Detox Tea Talk: July 2019
Originally published on July 23rd, 2019
A couple weeks ago I briefly caught up with a friend via Instagram messages. She’s working at camp this summer, and even though I didn’t have much to share and there wasn’t much time to say much of anything anyway, it was good to talk to her. Towards the end of our conversation, she asked me how my heart was doing. Of course, knowing her, she didn’t mean my physical heart (though, if you’re wondering, my valves, veins, and arteries are doing just fine, thank you). No, she meant my emotions, my thoughts, and my general soul. I said I was doing good, which was (and is) true.
Writing these are always so strange to me, because, like I’ve said before, they feel like public diaries. Because of that, I seem to always remember where I was when I wrote them, and generally how I was feeling at the time. Because of the whole “public diary” thing, these posts always seem to be a little more personal, a bit more vulnerable. As I was constantly told over the last school, acting is simply doing private things publicly. Conversations, physical actions, and the things you say to yourself that would normally go unpublicized are all of a sudden written in a script and performed to a group of people. It shouldn’t surprise me that writing is often similar, just without the performing bit. You tell your stories, and you write your inner most thoughts, and, sometimes, there is an audience.
But back to my heart- it’s been on a rollercoaster of sorts the last few weeks. I always need the summer in order to recharge and process the past year, but for me there is such a fine line between needing my own space and needing to be around other people. If I’m alone for too long, I sink into a depressive-like state, and because of that I find it difficult to get out of my own head and actually do something about it. The heat definitely doesn’t help much, either, especially when it’s been 100° or over this week. In general, this summer has felt a bit odd. I’m never quite sure what I’m doing, or how my mental health is. July has always been a month that feels different each year. Last year it was wonderful, and a few years ago it was awful. This year, it’s been neither. I’m feeling indifferent towards July, but I’m still trying to focus on the good things.
I drink many cups of peach tea, text Emma, and watch murder mysteries. I go on walks, and talk to my mom, and try to read a little bit every morning. I don’t write as much as I’d like, or see as many people as I probably should. Summer, as a whole, is usually a hit or miss season for me, and I’m not sure how I’ll look back on this one quite yet. I miss my friends a lot, and there is a large part of me that is waiting to go back to Washington. Still, I am trying to remember the words of Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist nun, who says, “Whenever we are in between here and there, whenever one thing has ended and we’re waiting for the next thing to begin, whenever we’re tempted to distract ourselves or look for an escape route, we can instead let ourselves be open, curious, tentative, vulnerable.”
To put it simply, my heart is good. It’s a bit sad, and a little uncertain about how the rest of the summer will go, and a tad apprehensive about the year ahead. But it’s good. Instead of looking back or looking ahead, I am trying to remind myself that this moment, right now, is all that exists. I am trying to live in the open, the curious, the tentative, the vulnerable.
~ Claira
