Big Sad.

Oh my gosh you guys, yesterday I had a big sad. Like a Big Sad. Like I had to leave yoga because I was weeping. (I’m also reading The Crying Book by Heather Christle. I’m sure the two things have nothing to do with one another.) I felt small and sad and useless and unworthy but not alone. My number one pep talker Amanda Kelly is out of the country. Find My Friends places her in Bali, which is not an appropriate vacation for me to interrupt with my small human needs. I talked to my friend Colin multiple times. Joe reminded me of the time he had a Big Sad and I invited him over to watch a movie that turned out to be very sad but is now one of our funny codes for how much we love one another, how sometimes we fail and succeed even in our failing. I lost my keys many times. Found them too. Joe called me again. And again later. I cried so much I thought I’d never stop. Susanna talked to me in her calm and loving way while I lay on the floor. I had lunch with my sister, a fast-food car picnic dinner with my friend Jen and her lovely daughter and puppy. Talked to my friend Kevin. Went to bed. Woke up ashamed that I had dragged so many people into my sad. And grateful that they stepped up as they did.

The catalyst at the beginning of it all seems so ridiculous and it seems like a joke, and it is, but also it’s serious. It occurred to me on Tuesday morning that I’ll never know everything about whales. And that made me feel really blue. And I think it’s this question of what is even the point of everything that I am doing and learning?

So your prompt (inspired by a great piece of writing at Walter Reed today). What’s something you learned this year? Begin with “all these years not knowing/…”

Catalogue of Damages by Christina Olson
       

All these years not knowing
the difference between mammoth

and mastodon: just another
human so proud in her indifference.

It’s in the teeth: mammoth teeth
resemble the rubber sole of a snow boot—

mastodon teeth, jagged mountains
turned to granite after all these years.

Jefferson thought the West still crawled
with mastodons, sent Lewis & Clark to thin the herd.

All morning I’ve tried to reconcile
our ambition with the misery it brings:

what we set out to do & what disaster ensues.

Eleven foot at the shoulder, Max
is the largest mastodon in the West.

Jefferson owned Sally Hemings.
I never could make small talk with my father.

I told you this was a catalogue of damages.
Oh god, the mouth is such a weapon.