When last we spoke to each other here, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had gloriously entered the yellow phase. Remember those days? Locked up in our homes and hitching our hopes and dreams for normalcy onto a seemingly arbitrary color-coded system that gave us all The War On Terror PTSD? Red! Orange! Right foot yellow! No whammies!
I had opened up this newsletter during that time as a way to not only give myself an outlet, but also to give you a little space in which you could reacquaint yourself with my writing. Catch your breath. Stop screaming into the void. Set the fear of WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING, NEO?! aside for a bit while someone hopefully rebooted the clearly malfunctioning Matrix. A lot was happening in my life at the time and to be sure, I’ve spent nearly all of my quasi-public years as privately as I could, so there were only a select few humans I let into my circle. And even inside that circle, I tend to keep others near the edges. Ready to shove them out when I need to escape and hide.
As it happened, my life went through complete upheaval the summer before the pandemic began. At 45, with my life in order, my future certain, enrolled in college to earn my second degree — this one in history, my children thriving, my dogs adorable, my house cozy, an acceptance email from NASA to attend a launch in Florida sitting in my inbox, I was walking on solid ground. And shouldn’t that be where we are when we’re 45? On solid ground? Stomping around some challenges here and there, but not really having the basic foundation of our lives crumble underfoot no matter how high the hurdles we might have to jump? It only seems fair.
That changed in 2019 with my separation and with my eventual divorce in late 2020. The bottom fell out. The solid ground disintegrated, leaving me floating. I broke. I quit school. I canceled on NASA. The pandemic came. Health scares arose. I grasped in vain inside the primordial soup of my new existence, looking for an anchor. I found none. I just floated. Trying to come to terms with who I suddenly was — a middle-aged woman with an uncertain future. A single mother of an autistic teenage daughter and a teenage son. I floated through 2020 looking for that anchor while writing this newsletter for you and coping as best I could with the pandemic and divorce and how they impacted me and my children. I returned to school for no reason other than I WILL BE DAMNED IF I DON’T FINISH WHAT I STARTED. I floated anchorless through 2021 while managing somehow to complete my first novel despite the continuing pandemic, my brokenness, school, and the constant shadow of uncertainty darkening my previously lit path.
Right now? In September of 2021? Well I’m still floating. Ungracefully. Flailing like a Disney villain falling over the edge of a precipice at the climax of the film. I’m Scar. I’m Charles F. Muntz. I’m that square-jawed butt-chinned jackwagon Gaston.
And? I’m happy.
And? I’m terrified. Just a little bit terrified all the time. Like that feeling when you’re watching a horror movie and your shoulders hunch and your arms tense and you recognize the fear inside you and you accept there’s no way to really get rid of it so you might as well grab it by the collar and drag it along for the ride until the lights come back on and you remember it was only a temporary companion and you let it go, Elsa.
What am I afraid of? Instead, ask me what I’m not afraid of. I’m afraid the ground will never solidify beneath me. I’m afraid my history degree will be useless because I’m 47 and no one will hire me and if they do hire me, all the “youts” I work with will speak in weird jargon I won’t understand unless Duolingo starts teaching the Urban Dictionary website as an official language.
I’m afraid I’ll never publish my books. I’m afraid if I do publish a book, my book will fail. I’m afraid loneliness will come for me someday. I’m afraid I’ll fail my autistic daughter. I’m afraid my best years are gone and the rest will be spent floating aimlessly in the soup with my new permanent companion fear and enough baggage to unbalance a 747. I’m afraid Donald Trump will become president again in 2024. (BOOM! Politics!)
And? I’m happy.
Some days the fear strangles me. Some days I feel confident that I’ll eventually figure my future out. Some days I feel as perfectly centered as Kim Kardashian’s hair part. Some days I’m completely unbalanced and my world is skewed and I have to just stare into the middle distance until my contact lenses turn to Shrinky Dinks and I blink them out.
And? I’m happy.
I have finally begun taking care of my health after I stopped doing so once my daughter was diagnosed. I’m in the best shape of my life thanks to miles and miles of walking I’ve done every day for nearly two years to bring myself back to center each evening when fear uses the quiet thickness of night to tighten its grip on me. I wrote a damned hundred-thousand-word novel and I am proud of myself for finally doing it. I love school and I’ll graduate in February and will go for my Master’s. Make Room for Kids is gearing up for some big and exciting changes. I’ve joined the board at Write Pittsburgh. I have my sisters and parents never letting me feel like I’m going it alone. I have a small group of friends who quickly build scaffolding around me to repair even the smallest parts of me that start to crumble. I’ve begun accepting speaking invitations because I recently realized I’m not bad at it and I’ve got a great message. I hope to one day get invited back by NASA to watch a launch.
But? I’m floating. And the thing that has always grounded me amid my floating has been writing. Putting my words down. Forgetting about the scary vastness and uncertainty of the soup until I’ve written something I love so much I feel the ground temporarily solidify under my feet.
I don’t know what my future holds, what it will look like, if it will ever stop scaring me, but I do know that it will probably involve writing. And I need to get back into that in more than just the novels I’m working on and in more than just the dozens of research papers I write for school. I need to find my writing home again while I float because maybe that’s the elusive anchor I’ve been reaching for since 2019.
So I am back at Breathing Space. This is my home now, my goal to publish it every Wednesday to start. This is where I’ll be funny. This is where I’ll rant. I’ll share. I’ll bitch. We will talk about all things Pittsburgh. We will laugh. We will cry. And maybe if you’re scared and your life is changing and you’re looking for your anchor too, we can both rest easy knowing we aren’t swimming through the soup alone, Dory.
See you soon, my yinz.