Daybook, v.02
Last week’s dispatches, July 12-18
12 July
Sunday. Slept a long time, which is unusual, but something I have been trying on for size. Sleeping on time, I mean. And sleeping a long time. When Tevin says “I’m glad you got to rest,” I know he means it. There is no reprimand hidden inside the tenderness, no suggestion that I ought to have spent the hours becoming someone more useful. I feel well-loved in a way that is simple and necessary. I think of Frida Kahlo writing to Josep Bartoli: “I wish that my substance were your substance, that your voice should come out of my throat so as to caress me from the inside.”
13 July
Monday. Woke up in a panic, heart beating so violently it seemed determined to escape without me. Tried to go back to sleep, only to be plunged into it all over again. Will I never get far from it, all the danger? Been years and years, and yet when I fall asleep some nights I plummet backward into the child that I was, hands gripping nothing, self tethered to nothing. “I’m safe,” I whisper to myself, over and over. I’ll save myself dammit, if it’s the last thing I’ll do.
14 July
Tuesday. Cramps. What a bitch.
15 July
Wednesday. Tevin and I are in sync again, our bodies in conversation despite oceans between us. The same exhaustion, the same desire to withdraw from consciousness until conditions improve. We are old and we are tired and we just want to sleep. Wake me when the world is alright again, or when there’s cake within reach when I hold out my hand.
16 July
Thursday. What a catastrophe of anxieties my mind is. Every thought opens into three thousand more thoughts and an urgent list of hypothetical disasters. I wander through the labyrinth of everything I am overthinking, meeting myself at every turn and finding her deeply unhelpful. Above my desk, a reminder: Love more, worry less. Oh self, believe me, I am trying.
17 July
Friday. Ate entirely too much, goodness. I am way past the age for buffets. Can’t believe I ever harboured the dangerous belief that one must personally taste everything, calling it research on behalf of the nation. Now I only want to lie down like a Victorian invalid, hand arranged dramatically across my forehead, and wait for someone to administer a sundry tonic.
18 July
Saturday. Feeling manic and a little too close to the edge. Nurse! The patient is awake—and has several ambitious proposals.
Thank you for describing the early morning hell of panic. It’s hard to convey to other people by that I mean people who don’t experience it so hand on my heart love back to you and I’m so bloody. Glad when you get some sleep.