to the feeling itself,
to the feeling itself,
I’ve always been someone who appreciates the way we get to experience feelings. The quiet miracle of being moved by the exact moments that we are living inside of.
There’s a truth you carry long before you know how to articulate it, and that is that each moment is given to you only once. You begin to understand it instinctively when you’re young, and more fully as you grow older. Every instance we get is singular. A small and unrepeatable pocket of time in our already short lives. Seeing life this way has always made me romanticize the way I move through it.
The long hug you’ve been waiting all week for. Laughing at the same old joke before the punchline lands, because you already know what’s coming and love it anyway. Crying alone in the car after a long day and purposely taking the long way home to let your sad-song playlist play just a little longer. Singing your favorite happy songs with the people you love on the rooftop while the fireworks go off on the Fourth of July.
These are moments we might experience a hundred times, yet each one carries something different. Each one fills the cup in its own quiet way, if you’re paying attention.
I think I’ve always had a habit of missing the moment before it’s even gone. Of feeling it slip through my fingers while I’m still standing inside it. I don’t know if everyone carries that, or if it’s the nostalgia that’s always lived somewhere inside of me, but it’s a feeling I wouldn’t trade.
I can look back on every era of my life with tenderness; each one colored differently and each one leaving something behind. There are memories from every version of me, from every person who’s ever touched my life in some way, that have stayed and still linger. Moments I don’t just remember, but still feel.
Sometimes they come back to me unexpectedly and I find myself wondering if they’ll stay forever. And if I’m being honest, I hope they all do.
I hope they all do, because those moments stay with you for a reason. Each one carries a brief window where it feels most alive. A softness to it. A warmth. A way the light hits just right before it changes. That fleeting stretch where everything feels fuller than it did a second before, and you don’t yet know what it will become. You only know that in that moment, everything feels right.
Those are the ones I want to hold onto. The ones that glow, even after they’ve passed.
The golden hours.
