When the Words Don't Come

This is one of the pieces I started but never got even halfway through because life kept on lifing (and yes, I have adopted that as my default reason for everything). The main reason why I am returning to publish now is because it captures a unique turning point in my grief journey from this summer--right before the world turned inside out. After the page break, I am writing in real time again, so hopefully that will make this come together. --ADH

It has been a LONG time since I posted anything to this blog. I am still here, trying to sort everything out, but it is taking me longer than expected. I have so many unfinished drafts, so many stray thoughts, so much chaos and crazy going on inside my head. I don't know where to begin.

This is not an excuse. I am just not sure if I can focus long enough to complete anything right now. I am distracted, I am grieving, I am overwhelmed...I am lost. And I don't know how else to express any of what I am feeling, so I will just freestyle and hit publish even if this is the worst, most vulnerable piece of crap I've ever written. Here goes...

I am not as okay as I think I am on most days. I don't know if that makes much sense, but in essence, I put on my big girl panties every day to face the world, and then night comes, and I can't tell you if I seized it or if I squandered it. I haven't begun to deal with all of the final stuff I am supposed to handle with respect to my Mom. I haven't sent off half the Thank You notes. I didn't send half of the Father's Day cards with Thank You Notes because I got caught up in trying to make it to the end of the school year. I still have unsold Girl Scout cookies. I haven't gone back to my house for more than a few hours because I don't have the mental energy to combat unnecessary chaos. 

I cannot believe this is the first day of summer. 

I did do laundry. I did label most of the Kid's stuff for her first sleepaway camp starting in ten days. I did order the Hub a nice Father's Day gift that he seemed to appreciate. I do manage to take a shower every day.

On Sunday, I was in the kitchen chopping veggies and prepping for an impromptu family gathering, and it dawned on me that I am now the de facto matriarch of this band of feral cats. And in this most thankless role, it means that I need to think about everyone in this family, while they get to decide whether to completely ignore me. I mean that in the most complimentary way because the one person who does notice is my Dad. And he is part of the reason why I haven't completely given up.

That is all I wrote before I got totally distracted and forgot all about this piece. Part of the struggle this year has been in the constant distractions--either I get called away to do something, someone who doesn't understand my process enters my space and disrupts my flow, or I get so bogged down in the minutia of over-thinking that I convince myself that putting a piece away for a few hours/days will help. Then of course, I look up and it is a few days before Thanksgiving!

In case you have been wondering what happened next, here's a quick rundown of how my summer went: 

• The Kid had her last week of school, then she (we) jumped right into what I will refer to as the Great Summer of 2024 Camp Marathon. It began with ballet intensive for a week; followed by two mini Girl Scout sleep-away camps during the week of Independence Day; a week of art camp at her school (to make up for the two weeks of the pottery-making camp for which we were wait-listed); a week of summer day camp; a week away at the beach; two weeks of tap dance/performing arts camp; and then the grand finale of two weeks back at the day camp. Whew, I think that's everything!

• The week the Kid started at ballet camp (which was right around the time I sat down to pen this piece), it was the same week of the Great Debacle that turned the world inside out. At the beginning of that week, I was invited to attend a rally with the Vice President to mark two years since the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case. Two days later, I was invited to the White House to meet with gun violence prevention advocates. It's safe to say that I thought this would make a great story to share at show and tell, but...

• Fast forward to mid-July when I was preparing to leave to meet my Dad at the bank to handle some business. I was almost ready to walk out of the house when I got the second phone call in a matter of months that would totally shift the ground under my feet--my dance teacher of 40 years passed away suddenly. Obviously, it was the kind of unexpected news that can throw one's day off track, except it hasn't just been one day. Months later, I can't claim to feel that much acceptance or sense of peace. Maybe that will change once I publish my formal remembrance for her on this blog (because circumstances, which I will explain). I imagine that others who have had to hastily mourn their loved ones during the worst points of COVID can relate to how hollow it feels not to have formal closure. 

