"That's so you, though!"
on being untethered, mailing a birthday card, and hiding from everyone
Mood Ring is a newsletter on life, love, writing, and desserts.
This was supposed to be the third installment of our November theme: “Patterns.” But I’m finding that a theme for an entire month of letters is leaving me feeling stuck rather than inspired. It was a fun exercise for a time and maybe we’ll do it again someday.
So, I’m back to writing about whatever is on my mind throughout the week. Complicated feelings, embarrassing childhood stories, first-novel-writing anxieties, an assortment of scattered thoughts, and all. 💗
Hi friends,
Earlier today, when I was tapping my fingers on the backspace key, stuck on what to write you, my partner asked me how I’ve been feeling lately. And the word that came to mind was untethered. This feeling is so familiar that I usually don’t know I’ve fallen into it until I’ve already spent days floating away in the middle of the ocean with no sense of direction—not even from the stars.
I’ve been untethered for a good while now. I think it started as a vague “off” feeling and, somewhere along the way, it transformed into avoiding my thoughts (likely because my brain’s radio is tuned to the could’ve, should’ve, would’ve station). If I look back, I see gaps in between dates as journal entries go unwritten. I’ve stopped noticing interesting things outside of myself, shrinking my world entirely. What do I write when I’ve tunnel visioned internally? And when everything gets loud in my head, external noise becomes an escape. Like when I’m washing dishes and intrusive thoughts creep up and over me, I turn on a let’s play of a point-and-click puzzle, mystery game. Or when I’m cooking dinner and I could be daydreaming about my characters, but I’m really wondering if I’m failing at everything, I start listening to a podcast on the writer’s ego. Or when I wake up at three in the morning, surrounded by darkness, and I know I just had a terrible dream that created a ball of anxiety in my chest, I flop over on my shoulder, settle my phone in front of my face (one side of it squished into my pillow). And I scroll and scroll and scroll. There’s no sound, but the dimly lit screen is louder than anything I have ever heard. I go on autopilot. Easily. And I don’t write about any of it. Even though I know writing always brings me back to shore.
“I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say.” — Flannery O'Connor
Maybe this letter is me swimming back from the middle of the ocean. An acknowledgment of the little things. An effort to notice little acts of love.
“That’s so you.”
I mailed my mom a birthday card earlier this month and she Facetimed me the day she pulled it out of her mailbox. When I accepted the call, she appeared on my screen—I noticed she got the haircut she had been talking about for weeks—and she was smiling and laughing, holding the birthday card in her hand. She held up the off-white envelope and the little corner of it that had so many stamps (much more than needed). I’m overly cautious about everything; I’ll pay for extra parking time even if I’m only going to be there for a second; I’ll look up the street view of a new destination to figure out the best place to park; I’ll do five or more practice runs of a dish if I’m making it for other people; I’ll arrive somewhere forty minutes (or more) before I even need to be there (in elementary school I tried to get my mom to drop me off at 7 am vs. the 8 am start time because I was always worried about being late). I often say the phrase, “just in case we need it,” for most situations. And I will absolutely put excessive postage on mail just in case.
And when I start laughing at myself, my mom just looks at me lovingly through the screen, and in the tone of someone who has known me my whole life, she says, “That’s so you, though. I love that.”
Over the years, I’ve been told I’m hard to get-to-know. And I think I designed it that way because it felt safer than dealing with the possibility that someone could see me and then reject me. I covered up failures with white lies, bad choices with a smile, regrets with silence. Thinking I needed to seem perfect for love, I seemed distant instead.
Like a lot of people, I’ve been in a push-and-pull with vulnerability—I want it, I want to do it, but I hide from it when the opportunity to open up draws near. Well, I try not to hide so much anymore. It’s a work in progress.
And of course, there’s really no hiding when it comes to my mom. On that Facetime call, I felt like she was right there in my kitchen hugging me. And I thought of how nice it was to be known, to be seen, and to still be loved. Not that putting extra stamps on a letter is excessively odd, not in the slightest. But there’s something comforting about someone noticing little things about you and looking at you, through you, and saying, I know you and I love you.
For the rest of the call, I tell her happy birthday, I ask her if she likes the maneki-neko drawing on the front of the card, and I tell her I miss her. Because I do.
With love,
Alyssa
Mood Reads
“When we remember Y2K today, we usually wind up talking about the loudest and silliest voices of doom.” Zachary Loeb on what is overlooked when we recall Y2K.
“On Going” by Dina L. Relles is a short piece on longing, memory, and love.
On the Glorious Queerness of Metrical Narrative by Cat Fitzpatrick. “Verse novels are gay, in the pejorative (i.e. desirable) sense: heightened, effortful, and beautiful.”
I loved this conversation with Hilton Als and Isabella Vega. They talk the nature of desire and the vulnerability of writing: “It was a way of really describing myself and doing it in such a way that it was a form of truth telling where nobody got hurt, where I could reveal things about myself.”
And a pov of me trying to get tickets to one of the Seattle showings— Taylor Swift crashed Ticketmaster.
Romance Novels & Pies
Sometimes you want a wholesome, low-stakes story with coffee, love, magic, and a warm cinnamon roll. That is entirely Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. And although it’s not a pie, I’m pairing this with coffee cake (one of my favorite recipes is this one from Claire Saffitz.)
I’m currently in a reading slump after reading Delilah Green Doesn’t Care. I have a lot of books on my Libby shelf that are stuck at 25% read. However, I just started reading Rebel by Beverly Jenkins. I’m new to reading historical romance, and I’m really enjoying it so far. Maybe the end of the slump is near. I’d love to hear if you’re reading or writing anything lately! You can always leave a comment or reply to this email.
Thank you for reading! You may have noticed today’s letter was a day late. I apologize for that! If you’re a new reader, I usually send a letter every Tuesday.