Turning points
In November of 2020, I received an email from a fellow creative and collaborator. Noel was writing me back, answering blog questions to announce the arrival of her collection at my job. She ended her email with:
“I would like to say thank you for all the support. Let's take care of each other, and our planet. It's the hardest and most rewarding work, to tend and be tender.”
This phrase has wormed its way into my brain and never left. It’s a reminder of my humanity, my responsibility to myself and those around me, and, more importantly, an example of who I wanted to become.
I was looking through the 33,326 photos on my iPhone, searching for something perfect for my Substack profile picture. Something artsy, maybe an old collage from undergrad, a selfie, or a landscape somewhere important to me. I was looking for myself, for proof of my existence over the last 9.5 years. All I found was your shadow.
I often romanticize1 my relationships, while I’m in them and after them. I assume everyone does. I write about the men who stayed and left, but especially about the ones who just passed through. Those men were notches in a bed post, turned into longing sonnets, images positioned on gallery walls, collages in a book, their presence magnified beyond myself. Always beyond myself.
A 72-hour connection that amounted to nothing more than a fiery feeling in my chest and a need for attention and uninterrupted conversation. Very few brushed fingertips between drags of a cigarette. In hindsight, it’s nothing, but, in picking up the pieces of myself after you, it is everything: to be thought of and to be yearned for.
There I go again: giving too much power to the permission of someone else.
What do I need to heal? Where am I going, and do I need anyone else to come with me? What does one need to be ready for a relationship or to leave one? How do I really know if I know myself? How do I remain tender and tend after myself when I am in the habit of shrinking into someone else?
Maybe that’s the invitation now. To be soft with the parts that still ache. To belong to myself again.
this is really beautiful