I was never genuinely good with change.
I mean, from the moment I was removed from my mother’s womb, I reacted by choking myself with my umbilical cord. And when that didn’t work, apparently I was constantly unswaddling myself. I hated — hated — being out of my comfort zone. I have never been one to enjoy when someone moves something in my world.
I have AuDHD, so it’s not always that I will notice and lose it the way my father would. But my body will notice. My body will feel the shift. My body will get emotional and register the loss before I even understand what has gone missing.
Lately, I have been very present in my own life. For a person who tends to anxiously dwell in the past and focus-jump into the void of the future — well, it used to look like a void; now it just looks scrambled, because I never thought I would live this long — the present is actually an amazing place to be.
I realize now that I haven’t always been reflecting so much as drowning in my past lakes. That is why my present was so hard to live in. That is why my future seemed so bleak. It is okay to reflect, but as soon as you feel your old self pulling you in, you have to pull back and walk away. You do not need to dip into, or fall into, any place you no longer need to enter.
And anytime you go back to past lakes that are too dark or too deep, always grab a line and tie it to a strong tree. That way, if you get caught by your reflection, you can pull yourself up and find your way back out.
I have felt more in my body, more in tune, more here, than I have been since I was maybe sixteen or so — before I knew what had happened to me, before I had language for certain violences, before I knew anything about my summers in Colombia as a kid. Even before that age, I was never completely whole. Pieces of me had already been taken, and I had already lived through physical and mental abuse I was well aware of. But I felt there. I lived. I owned myself, and ferociously so.
Today, we were driving through my old neighborhood, and my brother and I realized the old bagel place we went to growing up was closed again. It had been closed for over a month now, and my brother mentioned the old lady who worked there.
I remembered her from elementary school and junior high school. She made the best plain bagel with cream cheese. To me, it felt like heaven: that thick block of Philadelphia cream cheese sliced off and slabbed — PLOP, SLAP — onto the bagel. It did not need to be toasted because it was just that fresh. And it was $1.10.
Yes. $1.10.
I would pass by every once in a while as the years went by, and the years had made her smaller. They had curled her into something that would make anyone’s bones ache. Inflation made the bagel more expensive, of course, but it was still fucking delicious.
I was sad because I hoped the inevitable whispers of Mother had not asked for her return again. Even though I know living in that kind of ache is no life for a woman who spent more than half her life standing and making those delicious bagels — bagels she had made for my older brothers too.
But I also hoped some piece-of-crap mogul had not taken this mother and daughter out of their bagel business.
And then I started to room-inate.
Farther down, we drove to the place where there used to be a swimming pool. It was completely demolished.
There was once a pool there where only white kids went — seriously — because none of us could afford to go. Now it was closed. Gone. Leveled.
We found it interesting that when they finally — finally — made it reasonably priced enough to let everyone in, it only took a few years for them to shut the pool club down and demolish it completely.
It felt like it spoke to something larger about the kind of community we were part of. When I was a kid, I wanted so badly to go into that pool club. I would peek into it all the time and ask my parents why we couldn’t go. As I got older, I started to understand how discriminatory that place was. There was a reason so many people could not get in. The pricing was designed so lower-income people could not access the pool, and since the majority of lower-income people in our neighborhood came from marginalized communities, it made exclusion easy.
As an adult, finding out that this had changed made me happy.
Until they closed it down.
And it made me see that sometimes watching youth thrive where your family had once been denied access is not only a correction. It is a kind of grief too. Because the door finally opened, and then the whole building disappeared.
Roominate.
Then we passed the field.
The field where I used to play with my dogs. Where I spent countless snow days. Where I watched my friends play their team games. Where I ran track. Where I drank until I forgot why I was even there. Where I cut through for shortcuts. Where I played handball. Where I hid away from the problems at home.
It was completely covered up.
“Wonder what they’re doing to it,” my brother said.
I looked at it blankly.
“Probably some commercial development,” I joked.
But then something filled me with dread.
What if it was commercial development? What if it was another building? What if they were taking the field down because it was no longer serving its purpose? What if it was just taking up space, and they needed to build something new?
Roomination.
As we started to make the turn, we saw my favorite place.
The Historical House.
But it looked different too. All the windows were covered. Something was definitely happening there.
The field and the House?
Are they going to take the House?
This house was here when I came back as a little girl. This is the house I pointed out behind Willie in Paris Is Burning and said, “THEY FILMED HERE!”
And he said, “Yes, they did, baby girl.”
