For Lindsey. For Us.

In the words of great raconteur, Justin Bieber, “We’re at a party we don’t wanna be at.”

You’re welcome. I just quoted Justin Fucking Bieber at your memorial. I can see you laughing, but somehow I still feel bad.

We’re all here for you. We want to be here for you, but we wanted to do it with you. Not after you. You’re a continual force, there is no after you. you perpetual wondrous bitch. 

I think that was worse than Bieber. 

I knew I had to say something, so I’m going to fumble through this. I couldn’t be there in person because I jumped on an opportunity to stay in the house of the person reading these words (Hi, Deanna, thank you for this), and it’s in another country. You’d like it here. We have more rights, and there are TNR programs in England. Plus, your fashionable ass would fit right in. Goddamnit, I am swearing a lot. If I were there, I’d also be sweating. Profusely. Visibly. So. There’s a plus.

You told me I had to tell people about the real you. The filthy, quick witted, dark humored woman. You said, “everyone else will be all ‘blehh blehhhhh, Lindsey saved animals and inspired others, blehhhh,’ and I will need you to be like THIS is Lindsey.” (that is an actual quote, right down to the “bleh”s) Also, that quote was in the middle of a text conversation about some vaginal wipes called, “BOX wipes” and I don’t know that I should say that now, because your family does not need to hear the word “vaginal” at their daughter’s service and…it’s too late. I did it and we’re all thinking it now. Great. This is why you had a wedding flash mob, right? So no one would make this mess in your public space? Too late. I can hear you cackling, but that doesn’t save me now. 

There’s nothing to save any of us now, though, is there? We have to keep reeling. We have to keep hurting. We have to keep doing double takes at your pictures because it just isn’t right that you aren’t here anymore to make new ones. Our hearts refuse it. Our minds reject it. It can’t be. For five months now. It can’t. It is. I can’t.

You called me in the middle of the night to ask me to check on the people you love. You had specific asks, because you knew them so well, you were searching the friendship apothecaries of your mind to remedy their pain. Theirs. Not yours. Never yours. When we talked about your pain, you were resolved. It would always be there. And how could you continue? I asked about the people you cared for, and how you could love them and leave them at once. You asked how on earth it could be just for you to suffer the way you did, even if it was to spare them. I had no answer for you. And I’ll regret that forever.

You swooped in to protect me from social media trolls - even though I didn’t ask - and called me in to beat on some with you. You yelled at me if I took too long to verbally spar with some troglodyte in the comments. I wish I would have vanquished the monsters inside you. I’m continually kicking my own in the nuts, so I missed my chance.

Suffering wasn’t new to you, and you regularly lit yourself on fire to keep others warm. Waiting in your car for hours to trap a cat. Standing outside, having insults (and sometimes food!) hurled at you by families as you protested the circus. And most of all, continually hearing the voices in your soul that told you you didn’t belong here. You thought any bad thing happening to you was inevitable. What I took for false modesty in the face of such blaring success, wealth, beauty, and talent was the tiniest leak of the screaming inside you. You were keenly aware of all of your privileges. But you also thought you were a terrible person who didn’t deserve any of them. There was no way to stop the constant ticker of horrible thoughts. You were trying. 

I am not going to paint you as someone who lost a battle. Fuck that in the eyes. You were beaten every day by your own damned chemistry, and there was no battle. There was you, spitefully continuing to exist and shine and piss people off - even and especially those closest to you - while you bore the weight of existence on your shoulders. It’s weird how good your posture was. 

I hate…I HATE that you aren’t here. I hate that we couldn’t catch you. I feel like we could have if we all formed a net together. If you knew how many of us carried that same weight and wanted you to live…but you did know. Yours was just too much. We each tried to hold you, but you outplanned and outsmarted every one of us. Because of course you did. The hurt we all carry is a combination of anger and regret, and just selfishly missing the Lindsey in our lives no one can replace. I haven’t hugged you in years, and I’d give anything for a late night call. But those things aren’t coming. So we will lean on each other, which is what you wanted all along. Because you got what you thought you wanted - always - except peace. I have no way of knowing if you have that now. I hope you do, even if we don’t. I’ll light myself up to keep that idea warm. For you. For you, I’ll be obnoxiously hot and funny in public (what a burden) and swear up a fucking storm in private, though it won’t stop the storm in my heart. I’ll live a bit more like you and a lot more like me, since I was lucky enough to be someone you loved. All of us can do that to honor you - to be the people you so fiercely loved, but carry some of you with us. And probably swear more and listen to more old school hip hop, you fucking wonderful weirdo.

Do you think everyone forgot about the vaginal thing yet? Good. I thought so, too.

I love you. I don’t want to say I miss you because of what that means. But goddamn, everyone here does. You’d be so pissed and pleased.

This is where I tell everyone to reach out. To take care of each other. That magic didn’t work on Lindsey, no matter how hard she tried. So I’m going to say this: someone will pick up your late night call. Someone will make one to you. It won’t solve everything. But it’ll soothe in the moment. Moments and each other are all we’ve got, and they’re worth sticking around for - so I’m going to hope it’s enough for everyone here. Stick around and be entirely, unashamedly you. In your grief. In your anger. In your wildly inappropriate ways. Celebrate it when you see it. I love you as you are. So did Lindsey. 

Write Club Quarantine: Fight v Flight (FLIGHT)

This piece was written and recorded for Write Club Quarantine Edition: Trick or VOTE on 10/20/2020

Welcome aboard Pandemic Air! Whether You Want to Be Here or Nottm. Please affix your mask properly, but we’re totally not going to say anything if you have the thing hanging down below your nose. We think conflict is icky. And freedom is tops! We want you to enjoy breathing in the 40% restaurant capacity air currently being recycled through a Glade Plug-In we call “sanitized.” It’s VERY cold in here, to make all 143 of you feel sterile. Please enjoy sharing your armrest with Jaxon from Tampa who is here on spring break because he needs to “let off some steam” while being “unafraid of COVID.” Make sure to share surfaces, air, and droplets with him freely since we refuse to know that droplets are part of the spread. Outright refuse. We will be coming around shortly with alcohol and communal snacks.

Flying, specifically takeoff, used to be my biggest fear. Not a current flight, being in close proximity to people who are generally garbage and breathing in their spit air while I clutch my inhaler like a security blanket, but getting on a plane at all. The fear just popped up one day, unannounced, because it was “in the neighborhood,” of my general anxiety. Despite several unbothered flights, one day I looked down, saw mountains, and was entirely certain we’d be crashing into them in a screaming fiery ball of flesh and metal. Upon takeoff, my brain would split, trying mediate a divorce between the advancements of modern air travel and my lizard brain screaming, “THERE IS NO WAY THIS HULKING TIN TAMPON IS GETTING OFF THE GROUND INTACT, LOOK AT THAT FREAKED OUT BABY, HE FUCKING KNOWS.”

Then, with the help of time, hand holding, cyclical breath, and a few years of stretching out my dead mother’s remaining valium, I was able to fly again. 

Adorable that we could get over fears in the BeforeTimes without being hit with a new one in the next 14 seconds. 

***

We’ve just turned off the seatbelts sign, because it’s not doing anyone any good to stay in place. Please feel free to move around, interact with others, and open schools. Go to work, gather in groups, have a rally, go see a movie, get close and take selfies, kiss a stranger. Eat with abandon indoors while people serve you for three actual dollars an hour. It doesn’t matter anymore. The exits are blocked.

***

It takes effort to get my body airborne. I push my shoulder blades down into my back, hands firmly at my sides, each muscle united in its intention. Once I’m at a good height, I can focus on steering, my arms now making swimmers’ strokes as they cut through the air. I have to get a good distance off the ground, out of people’s reach, before I feel safe. They’re always so angry on the ground. They’re furious at my audacity, and at their own leaden feet. I speed above and then past them, their fists shaking, while I look for a rooftop or a tree to hideout in for a while.

It’s punishment to wake up and realize my muscles ache from engaging them while I slept for a thing that doesn’t exist. A thing no human, not even me in secret, can do. I can’t fly like that, no matter how real it feels every time. 

We look at flight as the reward. A bell rings, you die, your menstrual blood doesn’t stain your underwear, you drink a Red Bull, you feather your hair just so, you fry chicken parts and throw delicious sauce on it, you put Tim Daly and Steven Weber on tv for seven real years, you have. Wings. Congratulations, you have the ability to get up and over everything on this mortal plane. Hell, when you go, we send an entire...flock? Chorus? Murder?... Of angels to CARRY you the fuck out of here. Hallelujiah, by and by, you will fly the fuck away. 

I was never the type of person to think about the way they were going to die. That seemed pointless. I once accidentally rode my bike down lower Wacker Drive, screaming. “Today’s the day! Today’s the day I die!” just in case I needed to sound prepared. I am more the watch-my-daughter-sleep-and-cry-thinking-about-all-the-moments-of-her-life-I’ll-miss-when-I-die type. Morbid, just not particularly fascinated with how I’ll go. My parents: suicide and COPD. Two very different fights, and they both lost. No matter how valiantly we fight, we’re all flying the fuck away. At our current rate, Americans wonder if we have tinnitus with constant bells ringing, giving people their winged tickets up and out of here. Flights leaving every minute, every second. By and by.

***

As we prepare for landing, please be aware that you will continue to fly Pandemic Air even after you’ve left the craft. You may not be in the air, but our air is in you.

