The thing about reindeers

From your baby 💘

I think I learnt how to hold pain the longest, I think some way some how I learnt how to romanticize pain, to play with it in my fingers, I learnt how to dance and twirl and make love with pain, make love to pain. I made my chest home to the very thing that I hated the most - pain. I don’t know when or how, I don’t know why either. Okay maybe i do but just like every other thing it’s hard to talk about……it hurts. sometimes everything just hurts.

i started to gather pain in my chest as a way to fight back, you know i felt maybe if i remembered all the pain, all the anger, all the hurt, then i’d be fine. maybe if i remembered all the tears i’ve cried i’d never want to cry again, how do i explain to 14 year old tobe that i was wrong? how do i explain that maybe sometimes we’re wrong, maybe the pain doesn’t make us stronger, maybe all we’re doing is carrying the pain. maybe all it does is make us heavy and grumpy and tired.

i’m scared of healing, i’m scared of forgiving - if i forgive everyone who am i going to be angry at? who am i going to blame when everything goes wrong? is hating easier? is anger easier? easier than dealing with the truth? the truth that is - “life happens” and life will continue to happen. if i forgive my ss1 government teacher who slapped me so hard i heard ringing across my face, what would i think about before i sleep? i thought holding the pain was good to fuel my revenge… but why does it feel like i’m burning and that pain the fuel that ignites the fire?

2024 changed me, and i hate to say it but i feel it, in a way that i can’t explain… in a way you wouldn’t understand, an indescribable feeling of want, and anger, i felt like i cried all through the year but yet tears didn’t drop from my eyes, my chest was always crying, always sobbing. this year i want to laugh, i want to be happy. i need to be happy. the thing about reindeers is they shed their antlers, they leave these huge big antlers that they’ve grown for years and they break it off so more could grow. they don’t think of it as a betrayal to themselves, this year i want to shed my antlers, the anger, the noise, the tiredness, the loosing, the excuses, the rush, everything i don’t want to think of it as betraying myself.

“fill your cup so much so they fall in love with the over flow”

no fill your cup so much because your cup deserves to be full, because you too are a person deserving of love from yourself, of kindness and joy.

i no longer want to be angry, i’m sorry that it feels like i’m betraying myself, maybe that’s what growing is, constantly forgetting the version of yourself that fought so you could become this person. i’m laying on my floor in this apartment you know too well, but what you don’t know is i finally want to live. i finally want to be decisive, i no longer want to care if i’m choosing wrong, i finally want to spend all my time with family. i finally have a home and it’s in my chest and in yours too. maybe my mom was right, maybe I am an over feeler, but why wouldn’t i be?

maybe this year we change? this time not for everyone, not for anyone, maybe we just begin to understand that we’re the authors of our book, maybe we change for us, this time no pressure, no resolutions - just a reminder from me to you that we’re doing this together….. this year we’re becoming.

My baby, my love, my Tobaby, welcome to the best year of our lives yet! I prayed for you in church baby! Have a beautiful day also share your favorite part of our love letter on your insta stories, I’d love to see it 🥹💘