On the days when I can’t look my friends in the eyes (my heart is beating too fast, I’m too worried they secretly hate me), I lick the inside of my teeth and imagine my mouth is full of pennies.
Today is one of those days, and the fictional taste of copper is not enough to land me in the reality that it is me who does this secret hating of myself, so I picture dimes, too. They’re thinner, by less than a millimeter, and I tell myself I could slip them between my teeth if I needed to. I could change myself, if I needed to.
On the days I go from completely fine (for my below average baseline measure), to brink of tears to edge of tears to cliff of tears to tears, I beg to be a woman or a mother, as if age and a wallet for my troubles will take this breathlessness away. Will make me opulent.
When my chest aches like swallowing peach pits and there is no one to blame but myself, I wonder what it will take and how the switch flips so fast in a room lit by candles. I melt wax on my skin. I ask for something stronger.
That same little monster — so talked about, so universal, so isolating and so cruel — I sometimes can’t imagine how there is more of it in the world than all that is concentrated inside of me. Concentrate: I can’t do this, concentrate: it multiplies upon itself.
How I beg to escape the dance, my own cliche, the coins beneath my tongue. They taste like change, a truth too sour to swallow.
Hi! I haven’t done one of these in a while. That feels bad and good at the same time. Bad, because it makes me wonder if I’ve been writing or doing the things I promised myself. Good, because I know I have, even while I’ve been slow to share.
Change is indeed sour, but it is also a fruit and facet of our existence and there is so much of it approaching me that all there is to do is watch what blossoms. All there is to do is have a full-on panic attack in the middle of the day. Oh, how I love to be dual.
Here are a few updates:
Writing news — my biography of my grandmother won a Hearst Media award :’) She cried about this. If you’d like to read Jane’s story, it’s here.
Life news — I’m graduating! Jumpscare… I’m entering my last week of college classes. I will not elaborate for fear of terrifying myself (and my mom).
I’ve been reading a lot of books. These Precious Days by Ann Patchet and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen are two that have stood out.
I hit a personal milestone — meditating for 888 days straight. The app Insight Timer has changed my life, and that comes from someone who truly always swore I could not sit still or quiet my mind.
Where are you since the last time we emailed? Somehow, for me, it feels like yesterday and another lifetime all the same. I’ve changed in a million ways, as it always seems to go. I’m no different, in that I apologize here and again for taking so much time away from this space that I actually adore (mostly because you’re here).
All that’s left to say is that I promise I have more writing coming very soon. And it’s stuff I’ve been working very hard on:) Thanks for hanging with me!
Cheers to spring, cheers to newness, cheers to reconnecting. May the coins in your mouth feel like pennies in a wish fountain — at least for a little while.
- Julia
Question to ask your mom: What is a change you’ve noticed in yourself recently?