december 2025 observations

Somehow the medicine cabinet fills with pill bottles, bags of powders, gummies, and other things that stay on the shelf, barely touched, unopened until they're needed or desired. I measure out 1/4 tsp of white powder from a bag (vitamin c) to boost my immune system, combine it with water in a shakeable bottle, and sip the concoction. Revive me, I wish into the clear air. Heal my heavy mind, I whisper.

Somehow after twenty minutes, the vitamin c has revived me. Maybe also the writing helped. Sometimes nervous energy, stuck in the body for too long, turns cancerous and destroys everything in its path. I had to let it out and now I feel new.

A name is a perfect identifier. It's something that when called out elicits a gut reaction, like how when someone screams your name you feel fear or when someone whispers your name you stand at attention. Why do we react this way if not because a name has profound meaning? What happens when you rid yourself of your first, primary identifier? What happens when you change it, and why would you want to change it in the first place? To me, my name is matter of fact, a decision made by two people in love to identify their second-born daughter; it's like how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west — there's no changing such a thing, it just is. My name is the same way, and yours too. When I was a little girl, I never thought about my name. It just was. My mother used it when I was wandering off in a shopping mall, my father used it to reprimand me if I misbehaved or disrespected my mother, my sister used it when she was mad at me or loved me or wanted my attention. When I was a little older, more aware of the world and figuring out my place in it, I questioned my name, or at least paid more attention to it. I wondered why this name and what if I were named something different, but I never felt passionate enough to even try. There would be no name more fitting than the one I was prescribed at birth.

Most people are simple, kind creatures who don't ask for much except common decency and general politeness, which is something everyone should be able to offer. Some people have been poisoned to first see the worst in the stranger sitting across the cafe, minding her own business, sipping her latte; some people first see others as villains then, maybe, harmless strangers, then possibly friends, but that's the pattern their brains follow: foe first, friend possibly never. Maybe it's naive to hope for the best in people, but from my experience most people I see on the street or meet in a store somewhere smile at me, say hi, exchange pleasantries; some offer compliments, some ask how I'm doing out of politeness and others out of sincerity; they never sneer at me, mock me, criticize me, yell at me. I may never see them again but for a brief moment we shared the same air, exchanged words, enjoyed each other's presence. When you get offline and enter the real world, you realize most people are normal, most people are good, and the belief you've developed about everyone being a villain evaporates into thin air.

Last night I laid on my bed, sinking into the comfortable plush, and read Whitman aloud to myself, to the empty room full of furniture and air, and his words sunk into my soul, burrowing themselves in the cracks, setting up their homes so they could stay a while. Now the words reverberate through the walls of my body.

All I know is there's mystery. Questions lead to answers which beget other questions, and there is no end that I can see.

The sun is out. It is curling itself into my hair like a cat, tickling my ear, purring against my neck. It is warming the black clothes on my back. Even in winter the sun warms me.

the sun hangs low, that gorgeous star illuminating my whole world, the road, my eyes, the trees. the clouds purple like a bruise just before melting into red orange pink hues, incarnadining me. How quickly something can be yours and then taken from you

everything feels deep when you're little—the snow, the pool

everything is always changing. you don't stay five and small and cute forever. eventually you become grown like the rest of them, assimilating into the pool of adults, and you lose the spark that made everyone "oo" and "ahh" over you. then you're just you, still special, still significant, but not as cute, not as helpless, not as small.

There seems to be this ache in me, a part of me that yearns to be seen, heard, admired. I wonder if it's in all of us. I think it is.

Offense is interesting. When I'm offended by something, maybe even to the point where my skin is crawling and I need to just get away from what's offending me, I can tell something's going on in my spirit. Feeling offended usually points to something in me that needs tending to, that needs attention, that might even need to be uprooted.