“I am never too busy for love, and starting lives.”
-Jenny Slate, Lifeform
I am on the precipice of something again. I cry into the screen, tell the woman on the other side I am so tired of starting over. That every time I feel like I am finally starting to live my “real life” — that the house is finally starting to settle — something comes along and uproots me. I am starting to think the universe knows better than I do. Maybe she knew the soil wasn’t suitable for my roots, that the house had an unstable foundation we missed in the inspection. Maybe she is doing me a kindness I just do not understand yet.
I find myself spending an embarrassing amount of time examining my face in the mirror. There is something different about my eyes, and if I look for too long I start to not recognize myself and it unsettles me. It is probably the lack of sleep, but I think love lights you up from the inside in a way nothing else can match. There is a flicker still in there, I think. It would take a hurricane to snuff it out completely, and there has been rain but I am still here.
My peripheral vision has expanded beyond myself and I am noticing again. I make my coffee the same but it tastes different now. I feel like less of a ghost around other people, like they are finally starting to see me again and I am okay with being seen. I want it, even. There is color back in my body and when I hold my hand up to the light you can’t quite see all the way through me anymore. That is something.
I put the flowers in the frame to try to preserve what’s left, and there is so much left. They are not in the ground anymore but they are just as beautiful. The light is still on in the room. I don’t know which one of us forgot to turn it off but I do not open the door to check. I will leave the golden glow to peek out from under the doorframe and keep the hallway lit. I need something to help me see where I am going next.
I know I am on the precipice of something big because of the feeling that surges through my veins and how when I think about it too hard it starts to make my stomach hurt. That is how I know. That is where I usually start to turn away, where I say to the universe “Sorry! No thanks!” and pull the covers back over my head. I cannot quite make out what is on the other side, like there is oil over my eyelids obscuring the details, but I know it is good. I can almost just make out the shape of it, and I think it is something shaped like hope. Like every good thing I deserve.
Maybe it is in the leaving that things begin to shift. I still have not packed my suitcase out of fear for what it might bring. I am not who I was at the start, and isn’t that good? I am doing the best I can with what I know. Still rooting, still settling into my bones. There is always sunlight to be reached for, and I am standing in the street with both arms outstretched. I am here. I am here. I am here.
Thanks for reading this edition of To Be Tender. Keep scrolling for this edition’s library tour, spilled ink, on loop, on screen, and little joys.
Lifeform by Jenny Slate
Baby Teeth by Meg Grehan
The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan
Hacks (HBO Max)
Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (HBO Max)
$3 strawberry margaritas
Clinique black honey lipstick
Meeting Mona Awad and talking to her about my novel (!!!)
Farmer’s market tulips
If anything from this edition of To Be Tender resonated with you, let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear your thoughts.
As always, you can find me rambling about books over on Instagram @catherineslibrary
See you next month, sweet friends <3
Talking to Mona Awad about your novel!!!!!!! Obsessed with that!