Entries tagged with personal

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: the beautiful south - perfect 10

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made home, even if just for a little while

there’s a strange, tender kind of belonging that doesn’t always come wrapped in permanence. sometimes home isn’t a place with walls or a roof — it’s a person, or a few people, with whom you let your guard down, where your edges soften, and you catch your breath.

i think of those fleeting moments, the small pockets of time where you’re not just tolerated but fully seen. the friend whose couch became your refuge on a stormy night; the stranger who became a companion on a trip you never expected to take; the lover whose hands made the world feel less sharp, even if only for a handful of days.

home, in these moments, is less about geography and more about spirit. it’s the quiet understanding shared over a cup of tea, the laughter that feels like a secret language, the comfortable silences that don’t demand explanation.

i carry these homes inside me — folded gently like worn letters in a box — knowing they shaped me even if they didn’t last. some homes you make are brief, like a song you play once but never forget. others linger longer, imprinting on your skin and memory.

and sometimes, the most profound home is the one you find inside yourself after all the others have slipped away. but the echoes of those who made space for you, who let you be, whisper still, reminding you that belonging is possible, even if temporary.

who have you made home with, even for a little while?

Current Mood: exhausted

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themes & threads: the echo and the thread

i keep circling the same images, the same questions. not out of stagnation, but instinct — like a bird returning to where the ground was soft enough to dig. it’s not always memory, though it often is. sometimes it’s an image, a phrase, a sound. a sensation like velvet worn thin.

i think about the people who leave and the ones who stay too long. about the tension between silence and honesty. about the weight of a room that knows too much.
about hands that almost touch.
about the line between kindness and performance.
about what it costs to be perceived clearly, and what it means to be misremembered gently.

i notice how often i write about doors, letters, unplayed voicemails. i think that’s one of my threads — longing stored in transit.
another is the ache of caretaking, especially when it’s unspoken.
i write a lot about girls who disappear and are never searched for properly. about boys who get quieter as they grow. about ghosts who aren’t angry, just tired.

the things that come back again and again —
grief that pretends to be nostalgia.
love that apologises before it’s even asked.
the soft brutality of trying to remain open.
these are the motifs i don’t set out to write, but they surface anyway. like seams in the fabric. like breath fogging up the glass.

maybe you’ve got your own. maybe you’ve got a thread you keep tugging without realising, until the whole thing unravels and you’re left holding the truth of it in your lap. maybe that’s not a problem. maybe that’s the work.

because maybe it’s not about writing something new. maybe it’s about returning with more clarity, more softness, more willingness to look. maybe we just keep circling the well, a little deeper each time. and we learn to love what’s at the bottom. even if we never bring it all the way up.

Current Music: the beautiful south - don't marry her

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what would you leave behind if you could forget it completely?

not a person. not really.
i’ve tried before and it never sticks — faces and stories knot into the spine. there are songs i can’t play anymore because they still smell like someone’s cigarettes and aftershave and the lies they told. but i wouldn’t erase them, not even the worst of it. some things hurt in ways that sharpen you.

but if i could forget something completely, like shaking water from my sleeves, like it was never mine to carry —
i’d leave behind the feeling that i had to earn love by being useful.

you know the one.
the low thrum in your chest that says: be good. be helpful. be quiet. make the tea, learn their moods, edit their sentences, always understand.
and if you get it right, they’ll stay.
and if they leave, it’s because you failed.

i’d leave behind that lesson.
the one they never meant to teach, or maybe they did.
either way, it settled deep.
and i’ve been trying to unlearn it ever since, gently, the way you’d untangle fishing line from seaweed — patient, wet work.

if i could forget it completely, i think i’d be softer.
less afraid of needing things.
i’d speak quicker. i’d ask for the window seat. i’d tell someone not to touch me when i didn’t want to be touched, and i’d believe that was enough of a reason.

i don’t want to forget the versions of me that survived it.
but i’d leave behind the voice that told them that survival meant staying small.

and you?
what would you lay down, if forgetting it meant being free?

