A True Introduction

I know I’ve been very bad at posting here, and this year especially. My life has been full of mostly bad, some good things, and as I neared the end of my senior year of high school, I completely lost momentum for a lot of my habits and had general burnout from writing, reading, and generally comprehending things that required brainpower. So I got lazy, and forgetful, and Siouxsie slipped through my fingers. I owe y’all an apology for that. I missed writing about all of this. 

Anyways, I wanted to catch up with y’all, before I leave for college in a less than a month. Although I can’t be entirely candid about all of the things I’ve been going through, I can share some of the things I’ve learned, and some of the things I’ve picked up along the way. 

Firstly, and perhaps most depressingly (to get it out of the way): there is never a good time for bad news. You never really get to pace out all the shitty occurences, they just all happen at once, often on the same day or week or month, or if you’re lucky like me, year. Without going into too much detail, my entire home life was upended in a matter of months, and as I’m hit with wave after seemingly neverending wave of bullshit, I am constantly reminded that you don’t get to decide what a good time to be unhappy is. Or, more simply put, the fucked-up parts of life happen when you don’t want them too. All at once. It gets overwhelming, frustrating, and often I’ve felt myself giving up, in the sense that I have to stop making decisions and just cry for a while. 

But the flip side of that, which is another lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way, is that when you feel at your very lowest, you learn the simple value of simple pleasures. When I felt at my absolute lowest, I found myself discovering and rediscovering new and old music and movies that reignited my creative subconscious. I also made an effort to try new things, do things that made me happy, however small or large they are. I was offered the chance to an LA Sparks basketball game with some of my friends, and immediately bought tickets, as they were very cheap and I had absolutely no experience with the WNBA but was excited to see something new. On my way to the game I got some absolutely fucking awful news, and on the freeway from Hollywood to Downtown, I cried from Santa Monica Boulevard all the way to Olympic Boulevard. The funny thing is, I couldn’t have had more fun at the game. The extreme contrast from weeping in my car while boygenius played in the background, to screaming in excitement in the stands, to decompressing in the ride back home after- it made for a deeply intense evening. I realized that the happiness I’d felt at the game was in fact very simple: I was with friends, I was surrounded by joy, and I’d let myself feel joy while simultaneously acknowledging my deep grief and pain I was also experiencing. Things as small as a cookie from The Trails cafe or a stupid, highly enjoyable book have been great aids to me. Just let yourself enjoy the little things and feel fucking happy sometimes, even if your life feels unmanageable.

I mentioned discovering and rediscovering media earlier, and that’s been another thing I’ve been immersing myself in, and learned a great many lessons from. Like a lot of people, I got absolutely terrible at reading: simply not doing a lot of it. But then, as my life began to get harder and harder to contemplate, I realized the importance of escapism, and decided to just start bringing a book with me on my solo outings. It started with Lolita, which is a kind of horrifying start to this literary journey, but still a good one. That was just the surface. I read The White Album, Song of Achilles, and Crying in H-Mart, all deeply intense books that I didn’t realize would be so impactful on me. Instead of escapism, those books forced me to feel emotions I was already struggling with, just in a different context. A sort of baptism by fire for my own grief, depression, anger, and heartbreak. However, I did read escapism (Daisy Jones and The Six was more enjoyable than I care to admit), and in that I started ruminating on books I’ve already read. As I prepare to move out for college (also moving out of my house, which is a whole other emotional rollercoaster), I’ve been combing through my large collection of books to see what I want to keep and what’s going to be given away. Books I’ve had on my shelf untouched for years, sun-bleached and dog-eared, reminded me of how I’ve actually grown, a physical representation of what level of intelligence I’ve reached (and how far I have to go). A copy of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, yellowy and wrecked to shit (literally split in two and rebound with packing tape), caused me to tear up. Young Adult books filled with fantasy, toxic romance, and read obsessively by  middle-school me were immediately tucked away in the “to keep pile”, even though I probably won’t read them unless I’m feeling deeply nostalgic. Books I’ve read at least 8 or more times, that I can confidently say have changed my life. This all just reminded me of the power of something we cannot really grasp, non-tangible feelings and experiences that remain in between pages. A book has no real transcendent power until someone has taken the time to read and digest it, requiring a deeper knowledge of the words someone else has taken the excruciating time to write, and then dozens of other hands are on the manuscript before it even gets printed for the mass audience. I find that fascinating, as someone who genuinely has no drive to write a novel like the ones on my shelves. At any rate, the power of the written word.

Another thing that I’ve buried throughout these past few paragraphs: nostalgia is so fucking powerful, and so amazing. Nothing really feels as deeply human to me. It reminds me of the concept of umami: not quite salty or sweet, something humans had to come up with a new word for because it has no direct category. Nostalgia is different for every single person, except that it is universally recognized when displayed. Not entirely sad, not entirely joyful- we all recognize when it’s being shown to us. Watching old movies I haven’t seen in a while, I felt myself nurturing my own internal childhood, feeding my nostalgia. The movie that time and time again recalls this complex experience is Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am not at all alone in this experience- if anything, I’m co-opting the nostalgia of the people who were actually children who saw this movie when it came out, unlike the little Claire who saw this movie on DVD nearly 30 years after the movie came out on the big screen. But the power of this movie holds up: when I mention it, I think of swimming in the pool in my childhood home, hot summers with my best friends, being barefoot, eating dinner with hair still wet from the pool earlier. I remember being little, physically a child, which, as a 5 '8 woman now feels very disconcerting. Allowing myself to remember my childhood with joy and positive nostalgia, during a time when I feel surrounded by the trauma of both newly minted adulthood (I turned 18 in April) and past childhood experiences, has been freeing, as I am at once a little girl and myself in the present, finding the contentment of both periods of my life, without feeling entrenched in the misery of adulthood and the now-realized growing pains of a little girl.

