friends, i just wanted to let you know that in 2025, i’ll start attaching audio formats for these essays moving forward. that’s all, look at the recommendations below <3
hey there. i genuinely pray this finds you when you need it most. the year is over, and i am feeling everything all at once. there’s a buzz in the air—skittish, uncertain. nerves, maybe? or childlike excitement, or fear, or all those things tangled together. i find myself caught in a soft wind, scrolling through an old friend’s Instagram posts. she’s grown. she looks beautiful, full of life. her hair is tinted blonde, and she swims in the ocean like the great white she’s always been. i can’t remember anything beyond three days ago. all i can do is smile and let it be, just like i did all those years ago. in the evening, i sit in bed, watching ASMR videos to soothe the thrumming in my head. it comes like a hammered melody, shattering my skull to bits. all is well.
i see how people speak of two thousand and twenty-four: “the worst year of my life,” “it felt like being awake during surgery.” we cannot escape our grief. we cannot escape the struggle. and we miss our dead loved ones…even though they were complete and utter assholes. and yet, i cannot help but repeat that all is well.
this year, i’ve seen the sun. i’ve also accepted her sharp, searing blaze with valour. oh, how i love to be burnt to the bone. crisp, holy, and ready for another summer evening. 38 degrees Celsius, if we’re lucky. no, if God is so willing to let me feel that heat once more. this year shook me to the core. it held me like an unwanted baby, as i threw my rattle against the wall, wailing to be something more; something older, something wiser. this year was gentle. i teethed on the kindness and fervour of friendship. oh, how my friends begged me to stay alive, just as i saw the gate to hell open in my bedroom window. i drank friendship to the foot of its glass. chafed, i waved my white flag at last, knowing they would catch me as i sank to the bottom of Lone Creek Falls. they caught my untied fingers, each muscle unravelling with the strike of my pen. i was so depressed, and the year gave me her one and only sun.
a better life since. that’s what i tell people when they ask how i’ve been. the hand of memory, a biased analysis of poetry, staying alive for performance, prayers of my own, self-portraits, eyes t’ward the sun, animating all the time, and empty envelopes. these are what come to mind when i think of time and bloodshed. it’s all just empty envelopes (and that’s a good thing, i promise).
this must be the ordinary world Duran Duran was talking about.
i don’t know what lives on the hill, but at least the hill is there for me to climb. perhaps my jovial confidence is kicking in—i’m 23, i’m 23, i’m only 23, after all—but i love the rush of unreasonable confidence shooting through my spine like it knows exactly where it belongs. what did i think of this year? well, what didn’t i think? i ought to close this note before it seeps into oblivion. for now, my answer to everything is this: empathy is real, love is real, spite is real, silliness is real, glory is real, bitterness is real, a sense of justice is real, my inability to tell wrong from right from wrong from right is real.
and holy shit, i am too young to burn. far too young to burn.
thank you for being here. thank you for being so intentional, for gifting me your attention—something i can only hope to repay with my attention to you. i hold the responsibility of writing for myself and writing to share with this community like Arthur’s sword. the Muscle & Bone commune is the one place i’ve felt safe enough to drop my armour and come as i am.
when people speak of home, i think of what you allow me to do here and who you encourage me to be (more of myself, always aggressively myself). thank you for the love. i adore all of you and truly cannot wait to split myself in half, so we can dissect the little creatures that fester inside my guts together. i love you.
yours,
Thando. x
🎵:
coloured concrete - Nemahsis
Hold On - Adele
Little Wonders - Rob Thomas
Simple As This - Jake Bugg