and today we made it through

and that is pretty good.

Everybody loves to hate the internet. Everybody hates to love it.  The internet is the self (the one we’ve constructed, at least), so I’ll read that again but this time to remember that the odds are stacked against me, the odds are 16 in 1000 (that I will be attacked for being Asian), the odds are 1 in 4 (that I will want an abortion), the odds are 1 in something (that I will get the numbers a little wrong and you will believe them anyway), and I can’t stop reading the news, and by the news I mean Instagram and by reading I mean my heart thumps at 120 beats per minute when I see the words “Senate” or “women” or “need.” By reading the news I mean my head stays on a swivel, I run with one headphone in, I live with two elbows out, and I have just that many more weeks to use the runon sentence until I become an adult and I have to know what I mean and mean what I say. I’m growing up — says the girl who feels smaller and smaller each day. 

I sort grapes and cups by character (do you know what I mean when I say this? do you do this too? Please tell me you don’t, please tell me you do). I think my friends hate me and pretend they don’t, I listen to the voice in my head because I believe in myself — no, I listen to the voice in my head because it won’t go away, I cringe every time I comment “obsessed” on an Instagram photo and then I check the lock on my car until the little horn breaks and I train my ear to hear the whisper of leather on leather. 

I have always known myself as only my body (and by that I mean I learned to see that way from the world). I learned that little boys wore trunks to the pool, and little girls wore tankinis and the moms clicked their tongues as the tops got smaller, and that was all there was. That’s what the world taught then (at least in my small corner of it). It would always be one or other, and we know — I assume of you, reader, I invite of you, reader — that this isn’t true. But there was only red means stop and green means go; there was only yes and no; there was never a gray area and what they should teach you when you are young is that things aren’t always binary, that you are a gray area and gray areas are for fighting over and fighting is for power and power is the absence of love (I don’t know anything about love, except mom and dad don’t go to sleep angry; I don’t know anything about love, except I am trying to remember what gentle feels like). 

My first thought is always to apologize. 

I’m sorry. 

Writing is a practice and I thought I had nothing to say this month and I wasn’t going to send a newsletter because I didn’t really think anyone would notice and I didn’t really mind but I carved out this little corner of our boundless internet for this to be my practice and so here is yet another stream of consciousness and I wonder if you’ve read this far and stream, here, tastes like irony because there is one tear perched on my left cheek where it always does and it is waiting for another to join it (and then another and then another) but we won’t fall today because I only had one tear left to cry. Really, I just felt like I owed you something.

I felt like this is a heavy time and I am scared. This is also summer and there is sun and the birds the neighbor pointed out and there is stone fruit that is still a little tart, things are still a little hard. 

This is also 11:06 PM on Wednesday, June 29th and I’m taking one breath in and two breaths out and in between, before I let the air fill my lungs, I’m saying I’m sorry to the people who lost something this week (that’s all of us) and sorry to my parents (who worry about me sometimes, who love me despite), and sorry to myself for forcing words out when my well had run dry. I’m tired. I’m okay. I did my best today. I told my mom I love her. 

---

10 questions that I would (and maybe will) ask my mom today: 

1. What was the first thing you thought about when you woke up this morning?

2. What is something you wish you could remember better from when you were young?

3. What is something you wish you could remember better from when I was young?

4. Do you have a favorite pair of shoes?

5. How do you feel about holding hands?

6. Do you want me to be like you? 

7. Did you always want to have children? 

8. What is the hardest part about being a mom?

9. Do you remember your 21st birthday? 

10. Do you think things will get better?

And three that you would (thanks to those who shared):

1. Are you proud of/did you like who you were growing up, and are you proud of/do you like who you are now?

2. Is heaven really a beautiful place? 

3. Are you proud of me?