On Coming to Provincetown to Write
Maybe this was a mistake, is what I am thinking as I stare at my notebook, writing in big letters IF YOU WANT TO TAKE ME DOWN JUST GET IT OVER WITH.
This is not unlike the feeling I had when I was in labor with my daughter. Oh. No. I did not know it would hurt like this. I’ll just leave this hospital and keep her inside. Thank you very much for the ice chips.
Yesterday I had the idea that maybe I would not write about adoption at all. I would write about what it is like not being adopted after all the parents have died. (My birth father is still alive, but my relationship with him is so thin you can see through it.) I came to the conclusion that everything in my life is about adoption, still, as I even had to mention it in the previous sentence that was supposed to not be about adoption, and so I would write about adoption 100%. Then I felt hungry and deeply unsettled, so I went to Far Land Provisions to get the first of two giant Island Cookies I would end up eating yesterday even though I had set an intention the night before to start a fast to mark the new beginning of writing time here.
Fasts are stupid, is what I had decided after breaking yesterday’s fast at 7:01 AM with a matcha latte.
So, I had decided later in the day, polishing off my second cookie, is writing.
I fantasized about being a slug on the side of a tree. That sounded like a nice life. Passing time as something sticky who didn’t do much.
Tonight I rewatched Lion and I cried just as hard as I did the first two times I watched it. I had not intended to watch Lion, just as I had not intended to complain about all this free time I have to write whatever my heart desires. This is what happens, I have found, when I set aside time to write. Something guides me to the perfect next thing.
Here’s the question that came to me as I lay in the dark after the movie ended: How much love is in me? How much can I produce? How can I best give it away?
p.s. Writing is expensive. If you want to Venmo me money for more cookies, you can send it to anne_heffron. The last digits of my phone number are 6404. Thank you in advance.
