Five years ago, in the fall of 2015, I was writing it all down. Less than I should have and more than I wanted to, or maybe just the opposite.
“I could write you a script for how to love me,” I wrote in the last letters that were never sent. “I wish you’d tell me what you love.”
It’s a strange but learned reaction I have to stress when I slip from the better routines. I sip wine and read old poems and poke at wounds long closed, making them sting again. Just for a moment. I suppose it drags my head out of the current anxiety but it’s a risky bargain I strike with myself: that when I feel a little down I keep reaching below it, to the lowest I’ve been. Not to live there, not anymore. I work too goddamn hard for that. But to feel it, to remember it, to scratch the itch.
Or maybe it’s because I need to cry and it’s a guarantee if I just go read aloud that one poem I wrote when I felt half-dead and not doing anything to stop it. My voice breaks and then I can come back into myself again. Years older. A new life to write about. An indisputably happier one.
Shall I blame it on Red, White, & Royal Blue again? Now that is a love story and it has love on my mind in the middle of a workweek that has me scrambling to keep up with where I’m going and what I want. This is why we shouldn’t skip morning meditation. (It’s not quite the same before bed, though I like to think I fall asleep faster.)
“And the thinking comes eventually,” I wrote back then. Then, when I drowned out every damning thought with tequila (no lime, no salt).
I don’t drown it out anymore, all these bouncing wants and fears and contradictions in my head. I’ve learned to ride it out. This here, writing it all down for you, is part of it. Thank you for indulging in my process. My letters don’t go unsent anymore.
With Love,
Natalie