I don't know how to write anymore
But I’m also not sure what else is left. So here I am.
I really did mean to write sooner. I meant to write when my top surgery was scheduled back in March last year, then again when it was cancelled the day before it was due to happen, then again when it was rescheduled in a hurry with a brand new surgeon. I meant to write when my wounds reopened, and when they reopened again, and when one of them started tunnelling 3cm deep into my chest. I meant to write when I started my new job, and when we moved, and when we adopted a cat.
Then, of course, I meant to write when we lost.
Writing does not come easily to me now. The urge toward it, sure; that’s still there, and it routinely takes my fingers on the old familiar walk to the place where I save my works-in-progress. Once I’m there, though, it’s like touching a scar that has lost all sensation. I can’t feel my way any further. I am using the language of wounding on purpose; I feel as though a thing that used to come to me like breathing has been excised from me, left to heal over with insufficient care. I am also using this language from experience. Over my long months of healing, as my body kept spitting out stitches it refused steadfastly to dissolve, every raw open crater in my flesh felt like possibility curtailed.
What else is loss? Our possibilities are different now. We might be able to stay, or not. We might be able to keep our jobs, or not. I might be able to wring out citizenship before the U.S. dies on life support, or not. It’s all acutely speculative, and it’s all terribly new and unformed. Back in November, I thought we’d spend 2025 consolidating – rebuilding our savings after the long slog of moving me here, rebuilding my body after an unexpected nine-month crash course in wound care. I am now at a loss for what comes next. It’s barely any consolation that so is the rest of the country, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
In the end, we stopped waiting for my post-surgical wounds to close. They simply weren’t doing it on their own. Instead, I had two “minor procedures” to remove the scar tissue – which had become wide and pitted and messy in a way that seemed to personally offend my surgeon – and stitch the skin together more neatly.
We tackled the problem one side at a time, in case my body reacted equally poorly to non-dissolvable thread. We fixed up the left side a month before inauguration day, and the right side just days after. I was awake throughout, chatting to my surgeon and my nurse, watching the gleaming hook of the needle pulling in and out of my peripheral vision. After the fact, each time, I was strangely euphoric as I waited for the pain to kick in. At least this was a loss I had chosen. What’s a little skin, in the grand scheme of things you can’t get back – relative to the last nine months of political stability you might ever see in your lifetime, eaten up by split scars and cratered flesh and gauze poked into spaces that shouldn’t exist?
I’ve been thinking about John M. Ford’s Against Entropy, which he dashed off in a forum comment and which, now more than ever, feels like a star to steer by:
The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.
What choice we have is precious, and I’m afraid that will only become more true with time. I am choosing not to lose my words. Even if this is the only way I can do it – even if I never sell another word of fiction. Whatever else is taken away from me, they don’t get this, not least because I’m trans and they’d probably prefer it if I quit.
So I’m back, I suppose. Apologies, or you’re welcome.
