Humans of Intimacy: Morgan Brown
Lessons learned in life, love, relationships, and everything in-between.
I sometimes worry about my future. So often I liken myself to a moth, rather than a butterfly—my life is less of a metamorphosis from cocoon to butterfly and is more of a hapless, fluttering mothy creature looking for the light, landing awhile, and continuing on in search of better light. I wonder if I’ll ever be satisfied with the light I find.
I have gone to the absolute depths of despair, so waterlogged with grief I wondered if I would ever surface. There were many days — many years — where I questioned if I would even make it. Not because I would take my life, but because depression would take my will to live. I may have a heartbeat, sure, but I feared that by this age I would be a shell of a human, haunted by the vibrant person I once was.
I’ve traveled the world, 26 countries. I’ve seen the northern lights in Iceland; while they danced before me, I felt the dangerous and treasonous thought that maybe, someday, I could be happy in a world where my mother was not.
It’s been years since my mom died and in the moments just before sleep, I can still remember what it was like to lay my head on her chest. I can still remember the smell of her hair and hear her uproarious laugh. I think about her daily. I don’t think there will ever be a day when I don’t.
I’ve stood across from the man that killed my mother multiple times and his lawyer who tried convincing the judge that my family fabricated the most damning evidence against his client; hate doesn’t begin to describe the feeling I have for them both. I’ve seen global poverty and have wondered silently to myself why the world doesn’t have more compassion and forgiveness for each other. The irony of those two sentences is not beyond me.
I watched my family fall apart. So many people assume that the last few years have been hard because my mom died. Yes, that’s partly it. But more than that, the most painful things of the last several years are the things I keep off social media and out of the public eye: that when my mom lost her physical body, I lost my dad, too. The heart of the former no longer beats and the heart of the latter does, but the parents I knew for the first twenty-two years of my life are gone.
With each passing birthday, I think less of my current age and more of how I’m getting closer to 44 — the age where I will have lived as many years with my mom as I have without.
What will I remember about her? Will I have kids? How do I begin to even tell them about their grandma? How do I tell them just how much she wanted to know them, meet them, play with them, spoil them, and love them, long before I even knew if I wanted them? Just the thought of it brings a lump the size of a golf ball to the back of my throat and my nose begins to run and tears flow easily. It’s a feeling of not wanting to die but not feeling strong enough to live to 44.
I’ve learned that success isn’t measured by the amount of money you make or the jobs you have but how you make people feel.
Social media doesn’t tell me if you visit your grandparents, if you call your mom, if you acknowledge people who appear to live without a proper home, or how you treat people who can do absolutely nothing for you. Some of the kindest people I know are the people whose names will never be listed in a history book, or in Forbes 30 under 30. My mom had an uncanny ability to make people, even strangers, feel as though they mattered and were worthy of love. I can only hope I’ve carried on an ounce of that.
I’ve learned you can profess a lot of thoughts and ideas on how one should live, but those thoughts are fruitless if you don’t actually live by them.
If I end up poor and with no savings I can say that, without a doubt, I did what made me happy.
I’ve tried to honor the light and struggles in other people, to see them for who they are and where they’re at. I have friends and family who mean everything to me and I’d like to think the feeling is mutual. I’ve tried to live my life with permission — when around me, you can be you (examples of this include, but are not limited to, getting my grandma to dance to Taylor Swift in my VW van and getting friends to stay up all night because what is sleep when you’re having the time of your life?). I try to pick people up at the airport whenever possible — even if it feels out of the way — because seeing a familiar face after a long flight is one of the best feelings in the world, and I know for a fact that being the one with no one to pick you up can be one of the loneliest.
I’ve learned that a smile can say more than words, that people just need someone to listen to them more than they need advice, and the only true way to drink coffee is black. I will never get tired of eggs and bacon and I hold strongly to the belief that breakfast is always the first meal of the day, even if it’s 2pm.
I’ve learned that kindness is fluid — I want to share it with others because others have shared it with me, even when I felt so undeserving of it. I’ve learned that opportunities to give and receive kindness are everywhere and those moments leave you feeling more connected to each other than any amount of social media ever could. If I were to pick words for my tombstone today maybe I would choose a simple “She Lived”. Or maybe “Five More Minutes”- the phrase I’ve become infamous for in my circle of family and friends when trying to wake me up.
These are all of the things I’ve learned in my years, and I’m painfully aware that, oftentimes, I fall short of my own teachings. But I try. And maybe that’s the secret to life? To try. Whether it’s simply getting out of bed, working on a relationship, or going after your dreams, I’d like to approach everyone with the assumption that they, too, are trying.
Above all else, if there is one thing I’ve learned it is this: no time is guaranteed. All we have is now.
Written by Morgan Brown.
Morgan Brown is a writer, storyteller, photographer, and artist asking people to step into vulnerable spaces around connection, death, and the human experience.
