And I’m Sorry.

I have been partially in the hospital for the last week...

I have been partially in the hospital for the last week.

I stopped writing… which is something I haven’t done possibly ever (?)…

And I’m sorry.

My formative years, and fractured, insulated little childhood feelings were felt primarily through the black and white static covers of a classic Oxford composition pad.

I filled page after page instead of watching TV or being invited to as many sleepovers as I wanted back then, while enjoying the sort of blissfully protected, warm childhood that involves cracking open fresh Floridian aloe plants and rubbing them on constant wounds, because your world was scraping knees and skinning shins in equal measure to the worlds made through tendered, trepidatious emotions on horizontal lines.

I still feel better saying my feelings on the page or stage, instead of “in person”, and I still perform-away whatever is ailing me because boo-boos are kissed in childhood… but they fester into cynicism and numbness as we age.

I have been “silent” on my Substack memoir for the last week, which has made me feel enormously guilty.

I treasure every single friend I’ve made- even if we’ve never met in person- and feel as if I am letting you down with this attempt at stopping the hemorrhaging of my body and mind, right now.

For the last year, I’ve been a scraped-knee, a skinned-shin… except none of my pain’s were accrued via exploration, or play, or outside the same four square walls.

Most was because of two things: the body I’m trapped within (which has felt worse than I’ve allowed myself to sit with… even as it’s insufferable to sit with a rusted spine, hips of dust), and the mind that makes a “me”.

I write about my body openly.

The mind? Not so much.

There is no freshly-cracked aloe plant to heal the amount of loss that’s occurred in the last year, nor the decrease in autonomy and autonomic anything.

Community and catharsis are the cure for all ails for some of us, and I am one of ‘those’ within the ‘us’.

A director, or teacher, or mother, or woman is supposed to be everything and nothing at all.

We must be perfect, no matter how much it pains us. We must be a role model, no matter how much the role feels (on occasion) “un-earned”. And we must smile for the people we love… even if no one sees if it’s real or forced.

Even when we scream out-loud “Something is wrong!”, just as ‘we’ have encouraged others to do for years on end (and could write a delicately held thesis of every single cabalistic wound expressed in sacrosanct secrecy from so many loved ones along the way- something considered the vast privilege of my time):

The echo of your own cry can still ripple back; The cave is empty.

Often, if we smile too wide and for too long and for too many… we no longer are a person to the people we thought were our people. (Our “I’m not okay” is not an “I’m not okay”, you can say.)

Without the shame or duplicitous judgement these syllables seem to hold, this fact is actually just the way the world works.

Our directors, teachers, mothers, women: They can’t be humans too…

The world needs that stratum to go ‘round.

We all know it… it’s just hard to read it.

Since the age of 18, I have put another physical human body before my own physical human body (as one should), and would again and again… and hell, will again and again in all the ways for all the days I can, forever.

However, despite doing everything in my fallible human power to make sure we were protected, safe, and free… No one ever really is in this life. Even when we’ve arrived at the finish line, the rug can pull, and you’ve lost everything that was ever worth finding.

If this feels far too ambiguous to make any sense, I apologize.

In this post of sorries on sorries, I truly am sorry for the vaguery and cloaks and daggers… But I can assure you I’ll be more clear about my own somatic journey when I get back, and I’ll fill you in on the future liver biopsies and stupid appointments-about-appointments that healthcare predictably delivers.

The real subtext here is that I am working with every single part of me to fight for what I can… Because drawing the genetic short straw can be more taxing and traumatic than even ‘we’ realize.

I hate when people use the word “fight” when talking about the DNA they already can’t control (Who am I fighting: The deoxyribonucleic acid that is OF me? If I win, am I simply defeating myself? Isn’t that counter-productive?)…

But I am fighting right now.

I hate hospitals and I hate painful situations all the more, but we can’t choose our life or even our endings… We can only choose the parts of the sentence that matter.

The words that build someone else up more than ourselves…

The adjectives that can only add color to the 64 three-letter codons that create the you you must claim as yourself…

And the colons that allow for a pause… a deeper breath... a chance to navigate the architecture you’re housed within [and considering I don’t even have a colon or large intestine, this sentence is even better somehow].

Still… Emotions are the things we are blamed for. Emotions are our liabilities. Emotions are our entry to an ending; “Hysterical female” we say when the edifice cracks.

We conceal every single imperfection with layers of metaphoric-pancake. We check the mirror once, twice, then thrice again. We Susbtance-style scrub at what isn’t quiet and impressive and strong and soft (as we are told to be all of it, together, now).

