I still live in a dual world, it seems. During the day, I face outward. What do I need to do today? Dishes, groceries, library pickups, preparation for my students, something that Nick and Mike need or would love to eat, connections with friends and family, especially socially approved connections with friends and family. I worry about looking weird. During the day, I act my age.
With long Covid, this has gotten more polarized, this differences between showing the authentic parts of me and trying to hide them.
At night and early in the morning, I wake, knowing what I really need to do in my lifetime, knowing what I need to do just for me, because it’s important to me alone, because it reflects my beliefs and my vision of who I am in the world. This morning, I woke at 4:44 am. I like those numbers, 4, 4, and 4. I’m here as my quirky self. Instead of the normal one who plans her day around going to the grocery store. In the middle of the night, I try to plan how I might ask someone to go into the woods with me somewhere nice and do some ninja planting so my baby Western red cedar trees will have homes before I die. I plan how someone says they’re going for a hike, and I can give them one and they’ll plant it in a stand of other cedars and maples in a beautiful place. Maybe they’ll think of me when they walk by there over the years. I envision these little sprites as strong and tall and sucking in tons of carbon dioxide for years to come. I picture them with families of other trees, reserving water and nutrients for the plants they host beneath them, conversing quietly through the mycelium network under dead leaves. Western red cedars like growing with maple trees. These baby trees were given to me in my flowerpots by my grandmother trees that stand around my house, trees that have hosted me and my family for thirty-one years. I love them. I mourned that some of the seedlings died in my care over the winter. When it starts to rain, I want to go into the woods to my favorite places with a trowel and a canteen of water and kneel down in a good place and plant my baby trees. The Forest Theatre, the Snoqualmie trail, Twin Falls, Beaver Lake, Lake Alice, the Snoqualmie river, Little Si, Rattlesnake Lake, the Snoqualmie Pass. I want them to grow as a blessing to the places I’ve wandered. It’s weird. I know it is. But at night, I don’t care what people think of me. I want to accomplish the things that I need to accomplish before I die or at least before I lose my mind.
At night, my unfinished books seem like broken things, fragments of pottery scattered on the floor around me. I have at least five, maybe six or seven to finish. Why is a book about a cat important? If I do it right, you’d understand after you read it. No matter how hard I try to sweep these fragments up and glue them together, they don’t come together. My mind has trouble doing the things that are required to put them together, executive function, revising, editing, and uploading them. The writer me has gone into hiding again. In 2017, when I was out and honest about being a writer, those were the happiest days of my life. I don’t want to die before I finish my books. I feel the pressure of time. I always have, but now it’s worse. But when I’ve asked for help, people didn’t know how important it was to me or maybe they were uncomfortable because my impetus to ask for help is that my brain is injured or dying. People don’t want to stare those things straight in the face.
I do.
I need desperately to talk to people about the beauty of life in the face of dying. It’s important for me to talk openly about brain injury from long Covid, from dementia, from whatever, so that other people don’t have to quietly feel so ashamed if it happens to them. At night, I feel the right to think of what I need to do. Me.
In the morning and throughout the day, I turn to what other people want me to do or how I’m supposed to look to the world. These deepest desires suck back inside me and sound unimportant, frivolous, pathetic. The world has to turn. People are busy. There are groceries to buy, meals to cook, television shows to watch, appearances to keep up. Don’t look at the face of a woman who is slowly, inexorably, losing her mind. Don’t let’s let her look strange in public. Those baby Western red cedars and those unfinished books are only important to her and to no one else.
What is that weird thing that you want to accomplish before you die that matters to no one else but you?
Thank you for listening, jules
