Essaying

Not a crisis of an interrogation nor a self-chastisement. I am just wondering. Mostly about tenderness, mostly about courage.

Jul 01, 2022

I was going to write, yet again, of forms of desire and love and longing and lust of mine and of others—but this is an essay of figuring, and those forms of desire and love and longing and lust are not quite ready to be brought up against the light. That is: Maybe I have an inkling that I am not ready to confront the brightness, maybe the glare—or perhaps I do not need to look too closely, not yet, if at all. And so here I am, just wondering. The luxury of being able to ask myself things without it being a crisis of an interrogation, a self-chastisement. I am just wondering.

I am wondering why it’s difficult to send—hand over—a certain brand of letters. Not the kind bearing news, no logistics, and with well-wishes at a minimum. Just, perhaps, a fair bit of radical honesty. These letters I’ve written so far are to people who are relatively within reach: to my partner, to someone’s lover, to a growing devotion. I am wondering why I can’t send them. Maybe it boils down to the possibility of rejection. Maybe it boils down to telling someone that there need not be rejection, but to forgive me for wanting to be a friend. Maybe it boils down to telling someone you’re Home-sick for them for too much and especially at certain hours, but you’re afraid tenderness has become negligible. I am wondering about making a list of things sadder than a letter not replied to. Perhaps, include: A letter whose plea for tenderness is ignored. The two are not the same.

I am wondering about writing an essay called The Agony of the Sext. There will be dedications.

I am wondering about the trajectory of the love story in the love letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. How it began with “Mrs. Nicolson” and “Mrs. Woolf”—though Vita had written her husband, “Darling, I have quite lost my heart,” within four days of meeting Virginia. I’m wondering because I’m less than a quarter through the book—letters to each other, letters about each other, diary entries about each other—but on 31 January 1926, in response to Vita teasing her about her formal eloquence, Virginia writes, “Yes, I miss you, I miss you. I dare not expatiate, because you will say I am not stark, and cannot feel the things dumb people feel. You know that is rather rotten rot, my dear Vita. After all, what is a lovely phrase? One that has mopped up as much Truth as it can hold.”

I am wondering about how difficult it’s been to assemble an essay about an abuser when that abuser has successfully gaslit everyone around him, too. (And so effectively that it still must be confronted, when I find the will to give a fuck.) And how to write that essay when I was not on my best behavior, struggling to make him let me go, this man I met when I was 17 and he was twice my age. I would not behave; I think now maybe I needed to give him a big enough reason to cast me out, no matter the damage it wrought upon me. He only turned them into punishments. But those (for him) amusingly adorable and futile little rebellions—soon they became more for me, had to. Soon enough I wanted to cut my mermaid hair off; soon I wanted to wear clothes that were not pre-approved; soon I wanted to keep journals that wouldn’t be read (so I would write diary entries on the margins of novels, because the old man only read poetry in the hopes of maintaining hollow superiority over his friends).

Soon enough I wanted to allow myself to fall in love in earnest with C., the man who—despite his better judgment, despite him knowing already my torrents of longing for him—reached across a table and kissed me once, and then kissed me again. I wanted to understand what it was like to fall in love in earnest. The small, selfish, insecure predator kept his hold on me for eight years, and the evening he kicked me out of the house we shared with two other men, no one helped—but I had the tepid victory of having run my nails across his face: Ruin me all you want but you do not threaten the people I love.

I am wondering about trauma. A new friend E. asked me about that fucker, and I airily rattled off: “I have three true friends; I always apologize; it’s always my fault; it’s hard to be secure about myself.” There, I thought, light enough for a conversation with a new acquaintance steeped in whiskey.

I am wondering about a conversation I had with one of those three true friends at eight in the morning today, where I intoned, “People like us, we treat happiness with suspicion.” She forgave the ill-timed gravitas, because she and I knew enough that this was sentence that had mopped up too much Truth from just the two of us alone.

I am wondering about courage, about hopefulness. Sylvia Plath’s unabridged journals begin with, “I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.” And I’m thinking about my partner, a man I’ve known for seventeen years, and his broad shoulders and his forearms and whose ring hangs from a cord around my neck. And I’m thinking about a girl embedded in my memory as wrapped in striped cotton and how I want to have coffee with her every time she responds to my messages, despite the chaos that may ensue. And I’m thinking about the girl on the opposite side of the world with her lovely, fae familiarity and the strange softness of her heart and her gentle, gentle eyes. And I’m thinking about my letters unsent—except now, wait—

I’ve sent one of those letters, to the fae incarnate with whom I share the CRJ time-unraveling shorthand of, “I miss you so bad,” and as I waited for her to read, the wasps’ nest that is my brain was screeching that I’ve ended my happiness in so efficient, so avoidable a manner—I was too much, I was not enough, wasn’t that always the chant—when I sent her what I wrote. But no, assured the sacred-and-profane incarnate: I did not do that, not at all. I was not too much, I was more than enough. She wanted to smooth my hair to calm the wasps. My tenderness was welcome. Cared for. Held.

I am thinking of Conchitina Cruz’s poem “Swivel,” which begins with, “The mouth in secluded places. The tongue and its conclusions. / Say, your body like no other. Say, your body removed from simile. / Early evening. The room, undivided by light, / The mind drawn out of its coherence.” And later on continues, reverberates, “Your finger in secluded places. Your ear pressed against the sternum. / To hear the pulse, murmuring, dearest.” And I am wondering if I can add some postscripts to typewritten paper, folded once then once more, still unsent.

The Consolations

Discussion about this post