In the Air

I usually have a title ready to go before starting a post, but this time it’s in the air. I kind of want to break my own rules a bit, fuck around and find out. I really like creative projects. They are a really cathartic process of destruction, where the rules and restraints that govern us in polite society are done away with.

I think I’m a closet adrenaline junkie. There was a period near the end of 2021 when I wanted to go skydiving. I wanted to feel the adrenaline, my entire biological system going haywire when confronted with a total loss of control, possibly death. I used to think about dying, but in a more cinematic way. Most people hope to pass in a bed in a hospital surrounded by loved ones. I wondered what it would be like to have my 80 year old self wrapped in seal meat, dropped into the ocean and eaten alive by sharks. My body ripped in pieces.

Death is so taboo, something we are so terrified of. I see it as a biological function, like sleeping, eating, peeing in the morning. It’s when your system says “that’s enough.” Sometimes we are ready for death, hoping it will come. Others catch it by surprise. I think it’s better to catch death by surprise. You were too busy being alive. You have a small home and you grow roses in the summertime. It was a beautiful Saturday, you know, those gentle Saturdays when the world disappears. And then it showed up. Not violently, not even brushing against the beauty of the day, but with an almost systematic lightness. Like paying a bill or picking up a kombucha from the bodega.

I don’t mean to alarm you when I talk about death. My mom is a therapist. At dinner we dissected people, their behaviors, their minds. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy and in the process crossed a lot of emotional terrains. My clairvoyant uncle in Mexico City tells me I’m too strong of a woman, that men don’t like that. Is it terrifying that I know how to survive, that I went to war for myself?