some personal-ish news, etc., etc.

I know, I'm sorry, I know.

This is Bite Back, a newsletter from Tess Koman.

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Do me a favor and pretend like this isn’t awkward for the next few minutes? I want to tell you a few, as always, self-indulgent things, and I want you to be nice to me while I do it. Yeah? OK! Great!

You may have noticed I decided to take a break from this whole undertaking back in October, mostly at Michael’s encouragement that I “focus on things that make me happy.” I thought that meant figuring out how to write and publish a real fucking book, so I tried that for a bit. I thought that meant learning to describe myself to new people without using my employment and/or medical status as a goofy, self-deprecating qualifier. I thought that meant going to see more movies. I accomplished two-and-a-half of the above, and you’ll never guess what: I! Remained! A! Wreck!

I told myself—I told you!—that I’d come to the realization that I couldn’t move forward with my life until I got another job. I told myself—I told you!!—I needed to figure out how to care less about what anyone thought about any of my nonsense. And sTiLL I found myself unable to take steps forward that weren’t, like, putting myself in front of people I used to work with, trying to get them to remember why they loved working with me. People I respect and adore and who I’ll always have (professional) crushes on. People who it physically pained me to dance for.

And none of that did it.

But I did. :)

I start my new job at Apple today. I’ll help them grow and edit and mold their Apple News food offerings. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before, and also: It makes so much sense.

I don’t know, man. Something about finally getting the job just…It just!

It just has never been clearer who’s been proud of me the whole time and who cares to be proud of me now. I have been scrolling through 1.5 years worth of pep talks since I signed my contract a bit ago, knowing with such certainty what I can expect and from whom when I blast this nonsense out. And I cannot wait to not be surprised by any of the things I hear from many of the people I will hear from. (Alt. hed for this whole fucking thing: Thirtysomething Area Woman Takes Head Out of Her Ass Long Enough to Finally Get It.)

When we last spoke, I asked “what do you do when you’re not in crisis anymore?” There is no getting around the fact that I truly am no longer fighting for my life, slogging through an unprecedented recovery, or devastated and unemployed on the heels of all of it. I’m just not! I am strong enough to take care of my daughter and my dog for as long as I need to. I have normal (well, for someone with only 110 cm of intestines left) amounts of bowel movements, and I usually have them in appropriate places. I eat food. I adore doing so. I go on vacations with my little family and, now, I guess, I get up and get to work.

I’m not in crisis, but for the first time in 25 years of diseased drama, I am different. I don’t know if it was the onslaught of the worst things, or a specific starved straw, or toddler motherhood, or what, but something fucked me up so good between last September and now that I am far past grappling—I think I’m just different now.

It’s a very precarious set of changes. I don’t know how to describe them, really, but I suspect those reading who’ve also been put through a medical PTSD ringer might get it? Or those who’ve just been through it in general?

I look in the mirror, and it’s different. It’s different than when it was acutely, awfully different, of course, but it’s still just not quite right, not really me. I see leftovers of the surgeries and the sepsis all over my body, and I look so much more serious than I ever have before. I’m the most self-critical I’ve ever been, and I can also concede that I did it. I landed. I sincerely did not know if I could or I would but I told myself—and, oh god, I told TikTok—I would land and I did.

I did it. I did it I did it I did it I did it. Do you know how unhinged I have been about this? Oh my god. So unhinged. I took everything I thought I knew about myself and, in the middle of a legitimate crisis, ran it through the fucking wringer. And still: I did it.

(Please know that I know I can only admit to this when it’s tied to a professional moment that will absolutely impact what people will think of me. All of the things I have spent months trying to change about my psyche and self-worth, blah blah.)

But fuck it. I told myself I would land and I did.

Hundreds upon hundreds of words just to tell you that I think I’m finally going to let myself be, like, proud of myself. OOooOh, you must looove that!!

Anyway. I will be back to writing here again, as well as writing about my new and improved book proposal, which is due back to a publisher next week. I think all of the above might—might!—make me happy.

UGH.

(You can go back to being mad at me now. <3 )

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Art by Amanda Suarez