Everything I have

Musings of care and a poetry of failure

This email is too long. You may need to open it in your browser!

I admit I have to do things a little differently this month. I’m sending you two drafts of the same newsletter and both are incomplete. The first time I wrote my newsletter I reserved my right to fail and this is, I think, the first time I have. 

I’m embarrassed by all of this, and tired, and I’ve made two phone calls that tell me this is perhaps what I must do. One to my mother who said I should surrender to my feelings which were full of despair and anger and frustration, and the other to a friend who said “We will love whatever you give us.”

I told my friend of the dread and fear I feel when I have to delay my newsletter. I cannot say where it comes from, but it lives with such intensity I can at times find the shame of it paralyzing. Both the shame of not doing what I said I would do, of failing to live up to a standard I myself set, but also the shame of revealing my shame. The embarrassment of caring so much, of taking it so seriously. 

And it probably seems silly, I’m aware of the gravity that a simple email holds. But, at times I feel I am one delay away from being found out. That somehow everyone will discover, if I let enough time pass, that I’m not a writer at all. I’m just a nanny living in Brooklyn. Only then for the other shoe to drop and all the classes I did poorly in, the assignments I forgot to turn in, the typos, and forgotten references will give way and it will be revealed to me that maybe I’m not as good at this as I thought I was. A strange sort of imposter syndrome, like having and not having it at the same time. 

And I’m sad that this is the state of a theme that I care so much about, something that came to me as a big idea that for whatever reason, through a haywire February and generally difficult circumstances, I cannot articulate. But I thought perhaps the greatest way to show care, is if we came at this together. I like to think, if you’ll let us, we can learn so much, at least until I can return to this theme with a little more life and a little more literature to pull from. 

So, here are my fragmented thoughts. I’m sorry they’re not more together or clear, I feel like a failure but I don’t know what else to say. I hope that you find reason where I could not, a thread that will pull you through. I promise, I will give you everything I have.

“I think you like me a lot more than I like you.”

This is not what one hopes to hear from one's boyfriend on your one-year anniversary. He was standing in his room and I was sitting on his bed which gave him the high ground. It was all very literal then, and he was much taller than me anyway so he always had it. I didn’t have a jacket, it was still October when the heat of day lingers into the night so only the mornings got cold. But the heat was on and he was looking at me, his words hanging between us, and I understood this was a test, one of some annoyance to him. He wanted me to say something, but I didn’t know what. So I told him he was right, and that I knew it. Which was true. Admittedly he was stating something obvious and sincere, albeit rather cruelly. But to pretend that neither of us knew this would be the lie. And it would also be a lie to say that we did not then spend 6 more months in each other's company despite what we’d revealed. I was very young then and it did not occur to me and though it was not what I wanted to hear I did not have to stay in its absolutness. 

I still do not know what he wanted me to say. But I do get a sense now, after all this time, that he misspoke. I do not think ‘like’ was the word he meant to say. Because when I owned up to my feelings for him directly he did not find this fact between us very bothersome. It seemed, really, what he meant was I think you care about me a lot more than I care about you.

Which meant I had already lost. 

In all the years since this has happened this is what has bothered me the most. This strange phenomenon where you can be in a room you know very well and someone who invited you into it, who remembered the date this momentum began, views their indifference as the superior perspective. To care implies a weakness in argument, a logical fallacy that renders any opinion you now present as inherently flawed and void. And for such reasons, there is nothing you can do, you’ve lost in a way that you can never go back. You are now left vulnerable, your care gives you away. How can I take you seriously when you are so constantly giving yourself away?

The morning after my one-year anniversary I pretended to be asleep. I’d woken the way you sometimes do where suddenly you’re in the middle of a thought and can’t remember when it began, as if nothing preceded it. But my eyes hadn’t opened and my back was to him and I could tell that he was awake. I heard his hands press to his face, rub at the skin, then the sound of his feet moving over the side of the bed to the creaky floor, before the weight of the mattress shifted, and the springs clanged with it, with his attention. He was looking at me, me who had mastered even breathing. The mattress shifted again and the blanket at my elbow slowly dragged up my arm to cover my shoulder. He pressed his hand against it, made sure it would hold, it was kind of a cold morning. And then he got up and went to the kitchen to get us some water to share. 

I think about that more than anything. Even things that don’t care, find it in them if only in secret. Perhaps some of us can only care when we’re alone.

Most mornings before I really wake up I can hear my sister stir the milk in the tea she has made us. The metal spoon clangs against the ceramic cup and we are usually the first people awake in the apartment so, besides this, there is no other noise. The fridge opens and closes and then she walks down the hall, her hair wet from her shower, to her room where she will dress. Or else, she is already dressed and she goes to the couch and I lie in bed a little longer than I probably should, already no longer listening to the morning’s noise. Falling back to sleep knowing all of this about her and she knowing that if I’m not up by 8:30 I would like it if she woke me. 

I find it difficult to understand nihilism because I have a sister and a brother. If meaning is ours to make then I think life is about waking up early from time to time, and making my siblings a cup of tea. For some reason, however, cynics and apathetics do not like the closeness of an apartment, the morality of a single room. So when they pull out from this singular moment there is a train of thought I can never quite follow. The universe, so I hear, is indifferent to you. 

I admit, I don’t know if that is true. 

Somehow, and I really believe this, choosing to care makes the universe care for you. You become more aware of the intentions and deliberate acts of the world. Spring returns from its long holiday or the light of the sun so far away at last reaches your living room. And I understand the chances are in our favor. I know that there are laws and routines and cycles that say our universe will do these things, but I also know it doesn’t have to. Sometimes it keeps me up at night, the feeling that if I look away for a moment from this world it will stop doing what it should, and between one heartbeat and the next I’ll find a bright light, a fizzle, a bang, before it's all over. 

