Impossibly Heavy Things...
Just another mess of yesterdays and right nows.
I haven’t posted anything in a while. Since April to be exact.
So much has happened, and I’ve felt such a deep silence. Like being this alive is too much to contain in a single post. Like I’ve been all over the place with my loss and grief. Like I’ve been too lost and too found. Too sad and too happy. Like I’m so tired of writing sad girl shit, and the good things have been so good that I don't even know how to write about them anyway.
I haven’t been to work in 30 days.
By this, I mean I quit a job that was as strenuous as it was lovely, and I am still trying to figure out what it means to live a life in which working for somebody's else’s mission isn't the center of my existence.
In the first week I woke up tired everyday. Laid in bed a little too long, watching–sunlight streaming through my bedroom blinds. Filled my mind with shoulds.
Should be rising early to get to the gym.
Should be writing and reading.
Should be building out excel sheets and figuring out what is next.
Should be doing something–anything– with all that empty space.
I did not of course.
Did not rise early.
Did not build out spreadsheets.
Did not go running into the productive life someone told me I was supposed to want.
The analyst uses words like burnout and unsustainable, while staring into my narrowed eyes. Suggests that we both already know these things to be true, whether I have said them or not.
The analyst quotes Jung and reminds me that I am a writer.
I tell her I want to write but I am afraid. Afraid that all my sadness and grief will shoot holes through all the parts of me that are supposed to be fine but are not.
I tend to the basics. Fill my time with chosen family and friends. I practice breathing through and around all that is happening in my life.
Mostly, it is enough.
So here I am again, many months later with a series of intimate snapshots from any number of yesterdays.
Somewhere in Seattle a woman who sometimes feels like a girl sits on a green velvet couch unimpressed and slightly embarrassed with all that she has written before. Irregardless she returns to her computer and opens a google doc again. She wants to write but worries she has forgotten, and it is not the first time but lately there is so much silence. The impossibly heavy things sit atop her chest and she cannot breathe for long enough to find the words.
The heart racing kind of panic envelops her in the night after so many years or maybe just months of respite and she cannot seem to figure out what to do with herself. Her mind turns cartwheels that keep her up at night and she cannot calm it down. She practices breathing. She listens to rainforest sounds in the darkness and finds it still is not enough.
A woman who sometimes feels like a girl, discovers that the people she loves have been engaged in an elaborate game of pretend and she is the last to find out that none of it is real. The realization knocks the wind from her chest and leaves her gasping helpless and confused. She sobs in intervals—outside a friend's house in the car, in the parking lot of the grocery store, in her apartment, and at the beach.
She walks into the grocery store she knows by heart and finds that something has changed and she cannot find the oatmilk.
A woman who sometimes still feels like a girl has spent the morning sobbing. Resists the impulse to flake on plans. Goes on the date. Gushes about the 1927 film Metropolis. Talks about writing and the strangeness of loving Wes Anderson films, listens to an IT person who is also a writer. Together they drink spicy margaritas and eat pasta and she remembers what it feels like to be curious about desire with someone new. Alone at home, she cries from the guilt of enjoying a life when so much is falling apart.
And for a moment, I felt I was getting somewhere.
With the writing, I mean.
But then—those things. Those impossibly heavy things. Took me from the writing and back into the panicky places. And I did not know what to do.
Yesterday, someone told me there was a storm.
And it wasn’t outside.
And there was no before.
And after has yet to arrive.
I stood at the window and I did and didn’t see it for myself.
And I knew that I couldn’t be sure of anything at all.
Yesterday there was a storm somewhere, and it wasn’t outside.
But I still felt the thunder in my pulse.
And there were no places in my apartment to hide from the rain that fell from my two eyes.
I keep putting on my shoes to run and finding that my shoelaces are missing.
I keep dreaming about cars.
But I don’t know if the cars are crossing the ocean
or if the cars are just crossing the states.
And I know I need to make a decision
But the ground keeps shifting from the weight of losing but not quite losing.
Of knowing that something is not quite right.
Of unreliable narrators and fragmented stories.
Of all the impossibly heavy things
and the grief that isn’t yet has stolen my shoelaces so I cannot run.
The grief that has stolen my shoelaces holds them hostage.
Wears the face of the life that I have fought like hell—and in spite of—to build.
Stuns me immobile.
Asks:“ How could you walk away from yourself and into a storm?”
And I keep on crying, trying to explain
that up is down, and down is left
and there are all these things I need to do.
But my phone keeps ringing
and it's my sister
who doesn't quite sound like my sister anymore.
And it's my mother.
and it's my niece.
And I don’t know if I should buy a plane ticket for tomorrow.
And I want to believe there is something that I can do.
And I want everyone I love to be fine
But nothing is fine
And the thunder from the storm that wasn’t outside
is still in my pulse
making my whole body tremble
from the fear of losing but not quite losing.
Of witnessing someone I love
disappear
and reappear
and lie to my face
over and over again.
And the grief that holds my shoelaces hostage understands
but still will not give them back.
I walk into the disarming tenderness of friends and community over and over again.
It is so much more than I could have imagined.
I open grief portals on rooftops and living room couches.
I open grief portals over the phone and on walks around Greenlake.
I cry because I do not know what to do,
but I know it is too much to carry alone.
I talk to them about trauma
About violence
About all the nervous breakdowns in my bloodline that needed to happen but didn’t. or couldn’t.
or did—and resulted in ostracization or death.
I ask:
Where does all that energy go?
Could there be a broader narrative—
a lineage story—
one that makes sense of all of this?
I cry because I am afraid.
I cry because I know the people I love are afraid.
I wonder what it must be like for a mind to work so hard to protect itself
that it has to leave.
I tell them:
I want to be a person with tender hands.
I want the people I love to receive all the care
that others in our lineage never had access to.
From the depths of a psychedelic haze, I begin to construct a slam poem about waffles.
It sounds silly in retrospect,
but in that moment I am so sure.
I need to write a poem about waffles.
About not knowing what I want
or need
on any given day.
About the complexities of hunger and indecision.
About opening the refrigerator again and again
and again.
About too many options and not enough clarity
and whatever is hiding beneath the hunger.
About how weird my relationship to eating has been lately—
not eating anything that tastes good for days on end.
Until one morning.
One morning,
I wake up
and I just know
exactly what I need.
And it is easy.
I have the waffles delivered.
Because I can.
I tell my friend I ordered her a waffle, and she is delighted.
And I am so happy.
And satisfied.