I sat down in a crowded auditorium for the first time in over a year. It’s been so long since I saw this many people at one time. A man leaned over and wrapped his hand around my shoulder. I can’t remember the last time I was touched, either. I flinched slightly as I felt a needle sink into my arm. I skipped class at least once a month to serve as a human pincushion for most of my life. But after all this time, I forgot what the puncture of my flesh felt like. My breath caught, and I looked up at the high ceilings to coax my tears back in my eyes.
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Stepping off the front porch of the children I tutor felt like being released from handcuffs. Now, I don’t want to liken tutoring to incarceration - one is objectively much worse. But I can't deny the incredible, freeing feeling of being by myself on an empty street. Just me, and the morning.
Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Sing a song. Repeat. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe it reminds you of a concert or a Chloe Ting booty workout. Well, it's neither. What I'm describing to you is a Catholic mass in the eyes of a non-Catholic. I recently spoke with a woman who had lots of curious ideas about what it meant to be Catholic.
"Long-Run Saturdays" are a weekly staple in my running habits. I love my regular rituals, where I throw on my favorite green leggings, crank the volume in my earbuds to the max, and pound out all my weekly frustrations on the concrete around my city. These weekend runs are, frankly, the only time I have to be alone and undisturbed, and they provide ample opportunity to explore the mountains in which I live. The National Park Rangers know me on a first-name basis, and the trails are as familiar to me as the veins on my wrists. That is, most of the trails.
It wasn't too long ago when I discovered that people go to college for not-college. Parties, football games, clout, and cool sports and extracurriculars, I knew that. But a husband? Ladies. I'm not trying to pass judgment or anything, but this whole "ring-by-spring" nonsense and "M.R.S. degree" feels a little one-sided. It feels like a really expensive price to pay for lifelong companionship, and a lot of work, too (hello?! You have to take classes in college!). I'm no expert in finance and budgeting, but I'm just saying that if that's what you're looking for, maybe going on Tinder is maybe just a little bit cheaper and more convenient than Yale tuition.
I rolled my eyes as my bedroom door knob turned and clicked. Of course my mother would just walk into my room without knocking, like she always does, I thought to myself. I could be butt-ass naked and she would not care one bit. She asked me if I was sick. What could she mean, am I sick? I have a chronic illness. What a stupid question, of course I was sick. I turned back to my book. No, she added, I saw an empty Emergen-C packet on the kitchen counter. Was that yours? Oh shit. No one drinks Emergen-C in my house until they're already starting to feel sick. It wasn't my mom. It wasn't me. And it wasn't my sister, either. That only left one suspect - my dad, who, if carefully listened to, could be heard coughing from his office.
It was a late Tuesday night when I heard the back door behind my bedroom slam shut. Okay, it was a late Tuesday night for me. It was 7:30 P.M., but the sun had gone down already, so I was wrapping up my day, gently at terms with the fact that anything occurring from now until the moment I would fall asleep would be of no interest to me or anyone else in this world. But, having been stuck at home for somewhere between nine months to an eternity, the sound of the back door launched me out of bed. My dad was going somewhere! Possibly the store! On an adventure! I yelled after him to wait for me, sprinting through the house to throw on my hiking sandals and the first sweater at my disposal, a navy-blue and appropriately bedazzled Yale crewneck. As an NPR reporter discussed the stormy state of politics over the car radio, I leaned forward to tie up my still-sweaty hair using the only stretched-out elastic I could scavenge from underneath the car seat.
Motherhood is really, really painful. I know this, not because I am a mother, but because I have one. Since my early childhood, I have received no shortage of reminders about what a gift my life has been (albeit, a gift I do not remember consenting to), and that my mother can simply remove me from this life at a whim. Would she? That's a question to ask her, not me. But on a more serious note, I wonder what my mom's life would have been like had she declined to raise two troublesome girls. Would she have pursued her dream career of becoming a teacher? Would she have picked up an interesting hobby, such as writing novels or building eccentric yard sculptures? Or would she have simply directed her spite at an alternative target, such as my dad? Since my conception, I have been nothing short of pain, racking up what probably amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses for my family. My sister, probably double that. In careful observation of my mother, I gradually arrived at the conclusion that I would never, as long as I live, desire to be a mother, which is why when I read on WebMD that my acute abdominal pains were symptomatic of a possible pregnancy, I was shocked, appalled, and felt a litany of emotions that can only be described by words that are rude to use in public.
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