JUST KIDS
a piece about acceptance
“We’re just kids.”
I once told you that I write whenever I think of you.
And I think of you often.
When I pass the pink and white tulips at the grocery store. When I hear a song from one of your favourite artists on the radio. When I see or hear a joke that I know would make you laugh. When my friends recount moments when I’d light up at the sound of your name. Whenever I go watch a ballet performance at the theatre or discover a quaint jazz bar while I run my errands. When I sit on a couch and I realise hours have gone by without a love bite from you or vice versa. And whenever someone would ask why either of us did that? you’d say “it’s our thing.” When I’m looking for something to watch and remember how you’d watch anything that had lesbian characters, it didn’t matter if it was good or bad. When I’m eating something spicy and quietly laugh to myself at how you wouldn’t be able to handle it. And when I get a notification about our bucket list and how we had so much left to do. Are you doing okay? Are things better now? Are you still practising? Do you sleep earlier?
With every thought I think and with every word I write, I realise more and more that you’re gone and in your place is a growing mountain of poetry and letters.
You’re gone.
My wrists are starting to ache and my ink is running out. I panic because there are so many things I want to tell you. Like how I finally changed my degree, how kind my new lecturer is, and how well my first presentation in my new degree went. How I finally got over my fear of being perceived and shared my writing with the world. How I finally moved into the new house I was telling you about, and that with every box I carried into my new abode I thought about how much you wanted to help me enter this new chapter of my life. How every time I look at the garden I think about the plant you wanted to plant in there. How sometimes I wish you were still here with me. How I miss you almost everyday.
You’re gone.
“We’re just kids.” My friend softly said to me on a random Tuesday evening.
I looked over at her and a silence fell over us like a blanket. It was gentle, warm and assuring. It helped me relinquish the anger and resentment I was desperately holding onto and I slowly started to accept your absence.
Slowly starting to accept that we’re just kids trying to make sense of a world we’re navigating on our own for the first time.
A world we’re living in for the first time.
With every day that passes, a new challenge, a new lesson, a new choice comes our way. It’s a constant cycle of learning: how to fold laundry, how to cook, how to drive, how to tie our shoelaces, how to use a fork and knife, how to ask for things, how to care and how to love.
I’ve lived enough to know that none of us on this earth know what we’re doing. We rarely ever get things right on the first try, nevertheless understand things, but we keep going until we do. We keep trying over and over again until we get it right.
Just like how I’m learning to be okay with the fact that you’re no longer a part of my life now. It’s why even after everything, I still look at you with a heart full of love, a bittersweet smile and quietly send you well wishes then go on with my day. Over and over again until it hurts a little less. Until I can see tulips again and smile at how much you loved them instead of being taken over by sadness.
I thought trusting myself meant trusting my ability to make the right decision, but I’m starting to slowly realise that trusting myself means having faith in my ability to withstand anything and try again. It’s knowing that I’ll be okay, that I’ll recover, that I’ll be able to try again and again and again until I get it right and that even if I don’t, I’ll be fine. I’ll be okay.
Even as I write this, missing you, I know I’ll be fine.
I know you will be fine too.
“We’re just kids.” They repeat.
We’re just kids.
Hedonist's Hymn 