the shadi show

sometimes, I think I read so much that I hear words with my eyes closed they narrate the way I make my tea the way the sun, dappled, dances on the wooden table as I teach the way the wind blows through my bones with such certainty and such uncertainty the words hide behind my eyelids and scratch at my fingertips see us write us tell the stories you have to tell the words are not my friends, but they are not like other things ones that lurk in the pit of my stomach that sew up the cockles of my heart that run around at night when shadows are not shadows words are sustenance. they may not always taste like much but they keep me and life sometimes, I think I read too much, but then I keep on writing.

This evening I finished a beautifully haunting horror novel, and usually what this means is a late night of lying in bed trying to prevent my thoughts from wandering too deeply into the world the story has created in my mind. But not tonight. Instead, I am spending the night tending to my soul because I recently heard news of an old acquaintance and his ongoing poor thoughts of me. I need to be liked. I have learned early on in life that to be liked is a matter not of frivolity but of survival. Popularity gives you opportunity. Unpopularity means loneliness and voicelessnsss and an unnameable negative reality. My default is to live in a world of dichotomies. This, however, isn’t true to how life works. It’s messy and colourful and never stays within the lines. I know this, and I love this. I hate that the memory of animosity can steer me away from this understanding. I may be paraphrasing here but I believe Taylor Swift once said that basing your entire self-worth on whether or not peo

The teachings of Buddhism state that attachment is the root of all suffering - that to be attached to a person or a place or a thing will cause us sadness when that person place or thing is no longer a part of our lives. There are some attachments that I would never give up, and I guess that’s what makes me gloriously human, but I can’t help but believe that my attachment to the certainty of my future is causing me to experience an acute unsettlement that I could really do without. Three weeks ago, I had a plan of exactly what my year would look like. In fact, I had a plan of how this year would lead into next year and the year after that and the year after that. This wasn’t even something that I was looking forward to necessarily - I was just sure of my path. Now, I’m at home and listless and grieving the loss of a future that, in truth, was never really that certain anyway. I don’t want to give up all of my attachments by any means. I am willing to feel sadness when something I have