***

In every flying dream, there’s an angry troglodyte who wants to fight me because I can fly and they can’t. (haha) BRING IT. I have 15 years of martial arts training to be a warrior in a garden instead of a gardener in a war, so get you someone who can do both. I don’t want to be weighted down and swinging for scraps with you. I am trying to get up and I don’t want to wait until I’m dead or on a commercial carrier of disease to do it. Get out. Of my way. I am trying to see what the hell we’re fighting FOR because I cannot wrap my mind around the chaos down here. Turns out, I was never afraid of flying, I was afraid the flight would stop before I was ready, either because I woke up or we crashed. Equity and justice do not exist on the ground where I’m fighting you, your racist high school friend, and every All Lives Matter What If Fuckpaddle keeping us sick. Fighting to fly is fighting to get up.

28 Days of Future Past

Remember that time I was going to write about a weird little experiment I did on myself with food restriction? As though THAT were the thing that was going to inspire my creative slump?

Sure, it worked in 2017 because, A. that was new, and B. I was writing more, and C. I think I’ve mentioned the painkillers/vomiting and this being a great distraction from both of those things.

Also, the current state of our country has left me feeling…oh, I don’t know…riDIculous for food blogging about the things I am willingly not eating while trying not to consume my lip scrub.

No sugar on the challenge, sure, but IT’S NON GMO VERIFIED SO THAT’S…I MEAN. WHY MAKE IT TASTY IF I CANNOT EAT IT am I yelling? My God, I am so sorry.

However, there are a LOT of food pictures in my phone, and I have decided to do a very brief round up. THEN I am free to go back to not writing about the things that matter and complaining about minutiae * while making fun of myself for doing that. What a load off.

*Did you know I worked with a company where not one but TWO leaders used that word in an email but spelled it “minusha?!” The condescending, red squiggly line underneath that spelling apparently did not deter them, and they sent their company-wide emails with it just like that on more than one occasion. I corrected them because I know how to right click on a word and pretend like I know how to spell things, but the other leader came in declaring he, too, believed it had the first spelling. DO YOU NOT FEEL THE SHAME OF THE RED SQUGGLE AS I DO? What do you do with all that spare time and energy? What is your life?

So. It was a worthwhile challenge, sure. Did I ever get all the way to Alkaline? Am I now a better part of the Matrix that lasts longer? Was it like Nirvana but…with less reflux? I have no idea. I made good food that my body was very happy with, and I missed coffee. But I did enjoy the hell out of some tea. Highlights:

There was that time I made the only failure in the entire challenge, but what an incredible failure it was! A cauliflower “burger” (again, my distrust of food in quotes was not heeded, and I should fucking know better) that was so dry, I had tiny men calling for The Spice as Sandworms made themselves at home on my disappointed tongue. I later found this same recipe on a different blog listed as burger buns, which could have redeemed them if they didn’t have the consistency of kinetic sand and the strength of a soap bubble. If you breathed on them, you had sad piles of cauligravel.

I took them out of the oven and I just knew: these were a goddamned mistake. Oven to table, table to trash.

I put them in so many different things trying to save them, but I could only Weekend At Bernies these things for so long.

There was the time I made a stir fry using the Kylo Ren meme as inspiration in order to fit as many ingredients as possible in a bowl. It worked. Here.

As I carefully balanced baby bok choy on top of piles of sautéed vegetables and tried to see if I could topple the whole thing like Jenga but with kimchi, I pictured this. The entire time. My husband asked me what on earth was funny about stir fry. Nothing. Nothing at all. Can’t you see he’s deadly serious?

Then there was the time we decided to go on vacation to the middle of nowhere to an Airbnb with other families (we were masked the entire time, remained distanced and everyone tested negative. Hooray! Road trips and vacationing in a mask is horrible and fun doesn’t exist anymore!) who were NOT on this plan and we watched them happily consume pizza, donuts, stacks of the fluffiest pancakes on earth, and just…entire loaves of bread. We had ceviche in the car made with tinned cockles in brine, mostly because I can giggle when I say that. Truthfully, I only cried a little while the kids got McDonalds.

Carviche, or, The Taste of My Tears. (It was actually delicious)

You know how the rest of this goes. By the end of the challenge, we were energized and less bloated. We felt FAR less pain in our old people joints and we peed crystal clear spring water. We woke with the sun and greeted it merrily, all while thanking our bodies for working so hard, shimmying into our crop tops - both of us - to start the day.

Then, the second it was over (we ended two days early because it was the last holiday weekend of the summer and I wanted to pretend joy came from fried things), we swam around in coffee and burgers, letting our insides fall out of our butts, wondering why we don’t feel well again. We started poking at our stomachs while ordering takeout, snipping at each other and our child while clinging to the ceiling and making another pot of coffee.

At this point, the novelty of both of those extremes has worn off. I am now more balanced and eat what I want on the weekends while trying to make sure I get mountains of veggies and fewer sugars/simple carbohydrates during the week. I’m trying not to flame out my digestive system and my knees while working out 4-5 days a week. I’m trying not to be angry ALL. THE. TIME. THE COFFEE DOES NOT ALWAYS HELP WITH THAT but fucking hell neither does the news. Or people. Because they’re garbage.

The good news is that challenges like this continually remind me how lucky I am to have a system that can process food and drink. To have a job that allows me to buy those things. A home to store them in. Two loving family members to share it with. Income to give to others who do not have these things. Time to spend cooking, writing letters, and demanding better from our country. I’m lucky on all counts.

Come November, I’m hopeful we will be a step closer to more of us having this good luck (we’re still gonna have to push, because dems are a long way from providing UBI, but a step away from this hellscape). Every day and every fight is, I hope, also a step closer to having the current administration rotting in a cell where they are fed cauliflower “burgers” for eternity.

28 Days (P)Later: The First Days

Day 1:

Well, I prepped and cooked as much as I could, avoided the apoplexy that is a trip to Whole Foods to buy the shit some woman named Kyrstynne tells you your body needs to be a better…battery…or whatever, and got ready to start.

Day 1…is a motherfucking fasting day. Now, some of you LOVE intermittent fasting. You talk about it, gram about it, call it cute pet names like “IF,” and go on about this incredible mind-clearing calm that comes with being privileged enough to not eat a full day’s worth of calories on purpose. So here I am, about to be one of those people. I am ready for the focus, the calm, the inevitable wisdom I will gain from not having lunch and dinner, even though I felt none of these things when fasting for Yom Kippur growing up. It’s different now. Diet culture says so.

I wake up and go to the kitchen, ready to make myself a cup of coffee. See, I told myself I would continue to wean off the Go Juice even more in the first week, giving it up by week two. My husband, turns out, was all in and up before me.

“Kettle should still be hot,” he said cheerily, as I stared at the giant box of Signature brand green tea that had been on top of our fridge since 2018.

Look at how Not Coffee this is. LOOK AT IT. Fuck this healthful, timeless nonsense.

Ughfinewe’redoingthis.

I have no idea why I didn’t stick to my original plan. He doesn’t get the withdrawal headaches I do, despite his drinking even more coffee than I do (a feat not easily accomplished, mind). But off the ledge I went. “There’s some caffeine in green tea,” I told myself, “so maybe this will be ok.”

Have you ever pushed your eyeballs out with your thumbs? Would you like to? Then listen to yourself when you think you might need to step down slower.

Pro Tip: Drinking half-caff is a nice and helpful step, but not if you’re asking, “Should we make another pot?” MORE THAN ONCE A DAY.

The headache was not as bad as it had been in previous attempts, but it was also…not fun. Advil, sparkling water, and closing my eyes while whispering, “fuckuckfuck” helped a bit.

The fasting menu (a new novel by Jodi Piccoult) is a couple of hard-boiled eggs, 2 cups of broccoli, some coconut or sheep’s milk yogurt, a cup of berries, and some bone broth. Eat it all in the morning and then pretend that was totally enough to sustain you until you decide you cannot take this stupid, hungry day anymore and fuck off to bed at 8:15.

Instead of hard-boiled eggs, I went to my happy place - egg bites. I used to buy them at Starbucks in the Beforetimes, and then I got an Instant Pot and some genius called the Internet told me I could make them myself. So I did. A lot. Trouble is, they’re choc full o’ dairy. When you make them at home, it’s cottage cheese that gives them the velvety sous vide feel (unless you’re actually making them sous vide, in which case you probably aren’t reading this because you’re a way better person with a fancier life because you boil things in a bag but make it gourmet), and that PLUS cheese make these a non-starter for a plan like this. So I found a recipe that would work, and made mine with mushrooms and carmelized shallots since the first week is all fish and eggs and I couldn’t even add bacon.

Y’all…they were great…until they were freezer burnt. So I woke up, knowing this was the only protein I was going to eat all day, and it was water logged. I wanted to cry AND murder a chicken. Simultaneously.

Also, coconut yogurt tastes like nothing with a coconut aftertaste. Now you know.

Day 2:

Well, it has to go up from here.

Whaddya mean I planned for us to have egg bites again? Fucking hell. Fine.

I choked them down, focusing on the fact that I will get to have makeup food later. And I did. Oh. Oh, I truly did.

My headache was still hanging on, and I kept slugging water to keep it at bay. I am supposed to be drinking about 75oz of it each day, so at least I was helping that along.

I worked for about three seconds before it was time to cook again - this is the life I have chosen - and make lunch for us and for my child, who would eat some incredibly delicious bullshit I can’t have. I huffed the scent of her PB&J, pretended it wasn’t creepy, and set to work on some Tuna Poke Bowls.

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

You can’t taste this photo, but it shouldn’t stop you from trying. Also? HOLY SHIT.

I know that buying some tuna and marinating it, putting it in a bowl with veggies isn’t revolutionary, but you forget you can actually DO shit like that at home. Or…I do. Maybe you do it all the time. Again, you’re way too fancy for this silly blog. Why are you here, Captain Sous Vide Ahi Tuna?

The recipe called for mango, but that’s not on the plan. The Matrix batteries only work if you have citrus and berries, apparently. I remembered a roll from Tank sushi in Lincoln Square that had strawberry on it, so I decided to try it here. THIS is why I chided myself for not trusting my instincts earlier. Clearly, I’m a genius and it should not be forgotten. By anyone.

