minor comforts

I am emotionally wrecked.
Chanel is a fucking hero and a reminder that there are heroes hidden everywhere.

We love reading words when those words make our feelings tangible. Her memoir was so tangible. I think to be a woman at all already makes this memoir tangible. I'm not a victim of sexual assault in the way she was but consuming her pages dug up little memory flashes I actively try not to revisit. I was leaking sad tears and angry tears and happy tears. It was so exhausting to read, but so strangely comforting to follow along with her.

"Trauma was refusing to adhere to any schedule, didn't seem to align itself with time. Some days it was distant as a star and other days it could wholly engulf me."

I had two more logs of rice cakes left for a couple warm and sticky and chewy dinners:




One log was tossed with bok choy and topped with sweet soy marinated egg.

The other log was sauteed in cilantro-garlic-ginger paste and cooked in a reserve container of curry kabocha soup.

"I am not sure exactly what healing is or looks like, what form it comes in, what it should feel like. I do know that when I was four I could not lift a gallon of milk, could not believe how heavy it was, that white sloshing boulder. I'd pull up a wooden chair to stand over the counter, pouring the milk with two shaking arms, wetting the cereal, spilling. Looking back I don't remember the day I lifted it with ease. All I know is that now I do it without thinking, can do it on-handed, one the phone, in a rush. I believe the same rules apply, that one day I'll be able to tell this story without it shaking my foundation. Each time will not require an entire production, a spilling, a sweating forehead, a mess to clean up, sopping paper towels. It will just be a part of my life, every day lighter to lift."

I took a memoir writing class my sophomore year of college, and it was unexpectedly difficult. We had to read our sections aloud to the 8 or so other people in the class huddled around a conference room table. I wrote my first section in concealed language and metaphors, hinting at something but not outright revealing it, expecting everyone to just get it. They did not get it. I ended up choking up, crying by the end of class, embarrassed I could not talk about my chosen topic with composure. I wrote my next few sections as candidly as possible. And I cried through every reading. I made everyone uncomfortable. Whenever Chanel broke down in public and private with strange and familiar faces, I would cry again. I can't imagine all the places she had cried while writing her book.

"It took me a long time to learn healing is not about advancing, it is about returning repeatedly to forage something." -Know My Name, Chanel Miller