33: when it rains ⛈️

it pours, of course (december 2022)

Dec 31, 2022

Iteration #33 of this monthly letter full of feelings. This issue's theme is: ☁︎ absorbing the pouring rain ☁︎

A Time Traveling Feelings Letter
〰️〰️ sent on September 13, 2023 〰️〰️

4 images in a line. the first is a photograph taken from the passenger seat of a car at night; the sun is setting and you can see the rear view mirror in the frame. The 2nd is a photograph of a window with dappled golden hour light coming through the shades. Third is an iphone selfie of the author in the camera of the psychology today therapy portal. The last image is a screenshot of a text message exchange with Melissa where she is giving the recipe for an immune system boost tea. The recipe includes a fuck ton of ginger, tsp of turmeric, pinch of salt & pepper, tsp of cayenne pepper, tsp of cinnamon, tsp of lemon juice, honey, and cloves

When it rains, it pours. Did you know that phrase was created to sell table salt that doesn’t clump? I’ve been thinking about how much longer it takes dry soil to absorb heavy rainfall, how pouring rain during a drought causes flooding. How the soil is trying its hardest but just not processing all of that rain in time and it all starts to pile up. How many things can you keep stacking on top until the foundation just falls apart? I don’t know if any of these mixed metaphors are making sense, but I think there’s something there. I’m being dramatic about my melancholy but I’m also laughing at this tik tok on repeat. Both/and. When it rains.

I am the type of person that finally feels the weight of my emotions at the stupidest times, as if the transition from disassociation to confrontation requires a surprise back door. When my guard is down and my surroundings seem irrelevant: under the swing set at a birthday party, at a party on the last day of classes, at a palehound show when an acquaintance looks me right in the eyes and asks if I’m okay, in the middle of a facetime conversation with a Leo that I barely know. I am the child of two fire signs; I crave the chaos and intensity but can’t handle having my roots ripped out of the ground. My friend, a water sign, seems to process her pain on the fly: telling jokes and writing poems in the amount of time it takes me to get out of bed. I haven’t figured out how to quietly open the filing cabinet on a slow sunday and sort through the feelings. Is that a possibility? Is that something I should be working toward? I want to be responsible and keep myself under control, not embarrass myself in some unrelated outburst because my body couldn’t fit whatever emotion I was feeling into the overstuffed compartment.

A collage of 10 images in a line. From left to right, the first is a photograph of an orange fluffy cat's paws. The second is an iphone selfie of the author in a bathroom mirror with a child resting on their shoulders. The third is a photograph a baby in the arms of the author's partner. The baby's hand is holding the author's finger. Fourth is a photograph on the orange fluffy cat with her tongue out. Fifth is a polaroid of a porch with christmas decorations on it. Sixth is a photograph of a computer screen with a zoom chat and a hand holding The Sun tarot card from the Smith-Waite tarot deck. The card features a smiling baby on a horse with a huge radiant sun behind them. It is very yellow. The next image is a photograph of the author's star tattoo on their chest. Layered on top is an image pulled from a notebook that says "listen to this song to feel closer to me: closer to fine by the indigo girls." The last image all the way to the right is a photograph of the author's hands holding a printed photograph of their father and mother resting on the beach. Below it is a screenshot of a text message to arti that reads "on nye i'm gonna poke a little hopeful star on your ass"

I tested positive for COVID around the holidays and the entire season became sort of a wash. Christmas Eve was going to be at my brother’s new house; it felt like it could be a transitional year – the first time someone from our generation hosted the holiday. Maybe it’s better that it fell apart this year; maybe it would have been too much pressure. On the last day of December, I found out that someone who once broke my heart has terminal brain cancer; it was the first time I’d heard from them in years and they just wanted to let me know. I’m still not sure what to do with the information or what to make of it.

