A Havisham Summer

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I’ll start with this– I’ve missed writing. And I don’t mean my month recaps– though those are fun too (and one is coming). I mean I miss my brain dumps where I bare my heart and wax poetic. Reading Garance Dore archives reminded me of what it felt like to write journal-type entries. (Thanks, Garance). Today, my executive coach asked me if I was a writer. (It was apparently something I said or how I said it). The inner me said, “Hell yeah,” and then, she told me that my assignment was to write. To write simple and write often. She asked me to level with her and to write and speak from the heart without overthinking. So, here is some of the overflow from that. You may not care what I have been up to or care about my little Brooklyn life now that the triplets moved out. But if you do… (here goes)

-Calendar Recycle-

At the office, I was eyeing my desk calendar. You know, those large calendars that lie there on the desk like a placemat, taunting us with the passage of time. I will often fold the old month page and use the backside for random notes and such while I am on calls, or I scribble a to-do list on there. I considered ripping off the August page. I couldn’t bring myself to turn the page.

I am not sure why I was hesitant to turn the page because this year can’t end soon enough. 2023, it has been real.

This summer in particular was not what I had envisioned (not that it needed to be). I thought I would be moving, wearing bathing suits and honeymooning somewhere. Haaaa. Far from it, but I feel that now it is starting to pass like a field in the back seat window, and it will be in the rearview mirror in a few. I can speak about it with detachment and some humor at my expense. It was my Havisham summer. Not because I felt like her but others thought I was her, and they made that quite clear in their many questions, comments to others and weird unsolicited recommendations. There were people who for some reason thought I lost my mind or something, when in reality, what I lost were people, a wedding and a dream. They are not the same, I swear.

-The Room Frozen In Time-

For laughs, though, I’ll never forget a day when I looked around my apartment. Flowers my friend Martha had sent me were in a moldy vase, rotting. My unworn wedding dress was taking up waayyy too much space in a tiny NYC apartment, and all I wanted to do was burn it or throw it out of the window on top of the building garage (my Super would have killed me– just kidding, he is my friend. But he would definitely have questions).

Not only was my pressed dress just hanging there limply getting wrinkled again (which reminded me of the long walk I had carrying that thing and hopping over puddles trying to get home without a heat stroke or a single wrinkle), but then came the infestation of what I can only guess are European moths that arrived with my dress in transit. Yes, moths. If that wasn’t a Havisham moment, I don’t know what is.

-The Chase-

When we lost our family member, it felt like all the noise of everything faded into the background. In the middle of weird moments, you learn to swim gracefully. (There are moments of flail and me screaming help meee!). It’s like you lose your hearing, and just watch the world around you move in almost silence. It feels like you are underwater, hearing the muffled distant voices from the exterior.

The deeper in you go, the quieter it gets. You become extra sensitive to the proximity of others. You notice the people who distance themselves to “give you your space.” You notice the ones who come close and listen with compassion. You notice the ones who come near with a list of questions they want you to answer pretending to keep you “safe” from the questions of others. You feel people’s unspoken opinions and their judgments. You hear traces of made up stories about you and how people portray you. You continue to feel people’s unspoken judgments about choices you’ve made or are making. You feel the burning glow of outside disappointment, and worse, you feel your own. And so you sit with it in a deafening silence until it gets loud again and you realize you have reached surface again.

You reflect on the people who control every aspect of their life’s timeline, and you wonder how happy successfully controlling people (bc let’s face it we are all controlling to some degree, but only some are successful) are because life truly presents like a wild horse you are trying to capture. My horse kicked me in the face.

Sometimes, it feels like we are chasing the life we want, I heard recently, as if God is some cheap master who deprives us of good things. Like we need to convince Him or something. And yet, God is the opposite of what we sometimes feel in the real pain of life. He wants to give us more than all we ask or think. And hilariously, that doesn’t come through any type of control. It comes through resilience.

And while 2023 felt like a bunch of shattered plates and prayers that I had to walk across barefoot, life is just life. You decide what you do with it. A million people have it a million times worse. Another million have it better. You are the master of your ship, your mind, your soul. “What are you going to do with it?” my counselor asked a while back, I hear her GPS yelling at her in the background as she drives.

-The Recap-

This summer, I sweat out the exhaustion, sadness and rage with workout challenges. My addiction to matcha in June-July almost finished me. (Never soothe with caffeine– I was going to finish the sentence, but ever will work to finish that, don’t do it ever). My period this summer was the most painful I had in years. My PMS had me filled with enough rage to become a boxer and be good at it. I killed moths. I put away traces of old dreams, and sat there trying to create new ones. I sort of gathered myself.

I am excited about autumn. I always am. I keep glancing over at my Little House on the Prairie set. I want to revisit it this fall. You know, nostalgia. Autumn is the perfect season for reading and nostalgia. Nostalgia for what is truly good for the soul, the timeless.

It is a series about loss, pain, new frontiers, letting go, growing and moving forward. It has been that kind of a year. That kind of a life. I’ve learned a lot about the human condition this year. How we people behave, how we interact, when and what we judge, the behaviors we ignore in ourselves and the excuses we make for others. I have learned a thing or two about moths, too. (Only have like four moths left– should I name them?).

August has been an important month for reframing and strengthening my own resolve as a person. No matter what happens, I know I will be ok. I am ok. I am more ok than the people around me think– hopefully, someone can tell them I am ok in a way that sinks in. You don’t get to make up stories for the drama of it. “Why does it matter that people made you a Havisham?” my counselor asks while she scans something at self-checkout at Target. “It doesn’t, but it affects our interactions. It’s a real thing. Sometimes, it feels like people don’t know me,” I explained to my counselor. I hear her affirm and imagine she is nodding her head on the other side of the phone.

-Kindness-

So yeah, autumn will be a time of setting out the new placemats (fall theme plaid), continuing to improve parts of me inside and out. And a season, I hope, of more kindness. I think that is my biggest hope of all. I am not even hoping for clarity. I have clarity. I am thinking I want more kindness. Kindness with myself and others. It keeps coming back to me that we can only be as kind to others as we are to ourselves. I have little patience for anything apart from clarity and kindness these days (is that unkind?).

“Is this where you thought our discussion would go?” My coach asked me at the end of session. “I guess not, but it makes sense, you know, to end with me. I guess it all starts here,” I say holding my hand to my heart. “Kindness,” she says to herself, scribbling down what I said in a notebook I would love to see. “Kindness,” I repeat back to her, scribbling another item on my to-do list that has nothing to do with our session that happened to pop into my head (pang of guilt).

These are the thoughts swirling through my mind like autumn leaves in the wind.

Next time I am in the office, I will rip off the August page. It will be time. I’ll scribble a new ambitious to-do list on the back. Time is flying, but fortunately, it is not leaving me the same. We are kind now, you know. Kind to ourselves. We aren’t asking for permission. We are just being human around here, in all its frailty, loss, courage and glory.

I’m not a Havisham, bitterly frozen and rotting in her wedding dress. Anyone who thinks that, doesn’t know me. News flash: I’m more of a Laura Ingalls. Find me on the prairie in my calico dress. The Havisham Summer is over, and it’s time to prepare for the long winter. (If you know, you know)

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter