A body with some miles on it.

 "The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt—and one more failure."

—Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

I haven’t been inspired to write as of late. I wanted to, but nothing comes out. And there are these things that seem like they could weave into something coherent.

Like, for six days I’ve felt on the edge of my period: breasts ache, body bloated, acne, moody-bitchy-no-good-foul-mood, yet... nothing.

And I am flipping through my notes. Yes, because if I don’t write it down, I might forget it. Yes, I can live it, feel it in my body, it can hijack my life for almost half a month, but as the moon spins, I am stupid again. So, to the notes!

Maybe it’s diet, medication, stress. Or even just an off month, schedules off, summer heat. God knows it might even be my brain. You know what I’m talking about, like when your brain makes you sick by thinking about being sick.

But it could be menopause.

And I really need to take a step back and tell you vital context. I have never really feared growing old or “the change,” as women older and obviously less progressive than I called it when I was young.

At most, there was a brief time when I felt the need to decide if I was or was not going to have kids.

And in 2016, when I was 28, I went almost mad and actually was thinking I might. It lasted two months.

But I had so many other things to take care of and do, and it was on the back burner until finally I didn’t. I probably did not want kids.

After all, I put everything else in front of it.

A decade later, I decided I had feelings about it, complex feelings, but ultimately love my life as is.

So the idea of menopause and aging and not having kids doesn’t scare me.

I’m not even sure if scared is the right word. When I was 10, I used to put socks balled up under my shirt and pretend they were boobs. By 12, I had some and was excited, but then at 14, they were too big, too floppy, too cumbersome, and the outfits I could comfortably wear in public dwindled.

Repeat this with everything puberty. Period, excited, then it’s too much. Armpit hair, excited, then it is too much.

Till it more or less evened out and my body morphed slowly. Like erosion, like hair growing, so stealth and soft and quiet in the background, like gaining five pounds. It just happens.

It’s been gradual. I am a fish still in the bag, my temperature adjusting.

And now, what if it’s all wonky again? I will have to learn how to live and feel best in a new body again. Like an alien, I wake up—yet again in my short life—to find all the physical rules of my existence different. We were playing Uno, but now it’s poker—go fish!

And a woman I’ve never met in my life and probably won’t commented five years ago about over-the-counter progesterone cream, and now, six days into the sneaky little menses-who-cried-wolf no-show, I’m rubbing this hormone cream on my tits.

I guess this is what happens to women when all the crones are just shit-posting AI fake news on Facebook. If I had a daughter, I hope I would let her into everything I’m feeling and thinking right now.

She shouldn’t be flying into it blind.

Yes, all those women in my life, older women, elderly women, all those women, and I heard plenty of fear about menopause and so little of what it was actually like.

P.S. Tonight I microwaved nacho cheese in a “29 and holding” mug I thought was so funny and ironic when Mom gave it to me when I was 25.

URGENT!

What do they say? When it rains, it pours?

Pours out the ass?

I suppose you could say I have a lot going on right now. Earlier, I was squirting diarrhea into the toilet, but thanks to the miracles technology has bestowed upon us, that didn't stop me from still being that work-from-home diva, muted on the call, of course, hearing all about the end of fiscal year.

Let's have a meeting about how busy we are. Then let's schedule a follow-up meeting about that meeting.

And while I could mute myself for the call, I couldn't mute my ass. Or the stench. Or the rest of the chaos unfolding around me.

Like the Guatemalan man who had cut a two-foot-by-two-foot square in the ceiling of my guest room.

See, impeccable timing.

It rained hard last night, and there was water on the guest room bed: A leak.

Which is great because, you know, our house is on the market, and we were less than twenty-four hours away from a showing.

So we panicked.

We ran around.

We called numbers.

I say we, but I really just mean my husband.

Hence, the Guatemalan men in my attic, cutting holes in my ceiling and probably wondering what the fuck is wrong with the little white girl who disappears into the bathroom every thirty minutes while someone on speakerphone keeps shouting, "END OF FISCAL YEAR."

As if, between the drywall and insulation, they also worry about fiscal years.

Alas, the stupid leak might be fixed.

At least fixed enough for the showing.

So there I was, chewing an anti-diarrheal while inviting in a snooty-looking blonde, a decade younger than me, and her realtor, who spent a grand total of five minutes in my house—not even bothering to look at the bedroom we'd rushed to save—before deciding it wasn't for her and walking right back out.

