I Fell Down a Hole
falling in love with straight girls and other painful things
Me and Valentines day: not great friends. A year ago I was driving out West in my 2003 Honda Accord and Arizona was on my pit stop list. When I arrived my grandpa begged me not to keep going and said that girls shouldn’t do things alone. (I wrote a poem about it.) Two years ago I was subtly ghosted for a week by someone I really, really liked and so I went out to dinner with my mother instead and she, my mother, broke up with me. (I wrote a short story about it.) I think I’ve blocked out any Valentines Day events before that.
There is something wonderful about growing up and beginning to claim holidays. I feel like I have begun to have ownership over the small ones. I get to choose how I spend them and there’s no underlying sadness if family isn’t involved (and they often aren’t). The bigger holidays are sad, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate, and I think I have pinned it down to the fact that I’m only 23 and they don’t feel like my own holiday yet. I’ve never been in charge of stuffing a turkey or lighting candles or been the one to put the cookies and milk on the mantle. I think those holidays, you know the ones, are for parents. But then that got me thinking about how I may not be a parent anytime soon so I may as well do the things I want to.
So I did the things I wanted to on Valentines Day this year, which really is a silly holiday and it’s quite a small one, but I have found it’s easier to start with the small silly things. I went on a walk around my neighborhood and I went to the bookstore downtown to buy books and I boiled a beet in the microwave to make truffles. And then I shared those truffles with people I love and made some cards for those people, too. My favorite 3 year old who is almost a 4 year old drew hearts on the cards and I came home, after I tucked my favorite almost 4 year old into bed, and my roommates had filled the kitchen with biscuits. (There are 40 biscuits in the kitchen.) I’m not sharing to brag about my unusually wonderful holiday, but I kind of am. Because usually Valentines Day and I are not friends. And maybe I am getting better at doing the things I love.
That’s the happy ending but there is still a sad beginning. I tricked you, you thought this was a happy newsletter.
…
Last week I got a real taste at being a parent and let me tell you it is difficult. It may have been one of the most difficult things I’ve done. On the last night, after the kids were asleep, I watched Spencer and it broke me to bits. Near the end, Diana’s dresser takes her to the beach. There is a lake in front of them, the color of a handful of blueberries, and beach grass waving overhead. It’s just the two of them, in private, and landscape was so familiar. It was like I was there. And then Diana’s dresser, Maggie, says, “I've never told you this. And it probably means you'll have to fire me. But actually I'm in love with you. For years, I mean in that way.”
But actually I’m in love with you. For years, I mean in that way.
And suddenly I was Maggie sitting on the beach while the wind swept up in a warm, gentle way and the lake looked so delicious, like blueberries, and I thought of the girls I had loved for years and never told. All the straight girls I loved and never told. I once again felt that electric jolt of secrecy bouncing in my stomach, sweaty fingers, hot face. I remembered the way my hand once swept her blond hair out of her face because she was so beautiful and she knew I loved her, she told me. I hadn’t thought about all of that in a long time and here I was, in someone else’s house, doing my best at being a parent for 4 long days, remembering what it was like to be secretly in love. Remembering 14 year old me lying in bed and thinking of all the ways I could say I love you. Running it through my brain, my mouth.
So then I fell down a hole and wept because I was tired and sad and about to get my period. And I wished that I had been brave like Maggie and wished I had someone like Diana who would receive it well, no matter what her particular feelings were for me.
I guess I tricked you again, because it has a happy ending for me. I get to tell the people I love that I love them and there is no secrecy or shame and even if I love a handful of people at the same time, there is no shame. There is so much love.
But I guess it’s not totally happy because some people don’t have those endings and they are still closeted, somewhere in the world, or they are still sad on this silly holiday for some reason or another—and that really breaks me.
If your love is a secret or you’re Rodriguez and lost your job two weeks before Christmas or your mother is missing or your father doesn’t understand you or you are houseless and stampeded by hundreds of disgusting hearts taped on store windows, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know some of those things and others are foreign. But I’ll fall down a hole with you, if it helps.
Love, Jo
P.S. thank you for subscribing to my newsletter! I’m going to start sending out some poems and creative non-fiction work once a month, as an extra thank you for those who pay $5 a month. I really hate putting a pay wall on things, because in a perfect world we would just trade things and money wouldn’t exist, but for now it does and one day I hope to write and teach and live on a big garden that feeds as many people as possible. $5 a month helps support that dream. Again, much love.
