I Want My Heart To Be a Beautiful Resting Place for the Beautiful People in my Life.

My dearest reader,

It feels so good writing to you again. I have been extremely swamped with existing. Being alive is such a costly endeavor, and we don't have a choice in it. This newsletter is very special to me because I can only write it when I'm feeling a special kind of way; not exactly depressed, not exactly not-depressed either. I think it's the sweet point where melancholy meets longing.

So much has happened since the last time I wrote to you. I've been through some very difficult times that have completely turned me inside out. There is an earlier draft of this newsletter that I didn't get to send out; it was about grief. It was something I wrote under the weight of death, a really sad letter, and I don't want you to associate me with sadness. I don't want to associate myself with sadness. I lost an extended family member who I was very close to. She was very present in my life, and it was so difficult reconciling that she was gone. Death has always been unknowable, but it is equally universal. It's like tasting a new dish made from a base that you're used to. I've had my fair share of encounters with grief; in fact, when she died, I thought I would be able to handle it. I've been to more funerals than weddings, so, in my mind, I thought the grief would be easier to navigate.

It wasn't.

It caught me off guard so many times—in the streets, between meetings, during lunch— It attacked me like a thief with machetes. It crippled me like anxiety, and I found myself learning how to grieve all over again. It's not just about crying or about weeping; it's so much more about trying to understand that we are more alone in this world, more and more alone, and loneliness is frightening.

My biggest challenge was waking up and realizing that my aunt was no longer here. It didn't make sense to me even though it made sense. I didn't know how to accept it, but I still accepted it anyway. I've cried; I've mourned her, but it doesn't seem like enough because in my head, she is supposed to be a permanent fixture, like a couch in your parents' house, something you've always had.

I'm doing better today. I think of her now without my heart palpitating. I am now paying extra attention to my family members, storing their features in the garden of my mind, storing their voices so that they're always close to my heart. Holding on to everything that I can hold on to because just in an instant, everything can be gone. I have also learned that people don't die and disappear; they go on to live in our hearts. So in a way, I'm trying to remember everything about everyone so that if they die, they won't feel so lonely in my heart; they will find their voice there, their face, their beauty, themselves. I want my heart to be a beautiful resting place for the beautiful people in my life. This means more work on my part, more action, more listening than speaking. I believe if my heart is a comfortable enough place, then I would never really lose anyone.

So today, my message to you is to make your heart a beautiful place for the people in your life. Their death is not the end of them or their story. They go on to live inside you, and isn't that such a beautiful thing? To house multitudes inside one body? To hold love in a way that it cannot be thwarted by anything or anyone? And maybe, when we die, we get to live in other people's hearts too.

I think it's beautiful.

Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments, and I'll see you in the next letter ❤️

Here is a playlist to get you through the new week:

With love,

Nnaemeka