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April 30, 2024

Holding My Wounds At Bay

I would have liked to have something better for you for the two-month installment of this newsletter, but it comes on the heels of one of the worst weeks I've experienced in recent memory, so it's honestly something of a miracle that there's anything here at all. I do want to say thank you, thank you, thank you endlessly and so much for being here, for reading this, for giving me some of your dollars to keep attempting to capture the spirit of uncapturable things in words. I cannot overstate how much it means to me. I hope I'm somehow someday able to give back to you even a fraction of what you've given to me by making this a thing I can do. Even if it's never a significant income, I'm always going to remember that people exist in the world who believe my writing is worth a little money. Maybe it's because you know and care about me and you want to support me, more than it is the actual quality of the writing, but allow me my delusions.

Anyway. Here's the post.

My cat was sick last week and I thought I was going to die. My cat was sick last week and I thought I was going to die because I thought he was going to die, which was in no way reasonable or logical because there was no evidence to support this. In fact, once he went to the vet on the third day of being lethargic and in pain and unable to poop, he started showing immediate signs of improvement and has continued to get better over the past few days, and yet, I lay awake for several nights absolutely sick and miserable and convinced that he would be gone when I woke up.

I am no stranger to the ever-evolving ways my brain can find to ruin my life, but what consistently unsettles me is how my body reacts to anxious thoughts. It's as if they create reality and whatever I'm afraid of has already happened. I get an adrenaline rush, but not a good one, and I become nauseated and my muscles seize up and, for a new surprise this time, I started getting chills. And the amount I've cried is truly staggering. It was scary and stressful, yes, as it always is to have a sick pet, but my response felt disproportionate even as I was helplessly in the midst of it.

It doesn't help that I've been dealing with some turmoil in personal relationships in a way that is very painful and makes me feel like I can't trust that anyone is who I believe them to be, or that I feel an increasing need to be untethered from social media but can't seem to let go of it because at least then I feel connected to something. At least then there's an outlet for my thoughts and feelings and I don't have to take them directly to the people I care about and hope I'm not burdening them. Even if it's not the most fulfilling approach to communication, it's a safer one. I'm reading How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price, and not all of it is applicable to me, but a whole lot of it is. I'm working on it. I'm steadily turning off more and more notifications as I find myself irritated by them, and I'm trying to step back from some of the ways I'm involved with people online that make me feel more bad than good, and I'm seeking out ways to engage with the world around me that make me feel safe and held and peaceful.

To this end, I'm working on compiling a list of things that are calming, comforting, that make me feel like I'm taking care of myself, or that reduce anxiety. Last week was a black hole of misery and I almost completely stopped doing anything good for myself, so maybe if I make this list and keep it somewhere easy to access, I can refer to it during times like those when my brain can't come up with things on its own. So far, it looks like this:

  • sunshine/fresh air/birdsong/water

  • poetry, specifically reading other people's

  • a really good book

  • breakfast

  • cuddling/petting my cats

  • laughter and things that facilitate it (talking to friends, listening to comedy podcasts)

  • going offline

  • caring for my body through movement, drinking water, taking showers, etc

  • buying nice things when money allows (perfume, books, jewelry, dresses, home decor)

  • creating something

  • discovering new music/expanding my playlists

  • watching Scream

Anxiety comes in waves for me and then subsides again, and sometimes it subsides for so long that I believe I'm done with it, no longer prone to days at sea. I don't take antianxiety medication or antidepressants anymore, and mostly that's fine, but there are moments when it would be so nice to have something to take the edge off. None of this is a substitute for good mental health care, but in conjunction with it, maybe I can keep myself functional.

Something I used to do when I was anxious was repeat lines of poetry to myself that I had memorized. A big one for me was Catechism for A Witch's Child by J.L. Stanley. I'm not sure I have the brain capacity to do this these days, but if I did, I think I would want to do it with They Would Have All That by Mary Jean Chan. This poem drifts into my brain unprompted on a regular basis. The tenderness, the quiet intimacy, the familiarity with another person's body and their mundane inner life. The yearning in a way where you know it will be satisfied soon when you're together again, the reciprocal love. It's everything I want and it's so beautiful. Please accept it here as a declaration of love and an offering of thanks.

They Would Have All That

By Mary Jean Chan

To sing the evening home, the lover prepares

a pot of lentil stew – her phone lighting up to

the news of love’s imminent arrival, imagining

her lover’s footsteps across the swollen field,

damp with longing, her lover’s steady hand

gripping her smartphone to navigate towards

some notion of home, their flat an unfamiliar

place of worship, their bodies growing close

and moving apart with the regularity of heart-

beat, blood-breath. There the lover is, running to

catch a bus she knows will take her somewhere

so she can feel once again the sensation of lack –

wondering at her lover’s motions throughout the flat,

how her feet must press insistently on the floor with

each step, how the orchid must have stretched itself

a few millimetres overnight, how the stew must be

whispering on the stove and the table set for dinner.

The lovers are gentler with each other now because

they have memorized each other’s fears like daily

prayer: how too much salt brings back the years of

loneliness, how a warm bath may be more necessary

than a rough kiss after a day’s absence of tenderness.

The lovers are gentler because they have grown too

knowledgeable to love any other way. When one asks

the other to fling her onto the bed, the lover might say:

Do you actually want me to? And the lover might reply:

No, I don’t. Such asking becomes routine, almost like

walking down the aisle of a supermarket at evening,

but it is what they do best as lovers. Beyond desire

and its petty dramas, the two women will have their

tapestry of days and nights, their hands tempered by

love, clasped bodies holding their wounds at bay.

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