During my accidental three month hiatus a lot happened. I still wrote, guiltily in stunted little scribbles like I was hiding some great misdeed, but nothing saw the light of day. It feels disingenuous to share those paragraphs now, even last week’s confessions feel very far away. As happens every year, I am propelled into action by my birthday. This year I turned twenty-five surrounded by people I love, laughing and toasting and accidentally missing the countdown. I am starting 2023 with my frontal lobe developed, my early twenties laid gently to rest, and my bed made.
This reintroduction will be short for everyone’s sake, but I do want to share something that happened just before Christmas. At 9:00 am on December 23rd I received an email. It was a “yule letter” from someone I’d previously considered a friendly work acquaintance. The letter was about two pages, typed, single-spaced, with two one-page poems attached. It began, “Dear friends and dear ones, near and far, new and old.” That alone made me cry. What followed was a beautifully composed ode to an old tradition the author’s mother started. He recounted a brief history of Yule’s ancient, pagan, and then retrofitted Christian roots, and wrote briefly about being so far from home this year. It was kind, intimate, funny and I was radically grateful to have received it.
This past year I have thought a lot about friendship—what makes a friendship, how they’re sustained, when they’ve run their course. After a torturous, two year mourning period, I have finally accepted the silent end of one of my dearest relationships. Due in part to that heartbreak, I became a little sour. Towards the end of the year, everything was such a disappointment—friends, lost opportunities, money—everything was unfair, I felt very rooted against. We are taught early on that that is a childish feeling, but it is a feeling nonetheless. For me, Brandon Taylor encapsulated it in his most recent newsletter: “Like stumbling upon a friend in conversation with another friend and realizing you’ve been left out…it’s like that feeling, but directed toward all of mankind, as though the world has gone on laughing in another room without me.” We are also taught that the way to combat our cynical, envious little inner goblins is to practice gratitude. I would argue, however, that we have lost sight of gratitude as an emotion not just an action. And emotions often run in their own time. That is to say, practicing gratitude helped me move through the world as a pleasant person even when I was internally garbage, but it didn’t much change my feelings. What sparked the shift was receiving a Yule missive from somewhere of the coast of New Zealand from someone I hadn’t even thought of as a friend. While I was focusing my energy on sending long-range thought missiles to an old friend, I hadn’t noticed that someone else had quietly welcomed me into their life, without fanfare or expectation, just by pressing send.
I’d like to think this newsletter can sometimes serve a similar purpose. I’d like to write with the intention of gathering as many people as I can to my chest to make them feel seen and heard and loved. Know that I’m sending you a million kisses while you read. To close, my friend sent me this poem. I love it.
The Muse —Anna Akhmatova
When in the night I await her coming,
My life seems stopped. I ask myself: What
Are tributes, freedom, or youth compared
To this treasured friend holding a flute?
Look, she’s coming! She throws off her veil
And watches me, steady and long. I say:
“Was it you who dictated to Dante the pages
Of Hell?” And she answers: “I am the one.”
You are all Beatrice to me.
xx
Mia
Mia, so good to see you back on. I really do look forward to your posts. I followed you and your family on FB at Christmas, it was good to see you and your mom together. I was in TX for Christmas so we missed the horrible weather that hit Louisville. It really did put a damper on some of our friends getting together. But the weather in Houston was beautiful, which made a lot of my family at home a little jealous. I hope this year will be the best ever for you. The next time your home let's try to get together. Have a Fabulous New Year.