Fine Line in the Doldrum

and the tasteful art of driving home

There were no cars parked on the street, making it look wide, wider than the whole world. I was driving alone. It felt like I was the last person awake even though my parents were waiting at home and the teenagers at the movie theater had locked the doors behind me. The last Sunday showing of Little Women had ended and I had gone to watch with a desire to be alone. The first ten minutes of the movie went by fine but by the 15-minute marker, I began to cry, sob even, to the point that driving home I had yet to stop crying. The cold air wafted in from outside and the heat pumped out of the vents but to no avail. Normally on a January night, I would put my window up but instead, I rolled the other three down. I felt an immense sense of privacy, perusing home, the last straggler in the final hours of the weekend. 

Jettisoning to the outskirts and residential streets I took the long way. Passing parks, slowly falling further and further down to sea level. The ambiance of the silence outside was palpable despite the fact I was playing Fine Line by Harry Styles. Crying to the beginning guitar strum and the continuing softness building towards a great crescendo this was the first and only time the song had ever appeared to me as something sad. I listened, descending a hill, and rounding a corner to a stop sign adjacent to one beach in a row of other private and public beaches. I couldn’t bear to keep driving homeward. I wanted to pull myself together. Not out of shame, but for the privacy you want when the intensity of your emotions are so large even one laugh or coo would diminish how you feel. And it wouldn’t hurt your feelings, but you’d miss the serenity that comes with allowing yourself the space to feel everything without any judgment or restraint. With no one before or behind me, I put my car in park and listened to the songs echoing affirmation of we’ll be alright. Turning eventually to look out on the darkest water and sky I had ever seen. You couldn’t tell heaven from earth.

I felt the gravity of what was being said. Felt as though the words themselves contained with it my life. Something deep within saying this is for you, these lines, they are true. Over and over again listening and understanding that contained in my feeling of being lost was also the understanding I was going to be okay. It was not an okay that meant this feeling I had would pass. I knew this already. No, this feeling moved past a singular day to encompass the enormity that was my life. It drew in every dream I had ever had, every wildly successful article, every book deal, every impossible thing that writers hardly ever get that I daydreamed in passing on the subway to school and said you will have it. There was something unreserved in my faith in this feeling.

The car was somewhat overpowered by this energy, by the loudness of the song as it continued to build and the faith I had sitting on my chest like a pressure to keep going. In a strange way, however, this trust in the future made it harder to feel better. I was so sure, felt so deeply that I took it as fact, that my sadness became more intense. It was merely a reminder that right now, as sure as you feel about your life, you are only right here. Here was beginning to feel unbearable because it felt as though I had been there for so long. I was trying to move onward, but I felt stuck in this place. There was so much time between where I thought I was going and where I was then that all I wanted to do was take that first step and for whatever reason, nothing in me moved. It felt like every day was passing by me overhead. 

You can survive a low in your life, but a pause seems much worse. There’s nothing to do, nothing to work with. There’s no momentum building anywhere. When you’re depressed there is a least a feeling of going down, a general direction you’re heading in. As you approach some sort of velocity you can ask yourself how to fix your trajectory. To be stuck was like sending light into a void. It wasn’t going anywhere, illuminating anything, never bouncing back to meet me somewhere new. For some people, a pause might be survivable by the fact they can support themselves, make money, or think back on the goals they’d already met. I had no time to waste. I had bills that needed to be paid, a part-time job that felt like it was sucking the life out of me. On top of that, I was nannying for two families and then also going to school. I was fine not being where I wanted to be, but to be stuck waiting to head that way felt dire. I was so tired. 

The song ended with nothing else behind it. All I could hear now was the waves rolling up on the sand like sheets on a bed. There was no crash, just the sound of overlap. Still staring out into the black I said aloud to the darkness, like the universe was listening just beyond it, I’m going to be okay. And I drove home. I don’t remember when I rejoined the current of life, but eventually, I did. I couldn’t do anything to end the stagnation besides hope the next day would feel better than the one before. Eventually, it was true. 

This is really just a story. There’s no punchline, no resolution besides the fact that life tends to work its way out. I’ve thought of this story all of October because at its start I became scared. I could feel my life stalling, lulling, until eventually walking through the world it seemed each step made me smaller. Then everything again stopped entirely and I went to a concert where I heard that same song live while being in a similar period of feeling lost. I had fun, but my emotions felt a bit hollow. I danced and laughed, but when I first got to my seat I burst into tears. I thought my stagnation was going to consume me.

