It’s somewhere around 8:30 and I’m lying on the couch. Our apartment is quiet. Two of the six moved out earlier in the month, and the peace is palpable.
Two days ago I found myself tensed and shaking and realized my body had been in that state for days. Stress about the direction of ignorance and evil this country is going is nothing new, but I had to acknowledge there was the addition of the build-up of life around me coming to a point as I approach a quarter century here.
With external tension out of control, the blooming understanding of what I want for my life has become more pressing.
I wrote a bit about those wants, which I’ll share below. I sound like a little girl having a temper tantrum, and in a way I was. The little me lending my current expression feelings of pure desire, fear, and frustration.
I’ll put that at the bottom of this post.
Right now, my arms feel loose, my jaw in its natural position, my toes tingly. I’ll assume its the final legs of the endorphin release from this wild exercise class my friend took me to a few hours ago after a “co-working” session (we spent the time catching up, as we had assumed).
The class was in the basement of this boutique in Brooklyn that sold shimmery herbal hair tinctures and cushioned sandals and the like. My friends swears by this class, although sort of bashfully calling it a cult. I understood why in that clean chic store full of LA things and LA-NY women.
The class itself was like athletic therapy. Patterns of intense movements repeated like a meditation for the length of a song. Heavy exhales that you could barely hear over the music, freeing up space for real release.
I have never felt more proud of being a woman. I felt the burden and the wonders of my body and what it brings to my life. Simultaneously beating and nourishing it with the exercise.
It was cool. I recommend flailing around with your eyes closed and doing jumping jacks to tribal synths.
To offset the health I’m drinking crystal light pink lemonade out of a deli container.
I think I’m in a good mood but I’m shaking with an underlying anxiety. Feels like hunger but I’ve eaten today.
The world is just scary right now, let’s be blunt. I don’t want to die yet. I want to have a beautiful life. I don’t want that opportunity to be taken away from us. I want to pick flowers with my children and weave them into a crown for their father. I want to swim in freezing streams in Colorado with pine needles sticking to my feet, in between my toes. I want communal tables; I want kids to be kids; I want people to live for their present and their future.
I don’t want my nana to go to the grave worried. I don’t want mom to get dementia. I don’t want dad to get wobbly. I don’t want control over our own lives taken away by stupid, narcissistic men. I don’t want this to disappear. I don’t want to be twenty-five and needing a substance or two every time I hear the news or do my job or think about anything that’s not directly in front of me. I want to be useful, not replaced by artificial intelligence. I want humanity to continue, but not in the alt-right-natalist procreate-and-settle-Mars way.
I want there to be bumble bees and fireflies for my whole life. I do not want to see them grieve. There is so much I am preemptively grieving for, and I would rather be in tears that it all exists.
You are very beautiful!