A good day,
Spent in my bed
The kids stole my bed this morning.
I called my parents and sister to eat breakfast together and talk about our plans for Christmas.
Two hours later, Alyson crawled into my bed, a little sweaty, with pajamas on.
Sometimes, when I’m going in circles and nothing in my reach seems to have value, I think about the future.
“Yesterday, I got up from my desk and cried into my arms. I screamed in my room and felt alone. I banged up my wrist pretty badly, but my knee took most of the damage.
I dented my fridge, I’m pretty sure.
When I sat on the floor again — feeling just that little bit more calm — I thought.
And anyway, it’s mom’s birthday tomorrow.
And anyway, there’s that 150 years trip in 2022.
And anyway, there’s graduation coming closer and closer.
And anyway, everything ends eventually.”
April 2021
I thought about that YouTube video where a mom said that she wishes she’d been in more pictures.
I took a picture of the kids, snuggled in my bed. They whined at me from beneath the covers that it was cold and they didn’t want to get groceries.
I sent it to my co-president, because they were the right person to share the moment with. I told them the kids constantly want to buy groceries online and felt betrayed when they responded I should let them.
The kids stole my bed and proceeded to have an exec meeting, which they didn’t realize they were having, but they will. They asked me what my plans for our chapter are because they look to me for guidance, even if they claim not to.
When I refused to tell them, one of them called her big — my co-president — and laughed when they admitted I’d likely shared my thoughts but they didn’t remember them.
I left for the bathroom to give them space to talk and thought about a geology trip I went on earlier this semester.
“I’m sitting next to a waterfall and the instructors keep telling us to take notes, but I don’t know what to take notes on when it’s so beautiful. It’s hard to concentrate back on campus because it’s been August for so long. And now — with the water rushing and the trees changing color — it feels like September. But it’s felt like this before, so I’m worried and scared.
I’m thinking about my first trip to Walden and how it felt magical and maybe Thoreau was right — there is something about nature.
I look so small in my notebook sketches. I feel so small in comparison to the world.
It’s easy to forget that there are things, people, waiting for me to come back. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad, yet.”
Oct. 9–10, 2021
It’s been August for so long.
It was August in October; sometimes I wake up and find it’s August again.
The kids stole my bed, and I looked outside at orange leaves, and the air seeping through my window felt brisk instead of cold, and I knew my breath would be visible as I lived.
“And it’s so cold, so unfamiliar.
It was refreshing at Walden. The cold touched my skin, but it didn’t penetrate underneath it, didn’t settle underneath to chill me in the same way that it does here. In the same way that the unfamiliarity settles underneath me, drilling through my body until everything feels like the same shade of desperate and cold. I need to figure out a way out of this cycle, this endless repetition of cold and not cold and cold and not cold.”
Walden, September 9th, 2018
I snuck back into my room, laid my head down on Alyson’s hip. Her big was still on the phone in her hand, and I could hear them laughing.
I felt myself leaking love.
I thought once again about Maggie Smith’s Good Bones, and the line “you could make this place beautiful” sank into me like it used to before “I am trying to sell them the world” took its place.
When I was a sophomore, I sat with Ruth on my too-high-up bed in New House and asked if she’d ever thought about how there are people she will love that she hasn’t met yet.
I used to have that thought every month, week, day. I looked to the future and saw how many people my life would eventually include and how much I would have to share with them.
I hadn’t had that thought for two years until Ruth reminded me of it. I told her that I used to be overflowing with love; I’ve been reserving it now.
It’s been a while since I could feel love leaking from me.
The kids stole my bed, and I closed the open bento boxes in my head.
My friend laughed on the speakers of their kid’s phone and we were all smiling and I was happy.
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