But it never happens, even when I turn my back, even as I close my eyes. 

Which makes this whole vast endless cosmos more considerate and deliberate to me. Like the moon shining down in my room sees me lying in bed and tells everything out there why I’m so afraid. And as such the celestial bodies all conspire to keep on, so a relatively young girl in her room can sleep peacefully that night. Then, once all of that is decided and the moon knows for sure what will happen, it whispers I will stand watch tonight, I will take care of you. And I believe her.

But if that's too large, too far away, it doesn’t have to be. The universe, really, is very close to you. The table beside me holds my drink instead of letting it fall to the floor, my cat brushes my leg and purs at my feet. This is not an indifferent world and so I think everything cares quite a bit. And maybe that isn’t factual, but I do not believe this makes it untrue.

I do not find apathy or indifference to be noble or even particularly interesting. You do not have to be inventive or outstandingly faithful to its circumstances. By definition it contains nothing. Indifference doesn’t reveal itself or lend anything to the moment. It is a shallow mode of thought, there is nowhere else to go. So when people say the universe is indifferent to you I find it to be offputting. The point of reason becomes inarguable in its abstraction, in its enormity. But I admit, I don’t know if that is true. No one has sufficiently proven this, that the universe bends towards indifference. And at the risk of being scathing, it seems instead to be a lazy argument for pseudo-intellectuals. Who can argue with the universe?

I don’t know if I can, but I do often converse with it. In the morning my sister makes me tea. She knows that I like more milk than her and so when she brings me our cups mine is a little lighter.

Ideas that didn’t make it

The universe is indifferent to you. You do not always know what the universe is feeling. 

No one has sufficiently proven this, that the universe bends towards indifference. At the risk of being scathing, it seems instead to be a lazy argument for pseudo-intellectuals. Who can argue with the universe?

I don’t know if I can, but I do often converse with it. 

I feel at times this world does not take me very seriously. 

Sometimes, even in winter, I do not want to get where I need to go. On one such winter, just after my birthday, I was walking home from the bar and it had begun to snow. It was late in the evening and the lines outside every other dive had cleared so it was really just me alone. The snowflakes were the size of quarters and they fell in slow languid movements, and I walked the whole way home staring up at the sky, unable to pull myself from its beauty. But I admit at the time I was not in a very good mood. Life seemed to be moving in a direction I couldn’t stop it and I was sad for the discovery of this tragedy. But for the time, for that moment, I was watching the world go quiet. I couldn’t even hear the music playing from the windows of places I was not in. 

You do not always know what I am feeling. 

I know what you think of me

I care. I care. I care. 

I am not always 

But what do we want from each other? 

I will care. 

The universe is so defined as the sum of all matter. The strings and stars, sadness and joy, dark and light, how unimaginative and simple, to say it is all corrupted by an indifference none of us see. Because it’s easy then, to wipe your hands of it, to outsource reason and feeling to something with which you have decided cannot defend itself. In his poem For Grace, After a Party, Frank O’Hara writes “You do not always know what I am feeling.” And in The Book of More Delights Ross Gay writes, “I’m not an optimist, I’m just paying attention.”

When people argue this point I wish to point out that they are hiding behind abstractions. Their arguments are stale and lazy. I think of Norm Macdonald and Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think of the surprise and connection that sits in even the smallest of natural things. How plants enjoy music and grow better when you talk to them. I think of my sister in the kitchen stirring our tea, I think about the group of friends last summer outside my window who counted down to midnight like it were New Year’s Eve and sang happy birthday. 

For Grace After a Party by Fank O’Hara

“My experience with cynicism and pessimism is this: cynics are sure of their pessimism; usually they are cynics not by choice, but by an inevitable inner certainty of understanding that doesn’t leave them another option. Optimists are different. In most cases, to be an optimist you have to be deeply aware of the reasons to be pessimistic, and choose to go the other way. To hear the common advice of “having no expectations so you don’t get disappointed” and decide to have expectations anyway- it’s a very conscious choice, at least in my case. What is a life without expectations? Why live just to not get disappointed? Are we that afraid of difficult feelings that we’re willing to numb ourselves off to the experience of life just to avoid sitting with hard emotions for a while?” Erifili Gounari On Optimism

On optimism

I think constantly about you. There is no other way to say it. February 1st, 2024 11:48 PM

There is something joyful about wanting. It was no longer a wound. January 29th, 2024 8:49 AM

Here is February’s mood board! to the pink-hearted month and all its bitter weather! Stay warm and lovey.

If you wanna hear more about this theme, my paid newsletter comes out in two weeks. They all come with their own little goodies, a look at what I’ve been mulling over that month etc etc. If you’ve had enough, don’t worry about it. We’ll see each other somewhere groovy soon.

Subscribed

That’s all this month! If you enjoyed the little conversation we had let me know! Save, share, and tag @chloeinletters

Here is My Twitter and my Instagram is @chloeinletters  where the DMs are checked, cared, and loved for.

My Goodreads where I sometimes write reviews but keep updated is right here where more of my library is contained as far as books go. 

My website is where you can check out my portfolio and contact me 

My email, if you want to cut to the chase, is letterstochloew@gmail.com where you can let me know what you think or ask me a question about what you saw here! 

Here’s to coffee Fridays, to failing care, to caring anyway

Love always,

Chloé