Dig up
Good morning gorgeous.
I haven't seen you in almost a month. Shortly after we talked last, Roe was overturned. I started furiously writing to you, and before I hit publish, I got really brutally sick. A few days later I was diagnosed with pneumonia and was out for two weeks. It felt very 18th century of me, like a supporting character in a Louisa May Alcott joint.
The other day I was getting on my own case about how little I've accomplished in 2022. I haven't written or created enough or pushed hard enough to move my career along. I haven't sent thank you cards. My pre-pregnancy pants may never again successfully button.
To get me out of my self loathing, I switched self-loathing gears. I made a list of what this year has thrown at me. Losing my ability to walk in pregnancy, chronic pain, pre-natal depression, third trimester COVID, an emergency C section, the newborn phase, pneumonia.
Laying it all out made me feel like 2022 was an outsized opponent in the ring telling me to stay down.
When you're caught in an avalanche, buried under feet of snow, the general wisdom is to dig a small hole and spit. The spit is so that gravity can tell you which way is up. Then, you dig up toward the surface.
Dig up.
It's become my mantra. No matter what, keep digging for the surface. For a version of myself I can recognize. To get back to my creativity. To feel like my body is my own again. To somehow incorporate into myself the blinding gorgeous joy of motherhood with the vegetative boredom of motherhood.*
Dig up.
I've come to realize I may never get the creative writing and building time of my former life back, but that caring for a new vulnerable soul is in itself, an act of creation. That I have ADHD, sending thank you cards is actual torture for me at any stage of life. I'll just tell the people I love that I love them, constantly.
That my pants may never fit again. In all honesty, who the fuck actually cares which size your pants are? I'm just going to be out here buying new pants.
The last two years have been a trip. A global pandemic. Anti-vaxxers in our DMs. A small group of conservatives and judges with dead eyes stripping our rights away. Entitled assholes protest for freedoms they already have. Corruption and climate change and Louis CK winning a goddamned Grammy.
Dig up.
We have a scarily small amount of control over what this world will throw at us. I take solace in the fact that I'm not creative enough to come up with the batshit nonsense that is likely to happen next. The only thing we can control is how we react. What we choose to do with our unexpected experiences. And how we let them shape how we see the world.
I'm choosing to laugh, rest, buy new pants, and then dig for the light. I hope you come with me.
*If saying motherhood can be incredibly dull makes me a bad mother, pass over the badge. I promised you honesty, and honestly? Changing diapers, rocking a screaming infant, doing flashcards, trying to "engage him on the other side" so he doesn't get a flat(ter) head, and reading The Pout Pout Fish* for the 60th time isn't shall I say, exhilarating. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, or has a weirdly high tolerance for repetition.
** The Pout Pout Fish is a fucking great book. Next level poetry and character development.