In the Driest New York Autumn Since 1869 November Comes as a Good Storm

Here's The Life I Always Wanted

Hello, It’s been a while.

This November was not so kind to me. I had a few health issues and some life catching up to me, so very aptly to this month’s theme I withdrew a little, and I wrote this newsletter at long last, and I hope you enjoy. It seems pretty on par that, in writing about getting in my own way, I spent much of writing this newsletter getting in my own way. So I hope it makes sense, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t. I’m mostly just glad to be back.

xoxo

Chloé

“I wanted very much not to be where I was. In fact part of the trouble seemed to be that where I was wasn’t anywhere at all. My life felt empty and unreal and I was embarrassed about its thinness, the way one might be embarrassed about wearing a stained or threadbare piece of clothing. I felt like I was in danger of vanishing, though at the same time the feelings I had were so raw and overwhelming that I often wished I could find a way of losing myself altogether, perhaps for a few months, until the intensity diminished.”

The Lonely City by Olivia Liang

I’m trying not to see my life as falling apart, I’m trying to see it as something opening. 

The problem, very simply, is that these often look like the same thing. And maybe right now they are the same thing. 

That is at least what I told my sister about two weeks ago, and again my mother on the phone while I was crying in a corner store on my break from work the following day. Before I had a purpling bruise on the inside of my elbow, before it had really rained in New York after it hadn’t rained in some 30 days, and before the life I wanted sunk more viciously it’s molars and the wisdom teeth that were never taken out into my skin. Because I do believe in the idea, not very strongly or steadfastly, but in some real way, that parts of our lives, integral as they are, will come even if you refuse to participate, even if they must claw and bite and derail. 

I’m wiping the blood from my arms, so I know what's coming. 

I’ve always known it. From two separate darknesses, the darkness of what cannot be totally known, and the place of absence and wanting, have been two hands reaching. Clicks through the dark, echoes, they push back to me all the time. When certain songs play, or when summer for a week is over and the leaves are green and the wind does no damage when it manages to blow through them with the heavy hand of Autumn. When I’m traveling on a train or when I’m alone in my apartment and the washing machine is turning. The shape of my life, of the big life I am going to have, makes itself known to me. How pleasant it seems then, when I am reaching for it. Years spent splayed hands, writing and working and stretched thin, tired, but always looking, always finding, getting a little closer, yes. The answers all too clear, that life seems to be capable of being known. It would just take a decision, one that I know to make. 

But I can’t—I can’t choose. I flinch away. Because the hardest thing to ever have is the very thing you've always wanted.

And there was a time when I was afraid even to want. Now it seems to be the only thing I really know. Which is an increasingly unstable place to be, to be stretched thin, to always be reaching for something that is proving always its ability in this course to remain out of your grasp. 

When November came, I was tired. When November came, everything was still out of reach. Though it hadn’t rained, from the very beginning, November was a good storm. Then a lot of things did and didn’t happen, but mostly what occurred was the dawning realization that my life had become too thin to support the grandness I had seen out ahead. That I had built a big life but one that couldn’t last. There wasn’t any time, there wasn’t ever any rest, there wasn’t even the things that had once made being in the state of reaching so enjoyable, that I had hoped to take with me. No, because with how flimsy everything had become I couldn’t hold them any longer. I had begun to see them as something now waiting up ahead. It embarrassed me, when people asked after these things, to admit that what had been in my hand, what had been real and good, had fallen over a horizon, and slipped under the door to a life that I didn’t really have or know. The most obvious thing became apparent last. Everything which was meant to get me where I needed to go, was no longer here. 

But I had realized it all a little too late. Even as I tried to mend, to make the choice I was supposed to make before I flinched. The foundation of my life had buckled a long time ago and any good storm would blow it over. 

And so here it comes, the life I always wanted—maw gaping, incisors catching the light.

In spite and, in the light of everything, I can’t say anything feels too strange. Life feels how it ‘ought to I think. It feels actually how I always imagined it would. Even if I’m a little sore and shaken, a little smaller and studier than it used to be. 

For as obvious as the outcome was, the logic of this past year is not incomprehensible to me and I doubt it ever will be. To live so long in that state of reaching, where the eyes adjust. But who doesn’t make shapes from the dark? How human, to try to turn that which is unfathomable into something fathomable. I knew my life would be big, and it seemed then to be getting bigger. Which is to say I’m pretty sympathetic to myself, I don’t have any resentment, I can’t say any part of me is any longer stretched thin. 

But I don’t want it to seem as though I thought it was going to be easy. I didn’t, which was why I didn’t do anything about the life I had which was clearly not working, which, from this perspective, also clearly brought me no closer to what I feel out ahead. I think only that we are sometimes lucky enough to see the difficulties arise and have a little choice of where they fall, which is itself a little reprieve. So if I was passive it was only in the way that one knows something is wrong and is trying very hard for it not to be by pushing against a strong current. Which isn’t to say that I didn’t deserve the teeth, but it is to say that it didn’t feel like doing nothing to me. How could it? I was so tired.

But you know I figured it out eventually, started to direct the flow of something already falling, which is better than nothing. And now things are going up again, not now, but soon, and I've got big plans. I have always taken comfort in this fact, that I don’t want to fail. I don't want stay here. So I’m not going to.

November isn’t over yet, but the crumbling will end—eventually. All that destruction will hit bone. I've been at the beginning, at this beginning, a few times before, so I know what I'll do. I’ll find the words and the time, because now there is more of it than there was before. I’ll share again, take pictures, write, write quickly and for fun, and for nothing. Everything withdrawn will return, I will coax what was lost back over the horizon. I don’t have to wait. The life I’ve always wanted is here. I have the bruise to prove it. For now, though I can't stay like this forever, I do think it's okay if I do a little flinch. I think it's okay to be a little repulsed by what is happening and to try not to get too hurt. So I'm going to take a step back, rest, let the rocks kick at my feet, let the old ceiling overhead fall away, and then find, yes, that opening.

But I’ll be back. I’m already on my way.

In writers group, Stacey told me what I wrote reminded her of this comic by Anna Haifisch. I did not intend for the newsletter to be about this, I actually posted something very different at the start, which I scrapped or will use in the paid newsletter. But it seems other things take hold, grip us, whether we reach for them or not.

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicenter, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns. This moment is the absent mother’s: the boy, the empty house, the deserted yard, the unheard cry. Him standing here, at the back of the house, calling for the people who had fed him, swaddled him, rocked him to sleep, held his hand as he took his first steps, taught him to use a spoon, to blow on broth before he ate it, to take care crossing the street, to let sleeping dogs lie, to swill out a cup before drinking, to stay away from deep water. It will lie at her very core, for the rest of her life.” Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

I know he would never yield such power. To be the last one left in wanting. October 18th, 2024 9:29 PM

Unfortunately, nothing else as I didn’t write a lot even in my head.

Here is the mood board for November (late but always fun). And I promise! The other Newsletters are coming. The paid one, December’s. We’ll end the year with the tabs closed.

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 everything I want and its sharp teeth.

Love always,

Chloé