1/8/23

I sigh in a Mitski way. A way that tells stories of the trials and tribulations one faces on a daily basis within the confines of one's own innermost thoughts. I sigh in a way of extreme exhaustion, torn and beaten by the weight of carrying the most complex, and intricate frontal lobe. I sigh because everything is the same, and I'm still waiting for it to change.

 I got back Wednesday. For those who may not know, Southwest was having difficulties with... something, resulting in a lot of cancelations and delays in the flights leading up to my own. Because of this, I was able to bump my flight up a day early and at a significantly more convenient time, free of charge. So I got to spend the morning with my mom before departing, which was a sad day. In contrast to the last couple of times I went home, despite being excited to return to my own life, I was not ready to leave my mom. I think the comfort of one's own mother is something that, when faced with discomfort, we all subconsciously long for.  And now, ready or not, I have to depart ways with her and embark out on my own once again. But now that I'm back, I think I'm happy. I hope I'm happy. I still feel like I'm missing something big, as though the world is moving around me but for some reason, I can't seem to be able to move in the same direction. Some may say this is a symptom of clinical depression, but I say it's because I'm a Lisa Rowe (Girl Interrupted), Amy Dunne (Gone Girl), Suki Waterhouse, troubled soul. On a brighter note, there is work I have been doing to set myself up for a mentally successful year. Yesterday I finally removed any and all people who have previously caused me heartache completely from my life. No more exes, no more bad friends, I'm allowing myself to heal from anything I need to heal from without the disruption of people from my past still being a roadblock.  And I think that's something I want to continue doing throughout the year. I think the way my brain works, it is incredibly easy to get caught up on things from the past, in that I am mentally and physically incapable of moving on from anything I've ever experienced. My goal is to change that. For as long as I can remember, I have always had "love" at the forefront of my mind. Whether I will ever truly experience it, if I already had and took it for granted, if I'm giving enough to the people I know I love, etc. Why does nobody love me the way I love them, do the people who say they do even mean it, and if they do how long until they change their mind? And for just as long I have heard the exact same response every time I try to put it into words. "You need to learn to love yourself before you can ask others to love you". First of all, get fucked. Someone should not need to have full confidence and love for themselves just for the people around them to express love for them. What's more, people, such as myself, do not find it comforting in the slightest to hear that nobody will ever love them if they don't love themselves, because 99% of the time, they hate themselves, and that makes them even sadder. However, I think I've come to an understanding of what the phrase should mean, and how I'm going to be interpreting it from hence onward. I cannot expect to find love in life if I'm not protecting the love I have for myself. In my life, a lot of the happiness and love that I have to give comes from how people perceive me. I have a partner, I'm going to be a substantially happier person in my life. I just got dumped, there is nothing good in the world and I may as well rot away. So my mission, and a mission I think a lot of people should strive for as well, is learning to find enough things to love that you don't need love from everything else. I love my friends, I love my mom, I love my friends, I love grass, I love JNCO, I love the sound of water, so why does someone leaving me to have any impact on any of that? If Caleb with a K wants to kiss me goodbye and then never talk to me again, goodbye. I have enough love for other things that my lack of love from you won't change that fact. It's not a matter of loving yourself, I hate myself, and I think I'm shit scum awful, but I love. I carry love in me and put it out for others, and that is what I think the phrase means. 

I also am working on reviving my passions. I really haven't sat down and talked about a runway or fashion or art or music in my blog for a while, and those are the things I used to talk about 24/7. Not that I no longer care, but I've begun realizing how much my brain is so consumed by other matters, that when I sit down to write, discussing what a certain $85 billion company has decided we are going to wear for the next two years just isn't one of them. However, with the New Year afoot, and my fourth semester starting tomorrow, I feel like now is a better time than any to start thinking more about the topics I've devoted the rest of my life to thinking about. 

As well as the New Year, new collections are also bounding in. The pre-fall collections are a great way to see the styles and trends our trend forecasters have spotted for us. You can see in collections like Christian Dior and Ferragamo were beginning to slowly divert from the crazy prints we've been seeing throughout 2022. However, I'm honestly extremely excited for the silhouettes that, specifically, are in the pre-fall 2023 collections. Highlighting Ferragamo, they're using a lot of monochrome color schemes, longer coats, tighter-fit clothing, and more emphasis on silhouette and line. 70's fashion has been on the rise in streetwear for the previous few years, if not 2022 alone, and it seems like that aesthetic is trickling-up to designer collections again. I know I keep focusing on Ferragamo, but I will talk about other collections as well, but I just really love what they put out for this year. Denim and leather, though staples that don't really ever leave, it's clear that there is a focus on those two materials especially. What's really cool about them being used so much is how much you really can sculpt with them. Because of their sturdier textiles, I think they're being used so much in various collections says a lot about how much was shifting away from the oversized baggy clothing that has been so emphasized in streetwear and designer collections. Though this isn't necessarily new, we've been veering away for a while, I like seeing more fitted looks again, so long as we agree that skinny biker jeans will never come back. Please promise me that. On another level, however, we see brands like Bach Mai and Sea predicting a lot more of the flower variety. AND, inspired by HBO's "White Lotus", or at least referencing, A.L.C. made an entire collection for pre-fall 2023 of light airy sundresses, which we can also see throughout the collections of Bach Mai and Sea, both of which heavily focused on large, light, flowy dresses ranging from the typical summer dress that will never go out of style, to midi and shift dresses made from tool and silk. What I'm so excited to see is how these trends leak into more accessible fashion. As I've said countless times on the blog, fashion has become a major form of expression for significantly more people than it used to, and with that comes a lot more interpretation of how these trends can be styled. And the more designers catch up with the streetwear trends, comes new trends for streetwear. I think this can be a cool turning point, where everything kind of feels synced up again, no longer streetwear doing this and designer brands doing that, but unification of both, allowing for more branching from those who wish to continue standing out. 

I think that's all I have to say about that. So media. Un Million by The Marias has been on constant repeat for the past month, leading me to very much want to learn Spanish solely by listening to Spanish songs and translating them myself. I did finish White Lotus a while ago, which was very good, but y'all I just finally saw Pearl, and once again I am blown away by how stupid everyone is. I saw so many comments on the film saying it sucked, they wanted more, and it was so much worse than X. Yall lack critical thinking skills. The movie displays how circumstance twists the mind and makes people with good intentions do what they can to make those intentions come to fruition. It also frames X really well on how Pearl became the thing that she is, a product of war. No normalcy, no break from something she longs to get away from. Ti West is an incredible filmmaker and I don't want to ever hear anyone slandering his name or his work ever again. I'm still reading Gone Girl but definitely going to finish it momentarily because I have a few more books I'm in need of reading that I still have not gotten to yet. Anyway, that's it. I hope you all have amazing weeks, I'll talk to you soon.

Love you,

~Christian Reid