Hi friends
I’m pausing the paid subscription option on this newsletter for a while, certainly through These Trying Times. Money exchanging hands puts some pressure on the situation, and I’m just now getting back to creating anything at all. Not charging anyone feels right for now, for both me and for you.
How are ya?
I’m doing pretty well. Yesterday my mom texted me at the end of the day and asked how my day was, and I said “It was a pretty normal day.” It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d said it. Imagine! I’ve seen a lot of people use the phrase new normal and that doesn’t feel exactly right, but maybe things will feel normal-ish for a while, and then they’ll change and there will be a new normal-ish, and what I’m saying is that anything that feels normal will also be new.
For a few weeks all I did was play Animal Crossing. I would press the little power button on the top consciously thinking NOW I SHALL ESCAPE INTO THIS WORLD INSTEAD.
I knitted, too. Simple dishcloths in really soft cotton. I’d knit one in a solid color, then knit another that was mostly that color except for one corner in another color, then another that was only that second color. Each one blending into the next. A pattern that was either increasing or decreasing, one or the other. Bigger, smaller, bigger, smaller.
After a while I felt like reading, and then I felt like writing, too. Not much, but something.
The thing about paid subs is that I was always hoping it would feel a little bit like a friends-only group on LiveJournal, but “people who pay more are my close friends” seems …
I started this last weekend. It’s the first draft of a long drawn thing. “Am I good” is a question I asked my therapist once. GET YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR THE CHUCKLE FEST.
Pokemon Go came out the week after Brandon died in 2016. Within days the outside world was changed and surreal. I remember sitting at a restaurant staring out the window at everyone walking by staring into their hands, how restless it made my brain feel to think how I would possibly explain all this to him when he came back.
The impulse to remember things so I can tell him is gone now. A string of little lights burnt out. It’s okay. Not good, not bad.
Larry and I took a long walk and then put the new Fiona album on the big speakers and listened to it straight through in the clear Saturday daylight. I was lying flat on my back. I cried for no known reason other than Everything. I wasn’t sad. My body felt like one ringing raw nerve ending and I didn’t try to numb that or barrel roll away from it. My tears rolled into my ears and my hair. Ladies ladies ladies ladies.
ILU,
Lindsey