the seams of the fabric of our lives and how frayed they could become and how many holes may never be mended. We saw so much death, we saw so much change, and somehow we all got used to it in some way or another.
Sometimes I miss the days of being confined at home, being able to spend so much time with my family. I miss dreaming of the freedom the vaccines would bring and the short-lived elation during the summer of 2021 before I had to remember the Greek alphabet. But it’s a sturdier sort of happiness to be living as I do now, once again trying to figure out what being in your twenties is all about, building a rich life and meeting people and all of that.
The last three years shattered my understanding of time. I remember months and months like they were a single day or a decade and can’t reconcile how that makes any sense. I can’t really figure out how old I am. I understand that it’s been nearly four years since I graduated college and have entered a different life stage but it doesn’t make any sense because everyone lives these years so differently. Some seem to sprint through it, while others float along the lazy current, and I can’t figure out which path I’m going down. With how much time it feels like I lost, I already feel like I’ve wasted my twenties to some degree, even though I’m only a little over halfway through.
The last three years brought me a lot though. I loved and lost and loved and lost and forgot and remembered and healed. I’ve changed more in this time than I thought was possible and mostly in positive ways, but plenty of negative ones as well. I used to think that people would always keep improving throughout their lives, but that’s obviously not the case. There’s far too much unpredictability.
And the last three years have been the most important for my writing life — the years in which I discovered how much I truly loved this. I started regularly writing again at the end of March that year, and haven’t really stopped. I learned about poetry and read so many new things and met so many new amazing writers that have all made me fall even more deeply in love with words. I’m so deeply thankful that there’s a set of people I know well and those that I don’t, who somehow keep opening these emails week after week and let me share what I love so much.
Drops of the Week
PLAYLIST - FEATURED ON DOST - playlist of South Asian artists from around the world that has some great stuff on there!
ARTICLE - "I Need More Recklessness in My Life" by Heather Havrilesky - relatable Ask Polly post about letting oneself out
Donate to Abortion Funds Mutual Aid Networks
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Here and there,
Nikhil