I’ve been away from this space for so long. Just before the new year, I determined that I’d read more and write more. I’d read more feminist works, both new and old, and I’d write about them here. I realized that’s what I loved about grad school – reading books by women of color and writing about the awesome things they did. I’ve long grieved not getting into a PhD program. There are reminders of this loss everywhere and practically everyday. But what if – what if – I can still do all the things I loved while in school without paying for the privilege of doing them?
These were my lofty ideas at the end of 2017. Then my husband got sick. And, like every other time of illness in our lives, I thought, this will be over in a week or so and we’ll get back on track. And it was over in a week or so. He got a little better. But then he got worse. And stayed worse. And what was a 1-week-or-so-saga turned into a several month’s long saga.
I would like to say that I felt the ramifications of this illness so deeply that the “things that really matter” came into laser focus for me. I didn’t. They didn’t. I barely held it (and I am barely holding it) together. I went to work. On my lunches I went to the hospital. I went back to work, then back to the hospital. I came home, I ate, slept – with no rest – and woke up early as hell the next day to do it all over. There was help – a parent here, a parent there. But it was nonetheless hard. Money was hard. Time was short. Sleeping in a bed by myself was hard. I don’t ever want to get used to it again.
I have cried about this maybe once. I didn’t want to get lost in a spiral of “what ifs,” so I focused on work, hospital, food, sleep, work, hospital food, sleep. I didn’t want to cry, so I gave myself that one could burst of sobbing and bottled it all back up. I found things to be mad about instead. I found ways to yell. I still haven’t given myself permission to let go. Not yet, I think though he’s home and recovering beautifully. We’re not quite through it yet.
I can’t quite remember when I started doing this. I don’t think I’ve always been this way. I know that I do this in the face of the overwhelming ways in which oppression manifests in our lives. More shootings at and of Black folks. It came out yesterday that someone shot at a Black kid who was simply asking for directions. Trump would rather kill more people than admit them to the country to create new homes and hopefully rebuild their lives. ICE is doing what it does all over the damned country. Flint still doesn’t have clean water, like so many other places in the US. And this all coincides with moments of great opportunity in my professional and creative lives. I try to get happy about it. But I can’t, at least not for long. Because I’m so full of all of the other unprocessed shit. The phrase “emotionally constipated” comes to mind. Do they make Miralax for that?
It used to be that I’d read these things and plug up my emotional pathways. How can I keep going and trying to carve out some semblance of safety for the students I work for in higher ed if I’m crying or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed all the time? It worked for a time. But it’s bled over into how I deal with my own personal shit, to the extent that I just don’t want to feel things anymore. Even though I know it’s okay for me to do so. Even though I know that there’s power in it. Even though I know that purging these feelings makes space for something new.
I know I need therapy. But I can’t afford the one Black, woman therapist in the area who specializes in the impact of racism on mental health. Why? Because she’s not covered by my insurance. So I’ll come back to this for now. Putting it all here. Making myself uncomfortable because maybe I’ve shared too much? I can only be that vulnerable in my fiction, and even then I don’t know if the work’s as honest as I think it is.
I don’t know where to begin to untangle this knot. Maybe I’ll start by giving myself permission to cry. But first, breakfast.
Perpetually Reading 