dear mom,
I have so many twisting, winding thoughts that I always want to unravel on paper, but once I'm faced with the page, I don't know where to start.
Maybe I could start with loneliness and general anxieties around socializing? And how I'm constantly wondering where my support system will be. Or I could tell you about dad, and I wonder if it'd make you sad. I wonder if your presence would have changed my relationship to my entire family. Would you be disappointed in my dating life? Maybe you would've noted my fear of abandonment but also commitment issues before I did.
I've been traveling less this year, but still a fair amount. I find that the anticipation is not as great as it used to be. How am I already so tired before I even get on the plane to go where I'm going? It's not as bad as returning though. I've been feeling a vast sense of sadness each time I get home. My own bed, not as welcoming as it used to be. I just got back from the Midwest, where I spent a week living a slower paced life. Not to be confused with boring. It's more like peaceful. And comfortable. I guess you might respond that it's like home home. I crouched in my friends' gardens the way I used to stalk through yours. I stretched out on their couches in the evening, watching tv or chatting, the way we used to unwind after dinner by watching an episode of a Chinese soap opera. For a brief moment, I guess I felt like part of a family unit instead of a visiting guest.
If you were here to welcome me home from Madison, I'd make you mac and cheese with the block of gouda I obviously had to bring back from Wisconsin. I don't even know if this is a dish you'd like. Dad likes to impulsively buy cheese from time to time, but he doesn't have quite the same taste for it that I do as an American-corrupted child. Honestly you might think it's too oily and fatty. I'd probably get annoyed, trying to convince you to take a bite of this quintessential comfort food that I made with caramelized onion bechamel and fried sage.
I think when I settle back at home, the plane air showered off of me and something padding my belly, I realize everyone's lives have continued on. Of course it has. But the buzzing of life around me is not so dissimilar to how it felt to return to school after that summer you died. After an intermission of so much activity and distraction in the form of friend sleepovers and visiting family and art camp and science camp and YMCA camp, I had to return to "normal" life with my grief to hang over me, and no one to confide in. We move through so much tragedy these days that it's not even worth it to start processing one before the next one happens, and when I was only nine, it was so hard to take anything else in. But the more time passed, the less I felt permitted to my sadness. Like I should've gotten over it already. Now here I am 22 years later, still sad, and still wondering why I am so sad. My last last therapist introduced me to the concept around nurturing my inner child. Not the cute and carefree "inner child" that just wants to rediscover play, but the one that's nine years old and stuck contemplating the permanence of death with the expectation to quickly grow-the-fuck-up heavy on her shoulders. My current therapist continues this work, but I don't know what the outcome is supposed to look like.
Sometimes I just need an evening to myself to spend hours making myself dinner. Mac and cheese is the perfect vessel. Frying the sage first to scent the oil and the entire kitchen. Toasting some garlic and then sprinkling in some flour to make the bechamel. Stirring the milk in and watching it thicken. The moment when you add the cooked and drained pasta to the sauce is my favorite part, the creamy sauce enveloping the starchy pasta like tucking a baby into bed. Folding in an entire container of shredded gouda until the pasta twirls are coated and glossy. The little nine year old inside me is overjoyed I can make this dish for her on quiet, solitary evenings. It's a romantic dish in some ways, and I wish I could serve this love to you now.
I miss you deeply,
Amelia
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