Writing tidbits

from 2022

March

I love ranunculus. A bit wonky, a bit wild. A bit alien, like something beautiful that got hit by some random genetic mutation or serum.

I love them because of their almost-perfection. Because they remind me of me. Because sometimes I feel a bit alien, a bit off-kilter. About to burst with all these ideas and passions and adventures, and it has me walking with a tilt to my head.

But ranunculus break under their wonkiness. Their out-of-shape stems cannot handle their weight.

What does that say about me?

“Why do you care so much about being liked?”

The girl looked a bit startled. A bit panicked, as if she’d been found out.

She opened her mouth first in defense, but no sound came out. Clamping her lips down for a second, then — almost as if she was trying to believe it herself — “Doesn’t everyone want to be liked?”

“Not me,” the other girl said baldly. “I wanted to be loved.”

April

I showed Hannah McCune the Newseum’s Pulitzer Prize Photography book yesterday. We flipped through it, and I recounted all the stories each photo told. And I realized — these are quite dark stories.

So why do I say they’re my favorite?

Anything that moves me, makes me feel — I love. I crave feelings. I crave to be moved. To feel it in my gut. To ache, to grieve for the strangers.

It’s almost like I’m allowed to get attached without all the messy strings that come attached to it. Without the years-long weeping for that child lost, that soldier shot. Without the trauma and twelfth-hour screams from living through that war.

So I want to feel, but I don’t want to feel it really. I want half of the picture.

I’m a bit fortified by my fear.

Fear can protect and insulate.

But by going against my fear, I am fortified.

I do the thing that scares me, makes me uncomfortable.

I go to bat. I throw the ball. I sign up and show up. And it scares me.

I’m hella nervous when I go up to bat. Of screwing up. Of embarrassing myself. Of disappointing my idea of myself. So I smile and laugh at my errors, and smile and laugh when I’m pleasantly surprised.

I do it all despite my fear, because I can’t help but feel that the act doing these little things, saying yes, is building me more into the person I want to be. A sturdier, more solid — less shadowy — person. More confident, yet more humble.

I face my fears to be fortified.

May

I have these plants that I’ve neglected some. But I’ve kept them alive, even if it’s just barely. They don’t look good by any means. And I’m half-inclined just to toss them out.

But why do that?

Wouldn’t that make all of my efforts, all my watering worthless?

June

Is it weird to be sitting in a coffee shop that marked two years of your life, and feel tears and love for the people the used to occupy this space? I miss the barista that used to hand me mistake drinks. The baristas that I called friends and would frequently silent-laugh with when yet another person asked for the wifi Password. The old couple that used to get cortados, then ask for hot water to in their empty cups (and then drink it, oddly enough). The European food critic and his wife who would take loud, foreign-language filled phone calls in the midst of this space.

July

I forgot. I forgot how they treat your post-surgical incisions. How they carefully peel back the steristrips. Rub an iodine pen on them. Gently lay new steristrips over each little blood-dried slash.

Maybe that’s why I like surgery. Well, ‘like’ might be too strong of a word.

I like to be cared for and tended to. And it’s only when I’m lying on an operating table, completely helpless, that I actually let myself be.

No one tells you how hard it is to fall asleep after surgery. With one leg elevated. Or with head and upper body at an incline. You can never get fully comfortable.

I read over all my charts. All the notations other people made about me, my body. I see me through their lens. I cross patient portals, log ins, lab results and visit summaries. And I want to cry.

Is this what I am? Am I all these things performed on me?

I can picture every waiting room, every office. But at the same time, I have wiped ten years of visits and bloodwork and procedures from my memory. I forgot about the GI doctor with the charming British accent that I saw at 16. I forgot about the PT I saw right after I graduated college. I forgot about the alternative medicine doctor I saw in college — heck, I forgot the one I saw last year. I want to cry just reading all the medical words on the screen. Because it’s so, so much.

_______

I sob reading the intraoperative notes.

At 12:13 they cut me open. But I had no idea what was going on.

13:48 — They closed me up.

I see names I never knew, but who were there, but who bore witness to this work. Scrub personnels, and scrub reliefs. Who was this Regina Chevalier?

They wrote down that my left arm was extended, that my left leg was secured in a stirrup.

Dr. Silverman was my anesthesiologist. I can see the compounds of the anesthesia used on me. I can see my heart rate, my blood pressure during surgery.

At 14:03, Dr. Schertzer scrubbed out.

_____

I look up what “lithotomy” means. And I see pictures of people in that position. And I grieve. I grieve for that unconscious girl, being cut open and moved, entirely unaware of what was going on.

