I Am Thinking Tender Thoughts

My bed is large and warm and it is 12:30 on Christmas morning and there are just two family gatherings left to survive and I think I've done a pretty damn good job so far. I'm getting better. I am spending more time with my little ones- they are beautiful and brilliant and they love me so much. But their arms are not long enough to wrap around me, they are too small to hold my curled-up self in the dark.

It's amazing to me that in six years of speaking French I have not yet learned the word for "lonely."

Yes, this is another one of those posts.

It is wintertime again and I am needing to be held. I am missing the warmth that comes from someone whose body is just a bit bigger than mine, I am wanting the irrational feeling of protection that my own arms cannot provide me. I have already worked out in my mind our exact arrangement, the perfect placement of two spoons in a drawer, I promise you that cuddling will be the only thing involved. I am simply tired of being by myself.

Somebody help me find a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Or a very large pillow with arms. I couldn't care less so long as ze* can make me food and tell me I'm pretty and can tolerate being hugged constantly. I'm a simple girl. I don't need much- just food and blankets and snuggles.


*ze: I like to use gender-neutral pronouns for stuff like this.

I'm Getting Too Old For This

The world feels big today and I am afraid. We are spinning so fast. Soon there will be nine billion souls trying to glean meaning from their existence, nine billion people trying to build a life in a world where there is no more space to do so.

It is exhausting, trying to keep up with time.

You don't want to know the exact speed of the earth as it spins.

Trust me.

It is faster than you could ever imagine, and it is impossible to experience given that blessed force, gravity, that keeps our lives together. If you knew just how quickly we are turning in circles, your heart would hurt. If, one day, everything was silent, the groan of planetary revolution would be loud enough to hear in every tiny corner of the globe and your ears would be bleeding with the sound of days passing and Suns rising.

I read once that if you lie still on a quiet patch of dirt for long enough you can feel the planet breathing. Press your stomach to the grass and watch as the earth lifts you up with every inhalation, brings you gently back with every breath out.

I've never tried this. I'm too afraid to try it now- there were times when I was fearless enough to entertain the idea, but it never happened.

I'll be brave again someday soon, I promise.

It Has Been A Long Day

I want to take your gun away. You keep it on your wall. Maybe you've never entertained the idea of using it, but the gun is still on the wall and I want to take it away.

I want to eliminate the social stigma associated with men in therapy. It's time to put the focus on gluing the cracks in the cup before the glass shatters. We shouldn't have to sweep up the same shards over and over again.

You will spend this week shaking your head, trying to reverse the rotation of the earth with each turn of your neck, attempting to rewind time with each rotating demonstration of sadness.

Come dinnertime, you will make your five year-old's favorite meal. You won't mind when she spills her noodles on the floor- other people have cleaned up worse this week. Spilled milk and spaghetti aren't worth crying over, not today, these stains will wash out.

There are two funerals today for two boys who will never grow out of their Spiderman sneakers. This is only the beginning. The tears and burials and funeral lunches keep coming and all the roads are blocked with slow-moving black on black. At the wakes, everything is doll-sized. Lilliputian vases line the walls. The flowers can fit on the tip of your finger. You could cradle the caskets in your arms. The contents are so precious. These bodies, these babies, all you can say is "I'm sorry" and know that it will never be enough.

You will remember this day each night. You will sing your five year-old to sleep and climb in beside her. Time stops when you are sleeping. You like it that way.