5 weekly readings: the magic of the night

readings on possibility, the universe, dreams, sexual adventure, and drunken halloween nights

the posts i wrote this week knocked everything out of me. i wrote about a collapsed friendship — twice — and about how i was systematically terrorized as a child.

i am spent.

last night i wanted to write a piece about homecoming senior year and i sat down to work on it. i wanted to write about homecoming because i needed to take my mind back to a happier time. this is a happy time in many ways, but i realized that by writing so much so passionately and so quickly about so much trauma and so much heartbreak, i had simply knocked the fucking wind out of myself.

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writing tips: 10 tactics for avoiding writer’s block

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writing is so cathartic, is it not? my therapist tells me that is one thing we are supposed to do in order to help us process our trauma: write it out. and this applies to so much beyond trauma.

we can take our trauma, we can take our heartbreak, we can take our difficult experiences, write them down, release them somehow, detach them from ourselves somehow, or at the very least have a document in front of us that clearly demonstrates, if only for ourselves, that what happened was not our fault.

photo my own

but that doesn’t mean the writing itself cannot serve as an emotionally exhausting enterprise, and after the pieces i wrote this week, that is how i felt each night.

exhausted. i am fucking exhausted. tonight i am going out dancing. hopefully i will make some new friends. either way i’ll have fun. and i really, really need that. i feel like that’s why you don’t want to overdo it with writing.

you also want to have fun, and the night is an arena for so much possibility.

i suppose that’s one thing i love about the night. going out, having fun, dancing.

i wrote a bit about homecoming last night, and the memories with my high school sweetheart did make me happier, but i quickly lost momentum. i was digging and digging inside and i just couldn’t summon the energy. it was gone.

right now i am digging inside, trying to pull some grand statement about the night from the depths of my heart, but i am dead, as dead as i’ve been after finishing a marathon: my limbs crippled, legs stiff: it’s about to take me 60 minutes to walk a mile.

but the night makes me so happy. right now i already can feel how i am waiting for the night when i will go out and have fun.

thanks to these writers for articulating so many reasons why i love the night so that i don’t need to.

love,

andrew

“4. the moon looks lovely tonight” by

Violet

“In the night I feel like I could do so many things. I could rearrange my bedroom just for the vibes, knock out an entire assignment, randomly get creative and poetic. The night brings out a different side of me that gets locked away for whatever reason.

The idea of the night symbolising the unknown is actually so real as well as the moon symbolising mystery but what I think is truly beautiful and paradoxical is how the stars symbolise positivity, happiness and renewal. These things that everyone groups together as one, yet the stars stand out among them all, which is quite ironic as the stars just seem to be the backdrop for the moon.

When I stay at one friend’s house we always go for a walk at night but we’re never scared. The companionship, the unspoken rule that nothing said on these walks will ever be mentioned again and the time wasted just looking at the sky. Although is it really wasted if we enjoy the time to just… be?”

“the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you” by

Janu

“Then, my frustration grew as I realized how complicated life has become, causing us to forget our connection to the universe. We’ve created a society that keeps us so busy, we hardly have time to admire the cosmos. Light pollution means we can’t see the arms of our galaxy, unlike our ancestors who could gaze at the night sky in its full splendor. It’s sad.

But sometimes, this brings me down so much that I’ve even felt suicidal, as if my disappearance would make no difference—like an ant being squished. This thought made me cold and indifferent, as I struggled to find meaning. I lost interest in societal norms and the need to fit in. Every time I wanted to wake up and follow the daily routines or do anything that society considers normal, I’d question it all. The word “why” would pop into my head with every action. Why does it matter? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? I was going insane. Literally.

Yet, somehow my obsession with space became my motivation. School, good grades—everything was for space. I didn’t want to stop existing before I had the chance to experience the universe to its fullest. That would be a shame.”

“dreamt about my middle school crush again” by

lindsey peters berg

“i am constantly, i mean constantly, dreaming about two people, and that’s my middle school crush and machine gun kelly. when i wake up i’m always like, pretending i think it’s weird (“dreamt about [redacted, for his privacy…who knows what i’m about to write about this man] again,” i say to peter in the morning, who just sort of makes an indistinguishable mouth noise before i talk for too long about a dream that isn’t interesting and doesn’t make sense) but really, i love it.

………

i wonder if this is why he comes up in my dreams now: he was my first experience with longing. i wanted him to want me again, like he did before. i see now that that would have been boring. i would not have had diary entry upon diary entry about a weird boy liking me. what was better was the yearning. it felt more active.”

“i wasn’t wearing panties pt. 2” by

Taylor Cecelia Brook

“And whoooooo buddy did he live up to his claims and beyond. He is so so far beyond any other guy out there. It. Was. Amazing. Like no guy, no guy had ever made me come on my own, including my ex husband, by doing it on their own without toys or anything. And even with toys I had to do it for myself. Never in the whole time I was sleeping around. This didn’t just apply to men it was the same with women. So the fact that D was able to do that, on our very first night 🤯🤯🤯Now technically, he did not make me cum on our first round of sex, but I was definitely putting up a lot of resistance. It was too good. I didn’t want him to be right. Plus I was still a little too in my head for the first half. I didn’t want it to be easy for him, but the sex.”

“drunk on halloween” by

elaine alice

“Gently over the cargos, but they made my skin burn the way my face does when I blush.

Around to my shin.

Back to my calf.

His touches were nervously delicate but he was certain they belonged there, as if from then on, they were for me and no one else.

Our eyes wouldn’t meet, but they didn’t need to for me to know that this was something.”

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