____

I am an information intaker, an information digester. But sometimes, even for me, the information can overwhelm. Sometimes, information is not power. Sometimes information is a tool of the enemy.

Sometimes I feel like a UFC wrestler or a heavyweight boxer, pinned down my opponent, cheek on the mat. An elbow is over my neck, the full weight of another on top of me. And I’m smacking the mat as hard as one can when their oxygen is being cut off.

SMACK! I need a let up.

SMACK! I can’t take this anymore.

SMACK! Someone, just give me some air.

SMACK! Please.

August

I’m at Emory right now, in a surgery waiting room. I am not one of the many family members or dedicated drivers. I am waiting to be taken back for a colonoscopy. It’s no biggie — it’s not my first.

But I am the youngest one here. Everyone occupying these seats has decades on me. There are people with walkers, with oxygen tanks.

And I think —

I don’t belong here. I belong in the land of the living.

September

Riding the train into Spiez — it’s like air filling up my lungs.

I’ve been looking at this mountain for half my life, and I don’t know it’s name.

Is that what it’s like to do life without God? To be raised in Christian household, and hear about him, but never truly know him?

I was listening to the Bible Recap today, and TLC shared about a friend who’d smoked her whole life and struggled to quit. Then one day, she quit it — cold turkey. No patches. No weaning off. And when asked why, she said, “I wanted to hear what else God had to say to me.” She’d been hearing God say, “Quit smoking. I’m calling you to give this thing up,” for so long, and she wanted to hear him say something new.

Fast forward to tonight — I’m listening to Make Room on my drive back from the gym. And I think — this is it. What that woman was talking about is part of making room.

And I think about my own life. What things I’ve been feeling nudged toward by God. … Less time on phone …. Less time on social media … waking up earlier … writing more …

Don’t I want to hear him say something new?

October

I was biking along the marsh, thinking about fame, and being known.

I remember as a child longing for fame. Scribbling in my journals and envisioning NYT best-seller list books, that would then be turned into movies (which then I would star in, of course).

But today, fame is no longer my deepest desire.

As I pedal on, I wonder.

Do most of us fall into one of the two camps — longing for or apathy towards fame?

I guess we all fall into really just one.

We all want to be known.
By one million. Or just by one.

“I longed for the validation that fame implied.”

There’s this breath I do in physical therapy. You open your mouth like you’re about to take a big bite of a Publix sub, and you let out an ahhhhh. It feels like part scream, part silent cry.

Lately I’ve found myself doing it while biking or walking by myself. I know the ache well in my chest, of the stuck-ness and not-yet-ness and the longing-ness and all that life is and is not.

Grief over a dog is a strange thing.

I just think of her breathing stopping, but heart still beating. Her going still, head sliding off of my dad’s lap. Dad covering her with that blue blanket, and us leaving her on the floor in that barren room.

Now I am sitting on the couch at home. A home with one extra dog bed, one extra water bowl, one extra kennel.

Her home is here, her nails click clacking on the hardwoods, jumping up on mom and dad’s bed, whining outside the door.

She is here.

Yet we left her there.

November

Do you ever think about how close we’re willing to let ourselves get to the edge?

I’ll let myself inch right up to the other car’s bumper, only stopping when the sensors flash.

I crawled up to her side, pressing my left cheek to hers. I stayed there for a moment, eyes closed, exhaling.

“I think I get my feeling from you.

I think we both feel a lot.

And sometimes, we just don’t know what to do with it.”

December

I’m realizing there’s a difference between asking questions and being curious.

When I ask questions, all I care about is the answer.

Does it entertain me? … Does it surprise me? … Does it meet the unvoiced standards I’ve already set for it?

But curiosity takes that answer, and genuinely asks another question of it.

Curiosity listens, and it doesn’t just listen for the initial answer.

It listens for what is unsaid.

It listens and wonders why a person responded that way.

It wonders about who the person is in front of you.

This person is not someone to figure out.

This is an infinitely complex, precious person.

They are not meant to be put into a box.

[At Saint Simons]

I’ve been thinking about what it means to know a place, a thing, so intimately. To know the tides and water and how to read the winds and which waves to ride. To know the mountain and the forest. To know the skies and the sun.

You can’t just do some research and then write about that kind of stuff. You have to know it.

I think about raising children who know the marsh, know the tides. Know how to read a storm coming over the ridge. Know how to catch the perfect wave. Know how to raise their sails and crest the waves. Know how to triple-tie a knot. Who know the land like I know Atlanta traffic.

And there it is.

We knew it was there all along, lying in wait.

It was love.