solving my problems

happy easter

Marianne von Werefkin, Fall, School, 1907

It’s hard to know what to make of it all. The first day of spring was March 20. One of my friends says that March is a cursed month so I’m glad to be safely into April, even if T.S. Eliot disagrees. If you told me in December what would happen in the next four months I think I’d be happy with the progress in my creative life, my emotional life, but so different living it.

I anticipate movement eagerly. When it happens, I feel mostly shell-shocked. I try not to fight it. I write diligently. I stay in my apartment all day, and I think the best description of what I’m up to is just that I’m trying to work through my problems. If you want things to be different, you have to act differently. And, as I’m learning, accept a sense of extreme dislocation.

The last year has given me a kind of radical confidence. I was never this way before—willing to be disagreeable, open to conflict. I’ve always been someone who prioritized connection at all costs. I couldn’t regulate without it. So how is it that I’ve changed, why is that I’ve changed, why does it feel so weird?

Like most forms of change it’s relational, a result of being loved and grappling with love. I fell in love, there were consequences. I accommodated you, it was difficult. I changed, slowly then all at once.

I’ve been off the rails for so long that the real rebellion is going on the rails. You can sense that in me, even without knowing the details. I always tell people I won’t make plans more than a week out because I don’t know if I’ll be alive in 10 days. It’s just that I’m so absurdly tethered to the present moment, have been for quite a while.

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Charisma, authority, superiority. After all this time, I’m still absurdly soothed by your voice. I miss being a teenager, boy crazy. Also I don’t. You’re different from me, you would’ve been 17 years old with a particular kind of girlfriend. You would’ve enjoyed college. I am less reckless now than I used to be.