checking out for a bit

and not sure of next steps

I hate late summer/start of fall (I know, it’s not officially fall yet, but you know what I mean—when the angle of light changes.) Start of school. All of that.

Everything’s been very shaken up the past 6ish weeks.

The least of the disruptions was a series of four intense interviews with nearly no prep time for a job I didn’t get (probably a good thing.) I interviewed well, but there was an internal candidate, politics, etc.

In the middle of these couple of weeks, was the most horrible, unbearable thing —the child of one of my beloved friends died unexpectedly at the start of the school year. I’ve known her since our kids were little, and we connected initially through our shared difficulty with getting/staying pregnant/having babies, and our kids knew/know each other. I know how wanted and cared for and tenderly loved this child was, and my heart is broken yet it is only one millionth of the loss and pain my friends feel (her husband is a friend of mine, too. I love the whole family.) They actually have to bear this.

That shook me upside down, and I want to support them as things go on.

Then a few weeks ago, the rattling. My mom was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, which is not one of the okay-you-can-live-with-this ones. It’s really upending and scary and sad.

I know that it’s not my fault, that I didn’t cause this. If I could cause these things, I’d have killed and saved so many by now.

But I’m a Jewish girl who went to Catholic school and never got mad at her mom. Until I did, a year and a half ago. I got really mad, and took some space.

My mom’s grandma lived into her 100s and her own mom into her 90s, without any of the healthy habits my mom has. My mom looks so much younger than she is, and is in better shape than I am. It’s implausible that she is this sick, and that there is a limit to how much better she can get.

I feel utterly terribly horrible for writing about her, about my feelings about how she acted, the choices she made. I understand that her illness comes from her body, not from my feelings. And yet it is so hard to have things I’ve written about her out in this little world, anonymous as I may be (I write nothing to identify me or anyone in our family.)

So I’m shortly going to switch to subscribers only, and then may put the whole thing on pause.

I want to continue writing, and have a plan for doing that, unrelated to my 23 and what the fucked life.

Thanks, and I’ll write more later.