of neroli and pine.

Two years ago, I started a “note” on my phone in an attempt to distract myself from my world that was slowly falling apart at my feet. It was a way for me to process my feelings in a world that didn’t make sense through the art of “journal by storytelling”. (I was too ashamed of myself to actually right out my feelings as they appeared, and decided to creatively express the heavy that had somehow taken over my life.)

It was a season where I truly set myself on fire, and in an almost dissociative process watched myself burn from the outside in. I had given up on myself because I was tired of fighting. I was tired of keeping true to the things that I continued to believe in, but still could not see the end in sight to. I was too proud (and poor) to drag myself into therapy, instead adopting a mindset of seeing how much I could hold myself with band-aids before I became as unrecognizable as the Michelin Man.

I had forgotten myself in the grief and the weight of trauma that had opened itself up to me. I lost close friends who were once anchors in my life, as they became growing triggers for my anxiety. In spite of this, the space prepared me for something bigger than I could ever imagine, and while I am still perhaps unpacking the last few boxes of that season, I am grateful knowing that it gave me the courage to realize I am worth fighting for.

Fast-forward to today, that “note” has somehow turned into a 200-page manuscript that exists buried in an nondescript folder on my computer, left (until recently) forgotten to time that has become a catalyst for this.

It’s title?

Of Neroli and Pine.