Ever.

I went about my workday, content in my blanket fort (hush, that’s where I record) knowing I was a mastermind for reading a recipe and following it. Then I just threw eggs over other delicious stuff for dinner. Yes, it’s called a frittata, but we all know what it is: whatever with eggs and you’ll like it.

I mean, I’m not mad at it. Who could be? Look at this punim.

As a bonus, the sauce that topped the poke bowl also went great with this I’m Tired With Eggs.

Yeah, ok, I can see why “frittata” works better.

30 Days In the Whole 2: 28 Days (P)later

You know, this pandemic nice and all, and I really am digging the whole what-do-hugs-even-mean stage, and hey! Who needs to go outside when there are all…these…WALLS, ohmygodthewalls, but…what if…what if I took away JOY? What about THAT?

That has to have been my thought process, right? Why else would I, in the midst of death, isolation, and revolution would I WILLINGLY deprive myself of foods I enjoy? Diet culture is an insidious, wealthy bully and I am de-programming my brain from the self hatred it instilled in me since the age of 9. So…why…am I taking it out on BREAD?

I eat relatively well. I cook, I read, I experiment, and I love vegetables. Sure, we’ve probably had a bit (a lot) more takeout lately and eaten some of those bread knots from Domino’s when my kid gets them and my nightly cocktail from the To Go window has eleventeen grams of sugar and maybe I didn’t need to make 6 batches of cookies again, but otherwise…so good!

I’m on that 80/20 life, though.

Then…my knees started to get worse. See, I have a total knee replacement on one side and a meniscal tear on the other. I work with it, regularly exercising and modifying as necessa — oop. Now my back sucks. Ok, cool, but it’s not like I - OW, is that sciatica? The actual hell is this fu —oh god, my FOOT..

FINE. Fine. I might have been a little…inflamed.

Three years ago, I decided to give into the bully and I went on the Whole30. I had to pay for the book, see, so I literally gave them my lunch money. I said it was for its anti-inflammatory properties (and the articles! and its personality!), which was true as it was in preparation for my knee replacement surgery. But I did also lose weight at a time when I was seriously uncomfortable in my own skin. My pain reduced almost immediately, and I was a little kinder to myself.

That last part made me sad, truth be told. Why wasn’t I kinder to myself before? Why couldn’t I just accept my body for what it can do and how it does look instead of what it can’t and how it doesn’t? What? Right. Deprogramming. Bully. Got it. Workin on it.

As required by law when one does Whole30, I wrote about it. I wrote about the food, the ridiculousness of the book, and someone like me following it. Did it work? It did, and I’m still mad about it. Because no matter how slowly I reintroduced foods back into my system, I couldn’t tell exactly which ONE was causing the pain radiating throughout my body. Spoiler: it wasn’t one.

The sugar? The fried stuff? The dairy? The soy? The gluten? I CAN’T DECIDE BETTER JUST EAT IT ALL.

So here we are, late summer 2020: terrified of COVID-19, terrified of losing our jobs, terrified of not finding jobs, terrified of teaching our kids in the fall, terrified to let anyone else do it, terrified of the police, terrified of this administration, and terrified that we’ll either never be alone again or that we will be alone forever. THIS SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD TIME TO RELAX WITH SOME VEGETABLES AMIRITE.

But truly, the pain on top of the stress was getting to me. I decided I would do a bit of a reset, so long as I wasn’t giving any money to a program. I have a lot of friends cleansing (you can’t - your body cleanses itself), dieting (it’s evil and manipulative), exercising (ok, I love it and do it a lot), trying to get their “bodies to alkaline” (don’t get me started), but too many of these options are connected to the Bully. So I said “screw you” to any “doctor-approved” or “science backed” plan, or even a “Jesus, Corri, you have licensed dietician nutritionist friends” plan…and went with a friend from college who’s done the same nutrition challenge for the last 10 years.

Solid plan. SHUT UP I CANNOT HEAR YOU IT IS AWESOME.

But truly, this thing is a lot like my previous journey down the rabbit hole, only it’s 28 days instead of 30! Win! And it’s…more restrictive. Wait, what?

No gluten, grains, dairy, soy, alcohol, sugar, processed foods, or legumes.

Ok. Got it. Just like before.

The first week is only fish and eggs for protein.

Ok. I mean. I love fish, so that’s cool.

Also, no nut butters.

YOU MONSTER!

Just kidding. You can have 2 tablespoons a day.

We’re cool.

There’s intermittent fasting. Once a week.

Oh good. Like Yom Kippur…all…the time.

You can have berries and citrus.

Well yeah. I thought I could have all the fruit I wanted cause —

One cup a day, and only those. Alkaline.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. You can’t change the ph of your blood with…fine. But I can still have —

No coffee.

Holy shit, you just want to watch the world burn, don’t you?

(Deep sigh)

Truth be told, I have taken my beloved coffee consumption up to very impressive levels. I drink it all day, will happily drink it at night, and use it as a treat. As I wondered before, is it the coffee or what I put in it? Sure, I’ve gone from cream and sugar to coconut sugar and oat milk because what is even food anymore, but I still drink a gazillion cups a day. I can take a break. I already vibrate like a hummingbird naturally. I don’t need to weaponize it.

So. Here we go. I will write and post pictures of food and do all the things I am told I have to if I’m going to try to call zucchini “noodles.”

You know damn well which one looks more delicious, and don’t even try to pretend otherwise.

Also, I’m emailing, writing, donating, and calling for justice. That doesn’t stop just because I have to make sweet potato “toast.”

Oh, Christ, we’re doing the food in quotes again. What have I done.

I SAID...HAPPY Mother's Day

I’m not going to say anything new. Nothing revelatory is going to come out of my brain, through my fingers, and onto this page. My sister used to read tarot - she may very well still do that, but I haven’t spoken to her in a couple of years - and she would always tell her client, “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know,” right before giving them a reading that would blow their minds. I found this particularly helpful, as anyone claiming to see the future gets instant side eye from me. Cause…*gestures at everything* you coulda…said something.

Anyway, onto unoriginal thoughts taking up too much room.

The topic of Mother’s Day is a touchy one for…well, basically everyone except Hallmark, flower shops, and chocolatiers. The rest of us come at it with a sense of obligation, hurt, anxiety, and loss. I don’t care who you are, this shit is conflicted.

Maybe you don’t have kids. Maybe you don’t even want them, but no one will let you be ok with that. No one will accept that you can, in fact, be a complete human being without them. Or maybe you do want them and you cannot have them - even if it’s a temporary “can’t” - and that ache is only exacerbated by ads for floral bouquets and tennis bracelets. Maybe you’ve lost your own mother or have a strained relationship with her, and you really don’t care to be reminded with the forced glee of Hulu repeatedly showing children serving a (likely terrible) breakfast in bed to a delighted matronly figure who hasn't put on a pound since birthing the wee Iron Chefs. Maybe you’re a stepmother who would really love to be seen for who she is and what she gives instead of who she isn’t and what she cannot possibly provide. Maybe you’ve lost children, and there is absolutely nothing that any card, sentiment, or human can offer you to ease that pain. Only time, and even that is a gift with a steep price, robbing your memory while it eases the fathomless sadness just a bit.

Or you have kids. Or just the one kid because you had her so very late and your body has railed against you since, eating away at your cartilage and shredding your ligaments to bits. You love your child more than you ever thought you could another human being while simultaneously wishing you could have a moment of silence as your name is being called every one hundred seconds to be told the entire plot of the latest episode of Bluey. You try and do everything you can to give this human all the love and support you have within you, reminding her that she is smart and strong and special. You work endless hours to give her what she needs and a few things she wants. You sacrifice career, independence, sleep, health, and time for her and you don’t regret a bit of it. And yet, somehow, any mom posting a pic of their kids out and enjoying the world can make you feel like soft, steaming dog shit in about 0.4 seconds. Any human without children on a vacation or shouting, “Happy Friday!” sends tears streaming down your face with the speed and force of a rollercoaster, which you’ve coincidentally been on since a person was growing in you. This is not to say you don’t have moments of pure, unprompted joy. You do. You laugh harder than you ever have, and you tear up with the possibility of everything wonderful this small person is becoming. You just prefer that joy to come when it comes, and not be frog marched into being on a Sunday when the Google Doodle spells, “Mom.”

Because we’re in the middle of a pangoddamneddemic, everyone is collectively losing their minds. I don’t mean just the conspiracy theorizing relatives you try not to speak to outside of big holidays, I mean all of us. We’re either stir-crazy indoors or we’re trying to figure out how to work and avoid pants. Some of us have been trying to get through to unemployment for the last month, wondering how much longer we can keep our landlords at bay. Some of us are working at two in the morning because it’s the only time the house is quiet. Some of us are sleeping in small chunks, bolting awake at the smallest sound, ready for flight because we’ve been on “fight” mode all day. On top of all of this, we have now added teaching to the mix. That’s a sound proposition for sanity, right?

As I type this, I am eyeballing the time because a very loud alarm will soon startle me, my kid, my husband conducting therapy sessions in the other room, and my elderly cat so we know it’s time to go back to schoolwork. I have been logging on and off of the various platforms and networks necessary to do my seventeen jobs, while I wonder when I will get to the creative obligations also awaiting my attention. Last night, for the second time this week, my child’s response to a surface-level innocent request (“let me wash your pajamas” or “let’s do your reading assignment”) was to break down into sobs, taking in breath only to exhale ear-shattering screams of frustration before sobbing again. I’ve never seen such a pure expression of what’s going on inside my head. Both times, we just held her and let her get it out while the neighbors likely dialed, “9-1,” and waited.