Current Mood: morose
Current Music: billie eilish - everything i wanted

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the shape of what was coming

sometimes i think about those stories — the ones with a prophecy, or a fate scrawled into the stars, or a letter that arrives from the future and tells you who you’ll become. who you’ll love. what you’ll lose. the shape of the end.

sometimes i wonder what kind of person i'd be if i’d known mine.

not the big, dramatic fate. not the operatic stuff. just the quiet truths that feel enormous in hindsight:
that the first kiss wouldn't be the most important one.
that some people leave without slamming the door.
that i’d never feel more alive than when playing someone else’s sad songs on vinyl, late at night, to a room of strangers who didn’t need me to smile.
that grief makes a home in you, and some days it sings along.

would i have run faster toward certain moments? would i have lingered longer in others? or would knowing have dulled the ache of becoming — made it a checklist instead of a life?

i don’t know. i think i used to wish for a map. but these days i find myself softening toward the idea of not-knowing. letting the small choices gather into a story. not because fate is beautiful — but because it isn’t. because it’s messy and human and written in crooked lines, and you only ever realise what it meant much, much later. when you're standing in a kitchen, or staring at an old photo, or playing the b-side you used to skip.

and maybe that’s the magic of it. not knowing. choosing anyway. loving anyway. hoping anyway.

we become the kind of people who could hold what’s coming.
and we do.

Current Mood: touched
Current Location: phoebe bridgers - motion sickness

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small things that turned out to be not-small at all

not everything life-changing arrives with fanfare. sometimes it’s a sentence overheard on a rainy walk. a book picked up because the cover reminded you of something you couldn’t name. a stranger’s kindness that landed in the right place, at the right (or wrong) time.

i think about a thursday when i was 23, sitting in the back of a nearly-empty cafe that sold tea-stained paperbacks by the kilo. i wasn’t looking for anything, just somewhere to be. i picked up oranges are not the only fruit three times before i bought it. i didn’t know it would break something open. i didn’t know it would say the thing i couldn’t yet say about myself.

or the night someone casually called me they, like it wasn’t a question. we were leaving a venue, soaked in rain and bass. “they said they liked the opening act better.” i remember it exactly. it wasn’t dramatic, just… right. a small shift. a loosening. i didn’t correct them. i let it stay.

there was also the time i made a playlist for someone i told myself i wasn’t in love with. carefully disordered tracks, like it would hurt less that way. i never said what it was. they never asked. but they kept it. still have it, apparently. that counts for something, doesn’t it?

it’s easy to overlook these things. they don’t ask much of you. they don’t wave their arms. they’re quiet, like tides or grief. but they’re real. and once they happen, something is different. even if you don’t notice right away.

i think the older i get, the more i trust the small turns. the almosts. the things i nearly didn’t say.

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the first time I wanted to impress someone

I must’ve been about nine. That loose, liminal age where your sense of self is still made of borrowed scraps — the way your mum parts her hair, the songs your older cousin plays in the car, the smell of someone else's house that you think might be better than yours. I was wearing a jumper too big for me and shoes that squeaked on the assembly hall floor. It was a Thursday, which meant recorder practice, custard, and the boy with the chipped front tooth.

He was cool in the effortless way of kids who don’t try. I, meanwhile, tried so hard I nearly tipped over with it. I remember clutching The Secret Garden, trying to look like I understood the sadness of it all. I remember drawing a crow in blue biro on my pencil case. I remember laughing — too loud — when he said something vaguely funny, because I wanted to be seen. Not liked, necessarily. Just noticed. Just enough to change the temperature of the room when I walked in.

That was the first time I remember wanting to impress someone. Not because I wanted them to love me. I didn’t even know what that meant yet. But because I wanted to be something. Interesting. Strange, but in a curated way. Worth the space I took up.

Of course, he barely looked my way. Of course, I pretended I didn’t care. But that flicker — of trying to be shinier, cleverer, a little more like someone he'd remember — has never really left me. It’s just evolved: into mixes burned at midnight, book recommendations too carefully chosen, eyeliner sharp enough to wound.

Funny how a moment that small can echo for years.

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Music: Phil Collins - Against All Odds

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The First Song I Ever Lied About Liking

Just take a look at me now...

