Alphabet Soup Part II

A-Z Notes to Self

Hi! Welcome to Sunday Candy; a newsletter where I share whatever is on my mind in whatever way I want to share it with you.

This issue is filled with snippets of notes I’ve taken presented in alphabetical order. If you’re lurking this, loving it, but you haven’t subscribed, what are you waiting for?

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As-Is

“It’s not ever going to be perfect, so.” When I overhear this, I cringe. I’ve gotten responses like this, too. I hate when that’s used to justify keeping everything maintained as-is. It’s stifling. It’s a bare-minimum mentality, a settling for status quo. This type of thinking is lazy; a common complacency that harms the collective.

Boring

Sometimes I wish people would be more okay with just letting the most boring parts of themselves occupy more space. I don’t want your elevator pitch. You don’t need to be impressive or entertaining every moment. Tell me about the quietest corners of your life. What was the most mundane moment of your day? Can my boring meet your boring? 

Chicken

“CHICKEN!!!” I turned around and saw a small blonde haired girl buried in an oversized zip-up hoodie running in the drizzle. “I’m looking for my chicken!! But don’t worry, I’m not alone, my mom is going to meet me here in 20 minutes!!” I had seen “Missing Chicken” flyers posted around with a picture of a girl tightly hugging a chicken. I thought it was a joke the first time I saw it. But there she was, the girl from the missing chicken flyer, shouting for her missing chicken. “What’s his name?” I asked. “Florence. But he responds to “chicken.” “Your chicken responds to chicken?” “Yes. I have to go now.” “Okay?” “Okay.”

Diary

Some feelings and thinking seem like they’ve gone away, but in rereading different entries, I can see some are clearly just dormant. Even as conditions change, they’re still there. Do they ever go away? It all feels pathetic. Is it? 

Envy

Are good people never envious? I don’t like the way it makes me feel. But to never be envious? I guess it’s unrealistic.

Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola once said he likes working in the early morning because “no one’s gotten up yet or called me or hurt my feelings.” And it is true that when the sun has just awakened it offers a solitary safety. It’s a clean slate. Emotional damage can’t be done yet when the world is so sleepy. But when the clean morning light leaves, anything can arrive. These early hours are a shield.

Goals

She tells her friend to imagine how amazed and surprised everyone will be. But why spend your life striving to amaze and surprise people you don’t like? I like the idea of living to surprise myself instead. After all, only we know what we really carry inside. Nobody else can ever truly understand your growth. Perhaps, aim to amaze yourself with what’s possible.

Honest

“I can tell she’s lying to me.” What an interesting tidbit to catch. There’s a thick air of disappointment in their tone. I know it well. The moment I recognize I’m being lied to always feels disappointing and deeply confusing. But it’s also astounding how long a person will just keep telling lies if you let them. Why is it hard to be honest?

Isolating 

There is something so isolating about sitting behind the wheel, something so bleak about being separated inside little metal machines. We are not meant to be so contained and detached from one another, at least I don't think so. To walk is its own form of resistance.

Journaling

If I go too long without journaling it’s disorienting. I feel like I have no grasp on what’s been going on; I feel lost and kind of stuck. Paper and ink are anchors.

Kindness

A bus passed by and I remembered his face. His name was Abisai, but he told me his family and friends called him Abi. So I called him that too. When I showed up for my tutoring shift at his high school, I found out the building was closed. He showed up not knowing there was no school either. We walked to the bus stop and rode the same one together. We talked about his family and his post-graduation plans. When I arrived at my stop he told me he had to ride back from where we came. He said he only rode that bus because he didn’t want me to ride alone. I remember thinking that I wanted to be this kind and this caring; the kind of caring that leads you to ride a bus 45 minutes in the wrong direction just to keep someone else company.

Loud

A day of deprivation, no stimulation. Just watching a body of water, a walk, and writing words. And when it’s over, immediately everything feels loud and unbearable.

Men

My ears feel like antennas today. So when I hear the topic of this chat, I lean in. But isn’t it too early to talk about death? They talk and talk and talk and look into each other’s eyes. At least for like, four seconds, and then they shift their gaze or turn their body away, like clockwork, every time. I watch until I catch orange blurs from the mason jar lights hanging over their heads. They look like floating flames the way they dangle in the darkness of this uneven lighting.

Nocturnal Panic Attacks

Anxiety is relentless. Just when I think I’m good, my 2:00 AM racing heart tells me otherwise. It’s not humbling or just in my head; it’s real, it’s scary, and it’s exhausting.

Openness

There are sometimes less stakes with strangers. They don’t know everyone in your life. There are quiet things you can share, you can spill your secrets if you want. Is that why she is sputtering out so much of herself?

Photos

They look so young, the both of them, on the grass at the park, roughly the same age as me. What was going on in their minds? Was this a good day? I wonder. I want to know. But maybe we’re not meant to know our parents fully. 

Quiet 

You can take a pencil, a pen, and scribble something you see, or take a brush and watch the way you impact the paint and space on a canvas, or maybe write words and make something from nothing; anything you want that makes the chaos of the world or your mind bearable again, whatever makes it all quiet, you can always do that.

Roses

Usually once the roses disappear I feel a wispy sadness. All their vibrant colors, their scents, their petals, their thorns, their leaves, their beauty, the way they poke into the air, all gone. I thought about the upcoming Spring. How this decay is all in preparation for them to come back. This is rebirth. 

Song

This is the sound of falling asleep in the backyard of a home that wasn’t yours, it is laying atop the pointy blades of rich green prickling at your arm’s flesh, inciting a tickle and an itch, it is the buzzing of the fat honey bee coming too close, it is the liquid gold layered on you while you witness the light breaking through tree branch claws and little leaves, it is the flickered flight of the hummingbird that reminds you this moment is magic, and like this song, it will not last long.

Thoughtful

Be thoughtful with your thoughtfulness.

Unknown 

That moment when you see a different side of a person you haven’t witnessed or experienced before and you watch them come alive in a new way and it’s like a portal into another dimension of them, it’s so beautiful and special. It makes me wonder about all the parts of different people that are still unknown to me and will always be. In yearning for more of others I break my own heart.

Voicemail

There are voicemails from almost a decade ago. I don’t listen to them because they just make me cry. And still, I can’t delete them.

Whimsy

Read for whimsy. Not every book you read is best enjoyed with such an analytical lens. I wish I knew what it’s like to read solely and purely this way again; not always taking a scalpel to each and every word and sentence. 

X

Every time I can’t cross out something from a list, and it makes its way to yet another list, to attempt again; I can’t help but feel the weight of all that I want to do and the disappointing thought of not doing it all.

You

You tell me today is your birthday. You tell me you hate birthdays. You tell me people expect you to always be grateful. You tell me you survived cancer.

Zucchini Bread

There are so many things that feel tainted because of who they’re tethered to; even zucchini bread was once ruined for me. But through reclaiming things, experiences, or places, we reclaim ourselves and remember how we can evolve, grow, and recover.

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Thanks for stopping by Sunday Candy and reading!

Let me know what’s landing with you today. If there’s anything specific that you connected with or something here provokes a thought or feeling in you, I’d love to hear all about it— tell me what’s on your mind? And if you like Sunday Candy, the best way to support me is to share this issue with someone.

And if you haven’t read my previous Alphabet Soup, check it out below:

Stay Tender,

Sandra