burning

In Pandemia, the mornings are precious. Even under normal circumstances, this barrel toward summer solstice is my favorite time of year, sky already brightening and birds already singing when the alarm rings at 5:30, the shadow of the plum tree outside my bedroom window dappling morning light across the walls, evidence all around of the natural world alive and shimmering me awake. I’ve been a morning person for a long time, but in Pandemia, these hours of quiet before my housemates rise are sacred. There is of course, also, the promise of a strong cup of coffee. A settling into my day before having to talk to anyone. And, with zero external distractions, I don’t know what the hell else to do but sit and write and listen to what is calling me to go inside.

Since entering into this new normal, the stakes feel higher. I know I’m not alone in having certain behaviors and thought patterns I thought were long retired or at least gone dormant rearing their heads, calling out. I know we are all having to face the things we thought we’d managed to stuff under rugs. What feels urgent to me now is not numbing myself through this. What feels urgent to me now is letting whatever this is work itself over on me. What feels urgent to me now is not wasting time thinking and dreaming and talking and fantasizing about all the things I want to say, and actually saying them.

I’ve been working on the same personal essay since last summer. Indeed, I’m a slow writer. And, it’s more than that. Spending time with memory, and all the associated feelings, emotions, pain, confusion, is a murky process. One I have to make my way through cautiously, carefully, like driving through thick fog. Memory is like that sometimes, especially if, like me, you’re attempting to make sense of what in retrospect was the beginning of a long period of numbing out.

I’ve been staring at the photo of this girl, for whom I’m writing:

This is me at sixteen. This is my favorite photo taken of me, ever. It’s also hard to look at, because I remember utterly what it was like to be in that brain, body.

I, like many of us, didn’t get any training on how to deal with myself. How to cope with wildfire emotions and a deep sensitivity that overwhelmed my parents. The training I did get told me that who I was was not safe. Externally, I didn’t know where to go, how to be, so I went deep inside. My anxiety burned. Increasingly confined, my edges started to bleed out. I had issues with authority. I was routinely pulled over for going well over the speed limit. At home, all I did was fight, rail, riot. I might erupt at any time, and so when we started getting high, and I found a way to escape? It was heaven, until, inevitably, it became heaven’s opposite.

In recovery, I choose every day to not escape my life. I’m still full of fire. I’m just no longer afraid of burning.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’m sixteen again. I’m breaking out like a teenager. I’m angsty, and blue, and boy crazy, and stubborn in my wallowing. I’m annoyed at my parents. I’m terrified of the future, and paradoxically, I want to be anywhere but here. Stuck at home, there are moments when I might melt.

This thing is burning through us. We all know the number(s). So many people lost. And so many more will go. What do we do with this burning? We wear our masks, we stay at home, yes. At some point, that will end. Then what?

A common refrain here in Pandemia is the acknowledgement that though we don’t know what’s next, we’re sure we don’t want things to go back to the way they were.

I quit drinking and I had to let my old life burn in order for me to become something—someone—wholly different. This was not and is not a clean or neat process. There was a long period after the initial burn where I had to sit in the discomfort of not only not knowing what was next for me, but not even knowing who I was. Not really. And if you don’t know who you are, you can’t know what you want. Not really. I’m still on fire. The difference is that now, instead of trying to kill me, the fire is generative. I am no longer ever on the brink of self-destruction.

If you are burning, I see you. I get you. I am out here with you in the fallow, turning over the dark, rich soil of potential, doing my best to pluck out the invasive species and to nurture the parts that have not seen the light in a long time. I am alongside you as we pick our way through what remains, those most essential parts that can never burn, that when held up to the light refract beauty and truth so brightly that we can barely look at them head on. I am loving you through the waiting, through this unbearable season of not knowing, as we sit and smolder and cross our fingers that everything that is coming will honor all that is lost, that what is germinating is indeed the seeds of our collective imaginations, that we might rise and spread and spiral and become.

---

hey there everyone. how we doing? I’d love to hear how you’re making your way - leave a comment and let me know.

Also: Your support funds this newsletter, and it also funds my ability to write it. Thank you. Your support allows me to take this seriously and to feel secure in writing as a career in a moment where not a lot of people can say that. I am so grateful.

Please consider sharing this newsletter with someone else who might like it (and THANK YOU, truly).