self-soothing tendencies
Call Your Mom - Noah Kahan
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Call Your Mom - Noah Kahan 𖦹
i. Breathing is essential. Breathing is an act of hope. A cluster of life dancing around your head and a minuscule whisper to the world that you are still here. Somewhere in those four chambers of your heart a child screams, “I need my mother, I need my mother, I need her so badly but I do not dare show her the rot that’s growing inside of me.” And somewhere in those same four chambers of your heart kindness look for the child so she can be held. “Despite a week’s old rice that is stuck to the bottom of the plates, despite the invisible walls that suffocate your body, I will love you and you will not have to be brave with me because the pain doesn’t have to make sense,” it says. You are safe in your room, in your bed, in your closet, in your bath. Trust that there are no monsters underneath your blanket. Despite the thousands and thousands of eyes imposing their dialectics onto you outside the window, you are safe right here. They don’t understand, and therefore they can’t reach you.
ii. The words don’t have to make sense. They don’t even have to be worthy. Your soul is not a logical thing. You will learn to look at the sun with the same admiration that you look at the moon with. “I could be good, I could be great, I know I could be greater than this,” you think to yourself. And you sit in the darkness hoping one day the brightness wouldn’t strike you with such intensity that makes you unable to move. Anytime now. You’re going to be better anytime now. There is no need to hold down the fort here forever. If you could just see that the road is made of blurry what-ifs and heat mirages, you will also learn that no puddles are big enough to actually drown your poor, beating heart. One day you will take the plunge and learn how to ride the ocean waves and you’ll be a normal person and you will start to dance without having to constantly tune your gears and oil your joints. You don’t have to be so scared if you start treating it like a lighthouse rather than a shadow that haunts. A half-burnt candle in the corner of your room agrees with you.
iii. Next month will be good. And then the next month will be even better. And then years later, you will move to some place unbeknownst to you and begin to breathe like it’s the easiest habit you have, the one you’ve so carefully built and nurtured over and through the mountains and past the icy cold streams. Over the horizon there is a family bickering around the old dinner table yelling at you for being late. “Where have you been all this time? Where is your weight? Put it down somewhere inside the house and tell us your story,” they’ll say. You’ll apologise for how you reacted to your own heartaches and to your surprise, you’ll learn that they are the same. There is peace in this newfound discovery. The value lies not in productivity but somewhere deeper within you, and one day, you will have finally found it. Don’t the trees also exist in the same reality? When you witness the answer to the question you’re always been asking, you will realise you were never that lost in dreams than you thought you were.
cover image taken from Pinterest
