damn! all i asked is if we were ever gonna get another newsletter.
Don’t you guys love how I made a big deal out of trying to be more consistent with newsletters and updates, and then completely fell through with that? Yeah, me too! In my defense, I’ve had absolutely nothing interesting happen to me for the past few weeks. Things have been—well, not dull, per se, but definitely not exciting enough to warrant making people read what I have to say. But I’m also realizing that even though not every day filled with excitement and intrigue, there will always be something to talk about, some lesson or interesting thing I can make use of.
I need you to imagine me still. I need you to imagine me temporarily stunned into quiet by the beginnings of a migraine, staring at my computer screen, trying to string together clever words. Paint if you will, a picture (thank you, Prince) of me realizing I have nothing pithy to say, that my brain is grasping at straws, me realizing that maybe COVID has damage what I found most valuable in myself.
Holy shit, you think. Are you alright?
Um! Kind of!
The real problem is I never feel anything long enough to make it worth writing about. Excising a feeling feels pointless when the feeling is fleeting—gone before I have a chance to express it. People ask me how I feel or what I’m thinking, and my impulse is to tell them that I’m fine or thinking nothing, because in truth, there doesn’t seem to be much going on inside of me. And I’m trying to figure out if that’s a bad thing for me, as an author, to unable to investigate my emotions. But what would I be investigating, if ten times out of nine, I really feel nothing or think nothing? Or, and this is most nerve-wracking to me, what does it mean after years and years of therapy, that I’m nervous to press at what’s real? Even this, even zoning out at my desk and trying to write what feels real, it’s like pressing a bruise, but there’s no pleasure in it, just pain.
Am I thinking too much about myself? I imagine myself always been watched and policed, but maybe nobody’s watching me, maybe I’m my only voyeur, and maybe I need to stop looking over my shoulder, trying to find the camera. But then again, we live in a time where anyone with a phone can make a joke out of you, where every slip of the tongue and bad day is put on display, so who’s to say I’m not being watched? Am I being delusional? Is that red light blinking for me or is it just a red light?
I think I’m trying to say that I’m tired of being online. I think I’m trying to say that I wish I could work a “normal” job outside of my house, I wish I did not have to be chained to my computer, I wish I could delete every bit of social media, and have my brain be quiet. I wish I was more comfortable with the idea of people being wrong about me; I wish I was more comfortable about being wrong. Is there an age where you feel less ridiculous, or is that something that you’re constantly waiting for and never comes? Will I have these uncertain days in my forties? Will my fifties feel like my twenties like my thirties and on and on and on, ad finitum, until the day I die? What the hell is this?
Well, it’s supposed to be a newsletter, a little ‘what’s Yah Yah’ up to, but instead we got into some real feelings, which is fine. What’s an update from a Black author without a little emotional disembowelment? I was going to tack the books I read in January onto here, but I actually don’t want to do that, and I want us all to just sit with emotional vulnerability and the mortifying ordeal of Being Known. Some times I cannot be witty. I can only be Yah Yah.