Willie, who taught me to be who I am and to never settle for less. The grandest person — and his mom! — you could ever get to grow up around as your neighbor.
I saw that house in all its phases. I met my friend Joel — Pigeon — in that house, and never was a drop of wine wasted there. Words were sold at valuable offers, and boy, were they worth every bit spent.
I miss him daily. I think of him often. And I wondered what would happen if they ever did anything to that Historical House.
After all, that wasn’t its first place of living. The House had its bones somewhere else before its feet were cut, lifted, and placed near my childhood home. It had a rough time getting used to us, but now it has been well over thirty-five years. Now it is comfortable. Now it has found its shape and skin and settled here.
So what is happening to it now?
Room in ate.
Room in ation.
Rooms.
Matt Berninger’s “Frozen Oranges” began to play in the car.
I think the rooms in my mind heard the words before I had a chance to hear them. I began to tear up, and I did not quite understand what was going on. I was having a particularly good morning. We got bagels from the other really good place we love. I felt good. We were laughing and joking around.
So why was I feeling this way?
Then Matt sang about frozen oranges in the trees in Indiana. Crystal apples in the creeks. Swimming in a limestone quarry. Saturday.
And I realized it was, indeed, Saturday.
But more than that, Matt was singing about a memory. About childhood. About nostalgia.
And here I was, in my old neighborhood, in my rooms, watching them tumble down and change all around me.
And I smiled.
I was sad. I was so sad. I was grieving. Because I kept asking, What’s happening? But underneath that, I was really asking: What’s going to happen to my memories? What’s going to happen to all the things I lived? To all the things that happened here? Are they gone if this is gone?
And the answer came almost immediately.
Yes, because it was gone a long time ago.
The moment already happened, babe. You lived it. And as long as you live, the moment lives. And once you’re gone, the moment goes into the memory of all things.
Huh.
As easy as that.
No, it still hurts. Change hurts. But it makes way for some really beautiful things sometimes, so be open to it. Not all change is bad. Don’t settle for less because it is comfortable.
Oh, I’ll never sett—
I’ll never settle.
I said it to myself for the first time in a very long time.
I said it when I was younger, but I do not think I understood the meaning then. Maybe that was it. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe when I was choking myself with the umbilical cord, unswaddling myself, being the ultimate colicky bebé, my spirit was already saying, This body was just not enough, and it did not yet have the language to explain itself.
I was always uncomfortable in myself. People took from me and absorbed me, which made me want to hide more. People would say I was capable of more, or that I was scary, or imposing, because I could speak my mind. Because I could say how I felt. Because I could see through them, or listen, or understand, or whatever gift they wanted from me while resenting me for having it.
I used to cower. I used to get upset. I used to try to be lower. Shut down. Act differently. Mask.
And in the past couple of years, I have decided: truly, fuck it.
I am going to be myself. I am going to love myself and ignore what anyone else thinks or wants me to be. I am going to accept that I am this pure, loving, caring, intuitive, empathetic, bold, assertive person who wants the best for herself and for the people she loves.
And if people cannot get behind that, great. If they can, great too. But if they want to be a dick about it, they can fuck right off. I am not here for their bullshit.
I realized I am capable of change. In fact, I welcome it.
Change is good and needed at times so beautiful things can be born and flourish. We can be the creators of beautiful things in our own lives. We can be the change we choose to see.
And not everything is necessarily changed forever. All we have to do is travel to the rooms in our minds. We can ruminate, yes, but we can also remember beautifully.
I have these little rooms in my head, decorated and lovely, full of thoughts and things and places that remind me of my past. Wonderful things. Angry things. Sad things. All the things that make up me.
And for the first time in my life, I see myself as a monster I can bear to look at — and even love to admire — instead of something I can only other, or speak of in shadows.
I appreciate these rooms because they give me a greater appreciation of my present. They give me love for what I have now, for whom I have around me, and a greater awareness of how I want to spend my time.
They also make me think about my future. But not too far ahead. I am realistic now, and hopeful. I understand that we live in a world changing so constantly that it would be ridiculous for me to think too far ahead. I think as far as I am realistically allowed to think at this point, with how everything is going.
And honestly? It has been a lot better than I thought it would be.
It took me almost forty years for my spirit to finally adjust to my body, and I have to say: choking myself with my umbilical cord might seem a tad dramatic, but looking back and seeing what a dumpster fire this timeline has been, I can understand why the fuck I did such an insane thing.
I would never settle for such a terrible timeline.
So, BRB. I’m going to make something beautiful in this timeline.
Because fuck hoping. We have to make it.
