I exchange lengthy voice notes with a close friend of ours that are very on-brand and hilariously us. We ADHD ramble, we lose our train of thought, and we condense seven separate conversations into bite-sized 2 minute clips. We use kid-like code words and he loves and knows me well enough to know that any uncharted (to me) LA territory means he will research the when/where of whatever we’ll be eating that day. We also fantastically gush and profess our love, thanking each other for seeing and hearing and understanding the other so well. Occasionally, we unintentionally allow patriarchal, societal norms to suck all the oxygen out of the room, leaving us with an emotional hangover, and send follow up messages like-
I hope I didn’t love you too hard or I hope I didn’t word barf the horrors all over you too hard or I hope I’m not ever too much.
Then one of us will tell the other that they could never, that they want to hear it all, that they love the other one without strings or conditions.
We tell one another that we’ll stop apologizing for simply loving the other. We keep apologizing. We repeat and I love it.
I love us. I love that I have this type of friendship with someone. I love that we can not only be ourselves but that I have someone in my life that I am lucky enough to say, This is one of the best people I have ever known and I get to be his friend, and I love that not every friendship has to or even should look like this. Friends for every occasion.
Anaya and I were talking about legacies last week and what I finished with was that it wasn’t my writing or ass or cooking that I wanted to remembered for. When I’m gone I want the first thing to be said is “they were one of the best people/wives/mothers I knew.”
Or at least one of them, and then my ass of course. Maybe my buttermilk biscuits, but definitely my ass.
My friend that I love hard and loves me hard and loud is one of the best people I have ever known. I would like to impact people the way they have impacted me and I tell them as much.
Platonic but big love is one of the most sacred things we have. Tell your friend(s) you love them, if you love them, and mean it.
xxx
The further I detach from fight/flight the more my brain and my heart space are able to trust the feelings of safety but my body hasn’t caught up and I have had it/noticed. I have spent years untethering from overriding my needs as a means of survival. The more I am able to look at my partner and see both of us as kids, the more able I am to clearly see my kids for what they are- kids, and all of their tenderest parts that simply want to feel seen and heard, the more my body rebels. My heart knows we’re safe. My brain fires well enough to do its absolute best at using reason, but my body kicks back. The weight of defeat feeling like you ran with sandbags tied to your ankles in an effort to make it. To do the necessary work, the exhausting work, of undoing 30+ years of trauma just for your body to say no thanks, none for me. I think I’ll roll around in my fight/flight awhile still. I know it’s temporary. I know that just like the rest of me, my body will eventually catch up. It feels like a kick in the teeth though. I’m doing my best to be patient and/but I am fucking tired.
xxx
In addition to being able to see clearly now that I’m not completely white-knuckling life or treading water, my perception and ability to accept as a whole zooms way out. Our four year old sobbing to the point of hiccups out of frustration for not being able to do the thing (climb a steep, rocky hill in sandals) without feeling afraid, then panicking, and then going back for more, isn’t a tantrum it’s just a four year old being four. A human that doesn’t possess the entirety of language let alone vocabulary, that is sad and frustrated and scared and communicating by way of crying because that is what he has access to. I’m not saying this makes being climbed like a tree or having shrill decibels burn the inside of your ears while standing in 90 degree, shadeless heat any easier. I am saying that I can see him clearer than I could before. I was him. I still am.
xxx
I was finishing up an essay (being fat/food writing/diet culture) for a deadline yesterday and I could feel the clouds rolling in. This revolting my body has been doing lately and cyclicly, as it does this time of year, has left me raw and feeling exposed. Moonie will be 8 next month. I have never had an 8 year old before and I have (my body did first, naturally) started connecting the dots that my kid is now the age I was when I began understanding that my experiences as an even younger child, and as an 8 year old child, were not normal. That the things that I saw or heard or lived at her age that I had once normalized, the emotions I suppressed out of survival, were not the norm. That they shouldn’t be anyone’s normal let alone a child. Do you know what it’s like to look at your kid and see yourself? I don’t mean your eyes or your hair. Do you know what it’s like to look at this entire human being your body created and carried and puzzle the pieces together that she could be you? I was 8 years old the first time I intentionally restricted my food intake in hopes of being smaller. My kid will be 8 next month.
