DISPATCH 002: Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?
DISPATCH 002: Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?
A rant on turning 26 in pandemic, feeling lost, and being loved.
Hello & welcome to the new folks. This is the second installment of Dispatches from Chrysalis, an honest offering from me to you in the form of a newsletter. My name is Priya Florence Dadlani and I am an NYC-based cultural worker, community organizer, and strategist. I was born and raised in Silver Spring, MD to parents each of their own unique double diaspora. In 2018, I founded SPICY, a collective led by and for women and queer/trans people of color utilizing the transformative power of art to change the world. I am also a member of the Jahajee Sisters grassroots action team, working to end gender-based violence in Caribbean communities. Most recently, I started as a Teaching Artist with 826NYC facilitating youth writing workshops. You can learn more about my work, experiences, and background on my website.
As I work to build a digital community in different, more intimate corners of the internet, I’ll pop up in your inbox monthly-ish with Dispatches from Chrysalis - the liminal space I often find myself, constantly on the edge of becoming. I’ll also be including journal prompts in my newsletters so we can process various topics together from wherever. I feel like it’s important to say that these newsletters are for me to work through the chaos of my life as much as they are for y’all. I’m no expert, no genius, and I don’t have it all figured out. I’m simply trying — trying to heal, trying to find my way, trying to find the words. And I’m infinitely grateful you’ve agreed to be a part of this process. Thank you!
“But this is it, the deed is done / Silence drowns the sound / Before I leaped, I should have seen / The view from halfway down.” — Secretariat, Bojack Horseman, S6 / E15
I felt really bad that I didn’t send out a newsletter on February 15, 2021 like I had initially planned to. Then I remembered that these deadlines I’ve set are arbitrary. I don’t work in an emergency room, no one will die if I postpone my own deadline, and if I need the time I should take it. This morning, about one month after turning 26, I woke up with an unshakeable and intense desire to put the people who try to dim my light in their place, including myself. So this is me doing just that, and allowing my light to shine however it may need.
My newsletter was delayed for 1,000 different reasons, most of them being the stress of moving into a new apartment, the stress of starting a new part-time job, and the general stress of trying to be all the things for all the people all the time (of which I am actively trying to do less). I was also nervous about getting the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine (which I ended up doing on March 1st… thalassemia gang rise) and I was also spending hours on hours writing the plot of a themed murder mystery that my friends and I acted out this weekend, which was probably the most fun I’ve had in months. A final update that adds a wildcard to my life’s already messy plate: I’m entering level four of my serotonin kick and put a deposit down on a puppy which I will be receiving on May 10th. So yes, expect puppy pictures in these newsletters, if not for anything at least just for the vibes. And on top of all of this, I hit that “pandemic wall” people keep tweeting about. Although I’m not sure if it’s a wall for me, but more of a black hole. An endless void of wanting to do nothing, be nothing, say nothing. Everything takes so much effort. Only in the last couple days since the sun has been poking out can I sense a bit of a reawakening in my body, a bit of desire to maybe do something, maybe be something, maybe say something.
Just so y’all know, I had a completely different newsletter planned for my second dispatch, one where I would dive into the Second Portal from the last year that helped me reflect on my life and commit myself to pursuing my dreams (spoiler: it was quitting my job last summer). I drafted it and am almost finished writing it, but on February 9th in the early hours of my birthday morning, I got home from seeing two of my best friends. I felt extremely emotional, similar to Sister Bear from the Berenstain (or Berenstein…) Bears book series where she feels “too much birthday,” a feeling you can read all about in this article by Annie Armstrong. So I came home extra sappy and in true Priya fashion, drunkenly grabbed a bag of chips, opened my laptop, and started typing. The next morning I reread my rant and decided I should send it out to y’all. So, below is an unfiltered version of what tumbled out. The only things I edited were some typos simply to make things a little more legible. I hope you enjoy my birthday brain rant, and as always, there are some journal prompts (this time by poet Bhanu Kapil) and a new playlist linked at the end of the newsletter. I’ll be back at it again, maybe next week, with my third dispatch.
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WRITTEN IN BED ON 2/9/21 @ 5:00 AM EST:
I am very pleased to have lived 26 years. I just spent the entrance into this new year with the two people I have spent the last eleven birthdays with.
Last year I watched a webinar with the amazing Loretta J. Ross, a reproductive justice activist that pioneered a movement. She was asked if she would stop talking to her old friends and family members if they weren’t in the same organizing work as her. She said hell no, because if she dies, she knew that her organizing friends “wouldn’t know how to do the funeral right.” She was laughing when she said it, and so was I, but I deeply felt that. There’s a level of being known by your family and friends from back home that just makes you feel like you came from somewhere. Whether you feel like you belong there or not is an entirely different question, but the feeling of coming from somewhere, from something, from a lineage of tradition, is a warm one for me.
When I left my friends apartment, I was the car ride home. It was super dark outside and among other things, I was fearing death. I woke up this morning thinking about death, thinking about something happening to me on the icy roads. Something that would prevent me from telling the people I love most how much I love them. How much they have shaped me. How grateful I am to be a part of something much larger than myself. How their love keeps me strong. I thought of skidding on the ice. I thought of losing someone to the heavy despair they may feel in their own soul. The disproportionate amount of empathy they have for the world. I thought of the virus, and the way I’ve tried to conceptualize mass death in one form or another everyday for the last 334 days. And the way I’m so sad sometimes. Sad for everyone including myself. And guilty. Wishing I could carry more than I am right now.
And a minuscule part of everything going on, which would normally be very big thing in my life, is how lost I am. The level at which I am soul searching, demonstrated by the vastly different part-time, full-time, and freelance jobs I’m always applying to. Also demonstrated by my lack of routine and discipline. It feels like a side note though, how lost I am. And it is able to feel like such a side note because of the love I am receiving from people around me, who remind me everyday that I will eventually get to where I am going if I stay honest and grounded.