I wanted to juxtapose these moments in a piece and say here is the past vs the present but you can’t really tell the story of something you’re still in. All of October I have felt that same faith that haunted me in my car. All of October I have been so stranded by it and sometimes even angry. Don’t I deserve to begin? Haven’t I done enough work?  I sometimes see it as the moment before a race when the blank hasn’t been shot in the air, but the announcer has said set. Sometimes it feels like you’re already running, already tired and out of breath, and there’s so much tension in the fact you haven’t even begun. Perhaps it is exactly this reason why I have to be here. Once you get where you’re going you can’t go back. I know it’s good to enjoy the way there while you can so when it does finally get moving again I’ll be sure to take a look around. If not to make sure we’re really going then to at least find a moment of gratitude for how these things work themselves out. These ligamental moments, holding together two parts of life are hard. I’m still mad and I think that’s okay too. 

The other day I spoke with my friend Avery who appeared to feel similarly to me. It’s interesting, in all my time being stuck in these parts, I didn’t really look to see who else wasn’t moving. Talking with her reminded me to take note of who was around. Now I see just how many of us feel the same. There’s no remedy to this stagnation besides waiting, besides going through the motions and hoping when you do begin to move you’ve at least built up enough momentum to get you somewhere far away. When I thought about this newsletter I knew it would be hard because I had no answers to give. I only knew how nice it was to know I wasn’t alone. I hoped in any case if someone felt the same they’d find the world wasn’t so far ahead of them so that when we do start going again we get to go together. 

I went home the second week of October for plenty of reasons but one of which was to heal. I found it helped, not healed entirely, but helped nonetheless. The morning I was meant to leave back to New York I went into my yard and walked around listening to the birds and leaves and the grass. It was nurturing. I felt like I was happy, felt that happiness filling me up. I decided to put on Fine Line, recalling that night driving home. The opening began and it didn’t sound sad the way it had so long ago. I understood how I had felt that night, that intense feeling I was going to be okay. I realized just how alright I really had become. I wished I could talk to myself in that car. To say it’s true, it’s real how you feel, you’re going to be fine, but I knew she knew this already. I closed my eyes and looked up towards the sunlight, the last warmth of the year soon to be pushed out, and smiled.

Madison Square Garden Love on Tour October 4th, 2021 9:20 PM

“…many places you would like to see are just off the map and many things you want to know are just out of sight or a little beyond your reach. But someday you'll reach them all, for what you learn today, for no reason at all, will help you discover all the wonderful secrets of tomorrow.” Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth

Conversations On Love by Natasha Lunn

The first ending was knowing it would end. I tried very hard to ignore this feeling

November 2nd, 2021 10:37 PM

Looking out on all the gnats it had a way of making you believe you were forever, but I’m sure the earth feels the same way.

October 14th, 2021 3:02 PM

October 11th, 2021 6:23 PM

I took a romantic poetry course and one of the common misconceptions we are told is that writers went out into the woods and wrote about nature. Instead, it was summed up to me, when looking at Coleridge and Wordsworth, the goal was really to learn how to see the world more clearly. These writers were greatly influenced by the concept of sympathy. Who can we and can’t we sympathize with and what does that look like? I think about this a lot when I’m home because I have a great desire in me to go into nature. I walk barefoot in the grass while it’s soft and lush and stand on five rocks protruding from my yard and listen to the sounds of my mom cooking dinner and the birds in the woods behind my house. On walks when we pass by a lavender bush my dad will run his hands along one stem, squeezing it slightly in his palm, so in his wake the smell of lavender surrounds us. I’ll walk to the end of the jetty and look at the clarity of the water when everyone has finished swimming in it. I sleep with the windows open on the chance late at night when all the TVs have automatically turned off I’ll hear the ocean from my room. You can see this in my writing when I’m home, my obsessions with noise and nature. I can’t say I have come up with anything as good as the romantics, but I begin to understand what nature does. That quality of life you find, when you give it one moment to be understood.

Your newsletter mood board waits for you here. I hope you find it gives a certain feeling of movement.

Lastly a short and sweet playlist with songs that I listened to while editing and songs that reminded me of how it felt to be in the car driving home. I hope you enjoy and feel the faith too.

For my paid newsletter coming in one weeks time we will be answering this question:

“What do you do when you are so busy trying to live the right way, where you are constantly looking so deeply inward that it begins to make it hard to grow outward. It’s like I so deeply analyze everything I do because I want to be living in the best way, but that analysis stops the living from happening. It takes away the joy.”

For 5$ feel free to join us.

If not we’ll see you somewhere groovy soon.

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save +share your favorite parts and tag @chloeinletters

My Instagram is @chloeinletters where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for. 

My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, Fine Line, and the doldrums (may they pass quickly).

Love always,

Chloé