The final lesson I’ll learn, and possibly the most evident in my writing as a whole: humanity is powerful. Not humanity as in “we as human beings,” which is also true, but humanity as in the non-tangible experience of being a human, and humanity experiencing itself. I am not religious; in fact organized religion goes against a lot of who I am, but spiritually the power of humanity, the feeling and experience, makes me feel as though an omnipresence of something is around us. It’s never in the bad moments, when I feel isolated, and the idea of someone telling me that I’m never truly alone because “Jesus is always with you!” would drive me to homicide. I’ve been going to the beach a lot, as the LA beach is genuinely one of my favorite places to be on earth, and whether I’m in the waves or on the burning sand, with friends or alone, I feel a connectedness that is more powerful than any church could be for me. To me, this is an incredible display of the power of humanity. The people swimming a few feet away from me, whether I know them or not, are experiencing the same incredible form of nature I am, a wordless expression of the intersection between land and sea, in LA’s desert but the Pacific’s cold waves. As joyful as that is, I’m also reminded that humanity is also deeply powerful when we are at our lowest. In times when I have never been more fucking lost, questioning everything my life has come to, unsure of what will even happen the next day, the people I love have shown me, truly, just how much love they have to give back. I have and will always believe that to be a good friend, partner, and family member, you give as much love as you possibly can, without demanding the other person to constantly be grateful: when I see someone I love happy because I’ve done something for them, that’s instant gratitude for me. Wordless appreciation for each other. Simply seeing my best friend smile because I hug her extra tight, or find a little gift for her: that’s true happiness for me. But to see my family, some chosen, some blood-related, come to my aid when I felt completely alone, has both broken and restored me. It restored my lifelines, my ties to the beauty of humanity, as they offered their homes, their love, food, clothes, time, and more, and broke me in how selflessly they were able to give, just as I always try to do for them.

People are not see-saws or exchange counters. You don’t give increments of love and get a finite, exact amount in return. You give as much as you can, and they should give you as much as they can back, while you both take care of yourselves and respect each others’ boundaries. That’s the hope, at least. I have learned that this is the case for more people than I thought, restoring my faith in a lot of humanity, but I have also been deeply reminded that sometimes people forget that mentality. People lie. They try to sneak behind your back. They hurt you, purposely and accidentally. People are desperate for acceptance and then forget that the way to get it isn’t through desperation. Self-preservation and self-acceptance (and hopefully, with time, self-love) are the first steps to being able to find joy in life. No, you’re not an island, and you shouldn’t cut yourself out of the bigger picture, but you are the only person you’re going to be with for your entire life. At least come to terms with the person you are, and figure out what kind of person you want to be. 

Many of you probably know me, some of you knew who I was long before I’ve chosen to stop being anonymous. You know a lot about me already, but I’ve also changed a lot since I first started writing as Siouxsie. My name is Claire Bondoc Sand. Lana’s my best friend, and many of you have probably met me, in passing or actually know me intimately (I did a mediocre job of keeping my identity secret). I’m going to school for filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence in a few weeks, and I’m a little nervous, but mostly excited. I love movies: Moonlight, Kill Bill, The Grandbudapest Hotel, Beetlejuice, and most recently, Barbie. I love reading, a lot more than I used to a few months ago, and I just finished “Just Kids” by Patti Smith (can’t recommend enough). I love music, and I listen to everything: Lady Gaga, Nine Inch Nails, Omar Apollo, Kali Uchis, Britney Spears, FINNEAS, the list goes on. I have a star tattooed on my shoulder, which Lana drew for me. I like vanilla milkshakes with chocolate sauce, no whipped cream. I wear dark red nail polish. At this point, if you’ve read any of my entries, you know a lot of who I am, and what I believe in. Maybe I can keep writing here, but I don’t know. College is a catch-all for my general uncertainty for the future, so I’ll reference it here. 

I’m very grateful for this blog, and for Lana for letting me ramble on here for so long. Above all I am extremely grateful and humbled that even just one person has read my writing, and thank you to you, if you’ve made it this far. A few months ago, I decided to read the Wikipedia page of notable last words, which was extremely long but also very interesting. I’ve never read any of William James’ writing, and hadn’t even heard of him before, but he had something very beautiful to say before he died, which I’ll leave here. "These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact." 

Love and kisses,

Siouxsie

P.S. I couldn’t resist this one as well: Voltaire, after being asked by a priest to renounce Satan before dying: “Now is not the time for making new enemies.”

P.P.S. You can always email me at desperatelyseekingsomeadvice@gmail.com. I still check my email, don’t worry. Also, my insta handle is @clairebsand, feel free to say hi.