So much of this year was reeling. So much got lost. So many
things hurt. Every year, I say I feel more me than ever, but I trust myself
saying it this year because I’ve spent more time alone than I had in a long
time. So. 2016.
January: I had held an image (blurry and always changing,
but always with the same two faces) of eventuality in my head for nearly three
years, and the empty space between my fingers was still fresh and figuratively
unfamiliar. And I was not crying in the kitchen anymore. Maybe I realized the
space was not new, only newly acute. Maybe I was already angry, I don’t
remember. Theory felt not good, but not bad. I had barely taken a breath when
high school hit me in the gut; straight girl crush. Straight best friend crush.
I felt like the world had lurched under my feet, but I ignored it.
February: I ignored it because if I didn’t, it would be my disgusting
fault. I couldn’t point where the trauma was, I could only panic about it on an
increasingly regular basis. I remembered on Valentine’s Day that I love myself
and I will love others. I wanted to cry a lot but didn’t. We didn’t talk about
it. I knew I was misplacing my feelings,
and I think I knew I was angry. I knew I’d been done wrong in some ways. We
didn’t talk about it either. Theory felt not good.
March: March was a blur. Kathleen told me my empathy looks
like reason. I should have known my friend already knew. We talked about living
together and it scared me. The opera happened and it was good but it kicked my
ass. Theory was Fine except that it wasn’t and it was my fault for being bad at
organizing and time management and school, and I half believed that. The
anxiety felt like it was on all sides except one. Finals were mostly trash but
I trusted Melissa and she trusted me. I visited Chicago and saw and felt
different things than I had before. I was around straight girls without acute
tension. I was around people I was and am sure love me the way I love them. Scheduling
was a small thing, it was Fine, and then scheduling became a big thing, boiling
over the course of a few days. I asked for space I didn’t get and then drew a
line. I wasn’t sorry. I was angry. I wanted to stop caring about everything I
cared about except singing.
April: New term. Anxiety attack on the first day. Maybe I
stopped avoiding the word “unrequited.” The sun was a thing again and so was
cuddling. Slow burn, definitions gloriously blurred. A new kind of trust. I
called it magic then and I still call it magic. I worked my ass off for an
excellent singing recital and gave one. Mr. Post thought it was brilliant. I
had my people there and a beautiful dress too. That week, I ignored theory, and
coming back was anxiety everywhere. I felt my anxieties blend and confuse one
another. Some nights were Bad.
May: “Oh my god soft girl kisses in the sun wow” are the
perfect words. Warmth everywhere all over. I said one too many things about
straight girls and realized that I can say trauma when I lost a few days. We
were in and out for two weeks, and then everything fell apart. Actually
everything, it felt like, because I couldn’t contain it. And after Kathleen had
told me I was such a good container. Maybe for other people. I felt angry and
alone, and angry because I was alone, and alone because I was angry. I didn’t
know where to put it. I tried in theory, I tried to make things work and to
help him understand and then to make him understand. It felt bad. Everything
felt bad. I felt lost and I missed a lot of meals because I’d be damned if I
went to Warch alone, and I couldn’t hold eye contact with a single person. I
had to screw up my nerves whenever I left my room because I started walking to
the con by myself.
June: I was sure I would fail theory and I knew that wasn’t
right, that the whole situation wasn’t right, but I also knew it was entirely
my fault. That I was inherently stupid and therefore worthless. I wanted to
leave. Mr. Post died and that rocked our studio to the core. I barely found a
place to live. Graduation day straight-up sucked. It just sucked. Pulse
happened. I wept in my new kitchen. It rained the morning I flew home. I
recognized myself as a Black woman. Money for the new school year looked
impossible. Fall term looked like it wanted me dead, re: scheduling, re: skin
hunger, re: meeting anyone’s eye. I wasn’t planning on falling off the face of
the earth.
July: A wash of violent anti-Blackness. White silence
pressed in on all sides. I looked into grad school. The opera cast list came
out and I started running. I got a new tattoo. I stayed in Chicago and my
landlord immediately proved to be frustrating. I realized a triathlon could be
for me. I balanced working out and body image fairly well after an initial
foray into unhealthy territory and considering the running was actually a
revenge plan.
August: My landlord continued to be frustrating. I completed
a 5k, and then another, and then another. I realized that fall term actually
wanted me dead, but wasn’t too fussed about it because it would be hard and
then it would be over, whatever. My body felt strong. I hung out with a girl
from town and wanted to feel something.
September: Kathleen did not dip, but it felt like she
dipped, because it felt like everyone had dipped. I could barely sit through
the first church service of the year, I had so much pent up anger toward white
people. I had confusing feelings about a man. I put up a good show in theory
for maybe two weeks before it was bad. And I’d thought spring was bad, but
somehow, my anxiety about actually everything had grown tenfold. Or maybe it
was that way in spring and I mistakenly attributed that to the newness of the
hurt I felt. Or maybe the hurt just continued, maybe I never really got up off
the ground and I could just pretend better in the summer. (Maybe grief takes
more than six vacation weeks to experience?)
October: I was talking to another girl from town, and maybe
would have felt things if it hadn’t been school. I started calling theory a
little ‘t’ trigger. This was corroborated for me by someone who knows what
she’s talking about. I remember being literally trapped in the theory classroom
listening to the Beethoven and feeling physical fear. Anxiety, which was maybe
visiting five nights a week, moved in. Bad nights abound. I don’t remember much
about midterms, only that I actually cried myself to sleep, the most awful
shaking crying I’ve ever experienced, and I had an anxiety attack so bad and
long I took myself to walk in hours that Monday. Staging scenes was bad, but
some people came out of the woodwork who saw this department for what it is. My
new therapist was magic. It would be dramatic to say she saw me at my most lost
and saved me, but it would be accurate also. I met with music students of color
and felt real. I talked to my director about speaking up and speaking out and
felt real. I crushed on a boy. I solidified a new friendship. I kept the fuck up
in history. Percy found me!
November: I started recording lectures because I was so in
and out with anxiety. I was still working out, amazingly, and then I wasn’t.
NATS happened and Percy’s owner found me. I met with my theory professor and he
made me feel like a crazy person, like I was literally out of my mind.
Wednesday November 9 was the quietest I have ever seen campus. I still had
steam for a few days and then it hit me hard. I could feel tired and angry and
sad and nothing else. My therapist called it Fatigue. I couldn’t finish theory.
I couldn’t do it, even though I told everyone I could. I was too relieved to
feel shame for very long. My director showed up for me and I believed him truly
this time. A toxic person walked out of my life. I looked for a casual hook-up
and ran into something, someone, joyously different. I drank a lot and slept a
lot and kissed a lot and blurred out the anxiety, and then I flew home, where I
needed to be. I didn’t know how to tell people my graduation date moved, but no
one found a problem with it. I felt closer to my cousin than I had in years. I
thought I was going to dip out of whatever smiling kissing thing had started
and I didn’t.
December: I turned 23. Facetime?? Smiling and slow reaching
back out. Taking stock of the damage, but not rushing about it. My body image surprised
me in its fluctuation. My mental health is probably very bad, but I don’t have
to go back to the situation I left, and I’m not alone. I’m sometimes angry
about theory, which is good. This is something I have never done, walked away
with the express intention of healing and trying again.
Resolutions for 2017:
Cook more
Read more
Swim more
Sing better
Tell people I love them
Show people I love them