I am not patient enough to be a teacher. I’m barely patient enough to be a parent. Who am I kidding, I’m not even patient enough to be a functioning human in society. A friend of mine just said that this isn’t home schooling, it’s crisis schooling. That’s pretty damned accurate, but even when I think I’m doing my best and on my game, someone’s social media post with their perfect white board schedule and their children doing crafts and reading on their own is enough to send me spiraling into failure self talk. This is all while I’m cooking food for everyone, washing the clothes, and wondering how the floor got dirty again so quickly. We live in a courtyard building, so the need for silence in my job as a voiceover artist is compromised severely by children playing outside our windows. This serves the dual function of making me feel terrible that my child is indoors AND not being able to record any work. While I’m breathing through my teeth to soothe my nerves, my kid asks me to listen to the joke her reading program just made, insisting it’s funny, her negotiation entirely unabated by my pleas to get more work done. It isn’t funny. But I have to pretend like it is, lest I give her the impression she’s continually wasting my time. Which she is, but adorably, and with the fragile ego of a human you’re entirely in charge of. No pressure.

I should note that I’m not special. Moms are ruhl common - we all have one. Plus, many people have it much harder than I do, with no steady income and more kids. Kids with special needs, partners who are of little to no help. I am very, very lucky. That said, I am also a ball of anxiety, sadness and rage, fueled by coffee and an inferiority complex strong enough to power the sun. When I say I’m not special, I say it with a special kind of contempt.

When people without kids take a break from their thirty-seven hour nap to say, “I don’t know how you do it,” right before going back to day drinking and freely swearing out loud, I am overwhelmed by the urge to throw a jacket on them, for the sole purpose of grabbing them by the lapels and shaking them. It’s like getting offstage after a performance you worked on for years, only to have a patron tell you they don’t know how you memorized all those lines. They took only the most basic component of your effort, the doing, and marveled at its existence. it isn’t about doing. It’s about surviving. You do it because you HAVE to. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it well. My parents worked 14 hour days and smoked three packs of Winston reds in the house with the windows closed while running our finances and mental well-being into the ground. They did their best, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t mess us all right up in the head.

This holiday interrupts my regularly-scheduled anxiety and delivers A Very Special What Are You Doing episode that no one should watch.

My husband asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day, and I almost asked him to leave, with my kid, for a few hours. Normally, that would seem somewhat selfish. In our current environment, that would almost be a death sentence. “Go outside where no one is wearing masks or practicing social distancing and take our child with you while I nap. Lick a park bench while you’re at it. Be free.”

What I want is some fresh air on a nice day, an easy quiet that comes without guilt because quiet means people on devices, and the courage to take a three hour nap and not feel bad when I wake up from it. I don’t want this to be on Mother’s Day. I want it to be on any day I decide I need it. I guess that means I need to drop my own guilt off somewhere so I can have that time, unburdened by it. Maybe I’ll send it to the park.

Carol? Of the BELLS, Carol?

So it’s quiet, is what you’re saying. 

Real quiet.

And we should...be...praying or something. And while we’re doing that, gather this woman who’s never had intercourse but has an infant she claims is hers and just...tell everyone to go to sleep. Is. Is that right?

I mean. There’s also the part about the tenderness. The tenderness and mild...flavor of the baby. I can only assume that’s what you meant when you said, “so tender and mild” cause that’s how I describe chicken. I don’t understand any part of this.

So there’s. A man, is what you’re saying. That I should be wary of. I shouldn’t show any kind of emotion, you’re telling me, not negative ones anyway because I am being watched by this man who isn’t even in my vicinity but will be here soon for a visit. But he...hates sadness? So I should just stuff it down and keep smiling like the dude on the train told me to do? I don’t...did you just say when I’m SLEEPING? Sees me. Like with a baby monitor? And knows...just...instinctively...when I’m not sleeping. Like he feels it. Like a disturbance in the force. Can he tell me about the woman with the delicious baby, then? Cause I feel like he would have seen it.

So you’re wishing me well. Is what you’re saying. And that’s nice. I think the addition of “little” to the kind of Merry Christmas I’m supposed to have is...I don’t know...a bit pejorative, but ok. I also don’t see how ALL of our troubles are now just...eradicated by this “little” holiday. And why I want to spend all the years with people whose troubles are out of sight and out of mind, because that seems unhealthy and...wait. What do you mean IF the fates allow? THE FATES? As in the MOIRAI? You’ve invited the Spinner, the Allotter, and the Inflexible, respectively, to my allegedly LITTLE Christmas? What am I going to feed them? I can see these troubles VERY clearly. What are you even cryptically trying to do to this holiday? I can’t…

So there are bells. So many bells, you say. Please calm down. It’s all very fast. I don’t think you find them sweet because you sound panicked and I already told the last dude I’m not just throwing cares away when you’re clearly on speed or some - who are all these other people? Why are they repeating what you say? Is this a cult? Are you trying to initiate me? Merry merry merry merry stop it. Ding dong ding dong is not a song. It’s not...why is this so novel to you? That’s the sound bells make. Are you new?

It doesn’t make any sense. It never did. We were JEWISH. Why did we celebrate Christmas? I mean, I never asked. We asked for some Jewish holidays off from school and attended temple for all of two seconds, and I got teased plenty with “GI Jew, Real American Hebrew” by kids...which was pretty clever in hindsight...but I loved Christmas so I didn’t think it was worth investigating. People asked, my mom said she believed in the spirit of Christmas, and that was good enough for me. 

So when this woman, who sounded like if Harvey Fierstein just woke up inside of a Brooklyn ashtray and thereby the Nature Valley Jewiest of Jews, pulled the car over while driving me home from college one break to say, “I have to tell you, I was born and raised Irish Catholic,” it didn’t make sense. She then told me that she converted when she married my father, which made even less sense. Why tell me if you converted? Why tell me at all? Why lie about this for my entire childhood, allowing us to be sufficiently tormented and confused and then clear it up with mud? I mean, I don’t mind being Jewish. It’s an important part of who I am, but what the actual HELL, Mom? You sound like that and guilt me into chores like making YOUR bed and emptying your ashtrays and you’re...CATHOLIC? Irish Catholic. Someone told me once that the difference between Jewish guilt and Catholic guilt is that Jews were the inventors and Catholics were the perfectors. I don’t know if that’s true, but both kinds of guilt are raging inside me continually so I don’t care. 

So a manger, you say. In the winter. They see a whale pregnant woman and they say, “Go sleep it off in the cow feed.” Nono. Continue. That’s. The antithesis of kindness and sounds like something our current administration would...wait. Now he’s in the sky? I thought you said he was in a barn...trough. Thing. And you’re praying for his love? He’s a baby. He doesn’t even know you. What do you mean all the children go join him? In the manger? Or the sky. You know what, don’t answer that. 

I mean, it wasn’t the only lie she told and it certainly wasn’t the biggest, but it still messes with me every holiday. Like I’m not really allowed to go all out for Christmas, and I don’t celebrate Hanukkah (I had to spell check it when I wrote this). But I celebrate Christmas and just shy away from angel tree toppers and I sometimes replace “Jesus Christ” with “Santa Claus” in some songs because I’m a child (“Here comes Jesus Christ, here comes Jesus Christ, right down Jesus Christ lane). I love It’s A Wonderful Life but wince when they get too  religious. Not Clarence, though. He’s the best. But being Jewish is who I am, mother’s bloodline or no. I mean, maybe I’m just in it for the guilt and the jokes? But I know that’s not true. It’s my lineage and my family and my mother spent a good portion of the last part of her life running a kosher kitchen in a shelter where she previously lived. It makes sense in the whole scope of my family. Not any one part of it, but the whole of who we are. It fits.

(Sings)
I’ll be home for Christmas

You can plan on me

Please have snow and mistletoe

And presents on the tree

Christmas eve will find me

Where the love light gleams

I’ll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

I could take it apart, but it just makes more sense when you sing them. If you take them whole. You can get caught up in the idea of the holiday being magical enough to change things. You can believe in fairy tales and legends...even if they’re in your own family.

So you’re saying you let your grandmother walk home on Christmas eve. Like no one thought to drive her…?

Better Takes A Vacation

You know better.

You know how to breathe, how to keep focus and approach with understanding over judgement. You know what things look like from her perspective. You try to remain cognizant of that. You fail more often than you succeed, and you can’t really celebrate the successes because that’s where the baseline should be.

You know better than to appear ungrateful. Come on, now.

You’ve been having one of the best weeks of your entire life. Time to stop being a miserable shit.

This week, you filmed for three days on a digital series that you wrote with your friend and writing partner. You’ve talked about it for three years, and finally you got it done. You wrote as yourselves and your friends, capturing the banter that everyone says they want to watch. You got an incredible crew, the mind-blowing talent in the room was fire, and every single person signed on for all the ridiculous you could sling into a script. They were all in. You raised $16,000 with two of the finest people you know, and you did it in 30 days. You just saw proof positive of all the people who believe in you enough to back you. You saw very clearly the people who ignored you (not the ones who couldn’t afford to support the project, but the ones who very clearly ignored you - you know the difference), and even that vision was a gift.

Hell, you went to a function that caused you physical anxiety and shaking and you made it out having had a pretty good time. People were nice, which was unexpected. Sure, you got way drunker than you meant to because of aforementioned anxiety, but you made it out ok.

One day after filming, you came home and your daughter jumped on you, clinging to your leg, saying, “Mama! I missed you! I haven’t seen you all day. Look! I’m a monkey bird.” Your husband hugged you and you both sighed into that really awesome moment of coming home to people who couldn’t wait to see you.

