SO HIGH SCHOOL

If you know me, which I assume you must in some capacity as you’re right here reading my blog, you'd know that as I've aged, I do not quite believe in manifestation in most ways nor forms, and whenever I'm talking about it it's in a mocking or at least non-malicious, victimless teasing manner. And yet, the last post that was left published on this blog, was titled Luckiest Girl Alive, and I'm finding it a little difficult not to feel like that again in this moment, awake at 4am in Vancouver (or more accurately, Burnaby). Re: manifestation, I just think it's cruel to think or believe that manifestation works when the underlying premise functions very much like prayer — if you have some form of privilege in life then it's more likely to come true, but if you're impoverished and destitute, then fat chance of your thoughts being manifested. It's like saying, hey kids, Santa cares less about you if you're poor! You're only homeless because you don't know how to manifest! ....Right. Anyway, what was I saying, that was a tangent and I was not here to talk about manifestation at 4am. Oh, so this year hasn't quite felt like the luckiest year for me, and I have not felt like the luckiest girl for much of it, no. During the first half of 2024, I was still very much seething and depressed from seeing how most of the world was responding to the genocide happening in Gaza. I fell out with many people whom I'd previously had working/professional relationships with, or admired greatly. Many of them were more focused on doing things "the right way", whereas I was obviously concerned about doing the right thing. I say this not to aggrandize myself or whatever, I don't know if it's a mild symptom of autism, or maybe just me having the most basic common denominator of a decent human being, but the depression I felt this year at needing to do the right thing, was acute, and I failed at many things. I actually literally failed my courses in the Spring semester, and I failed at doing things within my workplace. All of it happened because I kept thinking, what the fuck does it even matter anymore — there are thousands of people who are dying and living in extremely painful, inhumane ways, even if they had been conscientious and outstanding in their studies and careers, and the only difference between them and myself was the luck of the draw, and where we had been born. I hated thinking about the ridiculousness of the lottery of life. I hated thinking about the fact that the human-inflicted torture and struggle didn't and doesn't even need to happen, it was and is happening because several world leaders are corrupt with power, that they deign to kill and maim literally countless populations of people with impunity. Oh, now that I've looked back on all that, it seems a little incongruous to talk about my updates about the rest of the year, but yeah, you know, I was and am aware of such terrible things and you'd hopefully understand how much my depression amplified and my year went completely off the rails. I simply did not care about my daily life, until I went to the school's nurse practitioner and started taking a daily antidepressant. It's not the highest dose, just 5mg of escitalopram daily, coupled with iron and vitamin D pills, all to give me energy to push through the actual insanity of the world. I know different people have different opinions on antidepressants, especially because different bodies react differently, but I love my escitalopram. It is the literal difference between myself caring only about survival and living to see another stupid, grey day, and myself caring to live my life and smile and see life as worth living sometimes. I will not have any escitalopram slander, and I will not have anyone take away the drug that keeps my brain functioning at the very baseline of my regular executive functional abilities. Together with the chemical supplements prescribed by my nurse practitioner, I also continued going to therapy regularly with Art, and I still went to marches and/or the encampment on campus in solidarity with Palestine, and thus I was surrounded by people who kept replenishing tiny bits of hope I had in humanity: people like Sara (the organizer of the Palestine movement in Nanaimo and absolutely the strongest person I know), Maggie, Alessia, Kaia, Warren, etc. These people have become the ones I truly respect and admire and love, and I consider myself very lucky to be living among them. Anyhow, I went on another tangent, that was also not what I came here to blog about??? About two months ago, I was talking to a person I'm very proud to call a friend (and so you can deduce who it is), but whom I cannot mention by name in this context as they have not gone public about their relationship status. They were telling me about how their partner was a man written by a woman. If you don't know what that means, it means a rare man who is decent and thoughtful and basically thinking about things more than how it would simply affect himself, much like the average woman does for the people around her. Also, if you read fictional literature, a man written by a woman is dreamy and romantic and is really hard or next to impossible to find in real