December didn’t always feel like treading water. Entering the month, I felt hope & optimism about the slowing down of the season. In that first weekend, I finally made the trip to see my friend and her summertime baby. I leaned into the slowness, let my guard down and tried not to let my usual intrusive hypervigilance take me out of it (what if something terrible happens at home / is my cat okay / is someone mad at me / what if someone’s feelings about me shift and I’m not there to change their mind / what if because I let my guard down, these friends realize they don’t like me / what if I’m not trying hard enough to prove my worth / what if the plant I brought them has a dormant disease / what if I make the wrong choice about dinner and everyone gets sick because of me / what if I haven’t done enough to deserve this slowness).

To resist the consistent mindset of urgency, I let my phone die and kept it buried in my bag. I took photographs with my digital camera and took stock of what was right in front of me: friends we chose to live our lives alongside as if they were family. Even if the parts of my life outside of this moment fell apart, I knew I could trust the vulnerability that exists between this friend and me. We had shown each other the parts of us we were most afraid of and we met each other with “I love that about you.” I could trust that; I could let the panic rest, at least while I was staying in their home.

two photographs by the author in their friend's pennsylvania home. The first image to the left is a black and white photographing showing Shawna kissing her baby on the head. The image to the right is a color photograph of Jake holding their baby. The background has a christmas tree and other holiday decorations.

I felt the panic return to my body as I settled into the passenger seat. I plugged my phone into the car charger as we started the drive back, and my heart dropped as a handful of missed calls and text messages showed up on the screen. From that Sunday through the rest of December, a lot of my time was spent figuring out how to manage what happened to unfold while my phone was off. It doesn’t feel like it’s mine to talk about, but I’m also trying to make sense of the effect it has had on me. Without naming it, let’s just call that the third thing. This letter is about the third thing, but it’s also about a lot of other things at once. Which is kind of, you know, like human existence or whatever.

🪐 always time traveling 🪐

I tried to write this back in December and I couldn’t even look at what I was feeling; I was just trying to keep it together and do my best to survive the moments with the least amount of harm as possible (which I guess sometimes means absorbing the harm because you think you can handle it). I’ve been craving privacy, only letting certain people in to the entirety of the experience. I didn’t want anyone to look me in the face and tell me what I already knew: it’s not your responsibility to fix this. Of course I know that. But what else is there to do but try?

2023 started and I put a wall up to just get some rest. January went by and I became aware with every passing day how exhausted I still was, how flooded my internal filing cabinets still were. I wanted to wrap up my feelings in a bow, but all of the paperwork was still too wet. The year marched along and I had a growing to do list. I knew if I didn’t process this, then it would come out unexpectedly: exaggerating my reaction to any perceived form of rejection. I knew this wall was temporary but I couldn’t figure out how to drain my flooded nervous system in a more responsible way. What is there to do? Then, eventually, it broke through like the fucking kool-aid man, flooding everything around me with fear – all of the fear I had pushed down so I wouldn’t feel it in the moment. Everything felt so viscerally difficult and it was just so much to explain.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say, which I guess is why this has taken so long to write. I tried to send this out a few times over the summer, tried to make a joke about putting off processing, waiting on the warmth of a new season to thaw out the freeze response. I’ve been impatient with the slowness – knowing that my body was putting up defenses, compartmentalizing and tucking little things away until it felt safe to process them. I wanted to get ahead of it before I let it fuck something else up. It’s impossible to compartmentalize when the compartments are flooded. How do you function in society with a flooded nervous system? Is this normal? How do you move through checking emails and completing jobs and catching up with friends? I could feel my body re-categorizing all of my anxiety and paranoia into eye twitches and tension in my muscles. Every time I went back to NYC, I had a panic attack. I don’t belong here; I’m too sensitive to function in the life I have.

an image of the author that shows a selfie in the corner. They are wearing a mask and clear glasses. They look tired. The larger photo shows the shadow of their legs alongside a yellow bar on the ground that says "watch the gap." The author is wearing velvet pants and chunky loafers. The setting looks like an outdoor subway station. To the left of this image, there is a screenshot of a message from Breanna that reads "idk about all of that but at the very least, i think he'd give you a giant fucking hug and say it's gonna be okay"

