Here is this post read to you if you should desire, or need.
I wanted to write to you all today but I didn’t know what about so I went to my notes app in my phone for inspiration. Often I’ll jot down quotes I love, passing ideas, dreams that could be story ideas, general car bubble ponderings about life. Once I found a note with no byline and assumed I’d written it, I felt a nudge to google it just in case I’d forgotten to credit it’s original author and thankfully I did because its original author was MICHELLE OBAMA. There was a tiny moment in time where I was going to claim the wisdom of Michelle Obama as my own. Another time I read a note that simply said, ‘A farmer who thinks his chicken is Princess Diana reincarnated,’ that one is all me, that gold is not Mrs Obama’s, that is straight up the chaotic neurodiverse wonderland of my brain.
I did find credited gold today, though, from Cheryl Strayed and Emily Dickinson from Tiny Beautiful Things.
“The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And “if your nerve, deny you-“ as Emily Dickinson wrote, “go above your nerve.” Writing is hard for every last one of us – straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”
Aside from this quote being the delicious reminder that my creative heart needed today to just dig. I remembered where I was when I read this quote and saved it just over a year ago. I remembered I’d written about that moment, so I went digging for that writing. I found it. And I wanted to share it with you…
I get my greasy, dirty hair blow dried and then I wander the city with my headphones on and relish being alone, while being surrounded by people. I take note of the street I’m on, how close I am, and then I decide to go to our restaurant. Mine and my exes. A restaurant we found by fluke when we were dating. The restaurant that became our restaurant and became sanctuary for some of our deepest conversations. We set five- year plans and dreamed of our future, our desires to cook more, and travel and one day adopt. Our restaurant where we celebrated our love and bought a bottle of wine that we loved so much we shared it at our wedding. Our restaurant where we talked about our art and shared secret dreams. Our restaurant where over cocktails we decided we'd officially start trying for a baby. So much of my life and that love is wrapped up in the white brick walls, pops of pink neon and delectable beef spareribs of this restaurant. I thought I'd never be able to step into our restaurant again. I thought our restaurant would be lost to me in the separation because of how it might feel to sit in a place of now and then. But I was one block away and I thought I'd try, and I'd see how it felt.
It felt bitter-sweet.
It felt like beautiful memories that didn’t sting like I thought they would.
It felt like deep love for these past versions of myself. For that love. For the possibility she believed in. The life she thought she was crafting.
It felt like moving on.
I feel strange that this version of my life looks so different to every other time I've been in this restaurant. I feel grief for the babies that could have been mine. I feel a mourning for possibility that I don’t ever hear spoken about. But, mostly I feel sweet relief for all that I am now.
The waitress with a thick New Zealand accent looks at me surrounded by dishes and drinks and she smiles at me, "You good?"
"So fucking good," I reply, as All Out of Love by Air Supply plays and I drink the rest of my pear cider, taking deep grounding breathes and realising those lyrics couldn’t be further from the truth, because I am so full of love. Love for past me, for every choice, every bold declaration, every time she let her guard down, every dream she pursued, for making hard decisions and following her desire. And love for present me, the one sitting in this restaurant on her own.
This love, I realise, this relationship with myself, that’s the great love story of my life, the story that’s worth showing up every day and digging.
Here’s versions of me living my AI generated mining fantasy.
So, loves, let’s dig.
Let’s do and say and share and love and write and eat and go to the places and do whatever the fuck we damn well please.
Let’s keep showing up with a pickaxe in our hands and doing the hard shit to honour our love for ourselves. It feels grievous to me that we avoid our desires, but believe so deeply in the desires of others. We have to believe in ourselves as much as we believe in each other.
I believe in you.
Love Claire.
If you fancy you can sign up to support me and my writing and get a Sunday Grit Guild Journal club pondering in your box…most Sundays…when we’re not in ADHD burnout.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I also want to acknowledge the atrocity and genocide we’re seeing play out in Palestine right now. I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live on without honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else. We need ongoing and final ceasefire.