I was in the Uber tonight playing songs from the almost unbearably nostalgic Delilah Radio playlist into my ear as I coasted across the Williamsburg Bridge. Phone to ear (because I didn’t have headphones) I watched the BP gas station go by and thought of the memories I made there, saw the streets and signs. I am not truly nostalgic for a pre-Covid world, but I am missing my friends. And it felt comforting to see the sites and streets where memories were made. To know where I was. To reflect on the memories as a point of reference. To feel like I might be home. That means so much, to find a place my body signals as home.
I have been wanting to send out a newsletter for weeks and between my job search and my current move, it has been hard to find the time. Right now it is 5:12 am on Tuesday, February 9th. I wouldn’t say I “found the time” but I would say that I had something to say today. I am grateful for these moments of clarity, which is interesting because... my mind isn’t the clearest right now. But somehow I have the gumption to approach my voice and write. That is either a happy or sad thing. Or both.
Landslide by Fleetwood Mac came on my shuffle. My mom used to play this song all the time. Mirror in the sky, what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? I ask this so often. I have always been way too adult for my own good. I have my moments, but more or less I was born being the bigger person. At the age of 7, I was grown enough to let my mom know that I supported her decision to get divorced and to do what was best for her. I let her know that I would trust her judgement and support her no matter what. I have always seen my parents as humans first, then as parents. I have never had trouble seeing the big picture of others, and accepting them for the way they may be. Therefore, I was treated like an adult in many ways, ways that could harm me too. I do wish I could have been a little more ignorant for a little bit longer. I once had a supervisor at work that was a few years over 40, but she approached every single day with her eyes wide open. So wondrous and childlike, she would be interested in learning about every little thing, so curious. I’m younger than her but wished I had her eyes to see the world. I never want to give up on the possibility of re-accessing childhood.
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Next on the shuffle is Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time… I'm only one, but not alone, my finest day is yet unknown. My birthday brain just can’t stop mentally thanking the people in my life that give me the strength to care and have faith in tomorrow. My whole identity, it can feel sometimes, is just made up of love from others and without it I think I would just be a shadow. And that is why I am so grateful for the people in my life that allow me to care about them in return because this reciprocity gives me purpose and function. Sometimes I do find it difficult to put myself first, almost as if I don’t have enough reasons to do so. It can feel like a selfish and dismissive thing to do. I ignore my needs and am guided by the needs of others and the ways I can plug in and support them. This can get super unhealthy, and a year or two ago I may have tried to glorify my self-sacrifice and avoid accountability for the impact this behavior has on me and even others around me. But nowadays, I know I need to get better at not simply setting boundaries, but actually finding and believing reasons to love myself. So if everyone's love disappeared I wouldn’t have to be a shadow... but on the flip side, life without a community of love must feel like a shadow, right? You see the conundrum… I know there is a happy medium somewhere between caring for yourself, letting yourself be cared for, and caring for others, but until I get to that place I cannot deny the impact caring for others has had on me during the last few years and especially in the panny. I’m writing this as someone who is very much a work in progress, very much not perfect, very much still grasping at the means to survive. To get by day after day. But as we continue to find a way through, I am so grateful to feel useful. That makes me whole.
✦
I sobbed the whole time writing this. Partially because I am listening to Delilah’s playlist. But also because I’m just so sad. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you how excited I usually am about my birthday. Ask anyone who REALLY knows me and they’ll tell you I go overboard every year and stress myself out over my birthday. I always throw a massive celebration, have endless champagne, make everyone do the Cha Cha Slide with me… all of it. I thought that this year having a “calm” birthday would actually be “nice” and “quaint” but it sucks. Of course it’s what we have to do but it feels so backward to even acknowledge a birthday at this time, almost a year since the pandemic started. With the amount of loss and suffering. With the fact I’ve thought about death far more than my future in the last year. With the fact that I am truly on borrowed time, that we all are. Truth be told I just wonder what I am doing here sometimes. What my function is. And I’m not sure yet. But I suppose not everything needs to be revealed at once.
Ok now we have Rod Stewart… Have I told you lately that I love you? Have I told you that there is no one else above you? You fill my heart with gladness, take away all my sadness, ease my troubles, that's what you do.
xo,
P
Journal Prompts as I Reflect On Another Year Lived
This week’s journal prompts are not my own. They are written by Bhanu Kapil, a poet whose work has comforted me the past few weeks. I’ve had a book of her poems titled Schizophrene for over a year now and return to it often, but I’ve been looking into more of her work since a Caribbean Writing Workshop I facilitated a couple weeks ago. She writes about mental health, young girls being raised by wolves, cyborgs, feminism, time traveling… and so much more. One of my co-facilitators from the workshop shared the below prompts with us that Kapil wrote in her book The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers. These questions, which I answered a month ago on my birthday, forced me to time travel at a time when it felt so difficult and allowed me to see my life’s journey not as a singular or linear path, but one of many — shooting out from the past, converging, diverging, disappearing, and returning. They really cracked me open, so keep that in mind if you’ve been feeling extra tender recently. It is Pisces season, you know.
12 Questions by Bhanu Kapil
Who are you and whom do you love?
Where did you come from / how did you arrive?
How will you begin?
How will you live now?
What is the shape of your body?
Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?
What do you remember about the earth?
What are the consequences of silence?
Tell me what you know about dismemberment.
Describe a morning you woke without fear.
How will you / have you prepare(d) for your death?
And what would you say if you could?
If you’re able to do the journal prompts, please let me know how it goes and do share any feedback! You can email me at pfdadlani@gmail.com or DM me at @priya.florence.