Coming home to my heart
A thousand hellos, a thousand goodbyes, and countless, countless thank you's
Hello beloved friends,
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post. Aries season was rife with change and an outpouring of incredibly active, assertive energy. Spring seems to be in full force these days, and I feel both giddy from the sunshine and on my toes, gazing over the precipice of great change. Taurus season has, rightfully so, grinded my non-stop frenzy into a halt, and I’ve been left to take stock of the hurricane that the last thirty days have been. Please buckle up for the sifting through of the fall out.
In late April, I had a coffee/work/gab session with a friend, and we discussed the upcoming new moon (May 7-9), end of mercury retrograde (April 24), persistent grief, and how to know when a chapter is coming to an end. I have known, in my bones, that change has been here for a while now.
To be less cryptic, I am happy to announce to you that I have accepted an exciting job opportunity in Boston! This position feels so in line with my values, skills, and interests, and although a cross-country move is daunting, I feel as though Boston will be good to me. I spent several years in high school dreaming of going to college in Boston, and while that did not work out, it feels quite fated that I’m being called back. While Chicago will forever be where I came of age, where I went through remarkable growing pains and heartache and inexplicable joy, I’ve known for some time that it is time for me to say goodbye (for now.)
In the same breath, it feels wonderful to separate from all of the grief that has become synonymous with who I am in this place, in this point in my life. As Spring has warmed me, I’ve reflected on how much my life has changed in one year, and where I was the last time Spring blossomed.
Spring 2023, forever ago
I associate last Spring with sleeplessness, a steely heaviness in my heart so dense that my body began to break down, and Lana del Rey’s ninth studio album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.? I have a hard time listening to that album, because of how it acts as a mirror to the pain (a feeling I’ve described as pre-grief) that I harbored while I listened to it. Songs like “Kintsugi,” “Fishtail,” and “Paris, Texas,” are virtually unlistenable to me these days.
This Spring, on the contrary, has been defined by an abundance of laughter, tender moments (and incredibly silly ones) with my friends, feeling like I belong both here and elsewhere, and an emotion I can only describe as “happy uncertainty.” It feels as though a lifetime has occurred between then and now— I’ve been to Japan and back, I have finished over 63,000 words of a story that was just a seed of an idea last May, and I have grown in countless ways. This growth has made me feel a bit cramped, a bit too comfortable here in Chicago.
If I stay, which feels like the safest option, I know I will be with my loved ones, my safety net. If I leave, I know I will be stepping into exciting change and new memories, new tender moments, but also solitude and the gaping blank slate that is starting over. Regardless, by even considering the option to move, I have started a new chapter of my life.
End of Eclipse Season
I had the pleasure of witnessing the total solar eclipse in April from my childhood home in Ohio. I took a big step out of my comfort zone and drove to Cleveland by myself, which was nerve wracking at first, but then I found it just as boring and tiresome as everyone told me it would be. I had some wonderful, much needed femme bonding time with
, and we spoke about breakups and relationships, trauma and therapy, writing and work. I spent time with my family and visited one of my oldest friends, and I resisted the annoying urge to text my first love for all of the wrong reasons after two or three glasses of wine.My 85-year-old grandmother, Martha, joined us for the eclipse and kept making hilariously deadpan observations about how “she wouldn’t be alive to see the next one.” She is a Scorpio, by the way. I keep having dreams about the eclipse, how the sky slowly dimmed as though we were all falling into a dream, and that silken, supernatural web of light that peaked out from the shadow of the moon. Cameras could never capture its delicacy, nor the awesome silence that descended upon the world for just a few short minutes. It felt too divine for my human eyes.
The eclipse ushered in some chaos (negative and positive,) some aching, that I was somewhat expecting. Some of my closest friends were bent under its weight, and I was reminded of that awful feeling of not being able to directly help someone you love, and only being able to offer understanding and space.
The shift that the eclipse caused came in waves throughout May. It came first in the form of trauma rearing its head and disrupting my sleep. Then, it came in the form of an unexpected connection, which I’ll go into more detail about later. Then, the job offer. Then, an impromptu trip to Boston, a meeting with an old Tumblr friend (hi, Hope!) witnessing the transformative beauty of DePaul’s Liberated Zone, and finally, to round out my tenure in Chicago, an invitation to a sapphic orgy. Yep. Big month. Huge, even.
TW -mentions of childhood SA-
I initially drafted this post with the intention of discussing my trauma work and how it intersects with my understanding of my own sexuality, kink, and attachment style. This was mainly inspired from my conversation with Raechel, just days before the eclipse. I’ve become more and more comfortable sharing with folks that I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and while that is liberating, I still feel a lot of guilt and fear when I open up about it. For one, I am fearful that it will be too disruptive to share. When is the right time to share something like that? I’ve also struggled with the fear that this trauma has made me irreparably damaged, unable to have healthy relationships, or made me someone who is too sexual. (Oftentimes, hypersexuality in children and young teens is a sign that something has happened. I learned this when I was 20.) I grew up surrounded by very negative perceptions of people who were sexually abused, and I felt like falling into addiction, depression, or a continuation of the cycler were simply inevitable. With some grace towards myself and continuous therapy, I know that this is not true.
I was really hyper focused on this earlier in the month, but the whirlwind of changes that I’ve been facing has really distracted me from it. I’ve noticed that about trauma work. Sometimes the pain demands to be faced, and other times, I barely remember it’s there.
