try a little tenderness
here for you and you and you and you
i haven’t done a long form q+a in awhile. sometimes it feels simpler to do them on instagram but then i worry a little about clogging people’s feeds with questions and answers they don’t really care about (i get it). and most times, i really like the longer form of answering your questions. so happy weekend, i hope you’re reading this with a really big cup of coffee or tea (hopefully still in bed) and something sweet on the side.
how do you maintain self when dating someone new? (for someone who has been single forever)
when i look back on dating when i was younger, the only thing i ever regret is how much i let myself be consumed by the relationship and by them. i’ve learned that a good relationship that grows and is healthy and happy isn’t one that is built by being obsessive or all consuming. it’s really special when you both can live your lives independently but also learn how to share a life together. it’s important for me to always have my own time, whether that’s having a couple days to myself or a couple of nights to eat dinner in bed and watch whatever reality show i want to watch (seeking sister wife is my guilty pleasure right now) or just spend time alone in my apartment. i think when you’ve been single for a long time, we really appreciate our time alone and i think even when you’re dating someone, it’s really important to preserve that. so preserve your solitude, continue to cultivate your interests and your hobbies, take yourself out on dates, spend time with your friends, eat dinner alone a few days a week. it’s important and it’s a really beautiful thing to maintain your sense of self and continue living a life that you feel excited to share.
i want you always to be independent of everybody. live as you have always lived, whether with me or without me, proudly, worthily, looking down upon goverments, men, and things, and not caring for or needing protection. that is the future which i should like for you.
victor hugo, from a letter to his wife written c. february 1852
how would you handle the fear of being alone forever?
i don’t think there should be a fear of being alone. i think we’re conditioned that being alone (romantically) is one of the worst things in the world. there is a difference between being alone and being lonely and i think often, we conflate the two. being lonely can feel isolating and fill us with so much yearning and desire for connection, for something, for anything that we find ourselves settling for less or retreating more into ourselves. i understand that feeling and i know that it can feel endless. but i promise you won’t spend your life feeling lonely. there are books to read, films to watch, poems to relate to, songs to cry to, meals to devour, people to meet, people to take a chance on, people to daydream about, people to learn from, someone to have coffee with, someone to slice a cake with, someone who will understand you and see you and know you, there is an unknown to continue moving through, a life to keep being surprised by. and i hope you always remember that.
believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
rilke
5 things always in your pantry, 5 things always in your refrigerator.
pantry: