Revisions Transmission Three

I am here

Every day I want to do more than I am capable of doing. I want to be a machine. I want to make the thing the best thing. I want to wrap my mind around everything, to consume every concept and turn it to liquid and create something jeweled that everyone wants to wear and admire. There is something deep inside me that is screaming. Something deep inside me that wants to stop. Something deep inside me that wants to go back to the Vipassana retreat in Nepal and sit for hours, eyes slightly open, and listen the the band of monkeys as they approach the meditation hall. Something deep inside me that wishes things could be as simple as silence and no eye contact, legs crossed and pain knifing up my spine and skin dissolving and all the sounds becoming my skin. I produced nothing then. I was nothing. I was everything.

Now I must produce. I must produce produce produce. I must page through editorial notes and page through my manuscript and toss and turn in bed as I try to wrap my mind around the structure of the book I am creating from my own life. This book gives my life meaning. This book makes me money. This books makes it all worth it. Because everything must be worth something or it is worthless and I am worthless.

Now I must produce. I must produce produce produce. I must write papers for classes to prove that I can write papers for classes. I must clean up my messes to prove I am someone who can clean up my messes. I must feed my cat because my cat is the only one who loves me unconditionally. I must feed my cat and clean up my messes and write papers and get my car’s oil changed and answer text messages and answer emails and set my alarm for 5:30am and read papers and read books and read newsletters and write newsletters because who am I if I don’t do things to get things?

Now I must ask you to subscribe, because if I don’t ask you to give me money Substack will remind me to ask you to give me money because Substack makes money off the money I make, but not as much as I make (though I don’t make much).

I stick the knife blade of my pain in between what I tell myself I must do. Create an opening. A sliver. I tilt the knife. The opening widens.

Inhale here and feel the tears right beneath the surface of everything.

Working hides this.

What I cut into has already been opened and exposed. There is nothing in me that has not been destroyed at least once. There is nothing in me that will face such deep destruction again. Nothing can hurt as much as it once hurt because pain will never be new again.

When I press my life together so tightly my body contracts and everything hurts and I stop breathing and I don’t cry and I forget all of the beautiful things, like you. Like me.

Forever I have been holding everything together.

If I hold everything at the same time I cannot move. I can’t see what I hold. I can’t admire what I’ve made.

My therapist says: write a list of everything you have done this year.

Two revisions. Five PhD courses taken. Four and a half writing composition courses taught. Sixty-seven possessions left behind. One cross-country flight with my life packed into two suitcases. Three hundred and six or so walks at parks and neighborhoods. Countless papers written. Modified Syllabi. Thirty-two physical therapy visits. Twenty-six shots of Humira. Three hundred and sixty two nights of sleep, alone.

I dreamed this life. I dreamed college. I dreamed my MFA. I dreamed my book. I dreamed this life and our culture sucks the life out of me no matter what, if I let it. I dreamed this life but our culture says I do not deserve this life.

I will not tell myself that I need a different body. I have to stop that.

Please don’t tell me that my body is a woman’s body or that my body is too large, please don’t tell me what my body should be please stop telling me (I whisper to myself).

This culture lives inside of me and if I let it live inside of me it will consume me from the inside.

Is there such a thing as free will?

We woke at 4am in Pokhara; before the sun rose there was a gong and S.N. Goenka’s voice followed us to the meditation hall. I had my own mat and pillow. After a few days it was my home; so easy. Always good at making anything my home. I felt my breath on my upper lip and then breathed my body and then sat without moving for hours. I always wanted to be a good student.

On day five I realized I was moving for others and not myself.

On day six I cried because I had no been looked at for six days, and I understood how much I wanted to be looked at.

On day eight I lost my body and that was good. The monkeys came through, chattering to each other. they were outside at lunch time, when we followed each other down the stone pathways for our chai and salad, the last meal of the day. A shock of eye contact; the first since day two. I hadn’t realized how much passes through us, how much we collect of one another. We watched a monkey carrying a baby on its back; more eye contact; so much there.

What does it mean to wish for silence, for nothing?

What does it mean to want to stay in silence forever? To finally understand how much it takes to live in this world? How much energy?

In the world I want to be a machine so I can stop remembering. I want to begin again with a better family and without so much pain. I want to know what it feels like to trust. I want to give my child-self what they deserved.

I have always been all or nothing. We learn to be who we are and we bring ourselves into this world, both.

Can I bring joy?

Press the knife all the way in until the gap is big enough for a finger, a body.

Make space for myself in my own life.

My large body.

My giant heart.

My tenderness and softness and pain.

My strength.

And quiet.

If I can’t make space for myself in my own life, how can I create myself in my writing, in my book, in my world?

I want to be big here.

I dreamed this life into creation and I clawed my way to this moment. I will not tell myself I’m not good enough to be here. To enjoy it. I deserve this.

We deserve this.

We deserve to be here, not metal or machines. Here. Present. Open. Free.