Jen's Journal

Lana del Rey’s Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass is a work of art I turn to these days. Her gentle words feel as ethereal as her metaphors. The way she plays with alliteration and assonance resonates personally with me as an aspiring writer. My favorite chapter from this collection is her account of taking flying and sailing lessons.

She shares that the pilot tells her, “you don’t trust yourself.” And then she turns it into a metaphor, as she expresses pilots and sailors don’t do.

This reminded me of a time when I was scuba diving on the seaweed filled beach of Cancun. My goggles kept filling up with water and my vision was so blurry I had to keep my head above the water. I was also a slow swimmer, even with the giant yellow flippers covering my tiny feet.

One of the scuba swimmers came over and saw that I was struggling to catch up with the rest of the group. He took me by the shoulders, looked into my eyes, and said, “relax.”

He kept repeating it until it registered in my mind that I couldn’t relax with him holding me this way. But I took a few slow breaths and closed my eyes, feeling the lukewarm water around me as the waves splashed against my slightly tanned skin. It was difficult to find it in me to relax, not because of scuba diving, but because he saw something I constantly try to brush off.

My mother takes anxiety medication and I refuse to accept that I have the same mental illness she does. But sometimes hearing it in a different way from a stranger in a coast far away is all it takes to admit there is a problem. Just like Lana was meant to hear those words; I knew I could relate that one word into every aspect of my life.