Fiscal year. Leak. House showing.

Every little emergency arrived on the same day.

And somehow...

it all got done...As if none of it was urgent after all.

But my ass soup?

That Hershey squirt?

That's eternal.

Summer Solstice 2026

Awaken, child, for I know thee. I know your heart and the fears it harbors and the hopes it dares not name.

Summer Solstice was yesterday, and with so little night, so little dark, my subconscious wreaked havoc. Dreams on dreams, layers of dreams. Not fun dreams, surreal and whimsical adventures in which the boundaries and physics of life are drawn out to their elastic limit. Not even nightmares. It was as if my mind handed me all my fears on a silver platter. One night only. Tonight's chef's special.

While, now, hours after waking, I cannot recall every little bit, I will disclose the few I do remember, for they weigh heavy on me, like a recovered repressed memory that really would have been better to stay put in the trenches.

Like I am in the audience of a comedy show with some guy. Who is he? Random dream guy. As often is the case, a placeholder for any guy. For whatever reason, I am lying on my belly, and someone points out that I am bleeding through my pants. There is blood on my ass. So, of course, I go to the bathroom, which has a steeply sloped floor and weird automatic soap dispensers that are broken. Of course they are broken, and plastic tubes, like life support, are spurting slick soap onto the floor—heavily fragranced, chemical-sludged, colored goo. And I struggle to get to the bottom of the slope where the toilet resides. I struggle to get back to the top of the sloped floor, back to the door.

Sweet child, you have hidden from your own blood as though I had not woven it into you.

I return to my seat, which has now appeared (good and gracious Lord, thank you. I no longer lie on the floor on my belly; I sit in a chair!). But every male in the audience is in some state of undress. Some fully naked, tiny little micro dicks, shaved and on display, big fat guts hanging over swollen, red, angry testicles. Some are in boxers or briefs or undershirts. My male companion—the Any Guy U.S.A.—is in a wife-beater and boxers, just like my husband wears to bed.

I ask him what is up. And the only response was that the comedian on stage said it would be funny for all the guys to get naked, and it wouldn't be weird if they all did.

Beloved, how strange that you should stand clothed among the naked and still believe yourself exposed.

Next dream: I am standing in a pool that only comes to my waist, yet everyone else is under the water, swimming beneath the surface, close to me. Close to my legs, as if they are sneaking a peek. I think they are all men, but I'm unsure. At least all the bodies I can see swimming under the water are male and buff. Like bodybuilder buff, swimming so close to me. And all I can think about is my pubic hair probably peeking out the edge of my swimsuit, and that they are probably only under the water to gawk at the shame of what had naturally grown out of my body. The cursedness of womanhood that sprouted when I quit being just a little girl.

Daughter, you have mistaken becoming visible for becoming unsafe.

For some reason, my husband (not indescript Any Guy, my actual current husband) and I are staying with my friend Kim. And for some reason, he needs to get up before me, so he has requested that Kim wake him up, even though I am sleeping next to him. So she tiptoes into the room and wakes him up, and I just lie there, silent and still, but also awake and aware. And jealous and outraged and hurt. He has picked her over me. They tiptoe out of the room, and I spend much of the dream searching for them. I find her, and she says it's nothing, he just needed to be woken up. But I could have done it! Why, oh why, did he ask her?

Precious, every door you feared would close behind you has always opened toward me.

Naturally, with dream logic, we leap to the next scene, in which I am moving in for a year with a couple because this has led to my husband and me taking a year-long break from living together (this is what happens when you have someone other than your wife or your alarm clock wake you up). Naturally, my husband is helping me move in. Did I mention the woman of the couple is pregnant? Not a little pregnant—hugely pregnant, might pop out a kid any moment.

My husband and her husband are trying to unpack my stuff, but she and I are trying to stop them. You can't just throw my stuff in with theirs! We need a system. We need organization. She and I plead with the men. Get some decorum! For we both know I will move out in a year, so even as we are moving in, we are planning the moving out. We need to have a system in place to distinguish whose stuff is whose, to make it easier when, in 365 days, everything we are doing right now falls apart.

Rest now, little soul. I have watched you bleed, hide, compare, divide your home, and prepare your leaving before your arriving. Sleep.
 Even morning arrives without rehearsing itself.

Unfinished Business

Last night, my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

 I just don't know what it is yet."

See, this is one of the things that first attracted me to him:

his spirituality,

his faith in the universe,

his belief in magic.

