Surprised; and to me she sang
Season two's third issue takes you into a swarm of bittersweet memories of the times life didn't quite measure up to the promise and let you feel like you were on the outside looking in
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective.
I’ve been thinking about how there are some things that we all inherently believe to be our due to be the building blocks of a full life, things that all of us don’t question because of course all of that is coming our way - everyone’s life has that so how could it not? It is only when it doesn’t that the obviousness and the matter of fact way that we had assumed it was coming are more heartbreaking.
When you’re a child consuming pop culture, you see the friends people make in the movies, you read about the picnics and the adventures they go on in those books, you hear the songs people sing about their school days being the best days of their lives and you know that’s going to happen to you. Except sometimes it doesn’t. Its never quite that image that you saw but sometimes its even less.
Years ago there was a boy in my brother’s class who all the other boys avoided because he was different. I remember once hearing of an incident when he lamented innocently to a well-meaning family friend “I don’t know why they aren’t hanging out with me. This is just who and how I am and I don’t know how to be any different”.
I’d never spoken to the guy.
Don’t even know if I’d ever seen him.
I’d just heard his name dropped into anecdotes from time to time.
But every now and then I think about him saying those words and for a little while I can’t concentrate on anything else because that self awareness, that despair and that powerlessness shouldn’t be coming from a kid who just wants a childhood with games and friends and memories he can look back on with nostalgia someday.
I hope the school he went to after he left ours gave him the place to be that kid, to meet those people who’d accept him for who he was and to grow into the person he would have liked to be. I hope he was able to forget some of that emptiness but keep the parts that took him through that time.
I hope in other words, that he was able to find his way from “Surprised” to the joy and wonder and wholeness of “and to me she sang” from this week’s heart wrenching contribution by writer Geoffrey Aitken.
Surprised
it confused me
how
the innocence of a kid
could become unpopular
birthed in adolescent
illusiveness
to become
a complex adult lie
bent on destruction
in this wealthy suburb
and to me she sang
i did not need
to be
the under developed
adolescent
summer beach body
bullied
with sand in the face
embarrassment
as that powerlessness
was always
my inheritance
and so
unexpected,
when she sang
her dream song
to me
-Geoffrey Aitken, Australia
Abandoned on the interwebs
Abandoned on the interwebs is a new section on this newsletter where I recommend some riveting, spine tingling, evocative articles, books, essays that I’ve stumbled across when I’m left to my own devices on the internet.
Nevada and the multiverse of sadness: Reserve some time to read this by the pool or in your backyard or with a glass of port wine after you’re done with your work day. You’ll want to spend time with every sentence, you’ll want to keep coming back to it, you’ll want to write these words on pieces of paper and stick them in your journal - and you’ll do that all while remembering the person you used to be, how you became the person you are, and why all the times you walked along an extra curvature when there was a path straight ahead did not actually lose you the time you thought they did at first glance.
This one is not really an article but a trio of songs that, from the moment I listened to, I knew were connected. Its how I know I have a connection to some of my favourite songwriters of this age. They live in the same part of my heart as the stories above. seven by Taylor Swift and hope ur okay by Olivia Rodrigo and Matilda by Harry Styles. Just a couple years apart these songwriters gave us though i can’t recall your face I still got love for you and i hope you know how proud I am you were created with the courage to unlearn all of their hatred and you don’t have to be sorry for leaving and growing up in quick succession. How? I don’t know but I remain spellbound.
Before I leave you to dream
With the aim to continue growing this newsletter, I’ve set up a page where you can contribute monetarily: Ko-fi.com/theabandoneddreamscollective
This will support the newsletter grow through increasing reach, growing its pipeline of contributors, optimize submission management and eventually pay contributors.
I hope you consider contributing to this mission.
That’s all for this week
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective