In Another Life I Was a Nebula

Dear Reader and Star-shifter,

It’s funny—I remember writing down this title about two and a half years ago. It was that March where I quit my warehouse job after a mild mental breakdown and flew home for a few weeks. I had just started this newsletter.

Now that I think about it, it was March 2020 when lockdown happened and March was also the month I was assaulted and I remember one March maybe a few years ago there was that big ice storm and it looked really cool because everything was encased in ice but also everything was encased in ice including the tree branches, making them really brittle and dangerous so the city had to cut off a bunch of them so they wouldn’t fall on people, and people were slipping and sliding everywhere (and not in a fun way) and getting hurt—’twas not a Good Time.

So anyway, where were we… oh yeah. Fuck March.

But before that. I wrote down this title two years ago and hastily typed out this Very Not Good poem. I only included the first half because the second half felt too cringey:

Look up at the moon

help

I am a creation born out of desperation

the whole is too much for me

why can’t everything just

stop

for one second but also wait for me

wait

for the fragile creature thing

panting and scrambling in the

distance

and when people say

the only way is up tell them

that time and space are meaningless here, thank you very much.

because sometimes what should be a verb becomes static and you are the idea but never the thing itself, see. never the doing.

in a former life i was a bouncy ball

one of these infinities, i’ll be a nebula.

That’s the whole thing. I know i meant to write something else besides a shitty poem concerning nebulae and space and bodies being weird. it’s probably taken this long because i don’t entirely know what point i’m trying to get across to you or if i even have a point and if not, if i should have one.

i just know that sometimes it almost feels like i wasn’t meant to have a body.

and that less than five minutes into Season two of Good Omens i had to pause because i had forgotten that nebulae existed—i guess they had just faded from my consciousness for awhile—and spent half an hour being mesmerized by pictures of nebulae on the internet before remembering that i had been watching a tv show. they’re just so PRETTY and EXPANSIVE and AWE-INSPIRING and COLOURFUL and YAY SPACE.

I will learn everything I possibly can about nebulae and start a blog documenting my learning process but it will also be about coping with existential dread and depression, I thought.

Shortly after: I am already crumbing under the pressure of this self-imposed structure (what if i wanna write about something else?!) and don’t wanna do that. Also the term “Nebula Project” is already taken. But it does make me wonder…

Did the nebula start it all??

To be “nebulous” is to be unclear, vague, lacking distinct form. Maybe that’s why looking at a nebula feels like seeing god because Dude, same. (and i mean that in a non-gendered way)

I’ve often felt like I wasn’t meant to have a body in this life. But maybe that’s just me trying to be a special snowflake again. Always a foreigner. I’m not an immigrant. English is the only language I speak (I’m learning French). And yet it’s always felt like somewhat of a second language to me. Like my mother tongue is some long-lost language or dialect existing solely in vague memories or an alternate universe.

Maybe god meant to give me another form and gave me a human body by mistake. is it sacrilegious to say that god can make mistakes?

I like to think I was maybe meant to be a nebula or at least I will be in a future life and then I wonder if that’s verging on narcissism because who the fuck am i to think that in any reality I could be that vast, that cosmic and utterly expansive beyond anything i can imagine.

I also like to think I might have been a willow tree in a past life. And a harpy. Mainly because of the weirdly intense joy I feel when i see something sparkly or shiny.

These are the stories I tell myself, and who’s to say if they’re true or not? But at the end of the day, our stories are all we have. They can be used to control and harm and distort the truth, keep us trapped in situations because we tell ourselves we don’t deserve better. And they can bring us back to ourselves—and each other. Remind us of our humanity. Make our lives more magical, mundane, meaningful and meaningless.

The point is… be mindful of the stories you’re telling yourself. Choose them with intention and awareness of the powers stories hold. And I recommend throwing in some silly ones if you haven’t already. It’s a simple, no-cost way of injecting a little more whimsy into your life.

Tell me your silly stories (or your thoughts about death and the afterlife).

Leave a comment

I’ve been told that I have a very calming and grounding presence, which I’ve always found interesting. Not because I don’t understand why—I always attributed it mostly to my quiet and subdued demeanor and fear of pissing people off—but because I just don’t feel that way a lot of the time.

I’m a Cancer sun, Aquarius moon, and Libra rising. I don’t know much about astrology, but the main insights I draw from that are that I’m a very watery and airy person, which seems to track. I often feel stuck in my own head, too lost in abstract ideas and nebulous concepts. Writing is one of the ways that I can try to catch hold of them and bring them back down to earth. It’s a container that holds me in all my airiness and flightiness.

In general, I find the elements—earth, air, fire, and water—a helpful framework through which to view the world sometimes. Seeing fire and earth as two elements that I can intentionally work to bring more into my life to help ground me.

It’s just another story I tell myself. I’m starting to think that these kinds of stories are my attempts at coming to terms with the fact that I have a body in this life, whether or not I want one or was meant to have one.

In three months I will be getting gender-affirming top surgery, a process that started over two years ago.

I will probably dedicate another blog post to this, but getting my surgery date has me thinking more about my body and my relationship to it. What it means to have a physical body and brain that functions differently than what capitalism wants. Efficiency above all else is a recipe for dehumanization—maybe even entitlement. It’s a cord getting tighter and tighter until it snaps from all the pressure.

I am not the norm. There is grief involved when you start to realize how many margins you occupy. Occupying a body that is predominantly read as an Asian woman, the sexualizing and racialization. The fact that my existence as a non-binary person challenges people's way of seeing the world, requires them to make space for me and rearrange their views. There is grief and sometimes shame from feeling so disconnected when I know in theory how many people are with me on this journey, occupying the same and different margins—I just can’t see them.

I am not special in any way and what a goddamn relief that is because otherwise I would be entirely alone.

I am not alone. It still feels that way sometimes.

I don’t know how to end this piece on disembodiment and all my harmless delusions. Just that I am trying to both separate myself from my body and get to know it better. Come to it with all my confusion, my disbelief, my frustration and euphoria. Trying to meet the overwhelm with gratitude for this perfectly flawed container, in this one specific, imperfect life, to hold myself in.

1. Enjoy this immersive astronomy ambient music:

2. A song for healing:

3. Three old blog posts that have recently been edited: 3 Stupid Font Hacks for Writer’s Block and List-Making as a Creative Act.

Until next week,

If you’d like to support my work but don’t want to commit to a paid membership, you can buy me a one-time “coffee” over on my Ko-fi page! Every little bit helps me to keep creating. <3

Kofi