Well, this is not what I expected. As I mentioned before, my life fell apart last month. To state the obvious, my life fell apart again in the last ten days. However, once again I find myself facing a major restart, even though I will have very little downtime or personal time for the foreseeable future.
But I am okay with that, as the difference between what I am going through now is fixing and restructuring my life to be able to withstand being a little more hectic.
To be honest, if there’s one thing I’m known for, it’s creating moments of peace to navigate through my busy life. I need to live life because my life isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
When I first moved to New York back in March, I never would have imagined I’d feel this way not even six months later. I feel almost stuck yet free for the first time in my life and it is just paralyzing to think of how hard I worked to get here, only to end up feeling this way.
This isn’t a sudden onset of this feeling, I’ve felt this way for months. looking for what could potentially be an out at any corner but never truly finding one.
So as any mid-twenties girl would do, I took a step back and decided I was going to restructure and rebuild the life I wanted starting in September, which of course happened to fall perfectly on the day I treat as the beginning of my weeks.
So everything aligned.
But if one thing I know about myself couldn’t help but be true, it’s that I need to hold myself responsible in some sort of way. Which brings me here, writing about starting over yet again, because apparently being 26 is the year of starting over for me. I am not going to share all the ways I plan to make myself start over no that would be too easy for me to find someone to just annoy me into doing it instead of taking a moment for personal growth and growing into this accountability for myself.
So here I am with one of my life-related tasks, getting my life together, and writing again. Something I love and enjoy forces me to use my brain more than I have been these last few months just going through the motions.
I don’t think anyone really ever plans to break their phone, it’s more of a momentarily annoying occurrence that happens every once in a while.
Personally, this seems to be the occurrence every couple of months to the point where my keeping my phone perfectly secure has almost become a sport for my loved ones to watch
I hate breaking it now v.s. when I first got a phone, the art of shattering a screen is so much more appealing of a reason to having to replace a phone than your motherboard dying out. My current predicament.
So while I sit in a random New York cafe waiting for the moment to come that I can go racing back to the device I’ve been without for the last 24 or so hours let me explain why for the first time I think this might have been an actual sign of when to happen.
I got broken up a year or so ago and it was hard, it was six years of my life, and happiness just gone. I (being a photographer) very much struggled with the concept of the breakup that included deleting the photos. The everlasting fear that the moment I deleted our memories something would happen and I’d be forced to live the rest of my life with the decision that I had made the wrong decision to delete.
So for over a year six years of broken memories sat on my phone, it broke me more times than not having Apple memories show me how happy I was back then, but still I did nothing.
Two days ago, before all the problems with my phone arose was the first time I truly decided that maybe it was time to consider deleting it. Starting new fully no fear of missing what is so far gone I couldn’t possibly look back.
And then all at once, the choice wasn’t mine to make anymore.
Let’s be honest it’s the best time of the year to be a girl who loves all things pink, and like everyone who loves a good shopping day. Sometimes you just want things to be a little bit easier.
So brands put together cute little collections of their all-year items in new colors or even just the Valentine’s Day vibes making it even easier when choosing for ourselves. But what happens when you are shopping for someone else, or want to limit yourself even more.
To start, we needed to start with classic sneakers, but in the limited edition pink and white. Can’t go wrong with any VDay-themed outfit leading up to the big day.
I never knew how to choose a favorite flower growing up. The idea of choosing something that spoke to my heart yet was beautiful all in its way didn’t quite make sense to me. I tried to detach the idea of just choosing one I loved simply because it fit the color I had grown to love so much and stood on its own. Something that wasn’t attached to a memory or something anyone else could ever be a part of, so I would never be able to feel as though it could be taken from me.
This left flowers holding a special place in my heart for whenever one would come across it. Whether it was a graduation boutique or simply flowers my parents would send me on my birthday. They all meant the world to me, yet I didn’t want to share that with anyone, at least not what it fully meant to me.
There was no secret my love of things that grew from the ground and for a while, in school, I was often caught photographing flowers in exchange for having to photograph models or people. Yet even with every photograph I took, I still found myself being the only one in my life who saw value in exchanging non-verbal “I love you’s” in everyday situations.
When flowers did fall into the equation of my life, tried hard not to showcase too much how much they meant to me, quickly displaying them and loving them while they lived on. While secretly keeping a few here or there to be dried or pressed for memories years to come.
As every good photographer knows, the best memories are worth sharing. And like anyone seeking to show their love to the world, I knew exactly what needed to be done.
One year ago, my little sister and I were prancing around Copenhagen going from store to store, doing the one thing we both love shopping. It’s not the most exciting thing to do, but for a couple of twenty-something-year-olds, it was quite a day. We enjoyed it more than we probably should have, and to continue our joy we switched to another love we both have.
