But when I go through my old journals, I start to consider that journaling might be toxic.
I’m tired of being constrained by the past. A diary reinforces the past. So I’m going to stop recording all the horrible, PTSD-inducing shit that I go through, because, why dwell on that? There’s nothing there I want to revisit.
But there were a few good moments, too.
I’ve found myself fondly remembering the walks I took with my sister around the harbor near the hospital, when we needed a break from watching my mother breathing and listening to the measured advances of the feeding tube, or later, in the woods near the nursing home, when mom was marginally better, but still couldn’t stand.
I’m wondering how my mother’s old roommates are doing, if they’re still alive, if they’d recognize my mother now, not only walking, but walking without a cane, not only walking but gardening and clearing brush and moving it around with a heavy concrete wheelbarrow.
(And to think that the “nice” rehab place wouldn’t take her in, because they said she wasn’t strong enough!)
Now we’re rounding the corner on a new September, sunny and cool enough for a jacket. I’m thinking I would love a do-over of the summer, but with all our tasks and struggles behind us. A chance to experience those months without the constant fog of exhaustion and delirium, asleep on the train twice a day, asleep at lunch, stumbling through most of the day in a post-nap haze, half trying not to embarrass myself and half not caring, every minute hungering for the next nap.
But for the past month I’ve been able to go running in the city on Saturdays. A restriction on the weekend train service means I’ve had to drive to the city and park in a garage (at great additional expense!) but the flexibility this offered opens up the opportunity to work myself into a lather over five, six, seven miles around the Charles River basin, taking in that majestic skyline, taking in the other runners in their skin and spandex (more revealing than nudity, proudly outlined tits and cameltoes, the exultation of bodies celebrating in exertion), then a post-run high walking through the park, sweat-chilled in the sun, feeling good about people for a happy half-hour, happy they’re there, sitting by the pond, sunning on the grass, taking wedding photos or actually getting married; or walking down Charles Street in disarrayed victory, smelling meals between the sidewalk diners and the restaurants where I’ll never eat, watching beautiful people dressed in the latest fashions to go out shopping for the latest fashions, thinking how lucky I am, this whole show put on for me.
So, yeah, from now on I’m only recording the bad shit if it leads to something better; otherwise, why write it down?
Used to think: wouldn’t it be great to get old and have all this stuff written down, so you could go back and remember it? Or at least gaze at a massive stack of notebooks and manuscripts with a sense of accomplishment, graphophilia satisfied by the labor of decades, all that complexity captured in desk drawers and filing cabinets, ready to be decoded by human eyes, maybe my own, or maybe AIs, and in any case, the closest we can come to immortality short of having children.
Now I’m old and don’t have time for it. If you write too much in your youth, you hit middle age and realize you’ve written more than you’re ever going to read.
Old happened overnight. The face looking back in the mirror isn’t one I recognize. It’s lined, grizzled, compellingly competent. Beard and hair gone every shade of gray, rainbows of gray. A big head. A little intimidating. The sort of person who, if he walked into my shop, I’d think, “This guy looks interesting but I want to be careful around him.”
I like looking a little dangerous. But it’s insane, because I still feel like a 12 year old kid who needs to ask for a hall pass to use the bathroom. I have to remind myself about the body I’m wearing.
It’s gotten 20 pounds heavier in the past couple years. Not toned by any means, but not fat either; I just seem to occupy more space than I used to. Muscle’s built up somewhere but it’s hidden beneath the results of indifferent diet.
By hand: 80’ long and 4’ deep, through rocky soil and ancient garbage, to replace a broken water line. I did it by hand because shoveling 30 hours a week for two months felt easier than talking to someone about doing it for me, and I wanted to save money. And with the pandemic on, I had time. I think that’s where the extra 20 pounds came from, and why my shirts don’t fit right anymore. Digging out boulders and eating my wife’s high-protein sausage and egg sandwiches. But it’s a shock at the mirror, too, because now I don’t recognize the body or the face. Customers commented on it too. “What’s different, Winston?”
You’d think I’d shrink back down eventually, but we’ve had trees to cut down, wood to split and stack, fences to erect, lawns to mow, broken pipes to patch, flooded basements to clear, and so, so much furniture to assemble, move, restore, rearrange, and throw away. I don’t want to talk about it, write about, or even, necessarily, remember it.
While my mother was recovering in the nursing home, we convinced her boyfriend of 30 years to leave the house. He had his own health problems and certainly was in no condition to take care of her while she recovered. I could write a novel about this guy but I don’t want to. It would sound like I’m blaming a lifetime of problems on someone else, which is, I realize, what I’ve been doing for a lifetime.
My sister and I, we still can’t believe he left. None of us (including my mother) wanted him around any more, but my sister bore the brunt of it, being at the house with him every day. Introverted, conflict-averse people finally stepping up to conflict. It took social workers, psychologists, lawyers. It took convincing my mother, in her delirium, to finally stand up for herself.
He drove away, to live with his daughter for a while. He died a few days after Valentine’s day; the flowers he sent my mother would outlive him. And now he’s been gone for all these months, and it feels like, “What was that all about? Was that really 30 years of abuse, manipulation, and neglect? And all we had to do was tell him to leave?”
If I hadn’t spent all those years writing, I could have been fighting.
Which would I rather remember?
