Learning to Make Fire

I last finished an essay before Christmas, 2022, and I don’t think I captured what I wanted to say about the current moment we’re all living in. I wanted to write about how I emerged from the rubble of lockdown and personal crisis and felt certain aspects of my old life chafing. I wanted to write about how precious life feels right now without ignoring the reality of struggle and grief. 

When I went home for the holidays, I was reminded of how human connection transcends tragedy and weariness. I found joy in watching my dad play Christmas carols on the accordion for his grandsons. I helped my future in-laws prepare their home to host six Venezuelan refugees released from ICE detention with nowhere to go. By the time the group arrived, mattresses had been set up, groceries delivered, and the long dining room table covered with donated winter clothes. 

The five men and one woman greeted us shyly but excitedly in Spanish. The translator asked them to share their stories. We heard about the wives, husbands, babies, grandfathers, and aunts they’d left behind. On New Year’s Eve, these no-longer strangers taught my now mother-in-law how to make arepas. They toasted the turning of the year with prayers for a kinder world. 

A month later, the love of my life got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. At sunset, with the Lower Manhattan skyline ablaze before us, I made the easiest decision of my life. I said yes. On my left hand, above a vein that stretches all the way to my heart, I wear a ring chosen for me by my true love. And yet, it (love) is a nearly impossible subject to write about.

I think it’s because love lives next door to pain. It shares an overgrown fence with sorrow. It dwells so near everything we’re afraid to lose. I didn’t know how much love my heart could hold until I held my nephews for the first time. I swear it grew new chambers for each of them. One of my sisters lost two pregnancies before her first child was born. Two heart-wrenching doctor’s appointments. Two silences when there should have been heartbeats. How miraculous and terrifying it must be for her to tuck her three healthy kids in at night. 

If I write about love, I have to think about how if I’d succumbed to COVID and depression a year ago,  I wouldn’t have gotten to hold one of those wide-eyed toddlers as our East River ferry passed under the Brooklyn Bridge. I wouldn’t have fingered the smooth pearls of the necklace my grandmother had set aside for my wedding day, knowing she wouldn’t live to see it. I wouldn’t have danced in the rain with my husband and our families and friends on that perfect day.

Love feels like an extension of other emotions I’ve historically been wary of: satisfaction, serenity, and happiness. As my older sister pointed out in her wedding toast, I’ve arrived at the life I always longed for. I have a husband I adore and a steady job I enjoy. I’m not burned out or depressed. I live in a vibrant city with endless opportunities. I’m close to my family. My health conditions and ADHD are well-managed, I’m financially stable(ish), and know who I am. Still, the suspicion that it won’t last clings to my heels as I walk through the city. The proverbial other shoe, poised to crush me at any moment. 

It’s a bit of imposter syndrome, a bit of who am I just to be happy, accomplished, in love, loved, grateful? How do I justify contentment when the world is burning, and what do I write about if I’m not outraged or in crisis? What’s left behind when we, especially women, let go of suffering and dissatisfaction? When we stop trying to optimize ourselves, to make everything beautiful and perfect? And it’s a sense of responsibility: I’ve figured myself out, now what? How do I help heal the world? How do I turn outward and contribute to justice and peace?

I recently confessed to my therapist that talking to her when I’m happy feels much more intimate and vulnerable than coming to her with my problems. “I’m broken, please fix me,” comes easily after decades of struggle and malcontent. “All is well” feels ungainly and boastful. It feels like I’m tempting fate. It feels wrong to be joyful when it seems like the world is burning. But I’ve realized that dissatisfaction is the lifeblood of exploitative capitalism. It distracts us from imagining other, more harmonious ways of living. It separates us from each other, from nature. It dulls creativity and sharpens envy. Humans crave drama, and satisfaction can seem boring. But it actually requires a great deal of intention and attention, resources I’ve often lacked.

Now that I’ve found stability, happiness in my life is less glitz and glory. It’s in the ordinary: an inside joke with my husband, the way rainwater collects in sidewalk cracks, a quiet Sunday morning with no obligations. In The Good Place, one of my favorite TV narratives about the afterlife, Chidi writes himself a note before a meddling demon erases his memory. “There are no answers,” he notes. “But Eleanor is the answer.” The woman he loves is the answer. I no longer think there’s a single answer somewhere on the horizon, ever eluding me. The answers–myriad and ever-shifting–are within my reach if I find the patience to look and listen for them. If I summon the grace to love and be loved. If I stop “raging against the dying of the light” and start learning how to make fire.