peanut butter, a non-book deal, meditation and the endless missing of my mom

If you know me well, you know my feelings about Reese’s peanut butter cups vs. their peanut butter-enrobed holiday shapes. I wouldn’t eat a regular peanut butter cup if it were the last thing on earth; I will fight my own child for the same exact product when it is fashioned into the shape of a heart, egg, or christmas tree. (See: ration of subpar chocolate to salt.)

This afternoon, I was doing my best to hide the white chocolate covered tree that I’ve been planning to eat since the night Santa came, sitting next to two dogs and one cat who wanted to take it from me, when I recalled a semi-awkward conversation I had with someone yesterday. I had been cleaning and arranging shit all day and hadn’t stopped for a second, but when I sat there with the salt in between my teeth, I was immediately transported to what I said.

— This year — after musing on it for many years — I realized the reason I am so obsessed with food. For, it is in the act of eating it that I enter a complete stoppage. A meditation. I live in a permanent state of unrest; wild abandon to my emotional state. I move and breathe erratically; I cannot be slowed down. But suddenly, I sit down with a fork or my fingers, and my body and mind fall under arrest. I become one with the thing I am ingesting; other stimuli forced by the wayside. Once I am all the way in, that’s when I can start to see out. —

Anyway, yesterday, I was standing next to someone I haven’t seen in a while, and don’t know deeply well, when I looked up and saw two young girls, around age eight, hugging each other as one held the other up in her arms. They were wearing gymnastics leotards. They were beaming; their smiles so big, seemingly so fulfilled to stand there, literally supporting the entirety of each other.

Oh. I breathed out with a deep appreciation and a deep heaviness. Little girls, I said. What? my companion asked. Oh nothing. Just: little girls. I sighed. What? she asked again, still not sure what I was breathlessly whispering. Then I had to get kinda loud with it, say it again, and I felt stupid. Oh. um. Little girls. I just, uh, well I love them. I don’t have that in my life. and I love it so much.

And she — a beautiful human (with a daughter) — made it her goal in that minute to make me closer to her rather than farther away — not to alienate me but to meet me in our humanity, smiled and said, Yeah. I have to admit, I’m not sure I would have been totally happy without it.

A free life is one in which you are breathlessly being able to speak what you wanted. Not to be punished for it. To be able to let the mourning fly — and live — both inside and outside of your body.

Today, thinking it over, I realized: duh. I needed a boy. Because I was always going to run around, seeing the beauty of and in little girls. I was not going to run around and see it in little boys. And what I have seen in and from them has been nothing short of stunning. It hasn’t been them in purple and pink leotards holding each other up — it has looked different — but it has made me so fulfilled.

I am so good at wanting. But I am also good at being fulfilled.

**

In four days, my mom will have been dead for four years. It still fucks me up that she didn’t know Ollie as a four year old. Or as a five year old. Or six or seven.

I am remembering how my friends fed me when she died. Every day, beautiful food was delivered to my apartment. I was sitting between numb and madly insane, but then I would start to eat and think: ah, but this. I think it was the most loved I have ever felt. Which was so confusing. And was so necessary.

I went through the pictures I took in the days surrounding her death this afternoon. I took a picture of the printout the hospital gave us of her last heartbeat. And then right after that, right there in my camera roll — people were smiling. Like two pictures later. The end of my mom, (which still, in some ways, feels like it was also the end of me or that it was somehow supposed to be) — and then joy. That’s fucking confusing. And necessary.

**

2022 is over. My only dream — for both the year and for my life — did not come true. I didn’t get a book deal. But, to be honest: I didn’t try that hard. I mostly made more bulleted lists in my head of why I am not worthy of one, which kept the number of my query letters I sent out (ONE) incredibly restricted.

but.

this writing space has allowed and continues to allow me the space to say what I am feeling since I started it three days before my mother’s sudden death. This writing space has allowed me to be free.

**

May we all stay wanting; may we all stay fulfilled.