I used to be quick to cry. When I was a teenager I proudly told someone that I wore my heart on my sleeve, to which they responded “no, you just need to get better at compartmentalizing.” It quickly became a story that lived in the back of my mind rent free, fertilized by shame. I began trying to tame the tears that came. Now I know it to be something that just happens to traumatized kids – a seemingly small event leads to a flood of tears, just to be met with more embarrassment. Why am I crying at this? The shame at crying about something stupid only making the tears come faster. I couldn’t tell you if I cried at my dad’s funeral, but I have a memory (or maybe a dream, or even someone else’s story) of going up to his casket and kissing him over and over again, seemingly unphased by the idea of touching lifeless skin. I think I was probably great at compartmentalizing.

three color photographs in a row. the first on the left show a bouquet of cloth flowers in the middle of a white landscape. it looks as though the flowers could be in the middle of a flat ground of snow or ice. The middle photograph shows a wooden block on a shelf with other memorabilia like a lion kind music box and what looks like a framed college degree. On the wooden block is a drawing that looks like it was done by a child in crayon. It shows a sad face with an exagerated frown, a curved nose, and two big eyes. The face also has hair colored in crayon that looks long, at least a bob. The third photograph shows christmas lights in a pile of other objects. There is a matte board frame in the center but it isn't clear what the frame is intended to be around. The lighting in the photo is dark other than the colorful light coming off of the string lights, in blue, green, and red.

The summer after I turned 18, I was in a car accident just a few miles from my house. (I started writing this before sending out this letter about my recent car accident, which goes into some of these details).

My boyfriend at the time and his friends liked to drive fast old cars down the country roads; sometimes I could hear the sound of loud engines from my window at night while trying to fall asleep. They picked me up late one evening, and only minutes after pulling out of my mom’s driveway, we hit a patch of sand taking a corner and spun out for what felt like the longest lingering few seconds of darkness. I thought those were the last seconds I’d be alive, and all I could think about was my mom and what I was about to put her through in grieving me. A story about what didn’t flash before my eyes became the punchline to a self-deprecating joke about who the main character in my own mind was, and the accident became just another thing he and I promised not to bring up again.

This was the year I started having panic attacks in movie theaters. At the regal cinema in Great Northern Mall, my friends were surprised to find me crying hysterically through the credits of The Time Traveler’s Wife. I told them through shortened breaths that I was just freaked out by the car crash scene and it was so silly, I didn’t know why it was making me cry. Just a silly girl crying at silly things. I thought they would just let it go, let me cry it out. I thought I was being my normal, emotional, heart-on-my-sleeve self, but I guess they were concerned to see me reacting so intensely and kept listening; maybe I wasn’t acting like my normal self. It was one of the first times I felt truly held. Eventually I told them about the accident, making them promise not to tell anyone else - especially my best friend at the time. I didn’t want to tell anyone who could be traced back to my thoughts in those last few seconds. I didn’t want to go through what had already became such a familiar experience in grief: tending to someone else’s reaction to what I went through.

a collage of images and text. From left to right, there is a photograph of three kids sitting at a table. There is a large window behind them that takes up a lot of the frame. It looks like winter outside. Above that, there is handwritten text on ruled paper that reads "~I'm not sorry there's nothing to say~" a lyric from a Stars song. Next, there is a photograph of a small pine-type tree with wavy branches that is in a medium size grow pot on a shelf. The small tree has yellow christmas lights on it. Below this image is text on a green background that reads "the body... it keeps the score." The next image to the right is an iphone selfie of the author in their bedroom mirror. Layered on top of the selfie is a text exchange that reads "LOL just do slam poetry lmao" and above that is another text exchange, this one from Cecilia, that reads "sending you love and centering and as much internal quiet as possible, mentally i am zipping you up in a big puffer jacket sleeping bag protector of vibes and emotions, like getting ready to go work in the cold it makes you ready to work in the land of big emotions while you stay safe inside. ily b" Next to that, to the right, is a photograph at sunset looking out at the road from inside a car. The sky is blue and orange, and on top of the photograph is written in serif font: "I'm sorry if I haven't responded to you this week -- very tired! Doing my best!" Lastly, at the bottom right there is a text from Blake Harper that reads "is fine. 2023 motto"

