Joy: I’ve been side stepping and evading your touch
knowing full well I’m not worthy of your true power.

You’ve sought me out, on occasion, revealing a sense of lightness.
But, what joy could I possibly allow within me following a sister snatched too soon?

She’s not here, nor there. She can’t hear me anymore
because she left me hanging on the other end of the phone on a dark day in late March.
I’m still standing there, 18, wondering, waiting, asking why
in a lifelong one-way conversation.

I talk to her inside my car or in the bathtub
revealing secrets I think she’d want to hear.

She’s not up or down, or in the middle.
Maybe joy is finding a place for her within me.

If I can just stop searching and hold her close
she’ll walk with me forever, taking me by the hand
and whispering it’s finally time to let myself feel.

You tried to explain away your radio silence.
You edited and rewrote in your mind your version of events to keep yourself blameless.
To keep you as the victim. To make it all about you. For the four hundredth time.

You think I don’t see you, but I do.
I see everyone, especially you.

But your damage is your own and you cannot damage me.
It’s so infuriating to you when you try.
You’d like to knock me down to your level.
You’ve tried and tried and I stay here, unmovable, shining bright in the darkness.

You wonder how I do it. You’ve never asked me though.
Instead you sit on top of your high horse, feeling righteous, planning your next attack.
Surely the next one will work.
But, it won’t.

I dare you to keep trying. All it does is let your envy show.
You’d like to be me, but you can’t.
I’m a mystery.

You think, “how can she be so OK?”.
You’ve never asked me.
You’ve never thought to ask one single thing about the real me.
And, so you’ll never know my secret.
You’ll never know why I am always and forever OK in my darkness.
I’ve got a secret weapon, she walks beside me and lives within me forever.

Some of my blogs allude to pieces of my memoir though I’ve intentionally decided to not reveal anything major from my book. It is a far-fetched and real dream of mine to become an author. Not an author on the side, not an author with a full-time job, an author author. I’m actively working on the dream as we speak and don’t want to give too much away.

However, for the sake of today, I’ll share that my sister Cherene and I have a song. Well, we have several. But the only one she knew about was the Alanis Morissette song, “Hand in my pocket”. It’s kind of like when you are crushing on someone and a few songs suddenly and beautifully remind you of that person. This is my sister crush song because when we choreographed the moves to this song together, I began to love her even more than I already did, falling deeply into sister love.

This morning I played the song over and over again while I drank my coffee and ate my cereal before work. I pictured us together. I screamed the lyrics. I became so painfully aware that the lyrics of the song are a little too close to my blog piece “Both” and it gave me the chills. The foreshadowing hits me in the most intense way. It was so intense that I become lost in time and space, but return to here and now only to realize that I have a meeting in five minutes and I’m not even dressed.

I get up, run to my room, frantically throw a Zoom outfit together and while I’m getting dressed, I have a sudden urge to throw up. I didn’t feel sick at all, but I have to sprint to the bathroom. I vomit exactly once. The cereal I ate is gone. It is not painful. I feel fine. I am not sick. I know in my bones it was something else entirely.

Two nights ago I watched a documentary on ayahuasca. In it, they explain what happens to your body and mind after you drink it. The first phase is calm, the next is purging, the final stage is four hours of a hallucinogenic journey. 

I feel very convinced that I just purged something. I don’t know what it was, but it had to come out of me this morning. I hope it was a release of some of my past trauma because I’ve been carrying around a lot of it with me my entire life. If I can put down even a little, my life will be easier to live.

I started writing my second book on Sunday. I will not share the details, but the first chapter has a theme. And, when I ordered Whole Foods delivery yesterday, the paper bags had stickers on them with the exact name of the theme of chapter one. I keep saying I don’t believe in signs, but I am kind of thinking it’s bullshit. I am beginning for the first time ever to believe.

I finished writing my first novel on Tuesday, September 26, 2023. I’ll always remember the date because it is the birthday eve of my very best friend. As a birthday present, I send her my novel. I want her to be the first one in the world to read it. She’s everything to me. I trust her more than anyone.

What I don’t know about that evening is that she will finish the entire book start to finish, causing her to miss her morning workout the next day. Around 9:25 p.m. she tells me she’s gonna stop reading, but she doesn’t want to.

I wake up with a text from her saying she’s read the entire thing in one sitting.

I am beyond honored. Truly, I don’t yet have the words to express my gratitude to her. One day I will.

For now, I can rest a little. The writing of this novel took me five years total and probably took a full five years off my life. Now I can take a break.

Last night I slept more hours than I have in the past 7 weeks. At 4.5 hours total, I feel awake for the first time. 

I wake up around 4:30 a.m. and stare at my ceiling, my favorite pastime these days.

I’ve rearranged the furniture in room and so now the shadows appear different. It is a curious contiguous shape. At first I thought it was a pirate ship. Early this morning I realize it is a warrior mermaid. 

She faces the door of my room, her tail is the shape of an arrow. Her wild hair sticks up straight then beautifully falls and flows down my wall. She’s wielding a bat in her hand, watching my door and waiting for a battle. I’ve found my shadow protector and now I’ll finally begin to sleep. 

I’m equal parts in shock and proud of myself. My first essay has been published in the Boston Globe. It is a highly personal piece describing in detail just how mean I’ve been to myself over the years and my plan for slowly changing my inner dialogue. 

My essay is included in a weekly column following a beautiful piece by the son of Morrie, who inspired the book Tuesdays with Morrie. Thinking about how my essay rises to the level of this article and all others before it, gives me the inspiration to keep going. 

My goal has always been to write a book about my sister, but until I’m able to dedicate myself fully to the writing process, I continue to write, even if, on the surface, the topic is completely unrelated, because underneath lies the purpose: to stay active and inspired for when the time is right to write about her. 

With the payment I’ll receive from this essay, I will carry my dream forward. My plan is to use the money to pay for renting the room in Concord where Henry David Thoreau was born. I’ll spend a day there to give myself space and time to think about my book, or whatever else comes to mind. The room holds a replica of the desk Thoreau wrote on during his time at Walden Pond. What could be more inspiring? 

There’s a dangerous creativity trap that nobody told me about and I fell into it. For years. And it goes like this: You do not have time to write, so you’ll never be a real writer.

So, naturally, I began seeking innovative ways to carve out time for creativity because how the hell would I ever find time amidst the beautiful mess that is raising children. 

I spent months writing and applying for a writer-in-residence program and found blissful writing retreats located in a log cabin on the side of a mountain that you must hike barefoot and blindfolded to in order to prove you really want it. Now, on the surface, these ideas are wonderful, but have one thing in common: they are far-fetched, one-off avenues to creativity. Even if I had landed the writer-in-residence program (which, I clearly did not, and have the rejection letter to prove it), there would have been a finite start and ending date.

What I’m just now beginning to tell myself, and believe, is that a real writer is a person who writes. Every day. And, it can be different every single day. Some days I’ll barely find the will to scribble a few sentences down on a sticky note in between removing candy cane sludge from my toddler’s hair and remembering to respond to that text from ten days ago. Yet, there will be other days where I’ll add a few paragraphs to my book or write a little poem that’s been swirling around in my brain. But most importantly, my writing doesn’t even have to be GOOD or GREAT. I can and will become a better writer by the simple act of writing regularly and reminding myself to not fall back into the creativity trap.