i. observations + reflections
university of pennsylvania, neuro icu, philadelphia friday, 10 october 2025. 10:10 pm.
The windows don’t open up this high, so I’ve asked them to leave the door. Each time someone comes in – you need at least six hands to orchestrate a death – both I and the attending who granted me this wish turn to check. I lunged at it once, anticipating, but they remembered without needing intervention.
A soul needs an exit route, or else it gets stuck. Everyone knows this.
I turn my body to the door, only watching it and G’s eyes; doe-d, staring blankly, like the rest of them. For once, I accept I don’t need to know anything more than that.
bradley funeral home, lobby, new jersey wednesday, 15 october 2025. 11:23 am.
At his funeral, we told stories of how the will of the world bent around him.
A man I did not know spoke of him with an understanding it has taken my whole life to realize. He had met him once for dinner in New York ten years prior. He named, correctly, that he was a funny, generous, mountain of a man. He named, correctly, that his presence preceded him, that his knowledge was unfathomably vast, that his pride was obvious and convincing. Everyone laughed. Everyone knew. I had never met most of the people in that room.
There are only so many ways to talk about someone who is entirely themselves. There are less ways to speak about them when they have fed you the script. Machine man; god-denier; the most important thing you have is your hunger to know more, to decide, to become.
I have been trying to carry on his task. It is eating me alive.
When he got sick, I thought if I knew enough, fed him the right foods, showed him he was loved and cared for; if I learned all of my lessons so I could learn his on his behalf; if I became his voice, his legs, his body; if I was stronger than I look, then I’d feel reality melt around us. I thought I’d watch him recover enough to take back the reins, be relieved of my holy duties, and return to being a disciple of his force.
He is dead, and my will remains unheard. We did not trade bodies or skills or understandings. He is dead and I can’t carry on where he left. I want to let my hands fall open. Open. More.
bed, echo park, los angeles friday, 24 october 2025. 1:40 pm
In a lapse of sanity, stripped away from a sudden bout of the flu, I paid an e-Reverend to convince me this was all for something greater. I hoped he would tell me what I was meant to learn so I could do it faster, better. I asked him for the story of my life’s past, my family, what I am still shouldering from them, and he came up empty. I sat feverish over my Zoom screen when he told me it was unusual, but he was sure I had only lived one other life. He had nothing to glean from any of it; the first life was apparently cosmically unremarkable, perhaps even non-existent.
He asked me if I’d like to know this life’s purpose and I laughed, “sure, if you can”. He was unfazed by my skepticism. Test passed, despite my waning belief. He went off-screen to meditate and talk to my “team”. I lay back to mouth breathe and stare at the ceiling. I worked on making peace with my universal abandonment. I am new here.
When he returned from the other realm and turned on his camera, the Reverend told me I am here to learn about human suffering. I sighed, of course, aren’t we all, though I was secretly overwhelmed by the confirmation. I had heard this before from numerous tarot readers, therapists, and my mother. The latter acknowledging our shared lineage and equating it to poor luck. I did not, and do no, believe in that. There is always a way through.
He told me I could shift my fate if I allowed my ancestors to feel their pain through me. If I opened myself like a channel and remained still, turned my inner eye to each energy point of my body, and allowed what was too much for them to carry to pour out of me. I was too sick to protest. Go ahead.
Through a series of cues and forty minutes of classical music, I saw visions of water, water, water. At my crown, there was a boat – shifting, jutting, and breaking open. There were no other people. I saw myself bob over and under the rough ocean like a lure. I felt helpless. At my navel, there was a shoreline, a longing, a sadness. My feet in the sand, sinking lower with each pull of the tide. Again, alone. Again, nothing to do but allow it. I felt myself begin to cry and stifled it. At my root, there was no longer air. Submerged. Each inch of my body held together by an outside force. Peace. I thought – there are infinite ways to get what you want. I thought – there are things to learn from that which you would not choose. I thought – if this doesn’t end soon I might die.
It ended soon enough. I wrote it all off as a scam. I keep thinking about the water.
echo park lake, echo park, los angeles monday, 3 november 2025. 4:45 pm.
