there are happy holidays, somewhere

It’s Thanksgiving, and I’m sitting in a (mostly) empty boba shop, tears streaming down my face. But this is not a sad story. This is the happiest I have been in months.

Holidays are a hard time for a lot of people. I’ve grown familiar with the poorly disguised pity that people struggle to conceal in their expression whenever I tell them that I would be spending Thanksgiving alone.

As of late, I’ve been trying to make some sense of my own life. I look back at my Substack and what I had written when I was doing either better or worse than I’m doing now, and I think about how, over the past two years, my life has teetered between sprawling out, more than my own body could hold, and shrinking just as quickly.

But over Thanksgiving break, I found that being alone and having some time to find myself again. The sad part is that I didn’t even realize I had lost who I was in the first place until I woke up at the end of October and didn’t recognize myself in the reflection anymore.

I frequently say that I used to live across the street from my favorite place in the world: The British Film Institute.

When I lived in London, I had a few friends around, but I would spend more time than not alone. One of my favorite things to do was cook myself dinner, then catch a new film or attend a Q&A at the BFI for a fiver. Sometimes, I’d work on an essay in the cafe and overhear two film students sitting at the table next to me brainstorming an incredibly convoluted screenplay about a grandpa learning to use social media.

I’ve probably told this story before; I promise this time there’s a different ending.

Since coming back to college, it’s been increasingly difficult to see movies as regularly or do the things I love, like going to concerts. I hadn’t even realized how being away from things that make me happy and unable to get involved in what I love has hollowed me out into a shell.

It took going to two concerts and going to the movies three times, more times in a week than I usually go in an entire semester, for me to realize, while cozy in bed, working on a piece of writing for myself, that for the first time all semester, I felt okay for more than two days in a row. My life wasn’t actively shrinking into the verge of disappearing or expanding beyond what I could handle; I was living a normal-sized life on my own terms.

For a little bit this semester, I was obsessed with the idea of zombies. In some ways, I felt like I was living through a zombie apocalypse, with everyone around me either talking about AI or mindlessly scrolling through TikTok or Instagram Reels in the middle of a conversation.

Sometimes, in the middle of talking, I would simply stop when I realized that nobody around me really gave a shit about the sitcom project I’ve been working on. I quite literally had some people even tell me to my face that they don’t have the emotional capacity to be friends with me. I found myself shrinking into myself, trying to zombify myself because my passion wasn’t legible to anyone.

But on Thanksgiving day, I read a story that my close friend and writing companion sent me, in which she wrote about her experiences with gender and her journey as a writer. When I got to the part in which she mentioned my name, I started bawling in this public cafe because it finally hit me that there are people out there who care.

Like my friend who let me stay over at his place the night after the concert last Friday. Like my friend who had driven me back to the concert on Saturday. Like the two lovely people I met at the The Academy Is… concert, who hugged me so tightly after the show out of sheer joy and adrenaline we were all experiencing together.

Like the movie theatre of people laughing at the Thanksgiving evening showing of the new Knives Out movie. Like my friend who called me for two hours later that night so we could geek out about the new Now You See Me movie together. Like my friend who texted me, reminding me that I’m always welcome to spend Thanksgiving at hers next year.

I had spent so much of this semester convinced that we were all already dead that I had forgotten how to be alive and for that to be all there is.

There’s some truth to the piece I wrote about the mundane pain of living an unremarkable life. But I also sense an undercurrent of unspoken fear beneath it, driven by my desire always to be high-achieving. But in that search, I’ve forgotten that sometimes, it’s just an accomplishment to have made it to where I am today. What’s the point of getting here if I don’t get to enjoy doing what I love?

My therapist recently agreed that I should be kinder to myself. I’ve written about how the kindness of others has changed me and about my difficulties directing that kindness inwards.

And I think I’m starting to figure out what that might look like.