I Miss Me
It’s that time when I finally notice the moments the light lingers longer in the late afternoon. It’s been doing that, I know, every afternoon since the solstice. But like so many things, I don’t notice until it’s been accumulating for quite some time.
What has also been accumulating: My resentment for allowing my environment to rob me of access to my creative self.
I’m mad at my job.
I’m mad at household chores.
But mostly, I’m mad at me.
Last night, I stood with hordes of people in T-Mobile Center swaying awkwardly to the E Street Band. As often happens when I allow myself to fully immerse in music, I started thinking about the things I’ve written and the things I want to write. I felt a tendril of bittersweet fondness rapidly followed by the hot scorch of shame.
There I stood, watching a seventy-three-year-old man unabashedly wave his agency about, gripping it like the neck of a guitar, wallowing in four decades of access. My heart ached to feel that way.
A few minutes ago, I watched my daughter drive down the street on her way back to college. We packed advice about filling the hours and becoming herself in the way you do between the ages of eighteen and thirty along with leftover ribs and $7 Panera mac & cheese. As I waved at her disappearing taillights, I thought about how I passed the hours in college, often in a dive bar drinking terrible coffee and writing poetry on the back of napkins. That time in my life when I never went anywhere without paper and pen. When writing was so clearly a part of my identity I didn’t tell people that I did it. I didn’t know anything else about myself, but I knew that.
Since she drove away, I’ve been sitting in a south-facing carrel in the public library, where I came to do some research and work on my taxes and do proper adult things. Instead, I put on my headphones, heard Bruce Springsteen, and felt tears prick a bit painfully, like when milk lets down — productive and right and useful, but uncomfortable as glands swell before the necessary release.
And I logged into Squarespace. To write.