summer diaries #1: the summer that never was

maya rajesh16 Comments

To me, summer isn’t really the weather getting warmer or the days getting longer.

To me, summer isn’t beaches and mocktails, or brunch.

Well, it isn’t just that.

Summer is the lack of obligation for me. And I simply don’t have that this year. With finals leaking into March and the SAT, and another set of tests up until April, which—you’ll never guess!—is when school restarted, I am anything but unobligated.

And here we are: the penultimate summer before I leave for college. The very last year of high school. And then it’s all over. I’ll probably never see some of the characters in my life after this, for better or worse.

But is it wrong that I want it to end? Is it so terrible to want to move forward for once and yank myself out of this endless loop of tests and revision and the same rectangular hyperbola with eccentricity √2?

Well, they say we craft our own destiny, in one way or another. But some small part of me still holds on to the belief that it’s all already laid out for us. It’s an odd sort of juxtaposition: the fact that we have control over the rest of our lives, but at the same time, we end up exactly where we were meant to be.

I’m taking the reins again, in a way. Drawing fate into my hands. And, for this last year, I’m giving it everything I’ve got.

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bigger than the whole sky 🌥️

maya rajesh11 Comments

[31.1.25] Grief.

It’s intangible, all-encompassing and frankly, difficult to experience; regardless of how you process it.

My pet guinea pig, Coco, passed away yesterday. She was, of course, very, very old and we’d taken her to the vet a couple weeks ago. We knew it was time. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

from three years ago

We’ve got only one left now: Butterscotch. He’s nearly 8 years old; like a hundred-and-twenty in human years. He outlived his entire family; we often joke about his almost disconcerting longevity.

But yesterday, when she died, I didn’t cry. I felt hollow inside, but I couldn’t cry. And it bothered me to no end because my sister and mother could display that emotion and I couldn’t. I didn’t not care, obviously. What was wrong?

I’ve spent the last 24 hours processing and I’ve come to the conclusion, that I was and am grieving — just, differently. Not everyone grieves in the same way. Grieve. Such a horrible word, but it tells you more than any other word could.

It tells you that you cared.

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bali: a travel diary 🌴

maya rajesh14 Comments

Two weeks ago, I read an article about counterweights. The concept is simple: they’re something to balance out the messy, wild parts of life we cannot control. Something you can control.

But I also see it as a force of nature instead of something we create. For every disappointing, scary, sad thing that happens to you, there’s a little magic waiting on the other side of the hill.

The past six days in Bali was that magic for me. It had been uncharacteristically hard for me to take a break from my routine and life at home but I’d rather not be in the frankly self-deteriorating headspace I was in before the vacation.

I think that’s what taking a break does: it alters your headspace. And often, it’s for the better.

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half moonshine, full eclipse || summer diaries #2

maya rajesh38 Comments

I was in class the other day (yeah not so much summer BREAK, but it’s just summer) when my physics teacher started on this mountain analogy. My friends don’t like him because he’s prone to incessant yapping and once he begins… he does NOT stop. But this one sort of stayed with me.

He said that we’ve just climbed one mountain (finishing half of high school.) For us, it seems like we’ve reached the peak – it is, after all, the culmination of everything we’ve been working for these past two years. But why assume life is just one mountain?

We’ve got infinite mountains ahead of us, and sure, some may be taller, some may be little hills, but they’re obstacles all the same. They’re milestones, even.

And we did it, we finally climbed our first one. But if we’re solely focused on the next one, we’re just robots; we don’t spend any time cherishing what we have, or what we did. So yeah, it’s important to look forward but I think it’s just as important to stay rooted to the here and now. What’s life without a little celebration?

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travel diary: a summer in australia 🌸

maya rajesh32 Comments

And for a fortnight there, we were forever

These last two weeks, I had the privilege of touring the island country-continent of Australia (side note: only two continents left for me now—South America + Antarctica!) It feels longer somehow because it’s too huge a country to “finish” in two weeks. Or months. Or years, maybe.

I only hope I get the opportunity to see the rest of that beautiful place. We went to 4 main areas: Sydney, Melbourne, The Great Ocean Drive, and Port Douglas. Sydney was probably my favourite because of how metropolitan yet calm it seemed. It’s somewhere I’d like to live in the future.

Australia has everything you could want—great food, good views, ample wildlife—and I finally get to document whatever little I saw. This trip included experiences I’d never had before and for that, I’m so grateful. We actually went during Australia’s fall so the title isn’t entirely accurate! Anyway, without further ado: Australia, through my eyes.

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