But your patience…oh, it sucks. Not just in the when-am-I-going-to-achieve-eternal-happiness kind of patience but the moment to moment patience. You cannot wait for people to help on a project, so you tend to do it all yourself. You just go and get it done so you don’t have to wait. You love learning, but hate when you don’t understand immediately and chastise yourself for it bitterly. Your leg never stops bouncing. You cannot stop checking time during a commute. A shoot schedule - for your dream project, mind you - that requires getting up at 3:30am will disrupt your workout schedule, and being on set means a lot of coffee and junk food. You aren’t patient with yourself about that, either. You just poke at your belly and wonder where your arm definition went.

Because you lack compassion for yourself and the world at large, the people who love you the most suffer for it. Your child is of the age where she asks for everything and then repeats her want no matter how many times you say no, using, “I’m just saying I want it,” as her defense for repeating the thing ad nauseam. Even while you’re giving her things, the ask is bottomless. It’s trying for anyone, let alone someone with very little sleep. You snap at her. A lot. You ask a million times for her to do something, and she asks you a million times for toys. You say no, and so does she. It’s a learning mirror of the worst kind on loop.

Your husband is more patient than you are. He’s a therapist. It kind of goes with the gig, but he was more patient when he was an actor and producer, too. But you can scarcely wait for the man to finish a sentence. You have things to do. You just made five more lists in your head while looking at this floor and oh man you have to clean this floor and also the laundry and how is he not done yet? He’s thoughtful and slow. You’re a freight train with anxiety.

Your schedules conflict so you’re passing ships. You both, essentially, single parent while being together.

After filming, you get one day. A one day vacation out of the whole summer, because that’s all your schedule and wallet will allow. Hell, you’re paying for it monthly, so you can’t even say your wallet is allowing it. But you’re gonna take it, goddamnit.

The vacation spot is a money trap for kids. An indoor water park with mini golf, rock climbing, a ropes course, and would probably have a pony stable if they moved the arcade. It’s the first vacation you’ve had in seven years, and the first one just for her. You try to cram everything on her all-access pass into 24 hours. She still asks for the things she can’t have, including more time. You say you wish you could. She’s understandably disappointed, but you cannot be asked again. You’re working so hard to get everything done and the asking never stops. She says again she wishes you could stay one more night. She says it ten more times.

“I understand that,” you start in a tone that says, “So help me God…”

“HEY. That’s enough. You’ve been unnecessarily harsh and cranky to both of us. Stop.”

Your husband just intervened on your daughter’s behalf. Against you. And your mood.

Before this, no matter how frustrating the asks and the back-and-forth of no, you and she were a team. Even earlier that day, “I’m on team Mommy!” she happily squealed on the ropes course she wouldn’t finish. She makes you sit in the backseat with her in the car. She goes through your purse and your clothes and wants to be close to you always. This? This was unprecedented. She needed protection. From you.

In sixth grade, we took a family vacation to Florida. It was while Epcot was still being built, and I was only with my father and one of my sisters. I remember hiding out during an electrical storm in Mexico, making sushi reservations in Japan, and thinking an interactive touch screen was the most futuristic thing I had ever seen in my life. I couldn’t understand how this place was so advanced in comparison to the rest of the world.

Mom didn’t go with us, and I don’t remember why. I just know that she decided to use a free hotel stay - that we got after a giant, buffet-sized salad bowl from the hotel’s Easter brunch crashed from the bussing cart and sprayed oil all over her white suit and wide-brimmed hat, ruining them - while we were gone. She didn’t tell my dad that she took that booking, and he couldn’t get in touch with her. Pre cell phones and all. So he drank straight vodka and took a bunch of pills to assuage his worry.

He tried to wake us up for a cruise we weren’t taking until the next day. He threw a suitcase onto the floor that he then tripped over, cutting his forehead just above his eyebrow on the corner of a dresser. He would have that scar until he died.

This was the only time I saw my alcoholic father drunk. I watched my sister, only two years older than me, take care of him and get him into bed. I don’t remember what he was saying as he passed out. When we got home, he cried and told us we should go to al-anon and he was so. So sorry. He didn’t stop drinking. My sister never forgave my mom, as though her being home would stop Dad from having a problem.

This is my family vacation memory.

You can’t hide behind the “she won’t remember it” defense anymore. Everything is a potential memory now, and you don’t know which good or bad moment is going to make the cut. You hide in the bathroom to cool down, as there’s no space in the Adventure Suite (where she has her own bunk beds and tv) to relax. You hear the balcony door slide open and close. You ask if they’ll go ahead to mini golf without you and you’ll catch up. You don’t think you want to be there, but you don’t want to be seen as the screaming, angry monster who won’t enjoy the last hour of kid-friendly fun before closing time.

Your husband and child come back into the room from the balcony, and your daughter has a sad and guilty look on her face. You stuff all of your self hatred down your throat with a hard gulp, and you all head down to have a “good time.” You pass throngs of happy children and smiling, encouraging parents in a pajama dance party taking place in the lobby. They’ve bought light up bubble wands for their kids from a special cart they brought out for the bedtime runway walk, and the adults are enjoying playing with things in the gift shop before saying yes to buying them for their asking children.

You watch her play mini golf and do an incredible job of climbing the rock wall. You warm up a bit, and you all realize you haven’t eaten. Your husband runs to get suburban chain dinner at midnight, since everything in the hotel is closed. You all sleep hard, knowing you have to leave early the next day. Vacation was less than 24 hours.

The next morning, you apologize to your husband for “ruining vacation,” a friendly softball of kind-of-joking-kind-of-not apology. That’s when he tells you about the memory you made.

Your seven-year-old requested to go out onto the balcony to talk to him. She asked to close the curtain so you wouldn’t see them talking. She quietly, patiently, and earnestly tells him that you get mad at her all the time. She doesn’t like it when you get so mad and she doesn’t know what it is she does so wrong, but she doesn’t feel like she deserves anger like that.

He says some other things about the conversation. Some jokes and some comments about how proud he is of her, being so open and trusting with her feelings to communicate them. You hear it, but you’re trying not to throw up. You’re cold. You’ve started shaking. The tears come out before you can banish them back behind your eyes. Your daughter is still asleep, but you can’t risk waking her up to the sounds of you crying. Bad memory. So you curl yourself into a ball, hyperventilate while you sob, trying to keep it quiet and hold your breath.

You were a team. The day before, she had just told you that she chose you as her favorite person. Both of these things, you know, can be simultaneously true. You can be her favorite person AND she can be very sad when you get impatient. But you can’t see both now. The only thing you can see is a severe split in your life. You know better, but your feelings don’t care about what you know.

You spent the week working on your dream project. When you come home, there is no talking about it. Your daughter talks over you and your husband tells you to wait. Wait until she’s in bed and we’ll discuss it, he says reasonably. That never happens. Either you fall asleep or he’s playing his game and really not interested in looking up to talk to you about a project he’s not involved in. He’s told you before that he feels left out of it. He’s also told you that he’s incredibly proud of you. Both can be true, once again. But in the world of your home, there’s no time to talk about work when there is camp to get to, playdates to set up, and bank balances to discuss and fret over. The cat needs to be fed, laundry needs to be done. Your little hot shot web series doesn’t get clean clothes. It isn’t important here in the moment-to-moment. The thing you have no patience for has no room for you, either.

Outside of home, many of your friends don’t have kids. The ones who do aren’t creating a digital series, writing plays, or producing shows. They’re hired as actors, something you are too impatient to wait for (because your phone doesn't ring as often as theirs does, and because you have no patience), and then they take pictures of the great time they have with their families. The ones without kids don’t really know your husband well because you hang out while he’s at home with your kid and not drinking. Because he doesn’t. Your friends they try to sympathize about scheduling with a kid, but…it doesn’t really translate. They can make plans in a second or casually mention “maybe we’ll have a hangout and call you.” They don’t hang out with you and your husband as a couple because they assume you can’t schedule with a kid. So your life is even more separate. They either jokingly gloat that they don’t have your problems (“This is why I only have cats! Ha ha ha!” “Sounds hard. I’m gonna sleep in!”), or they try and relate it to their nieces and nephews and other friends with kids who are nothing like you (“Oh, I remember when my nieces went through this. It’s gonna be fine. They love you! Kids are so kid-like when they’re your kid’s’ age. My best friend has two and a huge, stable income and she says it’s hard, so I already know everything you’re going to say.”)

So you experience a dream realized and your family isn’t there. You experience a family vacation without having anyone relate to why you’re so tired. You’re alone in both scenarios. And you can’t tell anyone about either side.

No one wants to hear it.

Fix it, yes. But not hear it.

You don’t want to talk about it.

Pretend it isn’t there, yes, but not talk about it.

You know better. You know that you cannot pretend feelings don’t exist, because they will leak out of you whether you’re prepared or not. They will build and explode and you’ll yell and want to sleep for days. You will see your daughter get sad and scared and go away from you to confide in her dad about it. You will see your friends try to be patient while you attempt to get better, but they say things like, “I mean, I’m glad someone kicked your ass into coming out tonight,” because they aren’t witnessing the severe depression and anxiety that you had to fight to get out the door. They think it’s your fault, and it’s yours to get over. Just get over it. Be patient. Be kind. Just breathe. Meditate. Practice self care. Play with your daughter. Platitude here. It’s all temporary. Things will get better.

Because you know better.

Pandora's Cat

A small box, made of rose quartz, sits on one of my bookshelves. It’s nestled in among various other trinkets and signs of Someone Lives Here Who Likes to Remember Things. The wee handle knob on the lid is broken off, and inside it are about five mineral rocks of varying colors and textures. I never remember their names, but I like the way they feel in my hands and glimmer in the light. It was given to me in the seventh grade.

