what do you do when you're not in crisis anymore?

no, really...what do you, like, do?

This is Bite Back, a newsletter from Tess Koman.

—

When I told my husband last night that I felt like I’d been writing about the same thing over and over again, he looked at me questioningly. “...Yeah?” he said, as though I’d told him the sky is blue or the new Taylor album is….……not, in fact, 12 straight bangers. “Why don’t you write about how you feel like you’re writing about the same thing over and over?”

Granted (and respectfully), this man, who has many intellectual strengths, could not write a coherent sentence if he tried, so I immediately got defensive: “I have been doing that,” I told him. To this, he responded as though I’d just told him the sky is green or the new Taylor album is…12 straight bangers: “Yeah?”

He’s right, of course. I’ve written for weeks (OK, fine, months) now about how I’m moving on from a terribly traumatizing chapter, insisting that I am moving on because I am moving on by moving on. I am actually moved on, it turns out. I know this because I’ve moved on! Each of these very distinct essays about moving on are, in hindsight, just sad lil insistences of a gal attempting to find meaning in a continued weird chapter. I read them back now and I don’t see much evidence of self-awareness about…not actually having moved on.

So! Let’s try a less overwrought version re: what I’m feeling these days.

I started writing here more than six months ago in an attempt to journal through one of the worst, scariest, and most traumatizing series of things I’d ever been through. I loved doing that. I think, as I re-remembered what I’d pushed down, I produced some of the best writing I’d done in a minute. Some legitimately helpful, resonant, and moving stuff. That felt great! Purposeful and great.

a pause from moving on to admire my current view: my two stanleys

At some point about four months ago, I turned a corner physically. I began gaining weight and clarity back. I became well enough to take care of my daughter again, to look for jobs. The writing got muddy and mad and mediocre. That’s good news! (“Yeah?”) But it also feels sticky and bad.

If I’m over the dire physical jeopardy of The Incident, I’ve got no choice but to work on cleaning up all the ensuing mental garbage. I’ve come to understand only embarrassingly recently that losing my job on the immediate heels of medical leave feels so inextricable from almost losing my life that I have this sinking feeling I will not “be me” again until I am employed, or, at least, until I’ve unlocked some other mysterious sense of purpose that happens to financially sustain me.

(I said this was going to be less overwrought, didn’t I? Oh god, OK, trying one more time.)

…I feel so fucking floaty and weird still. I have tried and tried and tried and yet I feel like I cannot close the book on this awful period until I have something else to talk about!!!

This stupid stuck-ness unearths all the worst parts of me that I’ve never liked, in crisis or otherwise. I feel petty and DUMB for even caring what other people think of how I might be spending my time, or of how I answer the question: “What do you do?” I harp on how successful I used to be (again, in other people’s opinions, not my own!) versus how unsuccessful I am now (...my opinion, but maybe theirs too!). I feel selfish for still needing to take care of myself physically before I can even think of helping anyone else. I cannot help but to stand my objectively beautiful life still via irrational anxieties, ones my (wonderful, literary critic of a) husband spends far too much time assuring me are not grounded in reality.

Every week I tell myself I’ll figure out some crowd-pleasing, content-creating happy medium. I do this to make myself feel better, not because anyone expects it. Every day I remind myself the nonsense connecting my identity to work (and health) does not matter. I have failed at every count of the above.

I’m not a person in crisis anymore. I guess I’m just, like, a person now. (…”Yeah?”)

Ew!!!!

I don’t know that I know how to be just, like, a person!! My whole life has been defined by “longevity-at-a-cool-job —> crisis, longevity-at-a-different-cool-job —> different-but-more-dramatic-crisis,” rinse, repeat, blah, blah. I cannot off the top of my head identify a chunk of my cool-but-dramatic life that was…neither of those two things! Always one. Then always the other. And the product I’ve been blasting out into the world in an effort to navigate that?

Oh god. It’s my version of…every TLOAS track that’s not “Father Figure,” “Opalite,” or “Actually Romantic.” It’s…well. It’s not a banger!!!!

(I’m not here to fight about objective truths, and both of the above are objectively true. :) )

Anyway. It should be a welcome change of pace to not be existing in either chic professional stress or medical crisis, but here we are (………”yeah?”). I’m taking advice on how to just be a person, as well as working on not giving a shit about what you think I should be doing. You know—all the classic markings of normal people stuff.

See you next week.

—

Art by Amanda Suarez