The Apartment I'm Avoiding Cleaning

       I'm sitting on the couch in my very messy living room in LA, mourning my long and restful winter break. I'm supposed to be tidying up right now so that I can start the new semester with a clean slate in a couple of days. Syllabi, Google forms, and meeting agendas already sit untouched in each of my three (soon to be four, maybe even five) school-related inboxes. Why does so much of adult life involve creating new email accounts? I resent this deeply.

    Next to me on the couch are the "2026" balloons from New Years Eve that we've taken off the wall but still don't know what to do with. I'd suggested we save the two and the six for my roommate's next birthday, but was immediately hit with the realization that we won't still be living together then. Directly in front of me is a small easel propping up a half-painted portrait of Nori, one of my roommate's cats, that my roommate started a couple of nights ago. Strewn around it are an array of cheap paintbrushes, an almost-empty bag of Cheetos, and the mood boards we made on New Years Eve. The Mod Podge and glitter we used for the mood boards' finishing touches have also yet to be put away. I don't want to put them away yet, even though they won't be used again any time soon. Isn't that a little pathetic? Other items sitting out in include: a vacuum, a cardboard Amazon box the cats like to sit in, a laundry drying rack, two yoga mats, my foam roller, a bottle of allergy medication, packing tape, countless tote bags hung off the backs of our kitchen chairs, and two big, blank whiteboards that will soon be filled with study notes and to-do lists. 

    The light in our kitchen went out yesterday, so I moved a lamp into the corner as a temporary fix. It's propped up next to some shelves that have been sitting uselessly on the floor for an embarrassingly long time now. Every time I drilled into the wall to try and mount them, I hit a stud. Now, our wall has four needless holes and zero shelves. Further, the print we had up, of a woman bathing in a tub of mac 'n' cheese, has also made its home on the floor because its frame broke when it crashed to the ground and we never bothered to replace it. 

    I thought I was rested and ready to begin the mayhem of school again, but I'm afraid. It's a silly feeling, because I'm already halfway through law school. I should know how to cope by now, but my mind is just as unkempt as my living space. The imposter syndrome has not gone away, even as I've been privileged with opportunities I would've dismissed as pipe dreams just a year or two ago. I feel lucky to have so much love and joy and excitement in my life. For a long time, all I dreamed of was stability and some measure of peace. Now, I'm daring to ask the world for more than that, which goes against all my natural instincts. I am not a risk taker. Uncertainty makes me panic. But at the same time, I'm easily bored and constantly crave new beginnings. I fear failure and embarrassment and all of the regular things people are afraid of, almost to a paralyzing degree, but I also fear looking back on my life with regret. I'm reminded of the Kierkegaard quote, "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." 

    For a long time I've focused on living in a way I can feel proud of when I look backwards. I still think this perspective helps me see the bigger picture when I'm too deep in the weeds. But, it's also been a cop out to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions and truly understanding myself as I grow and change. If I really want to be fulfilled, I have to be okay with taking some leaps of faith and making mistakes, and learn to forgive myself for them. 

    I know from books and movies and essays and, of course, this blog, that the feelings I'm having about this stage of life are universal. That brings me comfort and excites me; it makes me feel like a part of something. This feeling, like I'm always on the precipice of something---either getting something I've always wanted, or being denied it and feeling mortified---is what really encapsulates being alive. I'm tired of holding myself back from going after the things I want because I'm too scared to acknowledge I want them. For way too long, I've viewed having ambition as setting myself up for disappointment. Rejection is a fact of life, in school or work or friendship or love or anything else. Sure, the more invested you are, the more it hurts. But I don't know where I got this notion that I'm not strong enough to withstand that hurt. As I recently read in a Substack post by Katie Bird that's been making the rounds on Twitter, "Being cool and disinterested and unaffected by the world is a bleak existence, like living near a river that you never swim in." Observing the river, beautiful as it may be, isn't enough for me anymore. I want to swim.

Teeth & love as always,

Anika

P.S. - Songs I've been enjoying recently:

1. "Mona Lisa" and "Bad Premonition" by Tei Shi
2. "Perfectly," "Love Crimes," and "Hard" by FKA Twigs
3. "Waitin" and "Onanon" by Kelela
4. "Lucky" by Britney Spears
5. "The Kill" and "Impossible" by Jessie Ware