life because men were not raised nor socialized to be like a man written by a woman writer, but instead are men raised in this stupid patriarchal society that we've built for ourselves. All this to say, I was gushing about how happy I was that my friend had found their partner, a man written by a woman, and they said they hoped the same for me. Around the same time this was happening, I matched with a man called Joel, on Hinge. When I first saw his Hinge profile, one of the question prompts he'd chosen to answer was: "My most controversial opinion is..." and he answered it with "we need a lot fewer old white guys in power. Also, it really shouldn't be controversial." I liked the answer, leading us to match. The more I learned about him, the more I felt that he was not only a man written by a woman, but it was almost like he was a man written by specifically me, Sarah Mei Lyana. He was and is also involved in local politics, and he reminded me of both Art and Warren, the two male role models I've had in my life for the past two years. All three of them ride their bikes as their main modes of transit, and Joel and Warren are also vegetarians, the biggest geeks, and some of the kindest men I know. For one of our first few dates, Joel took me to two shows of Vancouver Indigenous Fashion Week, which was a first for me, and I felt extremely enriched by it (it also really isn't the most expensive ticketed event despite being called a Fashion Week, and so I must implore you to try to attend it one day). I'm also blushing as I type this so it's a good thing I'm alone in the dark with no one observing me write it — I enjoy being in bed with Joel, very much. When I'm in a session with Art, I veer between trying to purse my lips because I joke about Art being my surrogate dad, and then also somehow rambling in excitement about the things that Joel and I do in the bedroom, because Art is actually my therapist. This is not a dig at any of my exes in particular, and most of them were decent and want to please their partner, so they would be happy to know that I am indeed being pleasured, and I am in amazingly good hands.... (and other body parts and contraptions, AHAHAHAHAHA.) However, this might be the first time I truly do not care about hearing from any of my exes. I hope they all delete my number and never contact me again, because I am happy and contented with Joel, we are so comfortable and familiar and easy and I cannot imagine having this with anyone else. One of the things that I think appeal to me about him, is that a long while ago, he was unhoused for half a year in the US, because he didn't want to return to his parents' place. There are two routes a person can go with an experience like this, they can look at it as a personal failing or blame the people around them, or they can look at the system and see it for how its institutions are failing the people they're being designed for (or actually, it's built by design to fail some people whilst uplifting others). Joel became the latter, and I think that's one of the things that we have in common. [This is an update at 5.21am. I'd taken my laptop to the living room to write this post to avoid waking Joel up, but he came out looking for me whilst I had my AirPods in. I looked to my side to see his face front-lit by the light from my laptop screen and ogre-screamed into his face, and trembled into his arms, while we both laughed at the silliness of trying not to disturb the other person but doing exactly that. That was a core memory forever.] Anyway, I don't know, in the past couple of months, I've been exactly the way I am when I'm in love. I think things like oranges are sweeter every time I bite into them, and when I listen to Taylor Swift's angsty songs I feel grateful that I've already gone through phases of relating to their lyrics, but that I hopefully won't, anymore. I actually started writing this post because I wanted to talk a little bit about the scholarship that I'm receiving in the year ahead, it will allow me to spend some months in Senegal to collaborate with the youth there and do climate change mitigation research. However, I'm tired after that little jumpscare with Joel, and I also woke up in the middle of the night, so I might write about it some other time, whilst I'm in the midst of it. In one of my recent sessions with Art, I told him I was finally finding it in me to do both, in that I was able to cope with my studies and finally regaining the balance in my own life, whilst still participating in marches or movements for Palestine. Art said, "see, there's enough for both, you have the capacity to be an activist, and to rest" but I corrected him. I didn't mean that I could find it in myself for enjoyment, whilst also promoting activism. I told Art, if I can go for a Taylor Swift concert (whom, as a billionaire, I hate supporting) and enjoy my bedroom times with Joel, yet still attend marches and do different activities for Palestine, so can everyone else. The least you can do is boycott problematic businesses — there are always alternatives, and you can wear kuffiyehs or Palestine pins, or you can engage with pro-Palestine content on Instagram. Trust me, if you wanted to, you can do both.