• Then there was the end of that same week when I learned that my first boss, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died. I was not expecting that either, at least not to have occurred so soon after the announcement that she was gravely ill. I received the news literally as I had just sat down to write her a note of gratitude and encouragement, because well, that's how one should acknowledge the person who had such an impact on one's early professional life. Instead, I ended up having to send it as a note of condolence to her family and staff. I'm sure that I will have more to say about her at some point, but I will just link to what I wrote here and here for now.

• And again, not much time to mourn since the BIG announcement of the summer the very next day was that President Biden decided to pass the torch to Kamala Harris. And within a week, I was standing at the end of a very long line on a another college campus with the improbable hope of seeing them in real life (and lucky me, I got blessed to see them in the overflow).

• I have a few other pieces in draft that I will publish about that incredible Hail Mary pass that gave us so much hope and joy for 100+ days. And while I am heartbroken and pissed, I'm recuperating and strategizing. More on that soon as well.

As I scrolled through the list of unfinished drafts, I decided to revisit a few to see if there was anything useful or salvageable. Consistent with my irritation at the constant distractions and disruptions has been this routine of starting and stopping and then feeling stuck. Wash, rinse, and repeat. In reviewing this piece, I presume the essence of what I intended to share had been that sometimes, words can be difficult to organize in a coherent manner, even for someone who fancies herself a writer. Thus, how does a writer manage to live through a year as chaotic and unsettling as this one has been for me and have nothing to say about it? How many times can one sit down in front of their cracked computer screen with so many jumbled thoughts staring back at her and still believe in herself? 

Right here is where I ought to insert a photo that captures the fine mess that symbolizes the state of my thoughts...instead, I'm opting for another cute Kid photo from the summer. Because I did succeed at something!

At one point, my lack of focus felt so debilitating that I mulled whether to just throw the whole blog away. It's no secret that we are our own worst critics, and this effort often feels like an accumulation of unrealized potential just staring back at me. More than likely, it was that train of thought that prompted me to start writing this piece as a gathering of all of my stray doubts to pile on some cosmic scale to determine if what I'm doing matters. 

The response from the universe: just live. And if that means putting aside a draft piece about Sean Combs' running tab of sexual assault allegations even though that's what people were talking about last year and again in June, no worries because it's still in the drafts and is newsworthy again. I will have more to say about him once I finally get a chance to revisit that piece. Same for the piece about all of that good Dad energy on display at the DNC in August...someone is going to want to be reminded that we almost had a cool Jewish stepdad as First Dude instead of another four years of Melania Antoinette and her hellish Haunted Christmas aesthetic.

The nature of writing a blog is that I am always writing from a space of hindsight or reflection as opposed to the fast-paced contemporaneous world of breaking news. I am not a journalist. Whether I am weighing in on current events or admitting that a marathon of Cosby Show reruns is how I am dealing with my grief, it works that sometimes my pieces aren't timely. And it certainly works better for my audience that I am not rushing out a lot of mediocre musings to meet a quota.

Furthermore, that this has been a difficult year isn't an excuse, but a FACT. My mother died, my Kid is growing up too fast, and now life has become uncertain for my family and friends because of this election. These are not keep calm and carry on kind of circumstances...these are stand in the middle of a crowded highway and scream until someone runs you over or tases you kind of times. These are the kind of times that drive people to drink, shoot up, or plunge head-first into some self-destructive vice. For some of us, resilience is a mask drawn on a cheap paper plate, but no one notices because everyone else's paper plate mask has the same blank expression (because we all bought it from Amazon). Whether you are living from Sunday to Sunday, from paycheck to paycheck, renting month to month, or living on a prayer, I get it. 

It took me five months to admit that I am not okay (even though I did say that back in June 🔝 and several times elsewhere, like here). So now what?

I don't have a clue. I just opened my laptop and tried again, for the umpteenth time to write myself out of the darkness, off the ledge. Whenever I come back to this space and take note that a few more people have stumbled across my musings because they may be curious, intrigued, provoked, or even inspired, I am reassured that maybe this isn't a waste of time or energy. The words haven't gone away; it is the motivation that waxes and wanes, or perhaps something as simple as just giving myself time to make sense of things. One of my Mom's high school classmates shared this poem Keep A-Pluggin' Away with me, and that is how I will end this, with that promise.