Watercolor Calm

Oat milk iced mocha from Café Dulce. Hair long and loose. Shirt dress, KAWS bag, brass bracelet from a shop in Tokyo. I bounce through The Row parking garage and drive after the sun. It’s morning in August, and everything feels overripe and ready for change.

Last summer was merciless. This summer is a triumph. One thing I have been taught during the past year is that there is no such thing as mental anguish. All pain is physical. If I think about it even now, I can still feel last year clawing its way out of my belly. But, even as I was realizing that my daughter’s father was Saturn Devouring his Son, I was learning to be an alchemist. As he tried his best to design my downfall, all his destructive energy worked to boost me up. It wasn’t easy. I was more afraid than I had ever been, and it was the loneliest I’d ever felt in my life. Every day when I awoke, I brushed my teeth and thought, “Good morning, aren’t you terrified? You’ll never make it.” But I pushed. Constantly exhausted, I pushed. I had no other choice than to keep moving forward, and the movement became my teacher. It has remained with me and has become one of my proudest parts. It reminds me to hold my baby close and whispers to me “you found the way out.”

Now, when I examining the abuse, a lot of it for the first time ever, I realize that I was always feeling burnout in that relationship. I used all the magic I could conjure to distract and beguile, to turn the vitriol away from us, and that was also exhausting. Emotionally, women are brought up to be master bomb defusers while men are handed a hammer and told to hit anything that makes them uncomfortable. This is the first summer in many years I feel rested, energized, re-created.

But today, I’m giving in to my bloodlust for peaches and watermelon. I can’t wait to get home to the basket full of figs, and cherry tomatoes and a tall crisp glass of cold water from my Cuckoo water dispenser. I’ve carved out my day around my two new projects, both inspired by coming out of the other side. Baby, today I feel like I’ll live forever.

I stop at a red light, almost home. The Korean nuns from the nursery school are walking back to their convent from Target. Clad in grey and white, and laughing through the crosswalk, swinging their bull’s eye bags. It’s a watercolor day, so soft you don’t have to strain your eyes looking for the beauty; it comes together right in front of you.