Memory, Emotions and Being a Writer

Unraveling

Image Getty | Image of a tangled pink rope on yellow background

My friend, Ica, texts me to congratulate me on the three-year anniversary of my first essay. I tweeted about it after my digital journal reminded me that on November 13, 2019, alongside some other partly articulated emotions, that I completed the essay about my now, and then, dead father. I sat, frustrated, on the verge of crying, in the rear driver side seat of an Uber Black headed to the airport. Frustrated because I have all these feelings that I reflexively compartmentalized, that have now run out of room in their tidy bins in my mind and are wreaking havoc on my day-to-day living. 

I am headed to Oakland, California. My best friend of nearly 20 years has moved there.  The part of her that I hate, the cancer, has been cut out from her breast and lymph nodes, and I’m going to see and to help her while her boyfriend is away for work.  None of this is as sentimental as it reads.  This is just what friends do.  I have been to northern California the most I ever have this year. Once I board my plane, this will make my third trip. I tell Ica that I like Oakland more than I would admit publicly, unlike the tweet I share about an essay that tries it's best to carve an outline around the estranged relationship I had with my father.