Not metaphorical magic.

Actual magic.

In our first month of dating,

we each slept with a crystal we'd chosen,

then gifted it to the other.

It was his idea.

The clear quartz point he gave me

still sits on my altar.

The raw amethyst chunk I gave him

still rests on his smoke stand.

So when my husband, lying in bed, turned to me and said,

 "God is keeping us here in Alabama a little longer for a reason.

I just don't know what it is yet."

I took it seriously.

I pictured psychic chains

tethering a ghost to a place

until it resolved

the unresolved business of its life.

And today I looked around

this place with renewed eyes,

searching for the soul contract

we made with this land—

the land we are so desperate to leave.

Do we need

to unite our home,

to end the feline civil war

that demands we keep one cat away from another?

Should we harvest and can

the tomatoes this summer,

so they'll sustain us

through the Hoosier winter?

Perhaps it's the neighbor

who waves goodbye each morning.

I gave him zucchini from the garden

and cookies I'd baked.

We still harbor resentment.

Or perhaps it's the leaky bathroom faucet

we still haven't fixed,

though the replacement parts sit,

silent and accusing,

on the floor.

Or maybe it's nothing.

Maybe we're falling into

the oldest human trap:

constructing

the illusion of control,

like OCD—

believing that locking

and unlocking the door

three times

can save you.

Please Keep Your Patience

I texted my dad that we were not going through with the house and explained why.

He replied, "I am sorry it didn't work out. Please keep your patience."

Forgive me, but that last sentence has been a pebble in my shoe ever since I read it.

Please keep your patience.

I read it once.

Then again.

Then one more time, trying to figure out what exactly he thought was about to happen.

Because I vaguely remember hearing that phrase from him when I was a teenager. And like most fifteen-year-olds, I had enough hormones pumping through my bloodstream, poking every brain cell, that yeah—I was on the verge of flying off the handle over the smallest inconvenience.

But I'm almost forty now.

I've been married for nine years. I go to bed by nine. I make balanced meals that we actually sit down and eat at the table. I do the laundry every week. Fresh sheets, too. I refill prescriptions before they run out. I compare insurance deductibles. I know exactly how much cat food is left before I need to buy more.

I really can't put into words how stable my life is compared to my childhood, when clothes might sit in the washing machine, wet for days—rank, stank, and mildewing—or dinner was canned green beans because there simply wasn't anything else in the kitchen.

So I kept coming back to that sentence.

Please keep your patience.

And the more I read it, the more it felt fearful. Maybe that's colored by all that pesky past stuff again, but it felt like he was bracing for my inevitable meltdown. Like he thought I might lose my temper. Freak out. Lash out like an animal.

But then I wondered if that was fair.

Maybe he meant exactly what he wrote. Maybe it's just something he says to people when life gets stressful. Everyone at the community center has heard him say it.

I honestly don't know.

What I do know is how strange it feels to realize that, at least a little, I'm still frozen in time for him.

Maybe that's what parents do.

They update your age, but not always your identity.

You can become a homeowner. Build a quiet marriage. Learn how to regulate your emotions. Spend years building a life that is so wonderfully, almost boringly stable that you forget stability was ever something you had to learn.

And yet somewhere inside your parents' minds, you're still fifteen years old, slamming a bedroom door and screaming.

The funny thing is, maybe he hasn't actually missed who I've become.

Maybe he just hasn't had the chance to see it.

Change is so slow from the inside. There wasn't one day I woke up and suddenly became patient. There wasn't a ceremony where someone handed me a certificate declaring I was now emotionally regulated.

It happened one ordinary Tuesday after another.

Unless you were there for all those Tuesdays, maybe you wouldn't know.

I can't really tell if I'm reading too much into one sentence.

But I also don't think it matters.

Call it reflection, healing old wounds, making amends, or whatever the fuck you want, but I feel called to call him today. If he doesn't answer, I'll leave a message. Not to convince him of anything. Just to let him hear, through my words and my tone, who I am now.

Maybe the phone call isn't really for him.

Maybe it's for the version of me that still wonders if she's one bad day away from becoming that fifteen-year-old again.

Or maybe it's simply because I'd like my dad to know that I turned out okay.

The strange thing about growing up is that you don't just outgrow old versions of yourself.

Sometimes you have to outgrow other people's memories of you, too.

I can fall in love with anyone in love with me.