Post-mortem
It’s over. It’s done. It is summer break.
What have I been doing, you ask? Well. I have been:
Planning my wedding. I am rather critical of the wedding industrial complex, but I am getting married and thus we do need to do plan it because my fiance and I do want to celebrate with all of our friends and family. The day would feel hollow if we ran off and eloped with just a few people there when so many others would want to be there with us (and we wanted them there, too). It would also be a missed opportunity for a great party, and my fiance and I are both air signs, so that’s a necessity. I’m looking at paper and narrowing down a guest list and all that good stuff. I’m pretty clueless but it’s fun.
Working at our neighborhood bar. I waitressed (my preferred term— it’s a descriptor used to demean and feminize and so I like to reclaim it) all through college and also for a while after college. I love restaurants— the hustle, the performance, the camaraderie between regulars and the staff. When it’s run right, coming home with tired feet but also a voice sore from laughing. The fluid movement of the front-of-house around each other in tight spaces, experts in nonverbal communication. I love hearing loud Latin music trickle in from the kitchen and people-watching with the other servers. I could write a whole other blog just about restaurants and the impact they’ve had on my life. I met my fiance while working in one! But that’s another story for another time.
Hanging out with Wren, our kitty cat. This is our first animal that my fiance and I have had together. We’ve been preparing to get a cat or a dog for a while now and it’s finally happened. She’s perfect. She’s sweet, loving, weird, and a little bit of a klutz. We find ourselves just sitting and watching her move about the world— it’s TV in and of itself. She’s still little— only nine months— so it’s beautiful to think about how our children will know her too, God willing. We both grew up with a multitude of pets and I didn’t realize how much having her here would make our household feel so much more complete.
Noooooooothing. I have been literally just laying on the couch thinking, which I probably shouldn’t do too much of. It’s making me a little stir-crazy. My fiance was working from home the other day and I knocked on his door twice just because I needed to say hi and talk to another person. I need to call my friends.
Reflecting, but not too much. I haven’t been avoiding thinking about school, but I haven’t been trying to either. I want to do a formal post-mortem at some point this summer. I started one in while I was still in the trenches— what was I doing that wasn’t working, what did I need to remember for next year? I probably should have finished it while I was still in it for specificity’s sake, but it fell by the wayside, as these proactive, growth-oriented personal missives have a tendency to sometimes do in my life. It’s all well-intentioned, but sometimes you just gotta get through it first instead of harrowing yourself to do better while you’re still just trying to survive. I plan on digging in and really writing about what I need to do for next year, for me, at some point this summer.
Doing yoga. Trying to go four or five times a week. I still need to create a workout schedule for the summer. It’s a routine that I want to build now so that way I can hopefully add strength training or running to my yoga schedule during the year. I also applied to complete yoga teacher training next year, something that I NEVER thought that I would do.
Reading. Currently, it’s “The Ministry of Time” by Kaliane Bradley. Absolutely fascinating. My kind of genre-bending book. Not gonna lie, it’s losing me in some places, but I’m still really enjoying it.
Watching “Bridgerton.” Need I say more?
In general, I think I feel good/okay right now because all of a sudden, I have so much head space. I don’t want to get into it too much and risk getting into that frame of mind, but last summer, I was embroiled in the Process. I had to sit at home, alone, wondering what they were going to do, if I was going to have to go back to work with the person who sexually assaulted me. All of it had to stay a secret, so I was just at home, scared shitless. I laid on the couch and watched all eight seasons of “Game of Thrones” for the first time. Arya, Sansa, and Daenerys’ abilities to outsmart, survive, and make justice for themselves over the men who hurt them was a balm to my soul, as silly as it may sound.
Earlier this year, I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it to the end of the year. I was afraid that I would quit mid-year, mostly due to the trauma, stress, and fear of the Process. But I didn’t quit. Things are okay.
And I made it— I made it to the beach trip. I watched my students play in the water. Me and a little group of my students held hands and laughed and screamed as the post-thunderstorm waves battered our thighs. I watched as Ade, who is an old man trapped in a fourteen-year-old’s body, finally got to let go and just be a kid. He kept laying down in the water, propping himself up on his hands. He ran up to me at one point, dripping saltwater with goggles suctioned into his eye sockets.
“Wow, Ms. Jager!” he said. “These waves are strong!”
“I know, Ade!” I said. “I’m glad you’re being careful.”
“But it’s really fun to feel them just hit you, the power of them.” He looked out wistfully at the water and then curtly added, “I can’t swim, by the way!” before prancing back into the water. I sighed and kept an eye on him.
I saw him soon after that holding hands with his friend Bryson in the waves, presumably so he wouldn’t float away. #blackboyjoy at its finest and most beautiful.
This summer, I’m just trying to take stock of all that I have and recognize how far I’ve come. Typically, it’s hard for me to do that. My anxiety feels so deeply hardwired that I’m constantly looking for the next threat— what should I be nervous about right now? What should I be working on? What should I change or get ahead of? But I don’t want to think about that.
I want to think about the life that I’ve built for myself.
I uprooted my life and moved to a new city, one that I had only ever been to twice before ten years prior, once for a show and once for dinner on the way home from somewhere else. I graduated from a challenging master’s degree program. I got a job that I still enjoy, despite the slightly insane challenges of the past couple of years. My fiance and I live in a beautiful little apartment with lots of light. It’s affordable and it’s not perfect, but it’s a home that we’ve made together, our first one. Our neighborhood has everything in it that we could ever want. We have new friendships that we’ve built here, and they live nearby.
I feel like I sound like I’m bragging. I don’t mean to. I’m meaning to outline that we are so absolutely lucky.
I have my struggles— everyone does— but we are, for lack of a better word, blessed. Beyond measure.
I want to center myself in the joy of the present this summer. I’m okay, we’re okay, and I don’t want to take that for granted.
I want to:
Go to the park near our house and lay in the grass and breathe in the briny water of the bay.
Swim in the ocean regularly. Is once a week too ambitious? Maybe, maybe not.
Go for drives for fun. Explore the beauty of New England. Go to some new places.
I need to learn how to crochet!
Get through a few books.
Visit our friends near and far.
Move my body and give thanks for it.
Write. I was reading through some old notes from my old phone and there’s some good ideas in there. I want to work on the old manuscript I have but I also want to try to get some short stories out there. New Substack incoming? Who’s to say?
Thank you for reading. Posts this summer will likely be irregular until I return to school. But let me know if there’s anything that you would be interested in reading and perhaps I shall write it.
May God speed you on your journey!