A few years after that accident, I was with the ex who is now dying from brain cancer. We spent almost all of our time together for about two months. Classic u-haul situation. During one of our few and far between evenings apart, I had a panic attack at the Kips Bay AMC during Pacific Rim. I didn’t choose the movie. It could have been the loud noises that sent me into shallow breaths, but I assumed it had more to do with codependency.

Maybe these threads aren’t connecting and maybe I’m not trying hard enough to tie them together. Maybe this letter reads as an evidence board with pieces of red string connecting each memory. I spent most of December like a panicked detective looking for clues in every text, decoding stories, searching for symbolism in every seamingly frivolously place object. Rooms became galleries in a museum of generational trauma. All of this studying and I still couldn’t get the answer right. All of this listening and still I wouldn’t hear something, wouldn’t make the right connection. Do not force clarity.

5 images in a row, from left to right: a small screenshot of the author on facetime. They look stressed and the other end of the facetime call is just a white surface, as if the phone is pointed up at a ceiling. 2: a photograph of orange cat paws resting agains an external hard drive. 3) paperwork and old magazines laid on top of a bed. The image in the center looks to be an educational pamphlet about beavers? Or something? And it reads "boldness" at the top in bright red uppercase letters. The fourth and largest image in the line is a bright orange, pink, and purple sunset on top of a line of silhouetted trees. The last image is a photograph of a bottle of mustard on a counter next to a stack of cds.

I wanted to make sense of something that isn’t mine to make sense of. I became obsessed with the investigation, as if I could possibly figure out the solution myself, negotiate an answer that makes sense. Every time I run this formula, I’m the problem. Things might not have gotten this far if only I had noticed this, responded differently to that, been there to absorb more. If I didn’t fall asleep, if I didn’t freak out, if I didn’t need some air. Codependency can look like enmeshment but it can also look like trying to be perfect so the other person has no choice but to love you. A better listener, able to anticipate their needs without needing to ask any questions. Turning off the pain points to get through the storm. Forgiving yourself when you’re just not able to prevent your body from having a human reaction. Being perfect can’t possibly be the answer, but if I give you a reason to resent me, will you still love me?

Some photographs from December, etc.

4 images, from left to right: 1) a bright pink photograph of someone dancing with a disco ball. The slow shutter speed leads trails of neon light making waves across the frame. 2) a portrait of Caroline, up close so you mostly see just her eye illuminated by a rainbow light, touching the edges of her nose on one side and soft curls on the other. 3) a black and white portrait of becca parrish of Becca PR. 4) a photograph of a table scape with bright red and yellow hues — photographed the 10th anniversary party for audiofemme & got to spend some time with sweetheart caroline vance; made some quick portraits for the becca PR team before photographing their holiday party

❀ art is worth investing in (screenshot from an unknown source but I feel like it might be a marlee grace caption), a weighted blanket is not enough, apology is an opportunity for connection, a tiny prayer, an offering from jessica dore around the 4 of swords (with a really good caption), a post it reminder from shawna’s cork board, a cracked egg with light beaming through, a secret third thing, hibernating, anxiety & hope share an ethereal nature, I get my news from the only reliable source. ❀

gif of fran drescher from "the nanny" in a bright red outfit putting her hands up and saying "my whole nervous system just shut down."

This newsletter was started in the Onondaga & Haudenosaunee + then again in the Pennacook & Abenaki territory of the Wabanaki Nations, and was finally finished in Munsee Lenape & Schaghticoke territory. To learn more about the stolen land you're occupying, visit native-land.ca ⋰