Addendum

Here’s the situation.

Sometimes I get an idea for an essay, but in the time it takes to find a day to write it, my thoughts around the topic evolve.

I’ve had this one on my mind for a minute, but I’ve been struggling with exactly what I want to say…

When I wrote to you last, I’d been thinking about that topic for several weeks, and seized a delayed-flight twilight zone to finally get it on paper.

But the truth is that I had a rush of brand-new thoughts and feelings that day that I wasn’t at all prepared to include. And in the six weeks since then, I’ve been awash in all sorts of confusion about what exactly remains unsaid. Meanwhile, the unsettled/incomplete feeling persists with compounding intensity. And so, I have for you…

An addendum.

All of that ^^ implies a heaviness. And that’s accurate. But, it hasn’t all been a negative sort of heaviness.

It has been the employment of over 30 local musicians on a single day (June 10), which is something that I am immensely proud of. It has been 22 events produced with happy clients. It has been showing up as the best self I have for my bandmates (not a perfect self, but the best self I’m capable of being on each given day – I feel I can say that with full earnestness).

It has been dozens of hours driving alone through some of the most beautiful land in the world. It has been consuming some sincerely evocative audiobooks, whose ideas have filled my brain to the brim. It has been planning artful new curriculum for my fall semester classes. It has been lovely and trusting conversations with dear friends, and students.

It was seeing my knee surgeon for the last time! And it has been four very special podcast interviews with people I feel genuinely privileged to know, six batches of sourdough loaves, plenty of other culinary joys, and many cuddles with my best boys (Bear and Andrew, of course).

And.

There has been some really burdensome heartache, too.

Six weeks ago, I mentioned a whimsical inner-child project I was excited about…

Since then, I’ve gone back and forth and back and forth and around and around about whether to talk about this, how to talk about this—and I’ve just come to the conclusion that if my intention is to be honest about what my creative expression and evolution looks like in this “research period” (and it is), then I need to say something. Further, if my intention is to build myself a little world where I can show up as myself (and it is), then I definitely need to say something.

If you’ve been here for any length of time at all, you’ll know that a lot of the themes I gravitate toward in my work are the result of my experiences being raised in a narcissistic environment where I was firmly entrenched in the scapegoat role. Because of this experience, I see people and situations in a somewhat unique way, and feel inspired to create art around those unique perspectives.

Masks (2020) was a bold and deliberate step for me in processing a lot of my own traumatic experiences, while holding plenty of curiosity and space for all sorts of survival-related decisions we might make as individuals.

The Hallowed Wide (2022) is sort of a manifesto about learning to find beauty and value within members of our complex and divided human family.

And what I’m working on now…

Well, I’m still figuring it out. But I think I can say that it’s circling around concepts of duality. Maybe…the power of narrative to see our way through duality, or plurality? And the work is (and I am) curious about a new sort of magic. Something more essential than what I’ve explored before.

You can see some of these thoughts fleshed-out in this essay, and in this one.

I’m following inspiration and curiosity wherever they lead me, and working to connect the dots on the back end. So far, so wondrous.

Now. Changing gears…

When I made the decision to go no contact with my father a little over three years ago, I knew it would likely mean informally cutting off ties with pretty much my whole extended family. There are some serious Succession-style vibes in my family, and my dad is a high-power, high-influence player in the whole messy structure.

So, from the greater family, I expected silence, at best.

But optimistic as I tend to be, I’ve spent a lot of the last three years trying to cast out lines to just see where there could be connections remaining—where I might be able to crack open a door, just a little. As it turns out, having zero family while you actually have a TON of living family is just…really emotionally difficult. And I don’t feel super comfortable hacking entire humans off my emotional family tree without intentional efforts to affirm connection. Scorched earth really isn’t my style.

So. Maybe about 18 months ago, I started really thinking of how I might be able to build a new, more sustainable relationship with one of my brothers, the one just younger than me.

I feel pretty confident saying he was mom’s most-preferred child. They were always really close. Naturally, this means there has been some significant tension between us since I started talking publicly about my narcissistic mother (about a year after she died, one year before cutting contact with my dad, four years ago, now).

But I thought there might be some things we could connect on—old family recipes, movies we loved as kids, that fact that his oldest daughter is a lot like me (according to literally everyone who knows both of us), our career goals, etc.

And to my joyful surprise, it really seemed like he wanted to meet me there – in that hope for reconnection, in the pull to build something new, something sustainable for us.

On Thanksgiving Day 2021, he texted “grateful you are my sister! I love you!” In May 2022, I gifted my treasured porcelain figurines collection to his older daughter, and to my younger niece, a very sweet homemade Halloween costume I’d saved from my childhood—the cutest little tiger outfit (mom was a very proficient seamstress).

He included me in a really beautiful “Mom’s Recipes” cookbook he and his wife made for Christmas this past year. That meant a lot to me.

We talked about our shared childhood memories of bike-riding WAY too far away from home, sleepovers at grandparents’ houses, Disney Channel original movies, and our two younger siblings being truly hilarious toddlers.

Exactly one year ago, we talked about how unnecessary a lot of the ongoing family pain seemed to us. We committed to doing what we, as siblings, could do to put as much of it behind us, as possible.

This past October, I asked if I could pen pal with my nieces, and got a resounding green light. I loved the idea of building a cute relationship with them via snail mail, and he said they’d love sending me some of their drawings and crafts. I said I’d really like to be closer with him and his family. And he said that would be great. I said all I wanted was to be a weird and cooky childless aunt. And he said he wished he’d had one of those…

We talked about me visiting them at their house sometime soon.