The girl who gave it to me was one of my best friends at the time, one of the few I could speak to about my father’s death while simultaneously discussing crushes and it wouldn’t seem odd. It was just…being 12 while also living with trauma. We went through awkward teenage years together by correspondence and lost touch after the first year of college. By the time we found each other again, adulthood had done a number on us both. One of us had a drinking problem. The other was dating someone with one. We lost touch again, but things were a bit calmer by the time we eventually reconnected. We had ill parents and eating disorders to contend with, but we talked through them and helped out where we could. Eventually, she got word that I was pregnant through my social media announcement. I hadn’t yet told her personally, and this was enough to sever the ties once more. We haven’t spoken since. My daughter is now 7.

The box remains in my care, the broken spot where the handle was is worn down smooth. I forget the contents often enough that they delight me with sparkly purple, smooth green, and glimmering white reminders every time I open it. I’ve moved it time and again to each place I live, always making sure it has a spot on some shelf among a collection of other Proof of Life items.

We all keep our lives in little boxes. Broken and dust covered, or well-used and constantly polished, they sit waiting for us to open them at the right time. If we didn’t, the contents of one would spill into one another and there would be chaos. We’d use our “professional” voice when hanging out with friends, tell our children about our sex lives, ask politicians to pick up milk on the way home. The disorienting feeling of forgetting our PIN at the grocery store or saying, “I love you” when hanging up the phone with a client (just me?) is so unsettling because it’s a merging of boxes. It’s a sign of the compartments starting to nest and possibly leak, and by this we cannot abide. Not without some kind of Scanners-type result, anyway.

So we move from box to box as carefully as we can. We try to perform well at work, be on time, follow dress codes and processes. We try to eat right, exercise, stand once an hour, drink enough water. We go home, we try to clean, to be patient, to be present, to catch up on tv, to get enough rest. We save and spend our money, anxiously checking balances to see if our one or five jobs will be enough to keep the avalanche of bills from crashing on top of us and wonder how anyone has ever taken a vacation, and long for it with shame we cannot afford. We create, we try to stay open and relevant, break new ground, inform a sense of urgency and empathy. We read the news. We see some version of ourselves being marginalized, beaten, tortured, punished, murdered, legislated into obscurity, oppressed, kidnapped, dismissed, sidelined; or (in the case of cis white men), we see some version of ourselves committing these acts onto people who do not look like us. We take a breath, put the phone down, and try to continue or begin our day, clear-eyed and open.

Then we open social media and see an echo of this news. Or, if we’re lucky, we see people shouting about the latest in pop culture (ideally with no spoilers) and, if we’re on board, we can focus there for a while. If we’re out of the loop, we scroll past to more familiar topics. But the familiar topic is news again, so we linger there. This time, the sadness and violence is peppered with pictures of friends out and about, seemingly able to have put that box away. They are putting Vitamin D and ice cream into their bodies, and they seem genuinely happy. So now, we wonder what we’ve done wrong with our lives, and we haven’t even finished our coffee.

Add to this a collection of people slowly awakening to the idea that small behaviors make a big difference - and they have the nerve to ask those around them to modify those behaviors - and you have a very unstable landscape. Our boxes, once kept in neat rows in separate rooms, are now stacked atop one another in cramped spaces, daring each other not to topple.

Recently, I had quite a spill.

I spent months collecting my thoughts, and the thoughts of some people around me, about the behaviors of people we love. I had to take the time to collect a bunch of examples of this behavior in a letter in order to say, “See, this is a lot. It’s very hurtful, and I don’t think you mean to be hurtful. Please stop this somehow.” It caused a lot of anxiety for me. A lot of crying. A lot of worry. a lot of anger. Why did I have to say any of this anyway? Why don’t they just know? Why don’t others see it as important the second I tell them? I had to ask my closest friends to stand with me, and some of them weren’t comfortable doing it for reasons of their own. Most were. I did not allow any of the people involved their own processing time, something I had months - even years - of for myself.

I knew that, once this letter was sent, people would be angry with me. Even if they agreed the behavior needed to change, they would not be happy with me for saying it. I was reassured by friends that this absolutely could not be the case. “They’re just tired.” “They will happily hang out with you again.” “Give them more credit.” So I waited. I tried to dismiss the signs of resentment.

I found out I was right. The anger was there. And that…that is ok. I know that now. I didn’t at the time. I was angry that they had any reaction at all, as though that changed my stance. It didn’t. It doesn’t. And everyone processes at their own pace in their own way.

I’ve been reading about Georgia. About the idea that it’s ok to make a law so outrageous that will punish women for miscarriages, because the plan is to take it all the way to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade. I think about what I would do if I were to get pregnant now, and how I need to have the choice. More than that, I need every woman to have a choice. And these men don’t agree with me. Some women don’t, either.

I’ve been reading about how the right sees Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and how they minimize her for being a young woman of color who challenges them.

I’ve been reading about synagogue shootings. People who look like me being shot for practicing a religion I only marginally observe. I’ve been reading about school shootings. Kids my child’s age rushing into closets instead of worrying about math scores.

Last night, my child was in tears because she unfairly lost a turn at kickball. And because another child pushed her. I cried because I wished to Someone that this would be her biggest problem at school. Please, Someone. Let this be her biggest problem.

So I reached a spilling point. Everything was knocking into everything else. Personal pain became a reflection of our current state, and our current state was made even more terrifying because of personal pain. If my friends could hold anger in their hearts for my asking for better, if the world could still turn while women are treated as vessels for life they do not wish to make, if children dying isn’t enough to change policy…then we’re all a bunch of shitbags. Prove me wrong. Go ahead.

And with this hopelessness, I took to the place of Birthday Greetings and Cat Memes (truly the only good Facebook provides on a consistent basis) and demanded people stand up. I demanded voices. I said that if my cis male friends weren’t answering the call on Georgia, then we were lost. The only people the monsters will hear right now are cis men, so speak up now because we need to hear from you.

Now. There’s nothing wrong with needing to hear words of affirmation and support. There’s nothing wrong with asking for action. But to assume that someone NOT posting about an issue means they don’t CARE…well. Now we’re trying to investigate the contents of someone else’s boxes and that’s just unsanitary and dangerous. I’m usually against this policy, especially in our current timeline of Everything Being On Fire At the Same Time because I can hardly post about tariffs and shootings and Sandra Bland and Georgia and Mueller and climate change all at once because I am not the Washington Post. I am not Apple News with pictures of my kid for good measure. No one is.

On a day where my feed was overflowing with Game of Thrones talk, I was screaming into a void about activism. Demanding receipts.

No good comes of this. Not ever. To open the Pandora’s Box of silence (ONLY on social media) = complacency, but also simultaneously employ the Schrodinger’s Cat question about whether activism still exists without the advertisement and whether there is still genuine activism in the advertising of it…well now we’re having a damn yard sale of all the box contents, aren’t we?

Speaking of pop culture, this bit from S2E2 of Letterkenny about sums up the Shout Your Activism sentiment.

"Whatever you do, just make sure peoples know about it.”

“Yeah, like you're gonna want to have somebody come down from the paper, take a photo of it. “

“Tweet a tweet, snap a chat. “

“Why?”

“Well, if it's not in the papers or on the Internets, it's pretty much worthless.”

“You know what I think, we should almost be snapping a chat about us talking about doing the charitables right now. “

“Pump the brakes. Now, am I doing the charitables for the charity's gain or my own?”

“Well, you do the charitables for the charity, but the whole point of doing the charitables is that people think you're a good guy for being charitable.”

“Yeah, behaving charitably, you'll have people saying, like, - ‘Oh, he's a good guy. ‘“

“Oh, he's a real good guy.."

“Oh, he's a great guy.”

I don’t believe you have to tell someone you did good in order for the good to work. I do believe you can care about more than one thing at a time.

I also believe social media warps our brains into thinking singularly about our morals under the eye of Posts, Tweets, and Likes. If it isn’t your cover photo, do you even care?

But because of the current and cluttered state of my boxes, I made some people very close to me feel very far away from me. I made them question their activism because it wasn’t good enough if I didn’t see it. I am no one’s standard bearer. I am FAR from doing enough myself. Who was I to ask for this?

I questioned my friendships outside of this mess. “I wasn’t invited to X’s house. They clearly hate me. Fine. Great. I deserve that, too.”

It was becoming a very angry purging of all of my contents. And then I realized, I was crying through most of it. I was hurt. I was scared. I needed someone to say that I would be ok despite all of this micro and macro mess.

But no one can say that. Not without lying, anyway. Because none of us know. “We’re not ok. And that’s ok,” is a place I consistently operate from, happily knowing that there are no guarantees. In doing so, I forgot to allow space for the position of, “We’re not ok. And right now, that’s not ok with me.”

When I went to pick up my daughter from school, another parent and friend asked me, “How’s the rage going?” There’s never a good answer to that, which is an answer in and of itself.

Another good friend told me that he measured his friendships by asking himself, if he were to die tomorrow, who would be able to tell his child things about him the child couldn’t learn on their own? I realized that the people who could tell my daughter the kindest and best things about me were those I was pushing away with demands I myself couldn’t even meet.

When I ask others to do better, I have to ask what that means. Sometimes, as in the case of my letter, I am certain of what that means and that I’m right to ask for it. In others, I’m far less certain. And uncertainty is ok, as long as there’s room in the box for possible answers and other ideas. Otherwise, it’s probably going to topple under the weight.

Midlife Nausea

“Are you upside down?” my husband gently asked. I stared out the window, my eyes uncertain if they wanted to glaze over and let the trees and the buildings blend together in a green-grey streak as we passed them, or if they wanted to linger on one spot and pull my focus behind me over and over again.

“I think so? Maybe?” I wasn’t saying much because I had just discovered speaking made the lump in my throat rise and push tears out of my face. I didn’t have time for that. I was going to work. Best play the eyeballs/windows game and stay quiet.