And that’s just the beginning.
xxx
What’s your earliest memory? For the short term memory I lack my memories span and swim deep, something I am both grateful and resentful for.I don’t want all those memories. But I can see myself at four, still. I can certainly see myself at 8. I know I'm sensitive, really sensitive, some might say too sensitive even, but the fact that I can see my kids as me and vice versa fucks me up. Really fucks me up, actually. For all the years I had to be tough or strong or survive I question if I am that tough anymore. What about the years and years still ahead? What happens when I look at her next year and see my 9 year old self sitting on the porch in front of a locked house after being sent home from school early due to the weather. I try to imagine myself being on the other side of that locked door like my own mother was and teaching her a lesson for forgetting her house key and I can’t. I cannot and it’s an unbearable thought to even try and conjure. I’m still learning what it means to grieve for 9 year old me. You get forced into doing so when you suddenly have a carbon copy of yourself that needs you who is also 8 and then 9 and then and then and then- then it makes more sense. I wasn’t strong, I was just a fucking kid. There’s no faster track to reckoning than imagining your kid as you. What happens all the rest of the years to come and am I strong enough for them.
xxx
Touching grass before picking up my phone or drinking coffee every (most) mornings
Cooking and reading just because lately. No measurements, no documenting, not even note taking
New music
Old music
Hobby sharing with the kids
Watching Anaya read his favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird, to Moonie at bedtime
Making ice cream
Putting ghosts to bed
Little learning how to properly clack a fan
Minimal clothing
Water to consume or to be by or in or swim or soak
90’s movies
Looking like a 14 year old boy or high-femme, no in between
Salads with the gumption to be mains
Spoon cake, I keep trying to tell y’all
Celebrating my birthday and birthing day by way of sushi with Anaya. I turned 36 on June 30th. I didn’t expect myself to make it this far + bonus parts for getting hotter with age. The horrors persist but so do I (and my grey hair)
Making a yellow cake with chocolate frosting which happened to be my mother’s favorite and Little’s request for his birthday
NYT’s predictable list that inspired me to revisit my own top 10 (most influential to me) list in no particular order-
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Toast by Nigel Slater
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saaed Jones
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Blood, Bones and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
I love a list and I cannot finish this one. Yet.
There you have it, a shortlist of things keeping me afloat.
It isn’t all sky-is-falling and existentialism. It’s present tense and presence. It’s duality. It’s learning to slow down and not the hard way.
Check in with your people and when you ask them how they’re doing, say it with your chest.
Biggest love,
AR
Currently Reading: I am ashamed at the way I have been book-hopping but I was reading Pretty Baby by Chris Belcher earlier
Currently Listening To: A lot of 90’s alternative has been in the rotation
Currently Cooking: leftovers and dregs from the week
PPS apparently you have created a safe space here. Thank you.
Your missive hit home. I was 7 when my parents deemed me too fat and put me on a diet. Then I became the girl with crumbs in her pockets. The girl who wished to be able to have what everyone else was having. The girl who was too much literally and figuratively.
At the same time it became important to everyone that I get good (read perfect) grades in school. So then I became the girl who worried. The girl who obsessed about doing more. The girl who wasn’t enough.
I am 68 years old and have been in therapy for 20 years and what has helped me is EMDR therapy. I’m just now learning that it doesn’t matter that they thought me too much or not enough. It matters that I know I’m just right. Having a good person to guide you through the forest of the past and help you find the truth about you is everything.
I am grateful.
PS I never had children but your description of seeing you in her really touched me as I’ve begun to see the girl who was too much and not enough and heal her.
♥️