All winter, we talked regularly about my knee injury and recovery (he’s a physical therapist), and I felt so grateful for that, and more hopeful than ever that we could figure out how to be siblings again.

So.

As I crutched and hobbled through my winter recovery, I started dreaming about what sorts of wonderful treasures I might send to these little gals. I consulted my fairy-core facebook group for fun ideas, and had some darling notions of my own. As I dreamed about wax seals and pressed flowers, I began to feel like my whimsical inner-child needed these treasures, too. And it all felt so pure.

As soon as I could walk, I got started! Throughout the spring, I sent a drawing, some stickers, a cute little hand-painted activity, and a magic lemonade kit (dried butterfly pea flowers + crystal lite packets).

But…at the beginning of May, my brother stopped responding to any of my texts. I assumed, naturally, that he was just busy, and kept checking in – maybe once or twice a week. Then, I wondered if my phone was broken, so I tried an Instagram message. A few weeks later, I tried texting him and his wife, together (did something happen? what is going on?). Andrew tried texting them both…

Unfortunately, it’s now been nearly three months of complete silence. I have absolutely no idea why. Without any context given at all, no explanation, no warning…I feel myself coming to terms with the fact that this is likely a permanent break.

My old traumas have been raised to the surface in such an intense way, these past few months. It’s a stark reminder that this is exactly how my parents taught my brother to treat me. Like I’m not a person, at all. And once again, I’m finding it difficult to remember whether I am a person, at all.

The day of the flight delay, the day I last wrote, I was supposed to have a quick layover in the Phoenix airport. I didn’t think anything of it, I expected to be back in Utah by 11am. But as I stepped off the plane from Albuquerque (by now, knowing I’d be in Phoenix all day), I saw the Arizona mountains outside the window, and immediately began to cry.

I hadn’t been in Arizona since mom’s funeral five years ago. I wasn’t ready. And it just absolutely mowed me down.

I remembered my dad picking me up from the airport, and taking me to help him pick out a tie for the funeral, then heading out for a father-daughter hike in those very mountains—where we had a real heavy conversation about the afterlife, and whether my mother would be offended from the other side if we, as a family, sought therapy and committed to stop treating me like shit (he…was pretty sure that in fact, she would be furious and definitely not ever forgive him for that #wtf). I thought about the fact that mom had requested that I do her makeup for her funeral, and remembered the excruciating feeling of my entire immediate family leaning over me as I applied eyeshadow and fingernail polish to my abusive mother’s corpse.

And I thought about that fact that in the past five years, I’ve also grieved a father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and now…a brother, a sister-in-law, and two little nieces. And I’ve done so largely in complete silence, totally alone.

Naturally, I had a full-blown panic attack on an airplane later that evening. Fun Fact: It was my second airplane panic attack, the first having occurred on the day mom received her cancer diagnosis.

Anyway. God.

I sat in the airport that day and tried to focus on what I could do with this extra time. And I wrote an essay that is full of things I believe to be true. But as I wrote, I had a lump in my throat reminding me that it wasn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth is that I do love to love. I’ve survived this trauma because I love to love. It’s the best feeling I can think of. It’s the best antidote to that lurking feeling that I am not a person, that I am easy to throw away, that I will never be worthy of love.

But here’s the thing.

Sending out love without receiving any is like only ever having seen photo negatives. If you’d never seen the real thing, you’d be thrilled with a negative. It would be so much better than no image, at all. It’s almost the thing. You know?

And for me, getting almost the thing has gotten me through quite a lot. I’ve learned to experience love in the giving of it. And I regret absolutely none of that. I did my best with the limited resources I had.

Now, I have some new resources. I’m aware of the ways in which these wholehearted survival strategies have left me vulnerable to codependence, among other emotional dangers.

I’m more committed than ever to continue to send out the best I have to offer, but to keep boundaries that protect me. And the truth is – it is much, MUCH scarier to believe that my best efforts, my shiniest self, really might be rejected, than it is to believe that if I’m not receiving love/acceptance/belonging, I probably just need to give more, to try harder, to ask for less.

I want community and connection SO badly, but for the first time in my life I’m grappling with the fact that it isn’t my decision, and it’s not under my control. I think I’ve finally reached the end of that rope.

As I wrote last time – I think what I want more than anything in the world is to build a life where I can show up as my sparkliest, most vibrant self, and have that self be received and valued by those who are allowed significant space in my days.

I’m both feet in on this idea. And also fucking terrified that I’ll be thrown away again, and again, and again.

And I guess what I want to say here is that this latest grief has made me realize that when I don’t say this part “out loud,” I’m participating in my own scapegoating. I’m taking away my own personhood. And I guess I just really want to be done with that.

I feel the urge to apologize for how dark this got…but I think I can’t. Because that shit isn’t my fault. And because I think I deserve love and belonging even when I’m overwhelmed by grief and rejection. And I think I deserve to tell the truth about the pain I’m experiencing.

If my community can’t hold me that way, it’s not the community I am searching for. And I think the only way to find the community I’m searching for is to show up however I am. Sparkly, or not.

Deep breath. Time for bed.

Thank you for being here.

Em

P.S. I’m working on an alternate plan to gift my inner child with magic and whimsy. #thegoodnews