It’s hard to know if you’re having an epiphany or a breakdown. Apparently.

It didn’t start this way. I just went to see a show.

The night before, I experienced an actual-factual achievement in Chicago theater. I was lucky to witness it, to see everyone performing at the top of their game. It was a gorgeous moment for my hometown and my craft.

After we said our hellos and goodbyes and stood for 65 real minutes while they vacuumed the lobby around us (we’re the midwest and our goodbyes are as long as our winters), we went out to chat and celebrate. We went out to dish and to laugh and ask our successful-as-hell director friend who helmed this theatrical triumph to join us on a project and yay she’s in that works who wants fries sounds like a plan.

It’s a good night. I take two sips of my beer. My whole body responds.

“I’d stop there if I were you. And I am. So.”

The next hour is my head, stomach, and insides swimming. I’m reeling from strong-smelling pepper from a pile of wings at the table next to me and my the equilibrium has started a floor routine. I’m suddenly bloated like my body wants to relive the labor I was in 7 years prior with my daughter. What the actual fuck was all of this?

I breathe. I drink a lot of water. I listen. I pretend everything is fine. It’s a good night.

I think about how I should be home with my kid. She’s asleep, but I’ve been so busy in the days leading up to her birthday that I see spare minutes as things to cram work and meetings into. I don’t have enough time. I have deadlines and invoices to send and just when exactly am I going to stop all that and take her to a nature preserve or enroll her in music classes? Can’t I just be all the other moms I know on social media? She’s the best and deserves so much better than - ooof. My stomach again. How is it bigger? Am I going to burst?

My actor friend is talking to our director friend about the Rooms We Cannot Get Into. How happy we are for all our other friends’ successes, but why can’t we even get into the damn room? How do we revel in the achievements of our loved ones while also kicking dirt at being denied the same opportunities? This is something I believe I can contribute to, right? I can say something here. But then I realize…these are people who work at The Goodman and Chicago Shakes. Who are on prime time TV, who are repped by Big Agencies, who have awards and own homes and union cards. There are rooms THEY can’t get into?

I have none of those things. I work on the fringes. The “nobody who knows somebody,” I reductively title myself. If you want a break from the wildly successful thing you’re doing to experiment with some shit, you call me. You want to branch out and never return to that branch, you collaborate with me. We’ll be great pals when it’s over, and you’ll go back to your regular stuff. I have nothing to add to this conversation. I don’t know the names, the people in charge, or the reason to know them. I’m from this city, and I’ve been in theater here for over half my life. Why did I suddenly know nothing? Was it always like this?

If this sounds incredibly self pitying, it wasn’t at the time. It was an honest assessment, and I knew I had to decide how I felt about it.

On the way home, I was struck by the idea that I had worked for decades in small circles. Being cast by friends, and not always in the best shows. My friends, my peers, my colleagues: they’re all climbing as they damn well should. But where on earth was I ? I was…nowhere. Not behind, not ahead, just…in limbo. My friend and writing partner instantly jumped into Fix It mode.

“Well the only reason I got X was because Y was there. The only reason A happened was because of B.”

She started about five sentences this way. She was defending her own success. Minimizing it. Making it about sheer luck and who she knows, as though that’s not what life is: a series of run-ins and events and who you know. In this business, you still have to back it up with talent. X doesn’t happen if Y sees you in A and you suck. She was making her entire VERY successful career a small series of coincidences so I would feel better. No one should have to do that. Not for anyone.

“Everyone knows someone. That’s how we all get places,” I say, waving this off.

“Well, you had a baby,” she offers as an explanation for my stalled and free-floating career.

This line is very familiar to me. More people are willing to allow you to disappear from Earth if you have a kid. They expect it. Didn’t see a movie? It’s because of you had a kid. Didn’t call anyone for weeks? Kid. Didn’t make your career move? Kid. Afraid of heights? Kid. Itchy scalp? Kid.

You aren’t allowed regular-person anxiety or difficulties. You cease to be. It’s all because you had a child. When you DO actually do things, they credit your resolve for your performance “even with a kid.” I am often introduced as a mother before a writer or performer. I hate it. I never hear my father friends strapped with these descriptors or reasons for not moving up.

“I worked the entire time. I never stopped.”

“Of course you stopped.”

“I produced shows and kept performing. I did a shows when I was pregnant. I did two shows back to back that went from her age two to age four. I never stopped. But I’m invisible when I hustle my ass off, because I don’t operate on the same plane as you. You think you see me, but you don’t. I’m not where you are. You assumed I stopped because I’m not in those rooms.”

Silence. The night wasn’t going so well now.

From there, she tried the tricks at the bottom of her comfort bag: my friendships were successes. My one-off live lit performances. If only I could see all that I had accomplished, surely this would pass.

It’s a natural reaction. We want to fix it when we see someone we love being hard on themselves. There is absolutely no response that will comfort someone facing their own career path. No platitude can guide someone who’s weighing the blood, sweat, and tears of literal body-breaking work against her current position.

Still, though, you’re in the car with them. You’re gonna say something. I mean. Jesus, we aren’t monsters.

The thing that struck me about this particular revelation was that I wasn’t belittling myself or any of my accomplishments. I simply noticed that I am VERY often in a room with people who are talking about Big Deal Problems (being on set, big theater contracts, pilot auditions), and I suddenly realize I have nothing to contribute.

I am a hanger-on. I’m friends with people who do big stuff, I told her. And that left me sobered and shaken.

Finally, she asked me what I wanted to do about that. Out of all the things to ask in the stifling air of midlife career crisis, this is the one question with a bit of oxygen.

The breath comes with the answer: I don’t know. I cannot choose, and I never could.

I won’t choose because I love it all, and I worry that indecisiveness has made me mediocre at best in all that I do. So I don’t reach.

I wait. While I wait, I create. I write, I produce, I act, but it’s all…while I wait. For someone to notice. I’m working, but not extending.

And then I get sad when the nothing reaches for me.

I crawl into bed with my soon-to-be-seven-year-old and I hold her tight. In the morning, I awake slightly dizzy but potentially better. Until the nausea washes over me again.

The spiraling started soon after.

Every wrinkle looked new - a result of poor life choices. I need more water, better products, more rest. I’ll be late to work. I have to get groceries and we don’y have enough money, which is why I ‘m going to work - too bad I’ll be fired from this job I don’t want. The job I have because I couldn’t make a career stable enough out of my art. Not…ya know…we don’t value artists enough to pay them a living wage (which is TRUE), but that I failed at it.

I’ve gained weight. But why are you so concerned about weight when it means you’re using the same standards now as you did in your 20s for desirability? They’re dated and harmful. Also, you should look better for all this worry. I’m aging into nothing, into more invisibility and oh god stop this now you need to be present with your daughter it’s her birthday.

So I tune in. I change my focus and I let her love me and us and I love her right back with all I have.

The anxiety didn’t leave, though. It just got quiet and waited for me to be quiet. It tightened my throat and let me know that I was selfish to have any feelings about this on HER day about a laughable career and LOOKS? REALLY? What YEAR is it? Do you want her to take after you like this? Do you —

“Are you ok?”

My husband is checking in again, asking if plans should be canceled or things can be moved. It’s his turn for comfort mode. I ask him not to change anything, as it will only add to my worry and my To Do list if we start rearranging things.

I fight sleep at my desk all day. The room looks like a flashback transition, wavy and animated, My eyelids get heavy. I snap them back open, and the worry has lots more room to wander now.

I keep preaching kindness and don’t know how to do it. Has all of this been a waste of my time? Of everyone’s time? What have I done? Will this be how my daughter remembers me?

I breathe. There’s reflux. I swallow it. I hope that stays down. Because too many other things are coming up.

I think of all the good things I tell other people about kindness. I repeat them to myself. I keep it together. When someone asks how my night was, I tell them. It was a good night.

Success May Be Fleeting, But She Ain't Getting Far In Those Heels

My success meter is broken. My compass for achievement continually points southsomething. I don't know where notoriety lives, but I'm turning down the radio while looking for the address.

I have no gauge for whether or not if I've succeeded at one of the 97 things I try to do, because I'm too busy telling myself I'm a failure in multiple disciplines. "At best," I silently hiss to myself, "I'm mediocre on a good day."

I see Success in the distance, unattainable yet hovering in close proximity. Like it's in my feed with a soft focus filter and enough likes to have a K after the number, but we've never met IRL.

It certainly won't meet me here, in this adorable breakfast spot, having a tense conversation over eggs and fancy biscuits. While I hold my teal stoneware mug and sigh with furrowed brow, Success wants no part in the couple's "are you sure you support me cause you didn't freak out Price Is Right style when I told you about this gig" talk we've had for 15 years. Success does not want this weird emotional unpacking session in hushed voices so as to not disturb other customers. Success disturbs all the customers with free coffee and shiny glee. Success has sequins and smiles without eye strain, it has open-mouthed surprise face and big, squeezy grateful hugs. By design, Success can't handle hand-wringing over the cost of childcare and arguments stalled because my damn jaw threatened to lock up while chewing. That's new. It's probably arthritis, but we just lost insurance so I can't find out right now. Success wants nothing to do with insurance. 

Success isn't really equipped for plan comparisons, discount codes, or last-minute texts to sitters. It certainly can't map the fastest route to somewhere it should have left for twenty minutes ago while making two separate dinners. Success just provided a balloon-drop of delightful news, and you want to talk about calendars? Next, you'll want her to take off her lucite platform heels and walk somewhere, you ingrate.

I'm 43 years old and I don't know what Success is supposed to do with or to me, or how I'm supposed to treat it. For starters, I don't believe it exists for me. It's a ghost other people have seen, a MagicEye puzzle I can't decipher. I dismiss it when it approaches and run after it when it's busy elsewhere. I'm a goddamned cat with a career.

