35: the weight of warm days ☀️
the guilt of spring & hurting my own feelings (february 2023)
A Time Traveling Feelings Letter (or, for days when everything feels impossible)
〰️〰️〰️ sent on April 3, 2023 〰️〰️〰️
For days when checking my email makes me forget to breathe. When all I can imagine is laying my body down in a patch of sun and waiting for everything to deteriorate. When I keep picking up my phone to look at things that only make me feel lousy. When I’m convinced that everyone hates me, that there is nothing love-able within these rotten cells. When everything I’ve ever said feels redundant but I still feel misunderstood. When I want to be a part of something but don’t think I deserve to. When I think I should be doing more. When I remember the answer to the question “in the last 2 weeks have you experienced having little to no interest in doing things?” What are the things anyway? For days when I can’t seem to stop hurting my own feelings.
the feeling of sun on my skin
It’s no secret that I take the passing of time personally. I’ve shared before about a reluctance toward spring, and I’m feeling it acutely now. Seeing people share photos of flowers and talk about warm weather finally being here feels like being without a father in the greeting card aisle in June. I’m not sure why, but the feeling occupies a similar isolated & lonely corner of my brain. Except I have a choice about the spring thing. Right? I’m not participating in the excitement of the bulbs opening up because I’m comfortable in my cave. I don’t want the sun to illuminate my bloodshot eyes and prickly skin. I’m scared people think I’m choosing sadness.
I was walking around without a coat on a warm day in February, almost 60 degrees – “too warm” for this time of year on the east coast. It feels so good to have sun on my skin but I can’t help feeling guilty about it. Who am I to enjoy this warmth? My inner critic is such a buzzkill. By the time I’m writing this, it’s actually cold again. A cold day in March – the spring equinox just passed, and the night before I walked one block outside and turned around because I couldn’t stand the cold. I should be so lucky to feel the cold air in my chest. Feel my lungs expanding. Now I’m revisiting this paragraph and it’s April, another really nice day, time keeps churning them out.
E A S Y D O E S I T
This time of year I have days where I’m just sad about every possible thing: the way the air smells on one corner of the street, remembering things I felt over the holidays and forgot about, the idea that my cat is merely mortal, the wind, a car commercial.
It’s one of those clear winter nights where the stars are really out it makes you feel grateful to share a blip of existence with birds and bugs and trees. It’s warm enough to walk around outside without your ears and fingertips getting too cold. I guess I should be in the habit of wearing a hat and gloves through a New York winter. Anyway, it’s nice. It’s really nice but no amount of niceness can bring my dad back and, well…. the polar ice caps are still melting. Jesus, can’t I let something just be nice? I wonder if the giant island of garbage in the pacific has grown sentient. Does it appreciate unseasonably warm moments or does it only know bitterness? Twice the size of Texas I’m sure it’s full of more complexity than my meaningless body. I made a life that I love after all but my dad is still dead and I’m still listless and lonely for no good reason. No “good” reason. Whatever that means. Every day on this planet is a fucking blessing and you’re having a panic attack about 78 unread emails? No good reason.
When I say this time of year, I guess I just mean winter. The space between the holidays and the end of march – the space of ennui most people chalk up to seasonal affective disorder. But I don’t just mean winter; I guess I said that to downplay it. I mean the stretch of time when my dad was dying and the residue that’s left in my body every year when it receives reminders.
I can’t imagine surviving an entire winter on your death bed. I think I’d let go at the smallest inconvenience. What a selfish thing to think, let alone share with an audience. I guess that probably isn’t true. The will to live is acutely inspired when life is threatened. (Is that right? I don’t know). I can hear my elders now going on about what’s wrong with my generation – “they’ve got it too easy!” What’s there to live for if theres not a fight? I catch my eyes swelling and the thought passes through my mind: my dad would be so disappointed at my lack of lust for life. He proved he could make it to Christmas and then some. And some and some and some more almost to spring.
I’ve let my unread texts build up again. It feels like I just chiseled away at that little glaring red icon, perfectly contrasted against the bright green messages app like a visual alarm bell; reminding me how many moments I received a fragment of human contact and thought “I don’t have the energy to be a good version of myself right now.”
Today the air smells like my Uncle Mike – cold wintergreen breath behind coarse stubble and the faint smell of cigarettes. I haven’t seen my dad’s brother since my college graduation party – a sad display of picnic tables in the driveway of my mom’s house, a few scattered half cousins twice removed, sitting at opposite sides of each table. Uncle Mike gave me a photo album he had started when I was little. He said he was saving it for my graduation, the first few pages full of early childhood, a clipping from the newspaper about my high school art award, and a lifetime of empty pages. Does it matter if something is factually true or emotionally true?
This time of year I worry I’ve pushed anyone I ever could have tricked into loving me away. My psychiatrist tells me that I deserve to keep the negative self talk low and not doubt myself. She says she’s proud of me. I don’t believe her. Who do I think I am, not believing her? Who do I think I am, thinking my dad would be disappointed in me for continuing to wake up and go to sleep every day even when it hurts.
Some Work from February, etc.
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This newsletter was sent from the Munsee Lenape & Schaghticoke territory. To learn more about the stolen land you're occupying, visit native-land.ca ⋰
