a lasagna, a punch, a lobster, a bracelet, a book, a question and a staircase.

My mom gave me her old lasagna pan, a ceramic one with butterflies from the 70’s. The presence of this pan has set me on a lasagna spree, and I can’t even eat gluten. I’ve been chopping up eggplant and zucchini and mixing oregano and garlic salt into my ricotta cheese (or mashed up tofu if I want to make one that my vegan sweetey can eat). A came over on Monday to eat some non-vegan GF eggplant lasagna, and I told her that lasagna is my love language, and then I said, “at work I always tell clients that interrupting is my love language. I say, if I interrupt you it’s not because I don’t want to hear what you have to say, it’s because I’m excited about what you have to say!” We laughed. Lasagna and interruptions. What a way to love people.

A and I went on a very silly adventure on the Northside and then I walked over the bridge to downtown to take the bus home, around ten o’clock at night. When I was sitting on the bus, right as it was about to leave, a guy standing on the sidewalk made eye contact with me and then punched the window, right next to my face, as hard as he could. It was a meaningless gesture that probably had very little to do with me at all. I wasn’t truly harmed in any way, and yet it activated me so much. Heart rate sped up, heightened awareness. Being cognizant of why you’re reacting in that way only helps a little bit. And oh, the fear. I’m a therapist, I know what to do once I get home (not on the bus)—bilateral stimulation. A/k/a butterfly hug. A simple trick to let the body know that it is not in danger, that this is the lesson from the other times it was in danger, that it can put those coping mechanisms down. I felt better while doing it and still worse when I stopped.

One thing that I find hilarious and probably other people find annoying is that I do a lot of my teletherapy holding hands with a lobster puppet. They’re off camera, obviously. This picture is a view of what I often see when I’m nervous, glance down for a little bit of grounding, a little bit of reassurance. I realized that I can use Crusty the Crustacean for bilateral stimulation too. Have one claw tap one side of my upper ribcage; the other claw the other. Tap, tap, tap until my heart rate slows down a little. It’s funny and stupid and it grounds me.

The next day I’m still wound up. Walking around the block in between sessions, wishing I had a cigarette, feeling utterly hopeless that I’ll ever feel any better. Feeling alone and depressed and oh wasn’t moving supposed to change all of this? (It has made it better, but then of course there’s all the shit that comes with you.) I found this little bracelet. I like to think that the universe speaks to me through little things that I find, through things I overhear, through numbers and through the flipping of coins. It made me think of someone who loved me during a very insecure and self-loathing time, someone who loved me until I could love myself, and how they’d always say, “You’re the best!” in a way like they totally believed it, and how much that meant to me.

You can find a lot when you’re looking for it.

My nervous system calmed down eventually. A took me to a book reading on the Northside—a memoir interspersed with lesbian history. It was pretty good. I didn’t know anything about the event when I agreed to go, besides the fact that it was about lesbians, and it was good. The audience members were very intense, as audience members tend to be in things like this. One guy, at the back of the room, said into the mic, “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt you,” and then a long pause. I started to panic, turned to see if I needed to run. It was a day after the Pulse shooting anniversary in a time when hatred of queer people is rising. Was this guy going to shoot us all?

But we didn’t die, he was just gathering his thoughts. “If the person who hates you the most wrote a book about you, what would the title be?” The author was shocked. She couldn’t think of anything. The moderator thought of something, I won’t say it here. It seems wrong to report on it, too personal.

After the bookstore reading, A and I took a very long walk throughout the rainy Northside. We were looking for her favorite city steps, Rising Main—the longest set of city steps in the city and one of the longest in the entire country. I learned from that blog article I linked up there that they have 371 steps, but walking down it, it just felt like it was going on forever. It was rainy and dark and the plants were taking over, all the knotweed and ailanthus, all the invasive species taking over where houses once stood. We talked about what the titles of the books would be by people who hate us. It was a hard question. I often think that people hate me and this question made me realize that they don’t, not really, not as much as I think. There are people who are annoyed by me or misunderstood by me or triggered in some way but I don’t have a lot of out-and-out hate. Maybe a few clients, maybe an ex I haven’t seen or heard from in over 20 years. But who cares about what they have to say? Who cares about what their books are going to be.

We made it to the bottom of the steps without falling over, falling through. The railing is missing in one part and someone has tied up an old busted water hose and I love it, the scrappy ingenuity of this city. A says that she’s so happy we’re out walking, and I say I agree. I say that these city walks make me feel so connected, to her and to the land. Just the motion, the act of doing something that you don’t really have to do. A has a car and we could have driven here. But that would have been missing the entire point.