Energetically Empty
Whirling in a whirlpool of whirls
Today is my only day off this week. Last week I worked 45 hours. When my employer, who isn’t a company but a person (I work as a nanny) asked me if I wanted the overtime, I tried not to seem so enthusiastic that I expressed desperation. Overtime? My credit card debt looms. My student loans. I would work 50 hours a week if I could. I do, with my writing, for which I often don’t get paid.
I told myself I wouldn’t do anything on my day off. Let myself off the hook. The hook is a voice in my head that says go. It’s still here, saying go. I am going, despite a headache and a deep sadness at the recent loss of a special person in my sphere of being. (You can donate to his partner’s GoFundMe).
I woke up thinking of Anthony, and of the cohort of beautiful people that surrounded him at our MFA program at Syracuse. If it were regular life I’d be buying a plane ticket to see them, and we could be together, to comfort one another. But nothing is regular. Anthony’s book will come out this summer, and he won’t be here to enjoy its release. Or maybe he will, from afar. I hope he will.
While I slept last night I dreamed of my mother. I dream of her once or twice a month. The dreams have evolved from her trying to kill me to less disturbing content. Last night she sat on a couch looking through a photo album, and I told her about the baby picture I’d found of myself, her handwriting scrawled on the back— I don’t love Janet, not like I loved Stacy.
If only she were here to see that I’ve reverted back to that childhood name. Would she love me again?
(For reference, my full name is Janet Anastasia Selby, the first name being my grandmothers’s.)
What would she think of my choosing the name because it feels less gendered to me? Because I have never fully identified as a girl or a woman?
It’s the holidays, which means I’m thinking of my mother a lot. Picturing other family members, like her sister and two brothers, getting together for the holidays (no doubt they will, as they subscribe to American exceptionalism as much as the rest of our country does). Sometimes I wonder why they don’t contact me. Am I not good enough for them? Do they simply not think about the child of their sister who died by suicide? Do they think of their dead sister at all? I remember jumping on the mattresses of my rich cousins. They had a huge playroom. They gave my mom and I their old furniture.
They’re still rich. Blonde. With babies. Republicans, probably. Why would I want to spend time with them?
And my stepdad, who lives only an hour away, in the house I spent my teenage years in. We don’t talk anymore either. That was my doing. When I picture him I see him yelling at me, as he often did when I was a teenager. Making fun of me. Was it fun for him and my mom to lock me in my room when I was younger? And why do I long for someone who locked me in my room, who called me fat, who has never treated me as a fully human being. Why do I long for my family?
Silly question.
Today I finished The Last Samurai, a beautiful book whose narrative is both repetitive and fresh. A young boy searches for his father, and longs for his father to be someone else. His mother years for death. She obsessively watches Seven Samurai.
Death runs parallel to our world. For Christmas, I am going to a small state park cabin to exist, and write, and read. Away from the city. Near the ocean. I hope for birdsong. Birds don’t live long but they are always around, hiding in bushes and occupying large bodies of water.
One of the boys I nanny has been processing fear around uncontrollable phenomena, such as waves and birds and wind. We went to the park last week, a beach we frequent, and there was a murder of crows (I don’t like that phrase but whatever). They were gathered in the bare tree branches and would flock to a small inlet, where they bathed and chatted and fought over dead things.
I want to go home, the boy would say, as his brother threw rocks into the ocean. I told him we weren’t going home yet, but he could hold my hand whenever he wanted. He put his tiny hand in mine and let go, grasped and released, grasped and released. This week he’s been doing the same. Seeking the warm reassurance of my hand, my presence. Letting go.
We all want that presence, right?
We chased the birds once, and now he only wants to chase them.
This week we saw a small dying seal on the beach and I said it was sleeping.
I had an entire idea for this newsletter, but it turns out I’m simply writing about things, without much forethought or editing. I hope it’s okay.
With love,
Stacy