Do you have a moment to spare, right now? Like, an undivided, wholly present, feeling your body in your chair moment. Where are you, if not right here?
I spent a lot of time outside of my body looking in. Still today when I am upset, I withdraw out of my body and into my head. I do not want to feel heaviness in my chest or a tightness in my throat. I do not want to hurt. I do not want to ache, yearn, grieve, or regret. For so long, I chose to feel nothing at all instead.
November 29th, 2021, I left that version of myself in coastal California and headed north for Bellingham. That girl still wanders the Redwoods in my wake, ghostly and proud. I spent a week packing up my entire little life into the back of my car, leaving only the tiniest crack of visibility through my blindspot for merging onto highways and into a new life.
The following winter was long for two reasons. The first was the ache of long days spent by myself, of rolling over at night to an empty bed. It was hours of alone time, wrestling with a break-up. Dragging myself out of the house to walk through the snow I had no boots for. Pablo Neruda wrote once, loving is so short and forgetting is so long. And it was.
But it wasn’t just that. During those months, I leaned heavily into the practice of savoring, relishing. When moments came to me that lit me up and melted my hurt a little, I sat with a commitment to feel each piece of joy in my body. It was the first time in years I had really sat with myself, allowing each moment to be long and rich as though savoring a new kind of chocolate I’d never tried before.
These days I employ a practice of presence in my life that I encourage you to try. I call it a moment. And you’re having one right now.
A moment is just that, a second in time. A collection of breaths, a quick pause, an expression of gratitude. It’s the space in which we laugh loudly, clink glasses, tell stories, celebrate birthdays, share food, and sing our favorite songs. It’s where we allow ourselves to feel joy. And when it happens I think to myself, I am 25, sitting in Seattle, alive and healthy, and I will never be in this exact place ever again. Now this is a moment. How devastating, how deeply wonderful.
The beauty and the pain in this world comes in part from its impermanence. My therapist told me once, nothing is permanent besides death and children. But even grief changes and children grow up.
If you struggle with anxiety, you may know the practice of identifying where that feeling sits in your body. Maybe it is a tight chest or clammy hands. You are supposed to acknowledge that feeling and then release it. We are not taught the same practice for our moments of joy.
When you are happy, where does it live in your body? Do you take time to notice it?
I am currently sitting in my partner’s house writing this. I am 26, drinking a coffee that is slowly getting cold. I will never be in this moment again. How devastating, how deeply wonderful.
Mostly, I wanted to use this post as a chance to reflect on some of my favorite moments in recent memory. So if you have a moment to spare, I would love to share a few of mine with you.
I’ve dreamt of living in Seattle for quite some time. I had pictures of the city skyline plastered over my walls in high school. In 2022, I finally made it to the city I had so badly wanted to live in for a decade. And for months after moving here my eyes filled with tears each time I crossed over the Aurora Bridge after sunset, the shimmering city skyline reflected onto the water. Moment.
Last summer my friends organized an event at Volunteer Park and they invited everyone they knew. We’d accidentally overlapped our plans with a loud festival across the park, so music floated unsolicited but welcomed through our afternoon. We tried to set up a new volleyball net for the first time and each time we pulled the net up to stake it on one side, the stake on the other pulled out of the ground. And back and forth we yanked until another friend came up to correct our technique. And so, the net went up.
Instead of playing any volleyball I sat on a picnic blanket and chatted with girls I was meeting for the first time, some I would see again and some I wouldn’t. And something about the temperature, the company, the music, and the sun clicked in my head. I looked across the crowd to catch eyes with a friend and yell out, “moment!”.
Another summer afternoon, I sat next to Seattle Central College in Capitol Hill. The sun was out and so were the people. I saw a group of people sitting across the grass and they laughed loudly as one of the girls placed yellow flowers into her friends’ beards. Moment.
One full moon, my friends and I stood on their rooftop overlooking the city. It was cold enough that everyone was wearing a borrowed jacket because it had been warm enough earlier that nobody could have imagined we might later need one. Or we hadn’t planned to be out so late. It’s hard to know which it was.
Being out on the roof under the moon reminded me all too strongly of a life I used to have, one I left in Bellingham over a year ago then. I felt overwhelmed by emotion, grateful for the life I had and all of a sudden deeply grieving one I had let go. I turned around opened the door back to the stairs and sat down in the corner of the stairwell to reflect and pine and ache. And a friend followed me out.
He sat next to me in that stairwell and let me ramble about why my sentimental self was upset, and I’m sure at some point I blamed it on the moon. I liked him, and I was pretty sure he liked me too. He put his arm around my shoulder in the stairwell corner and I felt safe.
We started dating a month later. I walk by that stairwell corner often and every time I do it’s like passing through a warm ghost. Like I am traveling back in time to the way it felt to have a friend-I-so-badly-wanted-to-be-more-than-a-friend put his arm around my shoulder. Moment.
An August afternoon in a summer past, I rode past Bellingham Bay in a friend’s passenger seat after hiking up to Fragrance Lake along Chuckanut Drive. As we drove home I hung my bathing suit out the window under the guise of drying it. Music blared from the car speakers and we laughed so loudly there was no room for conversation. Moment.
The first time I got into Shilshole Bay. Moment.
The night me and my roommate came home from going out at three AM just as our third roommate was getting up to run an ultramarathon for his 32nd birthday. Moment.
Watching the sun set on Alki beach on the 4th of July, frantically packing up our camp to try and make it back home in time to catch the fireworks over the city. We barely did. Still, moment.
Christmas morning making french toast with my siblings. Moment.
My first time at the top of the Space Needle. Moment.
I remember days when I refused to experience things this way — a time when I separated myself from the sanctuary of my body and withdrew into the back of my mind. Wrapping my heart up in tin foil and cellophane and putting it away to mold if it meant nothing could hurt me again.
But I am much happier now. Older, wiser, et cetera, et cetera. All of the things people tell you you will become, but you don’t really realize it until it’s already happened. Until your forehead has begun to wrinkle and your knees have started to hurt.
I hope you have a moment today. I hope you start to notice them moving forward. I hope you share your moments with friends. I hope you allow yourself to have them when you are alone.
It is spring of 2024 and you will never sit and read this essay for the first time again.
How devastating, how deeply wonderful.