when what you usually have are words

but even those seem to fail on a day like today

A few weeks ago, I was busily plugging away at my fall syllabus—the readings I had shared with you and the essays I was writing to go along with the recommendations I had made. I had pages of notes and ideas and post-its and flags and thoughts and it felt like shots of pure energy throughout my body.

Then, I struggled to get into the Shirley Jackson novels I invited you to read with me in October. I was surprised—usually, novels like that are exactly what I want to be reading. But it was something about the pace and the dread: the feelings too awful to sit in for long swaths of my evening. I opted for playing the second-half of the second game in the The Last of Us video game series, for the dozenth time, instead, because something about that game soothes me in a bizarre way. It’s a world where everything has completely fallen apart and two women rage against their trauma and their anger and zombies and their losses in the world with their whole beings.

Something in it resonates.

All this to say: words have been failing me. Reading them, writing them. I’ve felt stuck in the throat, a knob of pressure sneaking up my collarbone and into my jaw all day long, my tongue pressed so tight against the back of my teeth that I unconsciously created a sore spot that bleeds every night as I floss.

One thing that is pretty true for me, and perhaps also about me, is that I won’t write or share writing or put things into your inbox because my calendar told me to, or my “content strategy” demanded it, or because I feel beholden to requirements I’ve invented for myself. I’ve fallen off of my own fall syllabus schedule—a list of recommendations as much for myself as for you—because my heart hasn’t been in it, as all this unfolded. I haven’t had words.

Did you know I have two cats?

One is large and cuddly and so sweet he makes everyone who meets him laugh; the other is tiny, always in motion, and ferociously opinionated. The small one has not stopped crying and mewing and pacing since what looked like a “red mirage” became a “red reality” last night.

As things became more clear and the night wore on, as she ran zooming circles through the house like a tiny exorcist expelling the rising tension in the house through her raging little form, I realized I was not surprised at the outcome—at all.

Oh, I thought. Of course I had struggled to get into novels I love. Struggled to write patiently or meaningfully. Struggled to pay attention to the slimmest pleasures. Struggled to leave my house without worrying. Struggled to eat. Struggled to clean. Struggled to not dissociate, which I happen to be very good at doing.

I’ve been holding my breath for months, waiting for that one night back in 2016 all over again, and even though I’m well-versed in my therapy speak by now, despite longing for hope, some rock-hard knowledge in my gut said, all along, don’t hope. Of course I couldn’t handle reading a story about an evil house filled with haunted people.

Yesterday, we had our first snow of the season. Most years, I run outside excitedly to greet it. This year, it was too soon and too cold.

As I write this, my tiny silver cat—we call her “lightning”—continues to rage around the house. This morning, her target is the bathroom door near my home office. She’s desperate to get inside because there’s a plant I’ve hung from the ceiling that she wants to eat, despite the fact that it will make her sick.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. Poison. Self-destruction. Screaming about your right to do it anyway.

But it’s also a lot more than metaphor, this dread and sadness and fatigue I feel topped-up with this morning. It’s a clawing. History repeats itself in the stupidest, laziest ways.

“Talk about choosing a known pain over an unknown pleasure,” a friend messaged me early this morning. Yes. That.

In the midsts of all those feelings, which I’ve had before and surely will have again, I think: at least I know how to make a syllabus. Know how to make recommendations—for me, perhaps for you, too—for reading and writing and coming back to a good, generative, idea-sparking place.

I’ll make it back there, just like this little bolt of silver lightning will soon tire of the door and find a ribbon or a dust bunny and take a nap in the sun. The words will come. They always do.

‘Til then, for the love of god, let’s find whatever feels good and hold onto it.