an introduction: the rut

featuring the obligatory poetics statement (if you'll indulge my use of the term and my excessive use of parentheticals)

[art by rubyetc on tumblr]

i’ve been home for the past two weeks and i’ve been reflecting (you know how this goes—childhood bedroom, family dog, old haunts haunting. everything’s stirring). it’s rained several days, been sunny, hot, and humid the rest, and i am getting restless.

often, i think there’s something very healing about being raised in a small rural town in Oklahoma and returning to the respite it offers. to the creeks i swam in as a girl, to the dirt paths littered by hackberry trees. and it’s been good. it’s always very good. occasionally though, on these visits, i am reminded of why i wanted to leave in the first place: everything is better when you’re away.

usually, a week is a fine amount of time to be home. any time past that, i am swiftly reminded of all the terrible things that consumed me before i moved, perhaps permanently, from the place i grew up in. mostly, i believe i had an average childhood. i had a normal, angst-filled adolescence, and i had all the standard reasons to want to leave my hometown (including the ones i made up after consuming too many coming-of-age stories as a teen). i applied for colleges, all of which were hundreds and thousands of miles away from home, then planned for the next several months to live on my own. but when the time came to leave, i was three months deep into the worst relationship i’d ever been in. and within those few months i realized: i didn’t want to leave home.

after years of wanting to get out, i felt like i needed to stay. but i didn’t. i left, and because of that, this relationship changed me—and not for the good. considering, i’m actually quite sure it changed me mostly for the bad. i moved to Massachusetts at 18, left before i could turn 19, and transferred to my safety school in Oklahoma by spring semester all to appease some tired, romantic notion that i didn’t belong to the intellectual world, that home was something i’d taken for granted. this was partially true. the rest of the truth was that i felt guilty for leaving her behind. i placed false blame on myself for pursuing a prestigious education and as a result didn’t let myself enjoy a single second of being away from the place i’d always wanted to escape.

i’m sure this is a common story, that i am not alone in failing to leave. i know now there is nothing wrong in this failure—sometimes you have to be home—and i know i couldn’t have done anything to change the way things played out. but it was hard, as i’m also sure others can relate to.

we broke up before i turned 20. in less than a year and a half, i was an entirely different person. i no longer had friends to spend time with as she’d isolated me from them, nor did i have the vessel of attention and care i previously used to pour into others if they did still happen to be around. i was drained. i was spent.

despite all this, i’ve famously (in my circles at least) been in a loving, healthy relationship for over three years now. i haven’t seen my ex in longer (actually, the very last day i saw her was the first day i began talking to my current partner if we want to get into the minutia of lesbian melodrama), and i’m happy, even if i do often find myself lingering as we (writers, artists, creatives) all do.

and in thinking this all through this past week, i realize the truth: i’ve been in a rut. possibly since leaving for college, or since that relationship first began to form, and i don’t think i’ve quite confronted that thought until this week.

[from mary oliver, upstream]

i recently finished a rewatch of The Haunting of Hill House. this didn’t help with the emotional whirlwind already wheeling and diving in my brain, but it did help me understand that i have not stopped grieving since my ex came into my life. there are a lot of things that change upon leaving high school, of course, but everything at 18 felt exacerbated by the intensity my ex carried with her. while in that relationship, i felt as though i was the most in touch with my emotions than i had ever been. but the reality was that i had never been so… depressed. and lost. at the sake of sounding cheesy, she created depths in my emotional cavities i was not aware could exist, and i have been trying to climb from their bottoms since she left. i also realize i have not forgiven her.

in the past few months, and actually long before this but without real action, i’ve been trying to be a better person. i’ve been trying to read more because the habit left me when i entered college. i’ve been trying to stop eating out, to consume healthy amounts of media, to take care of my skin and my hair and my teeth, and to, as a whole, feel as though i deserve to take up space. in that trying, i’ve been clawing my way through forgiveness. i have a lot of people in my life that i, societally, should forgive. my ex, the person i got cheated on with by my ex, my toxic ex best friend that i befriended in the aftermath of learning i’d been cheated on, and all the people that have come before them and all the people that have come after. i’m told forgiveness is good, that it will make you feel lighter to no longer carry the burdens grudges and hurt leave behind, that it is warm like a tear on a cheek (as Nell says in her monologue). but, being autistic and only understanding extremes when it comes to social relationships, i am recognizing i have no idea where the line is between knowing when i should be angry and when i should let go.

the other day i reposted something on TikTok, some video about having an ugly ex, and thought for the briefest second i hope she never sees this. why? why did i think that? why do i feel as though i need to hold myself responsible for someone else’ emotions, especially those of someone (again, at the sake of sounding cheesy) who did not care about mine. in the past five years, i have not let myself feel a singular emotion that was not attached to how i perceived or thought about or recognized someone else’s emotional capacities. i have not let myself be angry in the way i’d like to be angry or do the things i want to do in the moment to feel a temporary joy—i have not allowed any softness to come out of me. and knowing this now, i feel terrible.

i know a lot of this comes down to a neurodivergent brain and having been through a formative traumatic relationship before i could even buy cigarettes, but i also know i have not been trying to let softness back into my life—and i recognize this isn’t fair to anyone around me. i’ve rejected gesture after gesture because i felt i didn’t deserve them. i think it’s time for me to work toward deserving softness and finding who i was before.

while watching Hill House this time around, i was struck by the final conversation we see between Hugh and Olivia (possible spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the show). Olivia’s concerned about keeping the children safe and Hugh urges her to understand their responsibility as parents to push them out into the world, even if it’s scary. He says:

Even if they’re broken, or addicted, or joyless or, yes, even if they die, we have to watch it all. Because we’re parents. That’s the deal we make. Whatever that life is, we bear witness.

whatever that life is, we bear witness. i think, as a writer and more specifically as a poet, this is what i am doing every day. bearing witness to humanity, no matter how awful that humanity can be, whether it is my own or that of a stranger in the grocery store, and continuing to live.

one of the very last words out of Hugh’s mouth in the series (coming from a younger Hugh which is absolutely devastating) is that all we can do is be kind to each other. if nothing else, be kind. i am trying to be kinder. every day. especially now when it feels so hard to do.

and with alllll of that being said, i’d like to welcome you to “bearing witness.” i hope this is a space, a diary, a journal, a confessional to work on honesty. i’m tired of pretending, tired of being insincere, and so beyond tired of feeling lost. i’d much rather face it all. i think it’s time.

so here’s to being kind, dear readers. i hope you will indulge me as i try to do so.