I am meeting more of myself every day, and it is crushing. A month has passed, and I am six degrees of separation from the daughter he knew. He will never know this me or the next. I am terrified that he won’t recognize me when he comes looking. I am terrified that I want to keep going. That I’m excited to. I am devastated at the thought of leaving him behind. I am devastated at the thought of leaving anyone. Time moves on unforgivingly, and I am learning to stop bracing for it. I’d like to stop bracing for it. I don’t know how to stop.
echo park lake, echo park, los angeles thursday, 6 november 2025. 5:01 pm.
i am, again and again and again
hammer museum, westside, los angeles sunday, 9 november 2025. 12:31 pm.
bedroom floor, echo park, los angeles monday, 17 november 2025. 8:32 pm.
I am escaping to the future and to other people’s lives on my screen. I am pretending each one of them will save me. I am destroying the life I inhabit as a necessary sacrifice. I am resenting others’ resentments at my purge. I am sick of my own excuses.
Just today, I’ve built a new life in six different cities. I am apartment scouting and rearranging money and jobs and dreams to fit each one. I can be anyone tomorrow. I can be anyone in ten minutes. It’s intoxicating, the hunt. The catch and non-release.
I write a poem about playing god to reprimand myself. I preach, but I do not listen. This is advice for other people; this is a peace for everyone else to know but me.
The man I love is trying, trying. I am showing teeth at his attempts. All of my walls, burst open, I only know how to build. I am trying to save him from the rushing water. He is shoreside whispering instructions. He is teaching me how not to drown.
Let your body lie limp, belly up, exposed. Breathe and breathe and breathe. Go. I’ll greet you at the river’s mouth. I’ll catch you before the ocean takes you.
My spine curls into itself like a willow. My arms flailing, grabbing, dragging. I am new here. I know nothing if not how to claw my way to safety.
I love him enough to listen. I am desperate enough to try.
I am learning a love that doesn’t take exhaustion to welcome.
I am learning a softness that endures.
ii. narrative
grief is something we hold together. grief is something that has had a hold on me, and I’ve grown weary of trying to buck it off. snake year, eating myself. I have little to say in terms of conclusions about surrender because I have yet to attempt it. through this, I am attempting.
I’m not clear on what I want from this and maybe thats the point. maybe you’re not supposed to want things from choosing to let go, but it feels wrong to not at least guide it in one direction or another. what i’m saying is; I am here because I have no other choice. I am told this is the sly gift of loss. I am told to embrace being so cracked open but it is hard to embrace anything while my guts are leaking everywhere. maybe thats the point.
reading this, I can feel my guiding hand creeping in, wanting to tie a bow around these past weeks and be done with it. grief has a hold on me and there is nothing I can do to rush it.
I do, however, feel a certain freedom. I do feel a small joy knowing there is nothing I can do to cheat death. if there was, it would have worked. I did everything. that is one truth I refuse to warp. there was nothing else to do.
if your worst fear comes true, all of the effort you channeled toward preventing it suddenly has no where to go. this, then, reveals a choice. this, then, is the threshold I am standing at. it seems I know the answer and am close to accepting it. I hope I accept it. I hope I give myself a chance to be.
iii. further research
When have you been so absorbed you forgot yourself entirely? Do you fight against or welcome it?
When has letting go given you more strength or freedom? What happened?
What are you most afraid of happening if you stop holding on so tightly?
What moments have you missed out on while attempting to control another? How do you feel about them? What has it taught you?
growing pains is a public self-archive. If you’d like to support my work by buying me a coffee, you can do so here. Thank you for reading. <3.
iv. appendix
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.”
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“As I recall this I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death. And to its punitive correlative, the message that if death catches us we have only ourselves to blame.”
*
“We all know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a time when we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.
Let them become the photograph on the table.
Let them become the name on the trust accounts.
Let go of them in the water.
Knowing this does not make it any easier to let go of them in the water.”
The Long and Short of It - Richard Siken [exerpt]
“And then one day you fall asleep on the train on the way home but you get home anyway. You close your eyes and nothing happens. You close your eyes every now and then, just to test the waters, and find you’re still moving, being moved, walking through the tunnel with your eyes closed, held up and carried along by the crowd. Not love or joy in any traditional sense, but a gentle kind of peaceful rocking that gathers together the single flowers to make a garland.
The lights flicker and the wheels clack. No one on the train can tell who’s driving, so you let go of the imaginary wheel. You lean back in your plastic seat and let your shoulders relax.”
Honest, beautiful, heart breaking. Thank you for sharing ❤️ your words are so powerful
raw, honest and absolutely beautiful - thank you for sharing.