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"that still can ring"
Nov. 12th, 2016 08:51 amI don't want to talk about the election. By which I mean of course i want to talk about the election, but so many people have done it so much better than I have, and I fear/feel all I have is fear and slogans.
I'm sitting with this fierce appetite for community that is not at all blunted by the fact that I'm socially awkward at the best of times and a wild introvert most of the rest. So, for the moment, I'm going to try to write things in places other people can see them from the comfort of my own couch, drinking my fourteenth cup of peppermint tea in the vague hopes this cold will at least be a quick one.
I've been taking a memoir class this semester, and the only assignment is to produce, each week, three pages of writing that could conceivably be from my memoir. And I've wandered all over the place in my topics, two pieces about BRCA+, one about Lesson, one about Braids, one about Red, one about my childhood, one about being my own unreliable narrator, one about celebrating 13 years of not smoking, one about hyper-vigilance, and I'm working up to convincing myself to turn in the one I wrote about the night I tried to kill myself. (I hadn't intended to write that one, I had instead written a piece that in editing I had decided needed to start with a strong disclaimer, and I chose "I do not want your pity" which led to me writing another piece entirely about that time that someone said to me all I wanted was pity, which lead to talking about M, which lead to talking about J, which lead to that night.)
It's been hard, it's been seeming to suck up a lot of my energy and I'm contemplating posting some of them here, with all the proper names changed. And it's been making me think about why I don't have college friends, high school friends, Northampton friends, why I'm someone who is discarded, someone who discards, how I'd ever reach out again and why, with maybe three (at most) exceptions, that's such a bad idea.
Light seems like he's just about to accept an offer for a new job, and I have been trying so hard to absorb the understanding that this is how software engineers career paths go, jobs just get changed every couple of years,and so I don't ask about the longevity of a job, I only ask if it is something that will make him happy and how good the benefits are. But I'm also still that anomaly who has had only two employers in the past fifteen years, a community hospital and then the Beast and I feel like that says something about my desire for loyalty to count, my desire for stability outweighing other things that might benefit me more.
And now I'm going to be self indulgent and listen to Leonard Cohen.
I'm sitting with this fierce appetite for community that is not at all blunted by the fact that I'm socially awkward at the best of times and a wild introvert most of the rest. So, for the moment, I'm going to try to write things in places other people can see them from the comfort of my own couch, drinking my fourteenth cup of peppermint tea in the vague hopes this cold will at least be a quick one.
I've been taking a memoir class this semester, and the only assignment is to produce, each week, three pages of writing that could conceivably be from my memoir. And I've wandered all over the place in my topics, two pieces about BRCA+, one about Lesson, one about Braids, one about Red, one about my childhood, one about being my own unreliable narrator, one about celebrating 13 years of not smoking, one about hyper-vigilance, and I'm working up to convincing myself to turn in the one I wrote about the night I tried to kill myself. (I hadn't intended to write that one, I had instead written a piece that in editing I had decided needed to start with a strong disclaimer, and I chose "I do not want your pity" which led to me writing another piece entirely about that time that someone said to me all I wanted was pity, which lead to talking about M, which lead to talking about J, which lead to that night.)
It's been hard, it's been seeming to suck up a lot of my energy and I'm contemplating posting some of them here, with all the proper names changed. And it's been making me think about why I don't have college friends, high school friends, Northampton friends, why I'm someone who is discarded, someone who discards, how I'd ever reach out again and why, with maybe three (at most) exceptions, that's such a bad idea.
Light seems like he's just about to accept an offer for a new job, and I have been trying so hard to absorb the understanding that this is how software engineers career paths go, jobs just get changed every couple of years,and so I don't ask about the longevity of a job, I only ask if it is something that will make him happy and how good the benefits are. But I'm also still that anomaly who has had only two employers in the past fifteen years, a community hospital and then the Beast and I feel like that says something about my desire for loyalty to count, my desire for stability outweighing other things that might benefit me more.
And now I'm going to be self indulgent and listen to Leonard Cohen.
