Valentine's
I spent the whole afternoon pretending I wasn’t waiting for anything. Practice, rehearsal, emails, repeat. It’s funny how you can fill a day to the brim and still feel like something is missing in the cracks between tasks. Everyone keeps telling me I’m “doing great” and “on the right track,” and I nod, because I know they mean well. But when I get back to my room, the compliments feel like they’re meant for someone else, some version of me who isn’t always looking past the walls for something she can’t name.My notebook’s a mess again. Pages of half-finished lyrics, doodles in the margins, chords circled three times because they almost say what I mean, but not quite. Stella fell asleep on my sheet music, which feels symbolic, but I’m too tired to figure out how. I love what I do. I really, really do. When I’m onstage, it feels like I’m finally allowed to pour everything out and no one tells me it’s too much. But afterward, when the lights are down, and everyone goes home, there’s this quiet that rushes in. It’s not empty, exactly. More like… a pause that’s a little too long. Like a breath held for someone who never quite arrives.
I had the lake dream again. At this point, it feels almost routine, like my mind has a favorite stage it keeps dragging me back to. Sometimes waking up in my own bed feels less familiar than standing there on that shore. Everything is so still, it makes me restless, no crowd noise, no amp buzz, not even the tiny sounds rooms make when they’re settling. Just that huge stretch of water and the moon looking down like it’s been watching me grow up from very far away.I don’t understand why I keep returning to the same place, always at the edge, never any closer. I stand with my feet just shy of the waterline, like there’s an invisible line I’m not allowed to cross. There’s this strange mix of calm and tension in my chest, like I’m inside a breath nobody has finished letting out. It doesn’t feel like home, but it doesn’t feel like nowhere either. More like an unfinished song... a melody hanging, no resolution. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be comforted by it or unsettled. Maybe it’s both, and that’s what keeps pulling me back.
Tonight the silence by the lake felt heavier, like it had weight. Not frightening, just… insistent. The air around me felt tuned to something I couldn’t hear, and before I realized it, I was holding my breath again, as if staying perfectly still might finally make whatever I’m waiting for show up.I still don’t know what I’m waiting for there. I only know that I am waiting. The feeling is sharp and familiar, the same way it feels right before stepping onstage, listening for your cue and hoping you don’t miss it. Sometimes I get the sense the lake is the one listening—to me—soaking up every stray bit of longing I bring with me and tucking it away beneath the surface. I wish I could ask what it’s saving all of this for, and who it’s meant to reach when the silence finally breaks
She was there again tonight. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen her now always at a distance, always more suggestion than shape. Just a figure in the water’s reflection, like the idea of a person more than the person herself. Every time, it’s the same: the moment I notice her, everything else in my mind just… stops. The lake, the sky, even the cold, all of it blurs, and my attention goes straight to her, even though I still can’t make out her face. It feels strangely familiar, like recognizing a song from only two notes I’ve heard a thousand times before.I reach out for her every time, but the space between us never moves. I’m always on the shore, toes right at the edge, like the dream itself won’t let me take a single step into the water. My voice never comes out the way I mean it to either; it feels like the sound gets dimmed before it can cross the lake to where she is. I wake with her silhouette burned a little deeper into me each time, along with this ache in my chest that doesn’t match any memory I own. I can’t explain why she matters so much when I know so little about her. I don’t even know if “real” is the right word here. But the feeling that I’ve been waiting for her doesn’t feel new anymore... it feels old, worn-in, like a question I’ve been carrying for years without realizing it.