SHORT:
One time when I was five, I climbed a tree holding a rock and dropped it on my toe. The bone broke in three places, but I stayed up there and looked out over the front yard, toe throbbing, taking in the view.
My therapist says that we can’t stay up in trees by ourselves. That we need to connect and interact with one another to survive. I know he’s right, but I sometimes wish he wasn’t.
MEDIUM:
When I was 13, my neighbor Kayla had a birthday party at a cheerleading gym. All the girls showed up in sports bras and soffe shorts. I arrived in grey sweatpants and a grey New England Patriots sweatshirt. We learned a cheerleading dance in front of the massive gym mirror. I watched everyone move. I tried to copy their movement. I was a dykey beluga amidst a sea of gorgeous fish. After we danced, we ate pizza. Kayla and I were the only people who had two slices. She told me that it was because we were “real women”.
LONG:
I like my therapist. He’s a graduate student. One time I saw him on the 6 train platform and we were wearing the same jumpsuit and he looked better in it. Every now and then he sends me readings that he’s been assigned to read for his Masters program. I skim them and report back with my “thoughts on it all”.
Last week we talked about elementary school. One of the only things I remember is that, in first grade, I made a huge seahorse out of paper and pastels. Then we learned about how male seahorses give birth– they carry the children, not the women.
As a kid, I remember putting a basketball under my shirt and pretending I was a male seahorse. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to float through the sea with a little coiled-up piece of life inside of me.
“They often die right after having the baby,” I explained to my therapist, “The male seahorses… they carry the babies to term, then die.”
“Ok,” he said.
I could tell he was trying not to picture dead seahorse parts sailing out on the current and melting into seahorse dust.
My little pastel creature hung from the classroom ceiling for the next month (next to an octopus and a clownfish and a shark). Later that week, I sold banana bread at a bake sale to try and save the Great Barrier Reef. My friend Jane and I counted the dollars and loose change together. Afterwards we wrote “I love Teacher Jeena soooo much” across the classroom whiteboard in dry-erase marker.
We took a picture in front of the dry-erase declaration. I threw myself in front of Jane, spreading my body across the floor and popping my left hip like some sort of sassy stock-photo model.
I think I really was in love with Jeena. Jane too, maybe. Who knows.
My sophomore year of high school, I had an ovarian cyst burst inside of me while I was chanting Haftarah at high holiday services. I finished the ending blessing and then shuffled offstage, collapsing in the wings once I was out of the audience’s sight.
My dad carried me to the car.
“Breathe”
“I am.”
“It might be appendicitis”
“Wrong side.”
“You pregnant?”
“Not unless I’m the Virgin Mary.”
“Ok.”
“…”
“Could be cool to have a Virgin Mary daughter. Daughter of immaculate
conception.”
I laugh.
I had to lie down in the waiting room of Valley Radiology. I remember everyone looking at me in my Rosh Hashanah dress and heels. I got an ultrasound and they commented on the cysts. To this day, I’ve never felt more radically, corporeally, and emotionally like a woman.
Christine Battersby often writes about tidal, imminent, and fluid conceptions of selfhood that are rooted in female subjectivity. She talks about how, if you possess a womb, you are implicitly tied to a certain cyclical naturality. You are designed for a constant rhythm of labor and birth.
But where does this energy go if you choose not to use it? If you cannot bring yourself to use the tools you were given?
I feel like I’m a male seahorse and I don’t want to die.
Did you enjoy this? Did you hate this? Do you know my therapist? Are you my therapist? Should I keep writing this newsletter? What other topics do you want me to write about? Let me know! I truly want to hear all your thoughts!
-Meg
Social- @megspope @mpopetweets
Venmo- @mpope-venmo-26
Website- meganpopework.com
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Album Of The Week: Shamir
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Project Of The Week: Learn more about the Bachelorette franchise [because I am being forced to watch this season in full]
BONUS: Here’s me in the tree.
I love your writing, and I love you. Photo of the jumpsuit, please?