It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, just about three hours in, I’m cackling on my sofa with marker coating my hands. Coloring like a child was not on my agenda for today, but it’s probably the best thing I’ve done since I’ve woken up. Hunched over my coffee table and rooting around in a cup of colors is the most escape I’ve had in the months my apartment became the largest part of my world.
So exactly what am I doing? I’m participating in GISH (The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen), a competitive scavenger hunt taking place over the next week. In the Age of COVID, sequestered away from my friends and family, this team effort can seem like a source of unreasonable pain and suffering, but it’s not. I’ve found myself scrolling the list of tasks and tapping into creativity I’d locked away over the last few months and years. …
Originally appears in snapdragon: a journal of art & healing (Winter 2018, Issue 4.4)
Route 62, straddled between Canton and Alliance, Ohio, can barely be called a highway. It’s a two-lane passage with stoplights, farms, and the occasional cow. It’s punctuated with swaying rows of corn, the whoosh of which sync with the sound of tires on the road and the echoes of the Stark County Jail. Route 62 is where I chose to die.
It’s where I drove my tiny sports car towards the rear end of a tractor trailer on my way home from work. I’d been tired for months, telling you, my dear mother, how difficult it was to rise from bed each morning and pretend that I didn’t want to simply disappear. I think you believed tired meant I was weary of my divorce proceedings and the loss of my life in New Jersey. So, when I arrived home, battered and dark eyed, you’d done as expected. You cooked and coddled and cooed. I was still tired, but I smiled and pretended everything was okay. …
I have made myself so invisible that the destination is no longer important
I know the difficulties of navigating a fat body on a plane. It starts by tucking my arms and narrowing enough to make it down the aisle while ignoring the eyes of the first-class passengers. It’s an exercise in praying no one is already buckled into the end seat and hoping that just maybe the middle one is empty. So, it comes as a surprise when I find rising annoyance with the woman seated in front of me on a flight hovering somewhere over Utah. For the duration of our six hours, sharing United’s ample seatbelt room but pseudo folding chairs, she has reclined into my knees, rocked her body into my space while she tries to make herself comfortable. I have huffed, muttered, and cursed at each jerk and press of her body because I know bright pain will shoot through my already sore legs. …
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