When I left my corporate job in 2015, my husband issued a dire warning. "When you do this," he said, a steadied, pleading gaze and strong hands on my shoulders, "please...please. Please enjoy the journey. There won't be one thing that will make it worth it. Because then there will be another thing to get and do. And if you're still miserable, what's the point?"

Such sage wisdom emitted from the man receiving my death glare in a diner while I'm resetting my jaw over a greens scramble. 

See, he didn't see Success walk in. I got something. I booked something. That was his cue to jump up and down and look at me, wild-eyed yet earnest, pledging his support to make this work no matter what. Instead, he made a calm note of his support and wanted to get down to the business of scheduling and making sure we didn't lose all our money on sitters while I rehearse and he counsels people with actual problems.

My six-year-old, on the other hand, LOVES Success and her sparkly dress. She likes her hair all curly and up like that, and she likes how she smiles so big. So when she heard I got work, she shrieked and jumped up and hugged me. She danced she screamed so hard and so loud, she gave herself a scratchy throat. THAT'S how you greet Success. Take note, adults with decorum and social skills or whatever.

Of course, my Success is not the Success of my youth. She's slightly pale and has saggy bits she holds up with shapewear, unlike the easy, comfortable beauty of the Success of people half my age. And what is Success for if not comparison and scrutiny? That's how that works, right?

I hang out with some younger people in the same industry as me. They're vibrant and woke, covered in Fenty, with all their boob tissue up top and they wipe Malort from their chins before heading to Steppenwolf for a Front Bar mingler and a role in someone's reading from that tv show they watch. Their Success doesn't settle for sequins and a good contouring cream. It has natural glow. These folx don't start basement theatre companies that will fade into obscurity along with four-sectioned newspapers. They build empires to topple the old ways, new works that excite audiences and build careers. The Old Guard finds themselves submitting their headshot and resume to be a part of the party, trying to get a little of that Success Shimmer (the newest My Little Pony) on their older, weary I-Guess-This-Gig-Works version of themselves.  

We tend to think we've been passed by, and so we're not successful. 

My husband left the table, having finished his egg biscuit with expensive aoli, and waited outside for me. Realizing Success was not going to pay the tab (she was busy playing peek-a-boo with the children next to us), I gathered myself and headed to the parking lot. I told him I knew scheduling was part of accepting the gig, and so was the constant job search. I admitted that his wanting to discuss logisitics doesn't mean he isn't happy for me. It likely means I'm not happy for me. It likely means I don't think I'm enough, that Success has taken off, and that what I accomplished will never measure up to the list of things I don't have.

While I wallowed at home over these thoughts plus my husband being right (again), an old friend called. He needed some Chicago-specific advice, as he might be coming back here to stay for a while. He's been isolated and focused very intently on his work because he has a razor-sharp vision of what Success looks like to him. It's Godlike, his version, berobed in gold and placed upon the highest and most lush mountaintop. I mean, it's...it's a lot. And it was killing him. What he wanted was everything he thought he worked for and deserved. What he was missing was a community.

I talked to him for a couple of hours - on the phone. Who does THAT anymore? In that time, I found myself telling him to accept that a vision of Success can change, and that you have to appreciate the journey or you'll be miserable. I extolled the virtues of the Chicago Theater community up and down as though they were physically cradling me and gently rocking me to sleep each night. To be fair, I firmly believe they would if I or anyone asked.

I told him everything I needed to hear and be reminded of. We lamented our secret hope of being better than everyone else while simultaneously thinking we were rotten at all of it. We laughed about our horrible actor-writer brains, our need to please, and how the other people around you can either keep you sane or ruin you. I opt for the former.

He thanked me for the call, telling me I was the most positive person he had spoken to yet. It meant a lot to him. It meant a lot to me, too. That right there? That was Success in all her swaggering glamour.

Later that night, I got an email from my daughter's teacher. She commended her advanced reading skill, already where 1st graders should finish the year (she's in Kindergarten), and thanked me for raising a smart, kind, and thoughtful child. She called her an incredible girl. My heart swelled, and I felt like I had done something right. Like I had succeeded in something. 

Sure, it's taken me three days to churn this blog out, and it's not what I intended to write. But I've decided I'll take Success where I can, putting her in as many outfits as possible so she's more accessible. Those sequins need to go to the cleaners for a bit anyway.

Write Club at Crip Slam: Late v. Early (LATE)

Scene: The night before my deadline, 11:30 PM.

I should be sleeping. Why am I not sleeping? I love sleep. I mean I only do it when I’m supposed to be doing something else, but that does not diminish my love. I’m going to bed. No no I can’t. I have to finish this piece this is shit I am shit everything is shit.

I am a professional Later. I am Forever Late, and it isn’t out of disrespect for anyone’s time. I’ve read that article, too, all of them all of the articles I know, and it’s a dick move I pull consistently throughout my life until it’s one giant dick in perpetual motion. I am responsible for all of the dick movements in time. I’m sorry. But the thing is, it isn’t you. It’s me and my mismanagement of time. I just can’t seem to--

11:55 PM

Goddammit. Ok ok ok. I mean, I’d be up right now anyway. This is when the good stuff happens. If you’re in your twenties or a sociopath, all the good party stuff happens late. When mistakes happen. When shit gets good. Or, for a regular human, when you can watch whatever you want cause everyone else was asleep as soon as they heard the Taxi theme song. So -

12:15 AM

Fuckstick. Focus. Come on, focus. I gotta be up with a five year old in the morning.

Whom I had late, by the way. I had my daughter late, and I was made to believe that was a bad thing. Like, if I had just ignored the fact that I was living in payday loan cycles while chain smoking and waiting tables in my twenties, it would have been a great time to give birth. Sure, my early thirties were spent understanding what communication and validation are, but babies don’t need that until they’re like 12 or whatever so I should have just spat one out from one of those fumbly pretend-it’s-good one night stands, right? NO. Late means I’m physically older but emotionally prepared for when she melts down and can hold and comfort and teach her. 25 year old me woulda been all, “you think YOU have problems? I can’t pay this phone bill!”

If you die and you’re revered, you are the Late Great. Great is even implied when you say, “late.” No one quotes the Early James Joyce that’s weird no one does that don’t do that. Belated, even. It’s so ok to be late that they made us a prettier word to use if we wanna dress up for it. Happy Belated Birthday! “Oh thank you that’s just as good as the regular kind. In fact, this feels like I was forgotten about and then remembered by someone special. With a monocle.”

12:50 AM

Sure, I’ll make coffee. You know I failed more than one college course by being late with a paper? One of them cost me my degree. Who messes up a BFA? Me. I do. Once, I was early to work and people dropped shit on the ground and couldn’t take the shock.

Because fuck early. Late is for terrible delicious food choices you’d never make by the light of day - tell me you ordered a chicken fried steak during regular breakfast hours and I will call you a liar. Late is for lovers and their darkened alleyway trysts; for one more that turns into three more, for raiding the fridge, for getting your child when they cry out because you’re the only one who can make it better, for talks that you meant to have at a decent hour but they just didn’t come up and here you are when you should be in bed, finally laying old grudges to rest as the hours move into closing time. Late is for scandalous clothes and dance floors and secrets you weren’t supposed to know. How else are you gonna find out how many people think you’ve died in a ditch if you don’t make them worry? Also, PSA: no one actually dies in a ditch. We’re all just late. LATE. It’s magical, it’s forbidden, it’s sexy, it’s wrong, and it’s perfect. “I should go, it’s late,” is a beautiful way to start a conversation.

1:25 AM

I’ve forgotten how sleep works. It’s fine. Maybe I’ll try whiskey?

My husband and I have made each other late for 15 years. The most vital conversations, the heart wrenching, honest, naked, keep-your-voice-down-we’re-discussing-the-certainty-of-our-marital-and-financial-future-and-our-daughter-might-hear conversations happen when one of us is supposed to be getting out the door. He’s not up now, in the wee small hours, because he works two jobs six days a week and crashed out trying to play a video game to unwind after helping people recover from drug and alcohol addictions all day. I’m up because I perform in places with a bar. We make each other late because these talks need to happen, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let a silly construct like time get in the way of the man I love. We could find a better time to talk, but it hasn’t been invented yet.

Being late perpetually means I can problem solve on the fly. It means I know every alternate route and possible CTA/Lyft combination to get to my destination. It means I am intrigued by things, usually shiny ones, and it means I am an optimist. Think of how remarkable that is, considering the flaming heap of whatthefuckery we live on. I am hopeful that I can change time’s linear structure. Which means, I AM A TIME LORD. BOW DOWN, NERDS.

2:30 AM

ALL NIGHTER, You know superheroes don’t get up early, right? They work under the cover of darkness. That means late. You don’t see Batman movies and think, “man, sure is bright out.” Superheroes need masks and dark corners because you don’t best baddies over brunch. Also? Brunch is late breakfast with booze. Which means it’s better. I can’t believe I have to spell that out.

Look, you show up late to the party, you’re arriving. You show up early to the party, you’re awkwardly expecting me to entertain you while asking if you can help because I am still setting up while applying eyeliner and that’s just weird, Larry. Why are you here?

It is after 3am now.

I’m half delirious. It’s moved from late to early in the morning, which means it’s time for me to sleep. This piece will still be abhorrently late, which means I will still be on brand. Forever running to catch up. Forever being ok with it because I know all of your secrets. You can be mad and stay mad, but I’ve sat with you in diners and on couches and you’ve spilled your guts and told me what everyone’s problem is in the late late hours. You’ll forget because you can’t seem to handle your whiskey mixed with your minutes and hours. I’ll remember every word, because late is when I shine. Am I blackmailing you? Now? At the end of this thing? Better late than never.