The more I write, the lighter I feel. Even on the days when my writing is shit, the act of writing itself pours into some sort of reserve. More than ever before, I’m noticing how my devotion to writing makes it easier to live in my brain. I’m not sure if the content of my brain is much different (I do think it’s getting softer) but my orientation toward it definitely is. I’ve noticed I can poke fun at myself; leverage my compulsions; channel heaviness into creative projects that transform density into a more buoyant, forgiving perspective.
I stopped short the other day to laugh at the thoughts that were running through my head and the following piece came out of it. I spun it into fiction, a genre I don’t often touch. But it’s been fun to access different parts of my creativity, stretch my imagination, play with voice, and veer from my typical style and tone:
You eat your yogurt with a fork, which means you have too many dishes in the sink and you’re too lazy to wash one god damn spoon. That’s the thing about moving through heartbreak when you live alone–some days it sends you into a creative frenzy where you’re writing writing writing about the hot sex you two used to have and the wedge that eventually pussyfooted its way in and breaking up after admitting that the wedge was, in fact, unwedgeable. You cry through the writing writing writing but feel proud of yourself for channeling your mess of feelings in a healthy way.
Other days it means leaving a pile of dirty dishes in the sink and tip-toeing around your apartment, like you’re dodging land mines, because your shit is scattered all over the floor but you can’t clean it up. Not yet. You convince yourself that it’s too hot to do anything and sit on your living room floor right in front of the AC and let it blast you. You think about brushing your teeth but why does that feel like the hardest and longest task in the world? and I don’t feel like being dommed by the smart timer on my Sonicare that follows the dentist-recommended brush time of two minutes then run your tongue along your top front teeth and tell yourself they aren’t that grimy, it can wait.
You get up after a few minutes to slice a radish (yes, don’t worry, local & organic) right on the kitchen counter–why bother getting out a cutting board?–hoping the fresh crunch of each bite will provide some sort of contrast to the current mush of your body and brain.
You shop online, hoping it will fill a void. You buy new wire-rimmed glasses that match your silver jewelry aesthetic, and think, oh shit, yeah, that will help, and it does for a while, until it doesn’t. Until they fall off your bed and one of the lenses pops out of the frame and you curse the cheap pieces of shit that just yesterday were the centerpiece of your rebrand.
You’ll consider getting a tooth gem and fringe bangs and doing something completely chaotic–not telling your friends about it–because you know they’ll give you sound advice and tell you they support the tooth gem idea but definitely not the fringe bangs because how many times have you told us that bangs don’t work on you and you explicitly told us to remind you of that when you toyed with the idea of getting bangs again but you’re feeling rebellious and slightly fatalistic so you tell your friends’ voices in your head that you’re going to do it anyway. Okay, I know, fatalistic is a strong word. It’s just hair, but you know they’re right, you always regret the bangs. Why are your friends so perfectly annoying?
You keep an exhausting amount of tabs on your chrome window so you don’t forget about all of your grand plans that will probably be snuffed out by newer grand plans (#gemini). Some of the tabs include: fringe bangs pinterest, zenni optical, signs of avoidant attachment style, signs of insecure attachment style, how to play a barre chord when you have small hands, 100% organic hand-dyed god-awfully expensive jeans.
You open yet another tab and ask ChatGPT to help you formulate a text to your ex about returning their ice cream maker. You go back and forth, polishing it so it doesn’t sound too overbearing but also not too flippant. To the point, friendly but unattached. Once you’ve landed on something that feels right, it types back it sounds like you’re in a really good place with it all! and you feel eerily comforted for a few seconds but then immediately get the ick like THANK YOU, I NEEDED TO HEAR THAT but WAIT YOU’RE NOT MY FRIEND.
Your computer starts stalling and you get pissed at it, which is ridiculous, because what do you expect when you have 5 million tabs and counting?
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