Millennial Pink

Oh goodness.

I haven’t written here in ages, and I’ve just realised that it’s been exactly four weeks since I handed in my dissertation. I cannot believe that so much time has passed.

I’ve only just started reflecting again, looking inward. I lived the past four weeks (and past four months) almost purely in the moment, the future only entering my mind at random moments and rarely ever with anything resembling clarity. There was always something practical to attend to, someone to see, somewhere to go, someone to have a drink with. In the past few days, in stolen minutes woven into hours, I’ve begun to tentatively swim amongst the unknowable depths of my accumulated thoughts and feelings regarding this year.

Today was monumental in this new age of self-reflection: it became clear to me that I have changed fundamentally. So much has changed in my life in the past few months. I can begin to justify the difficulties I’ve muddled through this year, or at least not regret them as much as I did.

There is one fundamental change that fills me to the tips of my fingers. Why would such a thing happen to me? Into a familiar darkness Fate threw an unfamiliar light. Gazing into a reflective pool, I was catapulted back to my previous self. So much had been rebuilt within me, but my core passions and values resurfaced and thickened. 

I don’t want to put too much emphasis on it, because it scares me. I always shunned all the whispers and shouts and words and images that piled in my ears over the decades, declaring it to be something close to the epitome of human existence. That would be absurd. But how, how can I now explain the new colour of my veins, the differences in my blood?

This bleeds into the rest of my life. It shades my year differently. I see the same things but their substance is different—the facts remain but the effects shift. I must think more, write more. I need to know this new self, define my edges and prevent the dissolving of boundaries.

Music is beginning to affect me again. I’m starting to want a bit more heavy weight (still, only 1kg at most) in my intellectual labour. I can write a few sentences now and again, admittedly still with the help of strong coffee. It appears I’m coming back to life in the other frames of existence that were frozen in time from the start of my postgraduate degree.

Lasagna, a familiar scent, otherworldly blue light behind pale curtains, a footprint in a footprint, the cuckoo’s nest, medieval German calligraphy, the unlocked garden…which self are you remembering? 

I dip in and out of consciousness, remaining in my dream world. Or is it the reverse? It certainly feels as though I’ve coated myself in rose-tinted glass, let it melt into my skin. I am such rosiness. Perhaps that’s why I’ve suddenly taking a liking for millennial pink. My new self makes intriguing choices, like all my selves.

There is nowhere to end this, for there was no beginning and no middle. I let my new blood flow through the proverbial pen and wash over the proverbial page. I’ll find my way back here soon, to cut deeper, and sort through more of my thoughts about this year. [Oh, do I have thoughts on academia.] Until then I look in the mirror and see the figure behind me, within me, in front of me. Is that me, or someone else?