a year of forgetting magick

Have you ever noticed the way hope sometimes feels like adrenaline? How it charges through your body, until you can barely stand still? Hope feels like magick, and it’s been a year of forgetting magick, putting it aside, shoving it down, leaving it to sit in the darkness.

It’s hard to have hope, when you’re busy surviving—trying to survive, as best you can, with all the mess. And the quiet. And the utter absence of things. Places, both familiar and unfamiliar, suddenly inaccessible. Losing people, grieving them, grieving so many things. It’s been terrible and hard, in ways there aren’t always words for.

This time, last year, things were wildly different, on the verge of becoming hard. This time, last year, I had a heap of plans—plans I desperately wanted and was looking forward to. Things I wanted to do, places I wanted to go, people I wanted to see.

In the intervening days, I’ve done a lot of thinking, a lot of considering. I’ve looked back on where I’ve been, relationships I’ve had, what ended and when and maybe if it should’ve ended sooner. Who I love and who I haven’t. Who I might’ve loved, but pushed away. Who left, who stayed.

Who stayed. It’s a funny thing, that. The saddest thing, sometimes, is leaving someone, being left. Closing a door. It never gets easier, even when it’s the right thing, the good thing. Looking back, there’s always a strange kind of pang, like a bit of electricity flaring up. A reminder, a warning.

I’m thinking about someone who repeatedly walked out of my life, waltzing back in when it was convenient. I’m thinking about someone who only wanted to stay on his own terms. I’m thinking of someone who told me I was dramatic whenever I had feelings that were inconvenient. It’s strange to look back and realize how much it mattered and how much it shouldn’t have. It’s hard to fully exorcise old ghosts, because you can’t salt the earth and burn the bones. All you have to do is close your eyes, and there they are. All you have to do is hear a song, and everything comes flooding back. All somebody has to do is say a similar phrase, and the whole world narrows.

How much of what we are is made out of ghosts? Today, I wondered this. Because even when it isn’t, something can so easily become an echo of the past. A question mark. A thing that howls. And baggage is sometimes a lot like grief: you think you’re beyond it, and then it renders you breathless. And I am not immune to this. I wish I were.

But the fact remains that I don’t need big gestures. But small things? Steady things? They calm me. They soothe. It’s sounds so odd to say that consistency is magick, like hope, but it’s true. There are not a large number of people who make me feel perfectly at ease, who don’t shy away from my mess, from the giant text messages, the desire for vulnerability, the particular way I need to be needed. Being messy comes easy. Showing that mess is not. So, if I do? It means a certain degree of trust. It means I’ll let you hold me while I cry. It means a certain level of safety that’s hard to come by.

When you’ve been too much, that safety is hard to come by. And when you do, it’s hard to imagine it won’t leave, disappear, vanish. Because it has before. But then, something changes, or someone changes—and there’s hope. A gleaming star in the distance, the notion that things can get better—and they are. That adventure and plans are back on the horizon. What would you wish for? What would you plan for? That’s what I’m thinking about right now. It’s almost safe again, and what then? I’m thinking about what matters and who, and how I want to spend my time. I’ve got a list, an actual list. It’s got places and names. And I know that nothing is a guarantee, but I don’t need that.

I need what’s steady, what soothes my soul, what sees me and doesn’t flinch. The whole mess of honesty that hits like a shock in the best way—hope, hitting like a lightning bolt. It’s been too long and there’s been too much dark.

You have a choice (with apologies to Amanda Gorman): find the light or be it. And me, right here? I’m a lighthouse. Without an agenda, without an ulterior motive. I’m ready for magick, the uncompromising wonder that you can’t predict, can’t plan for—but you know it when you find it. It’s time to remember that life won’t always be so narrow. Soon, before you can blink, there will be more to the world that this steady grief, this darkness. You won’t be ready. None of us will. But the best things in life are the unexpected ones, the wonders you could’ve never planned for.

Meet you there.