Sexual exploration has been a helpful tool in understanding that my sexuality is not a scar, a permanent mark left behind by the person who abused me. For a while, I think that sexuality served as a roadmap, showing me the roads that lead back to this wound, as well as venues away from it. More recently, through the help of someone I have been blessed to experience quite electric chemistry with, I have realized that the intensity of my sexuality is something to be celebrated, rather than scrutinized and shamed.
-end of TW-
*extremely hard pivot*
Dating Updates
The person I’ve been seeing (who may or may not read this!) is someone I met back in February at a topless paint and sip in Logan Square (gayest sentence ever.) We caught eyes at the beginning of the evening, and after splitting a bottle of wine with my friend, I had the liquid courage to approach them. They reached out to me a few months later, and we decided to get together for the first time a few weeks ago, mere days after they left a long-term relationship, and the same day that I received my job offer.
The circumstances are not ideal for a serious situation right now, but perfect for a beautiful fling. We have a pretty great understanding of the expectations of this connection, with me soon moving away. We were talking about how peculiar it is to have a deadline for this relationship, as I plan to leave Chicago by the first week of June. This is not the first time that I’ve been given an expiration date for a romantic connection, but I feel a lot more acceptance, control and calm this time around. Truthfully, I think that they’re incredibly beautiful and funny, and I’m just enjoying the time that we have to spend together. I have never had such sexual compatibility with someone, either.
Making Peace with Goodbye
I feel like my time in Chicago has really slipped through my fingers like sand. I’ve signed a lease and sent money to my new landlords in Brookline, an adorable township on the Southeast side of Boston that is popular with 20-somethings and University students. I’ll be living with three strangers. I’m feeling so overwhelmed with change that all I want to do is lay in bed until noon and scroll aimlessly on my phone, pushing the big to-dos (uninstalling my AC unit, packing up my entire life, finishing my fucking novel) out of mind.
I’ll be bundling up the Chicago memories that I want to take with me to Boston: August 2020 days lazing on my friend’s shady back porch off Belmont, finger painting in purple and green paint, smoking hand rolled cigarettes, and feeling stuck like flies in the hardened sun-gold amber that was that first pandemic summer. Winters full of childlike wonder that bubbled up inside of me as the clumpy snow fell and immediately froze in -13F windchill, my roommate and I not leaving the house for days like hibernating beasts. Impromptu swims in Lake Michigan in early June when I couldn’t wait for the lake to warm up, cutting my toes on the big, algae-slimed rocks at the concrete beaches off Irving Park Road, feeling drunk off endorphins when emerging from the clear blue chill.
I’ll be leaving the memories that were not as lovely behind.
There is proof that I have loved and been loved all over this city. I have fallen over and over in various forms of love– platonic, romantic, toxic, all-consuming- in this city, and for this, I know my life is richer. At the end of an alleyway in Wrigleyville, the words “I <3 AVA” are scrawled into the cement; a relic, a burn mark, of a love I am unsure I will recover from anytime soon. When historians come to this land hundreds of years from now, I hope they find this little corner of concrete and study it like the graffiti in Pompeii. Let the world know that I was loved enough to be written about in a permanent way. Or let developers come and turn it into rubble. But let that be one of many marks left behind for me, or by me, in this place, for however long.
In addition to being overwhelmed with the feeling of time running out and moving to-dos, I have been overwhelmed with the radical beauty of student demonstrations for Palestine. Just a few blocks from my office, bravehearted folks have been camping on the Quad for over a week. I visited the encampment the same day I returned from Boston, a gorgeously sunny day that almost seemed to rub Chicago’s beauty and political importance in my face, taunting me for deciding to move away. I stepped into the Liberated Zone to drop off some supplies, and my heart was full to bursting. Medicine, education, training, food, water, therapy, and shelter all provided for free.
I revisited later that afternoon and sat on the grassy hill of the SAC with some friends, like we used to do back in my freshman year. We listened in silence to the Call to Prayer, a hush falling over the crowd of people (students, faculty, neighbors, children,) the reverent silence amplifying a single, beautiful voice that rang out while people prayed in the clearing of tents. Afterwards, we enjoyed free food and greeted friends who were spending the night. I hated walking away, but I left with pride in my heart that my generation is creating future realities with liberation, anticapitalism, and Palestine at the center.
I’ll be trying to cram in as much love and wonder and vibrancy in this last month I have left in the city that truly raised me. It feels hard to focus on wrapping up work at my day job, or finishing grad school stuff, when all I want to do is play outside and consume every inch of Chicago. I’ve created a bucket list that I need to start chipping away at this weekend. I’ve been listening to two songs on repeat the last two weeks— One, “Delete Forever,” by Grimes, and two, “Jersey Giant,” by Evan Honer & Julia DiGrazia.
So much love, from me to you.
Palestine will be free <3
-QCB
My heart reading this is so full 💗💗💗 so grateful to be a small part of your magnificent journey, femme!
Oh Ava, there were so many parts of this essay that gave me goosebumps, witnessing and feeling the excitement of the newness that awaits you and the heartache of the nostalgia that's left behind. Your descriptions are so vivid they made it easy to step into your shoes and mind and emotions and feel your courage and anguish and trust in yourself. The hard work you put towards your goals, professionally, emotionally, and mentally is unmatched and soooo inspiring. I'm SO excited to see where this next chapter in your life takes you!!! Wishing you soooo much love and ease in what's to come! <3