It was a Sunday. I must have been thirteen — maybe twelve, with one foot still in childhood but already trying to fold myself into something cooler, sharper, less easily wounded. We were crammed into someone’s older brother’s car, the kind that smelled like knock-off Lynx and stale smoke, and Phil Collins came on the stereo — Against All Odds.

Someone groaned, exaggerated and loud.
“God, who listens to this?”
I did.
I loved that song.

But I laughed along. Said something like, “Ugh, yeah, so cheesy,” and pushed the part of me that sang along at home — curtains drawn, headphones on — deep down. I remember that specific kind of shame. Not because I didn’t like the song, but because I did, and I couldn’t admit it. Not in that car. Not with those people.

Years later, at 23 and mildly drunk on someone’s kitchen floor, that song came on again — tinny and imperfect through a Bluetooth speaker. I started humming before I even knew I was doing it. Across from me, someone smiled and said, “God, this song wrecks me.”

And just like that, I was allowed to love it again.

It’s strange, the things we carry. That moment didn’t break me. No one remembers it but me. But it was the first time I chose to be palatable over being honest. The first time music — which had always felt like safety — became a thing I could get wrong.

Now, whenever I hear Against All Odds, I don’t skip it.
I let it play.

Even if it still hurts a little.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: The Beautiful South - A Little Time

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A Love Letter to The Beautiful South & Phil Collins

They say you never forget your first heartbreak — mine came with a horn section and a deceptively cheerful chorus.

The Beautiful South taught me early that melancholy wears many disguises: a chipper piano line, a baritone muttering something brutal, a chorus you’ll hum in the supermarket and cry about in the car. No band was ever so polite about devastation. “Don’t Marry Her” is a hymn for bitter hope, “Prettiest Eyes” a love song that remembers time isn’t kind, and “Rotterdam” — well, that one just knows.

And then there’s Phil Collins.

Phil, patron saint of the emotionally inconvenient. His voice lives somewhere between a sigh and a plea, and I believed every word even before I understood what they meant. “Against All Odds” is a thunderstorm in slow motion. “Take Me Home” feels like walking alone in a city lit by sodium streetlamps. And “In the Air Tonight”? That’s a song you survive.

These are the artists who made it okay to feel too much, too often. Who said, yes, it’s absurd to be so wounded by ordinary life — but here’s a melody for that. Here’s a drum break that will make your chest cave in. Here’s a line you’ll repeat until it stops hurting, or until it does again.

So this is my love letter: to the unpretentious poetry of pop, to the way sadness sneaks into our softest places via FM radio, to songs that sound like walking home in the rain with your hands in your pockets. To The Beautiful South. To Phil Collins. To every moment that needed their voices.

You helped me name it. You helped me carry it. You helped me dance anyway.

Current Mood: hopeful

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july, softly

not a checklist.

not a challenge.
just a way to look at the month with both feet on the floor and a hand on the heart.

things to tend to

the stack of library books by the bed - return, renew, or finally read
the windowsill basil that wants more sun (don’t we all?)
inbox zero, but emotionally: reply to that one message you keep thinking about
a small corner of the house that could feel more like you with a little care
the habit of drinking water before coffee

thoughts to return to

you don’t have to earn rest
not every silence is a problem to solve
things take the time they take
joy counts, even if no one sees it
nothing blooms all year

music to play on purpose

playlist: songs to make peace with your ghost to
a mix of ache, stillness, and strange comfort:

add your own. haunt gently.

soft hopes

to write more, even if no one reads it
to feel the day instead of racing through it
to keep showing up as someone you like
to be surprised by tenderness
to remember: there is no behind, only beginning again

add your own. haunt gently.

“It doesn’t have to be productive to be worthwhile.”

or, as the breeze through the open window might say:
you’re allowed to just be here.

Current Mood: thoughtful

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welcome to the soft static

this is a journal. not a newsletter. not a brand. not an attempt at anything neat.

i’m rowan (they/them). 42. queer. librarian by day, vinyl night DJ when the moon’s just right.

here you'll find: long entries, soft grief, stray observations, half-formed theories about songs that break your heart in the right way, and maybe what i made for dinner. sometimes silence, too. that's allowed.

i write like it’s 2004 because it still matters to me.
no hashtags, no algorithms. just typingnoise.

stay as long as you like.