Let go and let God — I’ll miss y’all

Romanticize your life, let multiple things be true and always vie for the vice

It took me an embarrassingly long time to pick out my outfit this morning, and now I’m sitting outside a coffee shop wearing Doc Martens. I was feeling painfully performative — it’s my favorite. I’m so incredibly in love with feeling alive that romanticizing every second becomes something of a mental obligation, an itch I can’t not scratch. I think of it as craving consciousness — texting the wrong boy, booking tattoo appointments and everything in between. It isn’t always impulsive — or even imaginative — but always, always romantic. Every single detail can be designed deliciously and delightfully. When you take careful consideration of the ordinary, a moment becomes an opportunity to remember we are alive. Something simple becomes effortlessly extraordinary.

This might be why I love to write — because how you describe and define something changes the subject all together. To write is to make note of the invisible intricacies: turn of phrase, a poignant punctuation, a pleasing paragraph or a senseless story screaming to be scribed. To write is to make or take life and share it. It is to make love and war out of words. It is encapsulating what is and capturing what could be. Ironically, I lack the prose to explain more. Yet, I can tell you the best thing about writing, for me, is playing the game of making something beautiful — especially if it seems like just describing the art of living, and better even, if it first appears to be ordinary.

Then again, I may love to write because I’m a masochist — because I am so hopelessly obsessed with the story the very thing that drives me mad has become the thing I care most about. If every character needs an obstacle, I sometimes wonder if writing is the one I chose for myself, to fulfill the necessary plot points. Because loving writing is as horribly painful as it is undeniably enriching, it can be a passion — a love and a hate, a love to hate and a hate to love.

It’s such a small intimacy that I don’t quite understand how to make others see how large it looms. This also makes it so easy to fail, because greatness is the only honorable metric of success. For the artist whose art is not unnecessary, but rather fundamental to daily life, it is much easier to be common. I believe it is because playing with words is a fact of life. Even when you don’t mean to, you make them dance. You turn them into jokes and insults. You send them off as texts. We are all writers, and the admittance that doing it is deeper than a need is daunting; it is allowing yourself to fail at something almost inherent. How silly might it sound if I said “I love to breathe.”

“And yet.” These are two of the most love-filled words in the world, when strung together. So I say, and yet, I write. My time at The California Aggie and my time in college has forced me to love out loud — to love this way of sharing my world, as scared as I may feel that readers may not see what I have tried to show. Because, ultimately, the beauty and the pain exist simultaneously; where there is fear there is persistence, and where there is the ordinary there is the extraordinary.

There is space in life for multiple truths to coexist. I know this because Davis has been my greatest and most challenging lesson. Also, because of classes in history, politics and culture — discovering that lines between villains, victims and victors are permeable. Further, from finding and losing friends. Most importantly, from loving and hating writing — my absolute favorite high.

So, here, in my final piece, I share with you my truth: I am an addict. I’m addicted to the art of living. Part of this addiction requires me to describe it in this way, to sound as absolutely romantic as possible. In truth, its effects may only be glamorous insofar as being an overthinker is. Because sometimes all it is is chasing chaos to feel consciousness. Other times, though, it is making the ordinary matter. It is understanding that everything is multidimensional. It is appreciating all the pains as evidence of having lived.

The drug, though, is not writing. While everyone will write to survive, not everyone will do it to live. For me, everything I write is a love letter, but it isn’t ubiquitous. The universal drug I want to share with you actually goes by many names. It is romanticization, it is le joie de vivre and it is zest for life. It is the only drug worth addiction. I am but a dealer with crazy fantasies, playing pretend at the coffee shop asking you to use it responsibly but to please enjoy the vice.

Written by: Violet Zanzot— vmzanzot@ucdavis.edu

Violet Zanzot is a 2024-2026 Opinion Columnist.