Here are some short pieces based on things that have happened in my life recently.
Hopelessness
It was a simple thing really. Just food. Although as I write that I realize how utterly ridiculous it is to call food simple. We have rituals around food. Societal expectations around food. Literal needs around food. But, in this moment I felt it was simple. I should just stop eating it. My goal was to lose weight so I should just not have another ice cream sandwich. But it was so good. Fuck it, I thought and ate another. As I tried to talk to a supportive friend about it, I just got more and more hopeless. Would this new therapy even make a difference? Was I just wasting more money (I'm bad at that)? Was I even ready to actually try? Would I ever be? In the moment, the truth was that I was hopeless. Nothing had ever worked for weight loss for me before so why would anything work now? And even if I couldn't lose weight, could I ever improve my body image? I've been struggling with it since I was 11 and it's only gotten worse over the years (especially as I've gained weight) so I doubted it. I cried. No. I sobbed. I wept. My tears flowed down my naked and fat body into the warm, inviting bath water that I had poured to calm myself. I gruffly marked down "sad" in the context part of my food log as I ate more. The next morning, the memory of hopelessness felt distant, as though it had never happened.
Waking Up
He dozed off to sleep peacefully, or so I hoped. I had no way of knowing if it was peaceful or not. He rarely complained of pain, but, when he did, he complained that it was "everywhere." Tiredness plagued him and I suppose dying will do that, so I didn't want to interrupt him from having what he needed so I didn't speak as his eyes closed and his mind drifted even further away. He rolled over, facing away from me, giving me a moment to distractedly look at my phone. I was never sure how long to stay. How long to simply be there, but I figured some more time was merited and so I scrolled and tried to breathe quietly, hoping rest would bring him some much needed energy. Not a long time later, though how long I could not say, he rose with some difficulty. He wedged one elbow into the mattress and pushed one hand against the other to propel himself up. His fading, though not completely gone, hair was mussed and he ran his fingers through it to try and flatten it. He was still facing away from me and I got the sense that this was a very intimate moment that I was watching. I was sure he didn't remember that I was there, just mere feet away--sure that he'd forgotten I'd ever come in the first place. I quietly let myself be known and he turned.
Zine
I had heard of zines before. I wasn't that out of the loop. However, I wasn't quite sure what I should do for one. An idea struck, but it was too serious and too large to accomplish in one crafting night. I did, however, send a message to an artist friend I greatly admire to begin our work on it. They would end up doing the majority of the work, I thought, but not in a selfish way. I had written two pieces that I was considering for a zine, but lacked any great artistic talent to add illustrations of any kind. Now, sure, I can doodle, but I wanted this zine to be haunting and, well, that was just not something I could achieve. But back to the crafting night. I looked around at the materials and decided to make a goofy little sticker story of Scooby Doo investigating a house (made up of postcards from the Art Institute's miniature rooms) that was haunted by beings from Nightmare Before Christmas. It was a delight to make (seriously, do you remember how fun stickers are?) and everyone there seemed to delight in viewing it. I attempted to make another similarly fashioned zine, but decided instead that it would just make a good set of postcards (let me know if you want a goofy postcard with stickers on it). It was a lovely evening and I feel like I made deeper connections during it. Let me know if you want to see the zine I made and stay tuned for the other, much more serious, one.
(Prompt by Kimisha Cassidy)
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