Will they brand you a bad mother and threaten you inept? (A blanket threat my past once held from a soulless person; Branding me forever while far too young. Seared to the bone. Psychiatric barbecue.)

Will they smell your ichor in the water, and remind you you’re the weaker sex?

Will they go silent and leave the second you’re not producing something, making, working, go go go? (‘Friends are only friends when you give them all of you and nothing left behind… Don’t you know this by now?’)

We are taught to smile when its forced, and be perfect when it’s dishonest, and to swallow the pain whole like an oyster: Because to be a Hysterical Female is to be what humanity casts aside.

So, here I am.

Your hysterical, imperfect, pained female ready to say:

I am sorry for my silence.

(And for my ambiguity which so too shall pass)

I don’t think I’m so important that anyone should notice, or that a week or two off should even matter in the grand scheme of grand schemes but…

There is a lot of worry here to hold… a lot of healing to face down… a lot of hope to get better… And there is a lot to be found in the holes left from this year’s unending loss.

One more week-ish, and I’ll go back to pen-ing with gratitude for anyone who cares enough to care, and to allow me the caring gift of being able to care about pens and paper and people to begin with.

This is more than just words.

This is living. This is surviving. This is try-try-trying again.

But even though I know that many who write digitally only do so once or twice a week (and I often do so every single day and try to give extra sentiments here in contrast to every word-counted-limitation on Instagram): I feel guilty even for feeling guilty.

I’ll find the right words to explain how I’ve been taking control over my health and my mind, and fighting back like hell.

For now, the only two words I know to be true are:

Thank, and You.

PS. It has been so difficult to be off my phone this last week, and not texting my Momma or checking in on my friends, but since this is short term and I know I’ll “plug back in” soon enough (my writing is, and always has been, my work- so not saying an exuberant “hello!” to start the week, amid the crickets of the last, is simply professionally unacceptable)…

I can also say that slowly feeling my brain cells re-wire to not look at my phone in moments of stillness or discomfort, or to not wait for its vibrational lure when I’m wanting distraction, is oddly liberating.

It’s felt depressing to realize that I (someone who identifies as “not being on her phone that much” compared to myself many years ago or many human-beans that I know- leaving it behind or in the car on family outings, or only using it as a camera for photographs and memories despite being tempted to sneak a text or two) STILL need “cell cleanses” now and again for mental wellness.

Not just mental wellness, but mental survival.

I think we all do.

I think that taking a week “off” from your phone every few months (as “rude” as it feels in today’s splintered society), might be something we ALL need, you know?

We will appreciate each other all the more when we come back and find one another.

“I only use it for music when I’m driving”… I have thought- Justifying.

“I feel bummed when friends’ eyes wander to their phones mid conversation for no reason, with no notification to tend to”- I think secretly inside.

“I fight the urge to not check for emergencies first thing in the morning and last thing at night- even though I fail the latter more often than not”- I tell myself, to tell myself I am not as much of an addict as others. A game of gymkhana very few are Wifi-winning.

All those sentiments and yet = I cannot be still with myself.

“What do we do?” my brain thinks in a panic, wanting to check, or scroll, or thumb- a twitch, an itch, so deeply in all of our muscle memories now that we can barely function without the reflex- “Where is my phone?”

Our minds are always tracking; Usurping our wallets and our purses and our chapsticks as if some piece of us is missing when the pocket-prison piece that is not “us” is not nearby.

Technology allows me to write… It allows me to work… It allows me to be connected to those I love (including YOU if you’re reading this at this very moment). I can’t imagine a world without it… and thus, you.

But I’m also ashamed at how physically uncomfortable and anxious my body has felt during one singular week of “withdrawal”; The constancy of constantly being connected has left me disconnected from my own physiology.

There is no 9 to 5 any more. No landlines where children don’t dare call during dinner time. No weekends or Sundays where something feels sacred- A long slow exhale.

The “Sunday night deep-dread” that overtakes most of us when we realize Monday is about to hit is now… always.

We never lose that feeling because every single day- all 23 hours and 56 minutes- is a Monday morning.

If you ever get a chance to do this too, I will be your accountability partner. (The humor being, we won’t be able to prove it until the week is over because you prove an unplug by NOT checking in.)

But if you can, when you can, now and again: Give your mind this brief gift.

I may be projecting (am I?), but: Our brains are not doing okay in today’s day and age.

Our matter is being re-wired as we speak to speak less and scroll more, and the itchy twitchy exodus of an empty palm is likely way more uncomfortable than you’d imagine.

The return will feel even sweeter… Because the gratitude to find my friends again and reconnect will be based on real connection. Healthy connection. No longer a “drug”, but a choice.

Thank you for being here and understanding…

Because in the end: I choose you.