Coming Home to Joy
and notes on relief
I’ve been back in London for a week now. It has felt like far more than a week, but my three weeks at home felt like a blink. I am in a state of subconscious grieving at the fact that the life that is supposed to be fast-moving and busy has felt infinitely slow, and that somehow I pressed fast-forward on the slowness of American suburbia. Despite all this, I have been pleasantly surprised with moments of relief since I’ve been back. I love all my classes. The people I met up with have embraced me. And the sun — yes, the sun — has greeted me most mornings. My homesickness dissipated and I settled back into my routine, weighed down by finals season and essays, but feeling light nonetheless. I miss my family every day, of course I do. But I have come to accept that time moves in circles, with no hesitation. There is comfort in that.
Ursula Le Guin wrote in The Dispossessed:
If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home… Fulfillment… is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal… It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell… The thing about working with time, instead of against it, …is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.
In first grade, there was a song we would often sing together: Make new friends, but keep the old / One is silver, the other is gold / A circle is round, it has no end / That's how long I will be your friend. It’s stuck with me since, but I don’t think I truly understood it until now. London is my silver. I am not trapped under its glare. The golden ring of home means I will get to return, over and over again, and it will always be polished and shining, the gleam of it leading me like a lighthouse.
Through writing these newsletters, I have become far more attentive to the intensity of my own emotions. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment of deep relief I felt when I saw my family at the airport. There is a special sense of belonging you feel when you return home, and that is golden to me. When I moved to London in 2019, I was lucky to have my Dad come and help me move in, and family visits all throughout the fall. It made things a lot more comfortable. I don’t remember the feeling when I returned home that Christmas, probably because it didn’t come with any sort of relief. I had to struggle and spend a significant amount of time with solitude to know the intensity of coming home to joy. In the end, I am thankful for it.
There are moments every day in which I feel like I am right where I’m supposed to be. Walking on a sunny day, having a good brunch, being around people I can laugh with. There are struggles, too — writing essays, trying to get someone to come and fix my ill-functioning shower, dealing with a leak in my hallway. But so much of our anxieties and struggles come from attempting to avoid moments of discomfort. Giving into them and learning to be uncomfortable — in order to truly feel the relief of joy, when it comes — is to forgive the bad parts and celebrate the best parts of being human.
In recent weeks I have felt in the middle of a game of tug-a-war, part of me wanting to surrender after graduation and return home where I’m comfortable and solidly loved. But would the relief be as sweet? All this stretching has made me so tender, and coming home (in all of its meanings) feels like sinking into a hot bath with sore muscles. What I’ve learned is: I will never have to choose. It is very possible to belong in two places at once, but only one place will remain as home.
Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet:
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going?... If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.
You know when you’re sick for a while and in the immediate period afterwards you cherish the simple act of breathing properly? Sometimes, unexpectedly, you’ll experience moments that feel like that first clean breath. A return to your body, a place of belonging. Pure relief. Look forward to them.
Further Reading
“When I Imagine All the Possibilities of the Swarm” by Muriel Leng
“It’s This Way” by Nazim Hikmet
What I Enjoyed This Week
Recent Reads
My Body by Emily Ratajkowski. There is so much controversy and discussion around this book that it made me truly ambivalent. I actually read this for an essay I wrote for my life writing and memoir class on body politics, and it provided a really interesting perspective when talking about (to quote one of her essays) buying herself back from an industry that uses her as a commodity. Despite everything else, I think that’s the point of it all: to finally get a grasp her autonomy through sharp yet vulnurable writing, and I do admire that. She is a survivor of sexual violence, and I don’t think that should be ignored. But as a very well written GoodReads review says: “It is empowering. However, it is empowering solely to her.” Despite the criticism, I strongly believe that literature serves as a vessel, and that we should be open to hearing voices that we don’t often hear. That’s what this book provided, for me at least.
This Vulture review of Hanya Yanagihara’s new book by Andrea Long Chu is critical, thoughtful, and smart. I haven’t read any of Yangihara’s work and I don’t plan to, but I loved this piece. It’s just written so, so well. Kudos!!
Other Wonderful Things
My friend took me to an open mic where she performed some songs from her beautiful EP. She is so talented and the EP is really really lovely. Please give it a listen!
I am probably the last person to watch Emily in Paris but my brain is in finals mode and it needed a break. I did not think it was very good, but I did enjoy watching it. That’s all that matters. And now I want to go to Paris.
This song, this song, this song, this song, this song. (My Spotify Discover Weekly was very good to me this week!) All in the Devotions playlist.
Thank you for reading!!!!! Love you!!!!!!
<3
Tara
tara, I can't express how much I loved this letter. as soon as it begun, it was as if I knew I'd have to keep it in a corner of my heart, where all things dear reside.
as long as we find home in the people that surround us, we'll never truly belong to one place alone. I feel it, the doubt, the slight fear that ill never be free of certain pains that are like all things, temporary. I think concepts like these are always a bit hard to grasp because they require digging a little deeper into oneself.
your letter today has me looking at the world in a clearer way. thank you.
I love this redirection for grieving of our comfort. I find this winter season much heavier than past seasons and I couldn't quite name it. As always, your tender words nailed it. Being in such a transitional phase of life brings so many growing pains, and it'll all be worth it, but my heart strings feel like they're being tugged so much more than they are resting. Perhaps it's time to just let go and let the cycle take me back home to myself in its own timing and provide less resistance so the circle can be completed haha. Thank you for your beautiful written offerings as always ❤️