Thrift shopping.
We love finding hidden treasures within our own city or those we travel to. Ones that fit our own fashion or each other, it’s something that has managed to bring us closer together than I think anyone would have expected.
I didn’t just love thrifting for the two of us though. No, I loved finding things for the boy I was in love with at the time.
So when in the third little vintage store we had walked into that day, I couldn’t help but jump at the vintage 49ers jacket that was just sitting in the shop. I thought I had found the first truly amazing item for his birthday surprise in a few weeks and I couldn’t help but get it.
I teased him about how amazing the item I found for him was for weeks when I got back. I knew it would be the coolest thing to ever enter his closet.
We broke up of course before I could give it to him.
So there I was heartbroken and wondering what to do with this jacket.
This one god-forsaken jacket, that I couldn’t get rid of, because if I gave it to him then what. I’d be the girl who had given him one more cool piece of clothing for his closet, or I would be the girl who held on to his birthday present a bit too long before mentioning it.
Either way, couldn’t be me.
So there it was for months just sitting on my clothing rack collecting dust. My other thrifted pieces found their love and way into my closet yet this little 49er’s jacket just couldn’t escape. It’s not like it didn’t fit my style, which was its worst part. it felt like this constant reminder of what should have been a great moment for me and my ex turned into a sour memory I was never going to escape.
Until I started dating a boy who worked in sports, and god did I do the one thing every girl hopes they won’t do.
Try and make herself look cool in his eyes.
Not that I wasn’t cool to him. I liked sports understood baseball and would tolerate watching basketball, but I never got into football. I was a tennis player after all (and our high school football coach gave me a sour taste for the game when he got petty because we won more games in tennis than they did,)
So here I was with the football season beginning, being pulled to be a Sunday morning football bartender. talking to a boy who lived and breathed sports with a jacket that I had deemed not my own but stuck in my very happy place.
And what did I do? Well, I wore it, and it was one of the fastest days I had ever actually been complimented on an outfit. Even by the boy whose attention I was trying so desperately to get. I felt guilty still justifying not showing the jacket I had bought in January until that very day in August, as it wasn’t supposed to be mine.
It was mine though, it never was supposed to be anyone else’s. at the end of the day, I found a thing that brought me joy because it was me, I just hadn’t let myself be me in so long that I didn’t understand.
You see, I don’t get football but I do get fantasy football. Yeah, I know that makes no sense to literally anyone, but it is the case, and in all hon,esty I started loving the actual game by following the 49ers, especially over this season,
It not only makes me sad to see the season ending but with it ending and me finding my way to New York next month. I know I have one hell of a memento from living here in the bay for the last eight or so years.
If we were to go back to a year ago today, February 1st, 2023. I would have said I was on top of the world. I had just returned from Copenhagen, and I was falling in love with photography again. I was traveling more with my boyfriend of almost six years, and I had started actually telling people I was happy.
I wasn’t.
Or I don’t really know at this point if I was, but that girl was never ready for what was to come in the following week. Sure the anniversary was fun, I fell in love, genuine true love, But that all changed on the 9th of February and I don’t think I could have ever truly been prepared for it, any of it. I almost wrote about it a hundred times in the first month, Trying to process the actual loss, the idea of being so hopeful for a future and having it taken from me.
I had in the back of my mind tried to let myself believe in my art, my photography, but it all felt so hollow so empty. I didn’t want to be myself let alone the person I gave up for someone else. So I remained how I was, not speaking truly to being me but to once again who people expected me to be.
I remained.
It wasn’t until the TikTok trend surrounding the song “Right Where You Left Me” by Taylor Swift, took off that I truly realized what I was doing. I wasn’t moving on or feeling better. all I was doing was feeling bad for myself and hurting others that I was pretending I was moving on with. That was until I made the fateful decision to move to New York.
Hell, I wanted to move to New York for years, but that was never allowed to be a discussion. A possibility, it was always how it was and nothing would ever change that.
So I decided I was moving, and tried to keep myself rational. New Year, new place, financial independence but not being alone.
Or that’s what I thought, what I hoped. I hate being alone after all, you might not get that I am an introvert and all, but I hate being alone.
This is why I am now here, at 830pm on a Thursday night looking forward to spending my Friday off…alone because there is no one left. I move in one month. I go to New York all alone, just like I wanted, but I am more alone now than I was a year ago when I felt like I reached my absolute zero.
But now I can’t decide which is worse. to sit in misery feeling unloved and unwanted. Or knowing that the reason I am alone is because, for the first time in my life, I have fully been on my own side. Not letting myself take the shit others choose to throw at me, because Im quiet and they know that I have for years remained because it was easier.
I might still be the girl who remains, but for the first time, I see that staying isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength many will never be able to find.
Sidney Donna 