running up that hill
I got myself a pink Christmas tree this year. Something about how nothing feels real in 2020 made this feel right—let’s make ridiculous choices, see if we feel anything.
Once it got cold, I went into more of a serious quarantine than I’d had all summer. No outdoor poolside visits, no kayaking adventures, no more laying in the grass reading by the garden while the dogs play. My weekly modeling gig ended for the year as the painter left for his annual snowbird trip to the islands, and all that remained of regular human contact was my students and their cameras turned off four days a week.
The semester is snapping the last bones of my sanity, sucking the marrow out of my ability to think clearly about anything but work. It’s the first semester I’ve taught four full classes, and I learned a lot of things about myself as a teacher and about how to do this thing over Zoom, while everyone is falling apart in private. My students tell me I’m the professor who is most generous with mental health issues, extending deadlines around crises, not judging them. Why are we teaching if not to learn to be more humane? I’m angry about this. I called Carmen yesterday shaking with rage. None of this had to be like this. My medical friends are getting the vaccine and my students are missing finals because they’re the caregiver for someone with Covid. I’m making it work. This all is so impossible and unnecessary, at once.
In a moment of introspection, I reached out to an ex to thank her for her kindness when I was falling apart depressed in 2018, for teaching me things that have come to fruition this year and allowed me to come out and not be afraid. She was, to my surprise, happy to hear from me. I quarantined more strictly, and got kissed for the first time since the spring. It was exactly as overwhelming as you might imagine. How can we live with this little touch? I know the parents are touched out, ready to scream. But those of us living alone are having panic attacks or getting hard when someone brushes our skin. I had my students who were ahead of the other sections read this essay about that sensation. I think, behind the turned-off cameras, several of us cried.
The insomnia continues as always and I’m revising a piece about it—have been revising a piece about it since 2018—that should run in the Rumpus later next year. As I read and reread and adjust and clarify the text, the more I see how sleeping well, for me, has to do with feeling secure not just in myself but in having a community, an emotional home. I’m not depressed this year, and I have been better at asking for what I need, what I want, not when I’m desperate and starving for it but much earlier, when I actually can manage my emotions if I get rejected and not spiral.
I told someone I was happy they had a new person to sext, and then we realized I had a crush on the new person too, and they told me to shoot my shot. So now I’m caught in a group chat of friends who are all getting closer with each other while we celebrate not being so lonely, celebrate being more free. I’m sleeping better. The sexting is great, but the knowledge that I’m connected to people even if I am more physically isolated than I’ve ever been in my life is carrying me forward, keeping me squarely rooted in joy, in play, in gratitude. I want to hug everyone, but instead I’m sending them notecards, a homemade salve, thirst traps.
My kitten is destroying everything and I need to deep clean the house when the semester is over. Two more days until grades are due. I’m cutting all my hair off today and plowing through papers, grading as generously as I can afford to. Let’s get rid of anything that doesn’t feel wholesome, kind, alive.
When Sunday comes and I’m done, I’ll kiss someone again and I’ll work on this quilt for my brother and his wife. I’ll continue revising things—the book is alive in my head again—and start counting the minutes as each day grows longer. There’s more light to come.
xo,
eve