resuscitate.

the bigger the lashes, the less i see.

Eve’s Bayou (1997).

i bought myself the sofia coppola archive as a gift for myself because i couldn’t stop thinking about priscilla presley’s big lashes.

They were large, almost like thick black wings, and I immediately started looking up makeup tutorials and lash strip brands. I currently trend track as part of my internship. My major is based on the formulation of beauty, because if I’m going to see something beautiful in everything I may as well do it for the rest of my life.

The more I researched the less focused I became on looking alike. Instead, I realized how much of this aesthetic was my birthright and was coined by the people before me.

Elvis took most of his musical identity from the black communities of the South, and with it—in my personal opinion—came Priscilla’s dramatic makeup, long nails, and star-marking lashes.

I hate the theft of African-American culture, but I also understand how Revival changed his life. There’s a different kind of faith thrumming through the hills of my home. It changes your life.

Now that I’m back home in the summer, the days feel slow and syrupy. I’m bare-faced and almost always outside. I’ve never felt looser inside of my skin. Usually, I feel stretched thin and so close to the surface of my body, as if I’m trapped inside of my bloodstream, on the inside looking in. The South is reviving me and I hate to say it. I also consider it a win.

Tuesday, I made an appointment for my mom and me to get our nails done together. It’s mainly for my sister’s wedding, but also because I wanted to. I miss feeling the scratch of almond-shaped acrylic. I can’t have them at university because I’m always in the lab and they just get in the way.

I know what my mom will get: clean cut and square, most likely painted a color that’s boring to me because she’s convinced herself that she’s too old to wear certain things. I’ve already downloaded reference photos of the long set of tips I want: baby pink, almond, and glittering if I can get away with it.

This past week has seen me in denim cutoffs and baby tees, my hair slicked up in a bun. By the time I go to the salon, it’ll be wrapped up in my scarf because I don’t feel like doing it.

I’m excited to go and yes it’s because I’m going to come out feeling more like myself, but also because I get to put my phone on do not disturb and drown everything else out.

It’s transformative. I’m changing myself by going back to who I was.

It’s not really who I was, but I think who I always wanted to be.

I’m tired of the clean girl aesthetic.

This summer I want my lash strips, my long nails, and my cutoffs. I want to wrap my hair and maybe get a custom grill (I’m obsessed with the silver heart ones I’ve been seeing). As soon as the wedding is over, I’m booking an appointment to resow my hair into the textured soil of my favored boho braids.

Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I have two ear piercings on each ear and wear lots of jewelry no matter my father’s distaste for it. It’s about me.

I want to be more physical about the things I love. I want to be more present in my adoration.

Just this morning, I was walking my dog, and I saw a mother deer leading her baby across the road. She was going slow and like instinct, I fumbled for my phone to record it. But something stopped me halfway and I abandoned the idea, letting her cross the treeline until I couldn’t see her anymore.

Something about seeing her begin to run, her baby following joyfully behind, made me realize that I want to have a lot more moments that only I know about. It’s like waking up next to someone you love and feeling warmth the idea that no one else knows them like this. Even if there were people before you, there are still moments that are with you and untainted by the need to broadcast via social media.

Choosing to watch the moment instead of memorializing it made it feel much more special, and suddenly I understand why there’s so much emphasis on staying alive and alert when things happen to you.

Why am I having a funeral for everything I see that moves me? What makes me feel like it’s already dead and that it’s my sole purpose to record and reshare till the love has been exhausted?

I don’t realize how much social media has shifted my perception of everyday life. Now, where I used to be active I’m not. I have notifications off for both Instagram and TikTok (the only socials on my phone) and if I’m wondering about Twitter, I have to manually type out the web address to even begin to go in.

Even with Substack, I reject everything but the emails. I linger outside of it for a few days and then come back, scrolling and saving what I want to read for a time when I will pay perfect attention.

Maybe a little bit of it is fear. With the upcoming election, I’m terrified of what the future could look like. But running alongside that is the understanding that I still can change what that looks like by immersing myself in my community and showing up: to the polls and for my people.

My fear hasn’t immobilized me for once. It’s what’s keeping me alive. I write more and I’m closer to finishing my novel than ever. I’m unafraid to let my phone die.

I leave my charger at home instead of stuffing it in my bag. I don’t plug it into my computer when it hits twenty-five. The system notifies me (Low charge. Your phone is now at 10%) and now I’m like, yeah okay. thank you for letting me know.

I write down the tweets and posts I love in my journal. It’s more physical, more meaningful, and it helps keep the beauty of my handwriting is something I can’t bear to lose.

Pinterest. Credits to cigaretteuncle on Tumblr.

And it’s not as simple as ‘I want to start living’. I have been living. I do it every day and I’ve never slacked. But it’s more that I want to refer to it as my life rather than ‘that’s just life.’

It’s a difference that may not mean anything to anyone but me. It’s a personal concept rooted in the way I realize how unrelaxed I always am when my nail tech tells me to let go of the tension.

It’s like intuitive eating. I know how I feel.

I know what will be a good day when I won’t doom scroll and edit over and over again. So, I spend a little bit of time checking out. But I also feel it when I wake up and I’m nitpicking and irritable. I never write on those days. I stay off social media and find something to do other than sleep.

Right now my medicine oscillates between running and taking luxurious showers where the best part is when I exit from underneath the spray and hear nothing but the sound of the natural world beyond my window.

And I don’t want to lose looking into the future. I love that I’ve never lost sight of what I’ve wanted and that picture in my head. But I would also like to be able to come back to the place I currently reside in, more often than I tend to let myself.

Pinterest.

So yeah, it started with the big lashes and the dramatic makeup (which will probably take a longer time to appear ‘cause I keep my skin clear by minimizing the glam) but it became something bigger than me.

Everything having to do with molding my world through the palms of my hand becomes bigger than me.

With those lashes, I can block it out. I don’t have to see anything but what I’m looking at, which is a relief with someone like me who notices everything. I seem to find room for all my anxiety, my terror, and other people’s too but none for taking care of myself.

I keep thinking about it. How I throttle myself with this incessant need to be pushing forward, to be working my way toward something I don’t have yet. But one day I’m gonna turn around and not have this too. It’s so scary, but it sobers me. Makes me more intentional about handling my fragile little life as I carry it and it carries me.

love is more than balance. it’s about attunement. to complement each other. being able to give a little more than usual when the other is in need of it. it’s about creating a safe place for each other and a healthy space between each other. to fill the silence of another with meaning. to fill the void with love without flooding it. — ruhlare.

To fill the void with love without flooding it.

That’s the goal. That’s how I begin to patch the holes where everything leaks in. I’m reaffirming what I know and what I believe in, and I’m learning that I don’t have to lose myself in it just to make it important.

The fact that I think about it at all tells you how critical it already is.

Right now, my dog is sleeping beside me. I’m wearing low-hanging sweatpants from a high school volleyball team I’m glad I left. The sun is filtering through the trees and my white, lace curtains. My phone is on low.

47% till I have to soak it all in.

If you’re wondering how to help yourself, ask God and she’ll tell you to look at your own hands. 𐙚.