Humans have such a peculiar way of seeding their fear. What I fear could maybe not even make you blink twice. Love and fear are in a continuous tug of war in our day to day. Do I send that text? Do I buy organic or conventional broccoli? Do I send another follow-up email? Do I open up their DM? Do I bail on that coffee catch-up? I find the reflex of where we place ourselves on that rope fascinating.
How often are we pulling for love? How often are we pulling for fear? We tend to center the nuance of bonding with misfortunes rather than fortunes. Why? Who the hell knows. Misery loves company? Maybe misery loves company because the more company misery has, the less lonely it feels, and therefore… misery is no longer miserable? I think I’m onto something here.
I think we can all agree that we’ve lost to fear or won for love many, many times. I think the oddly beautiful part is the compliance to fear we all experience. Maybe because there’s a certainty with it. We know the side effects, and the discomfort that ensues, and, yet, fully aware, we still pop open the orange bottle and take the pill. Fear and love are antonyms. However, opposition doesn’t mean disconnection. The sun reflects its brightness onto the moon for its glow. The heart risks to be broken in order to stretch. Love illuminates what fear hides. The thing is, fear is just the unpredictable shadow. The stones we have left unturned. If we could try to replace fear with unarmed curiosity, maybe the pills could be more like magic mushrooms. Which, I think we can all agree, are way more fun.
My mother has told me many times that I am “innately buoyant” and that she admires my curiosity.
“Honey, you have just always had this unbridled curiosity…it’s like a jewel, your jewel!”.
I distinctly remember when this simile was first demonstrated to me. It was during one of our many phone calls when I lived in Asheville. I was living there five years ago with my ex-boyfriend, having existential crises three times a month about what the fuck I wanted to do with my life or, even worse, knowing exactly what I wanted and knowing that making that choice would ultimately hurt someone I love and being too petrified by fear to do it.
Not that in 2024, my volatility between immobilizing doubt, asinine confusion, and frustration to piercing clarity and unfettered, almost spiteful faith to go on has ceased in the slightest. However, on a positive note, the catalysts for my volatility from 2019 have been resolved due to current Glennon realizing those dreams, making those decisions, and doing the damn thing. So… there is potential… that I could be fretting about some badass dilemmas in 5 years' time. Let’s cross our fingers.
In Asheville, there was this place about a mile away from my apartment—Hominy Creek. It was absolutely sacred to me. My sanctuary with a path the perfect length to drain the anxious well I filled in my brain. There was this one cement bench on the path that always had some answer waiting for me; I felt like it was my wardrobe, my Terabithia, my portkey. I always had to stop and make a visit. I would sit there until the answer whispered and if it didn't, fraught with rumination, I would call my mom for a life coaching session on my stroll.
These phone calls became team recruitment for my personal tug of war with my relationship, my dreams and my time in Asheville. Fear kept winning the game and I needed an extra set of hands. I loved my friends but I feared that wasn’t enough joy to keep me, I loved the tranquility but feared the boredom, I loved my boyfriend but feared the simmering resentment. I knew I was building a house of cards. I didn’t know if I could simultaneously love him and love myself enough to make a terrifying leap to pursue what was calling me in New York.
“Ugh mom, I am still feeling so indecisive. I’m pacing around the creek again losing my fucking mind. I don’t think I’m happy and I don’t know the solution.”
“Oh sweetie, you do know. Your invention and buoyancy is innate.”
“Innately buoyant??? Quite a mouthful, Mom.”
"That’s your mother!”
“Alright, alright… I’ll take it!” I muttered with a smirk pulling up the corner of my mouth. I thought I heard the cement bench chuckle too.
I couldn’t disagree. Luckily my brain was wired with enough precision to be an optimist with ADHD. Which, inherently, breeds a decent sense of buoyancy (and impulsivity). I had to agree with my mom because firstly, I have learned that being agreeable with her makes my life much easier, but, more importantly, she was…right. I am just as shocked as anyone else that I’ve managed to float back to the surface after the parade of curve balls I’ve endured. Life’s humorous wink of character development.
Now, my mother is many things. An oxymoron that continues to evolve but one thing you should absolutely know, she is alarmingly verbose. This verbosity comes partly from her ancestry of eloquent speakers and partly from her bookworm nature. If you have the chance to meet her, she would be happy to tell you about her many book club meetings, the richness of her last book, or how it was her form of escapism raising four children. Don’t let her being labeled as a bookworm mislead you. The qualities you might expect from a bookworm could not be assumed by my mother. The observant, endearing dork was the role my father took on in their partnership. Her being well-read gives her an unshakeable charm, wit, and alluring intellect. (The apple does not fall far…obviously). These qualities also lend a hand to her cameos in life coaching.
Eventually, the house of cards fell. In the dystopia of May 2020, she helped me move out of Asheville back to Charleston with no “I told you so”s. My mother wasn’t always the most explicit with her support during that time in my life. In her defense, I did move to Asheville, a place I never once visited, with a boy I had been dating for a year and some change barely eight weeks after I lived in France for a year. I was 23 years old and blindly in love. She kept her mouth shut when I decided to leave Asheville but still stay with him. She has always told me, “You can bring a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink.” I was not drinking that damn water, but boyyyy would that have been helpful. Seldom did her words bring the warmest support, but she helped me move to Asheville and came to the doorsteps when it was time to go. If I have learned anything over the years, action does speak louder than words. I know, such bullshit, but unfairly true.
She brought me back to Charleston where we became roommates in her idyllic 2 bedroom apartment in Wagener Terrace. In the “unprecedented” times we were living, she gave me a pass. I lived with her for 2 months until the apartment I found with my two friends, Hailey and Rachel, was ready to move into come July. She had just broken up with Mark 2.0 and was on the hunt for a new suitor. There was a Mark 1.0. I liked him. Honestly, he and I were pals. He would help soften up my mother for me. He was kind, generous, and chill. I knew the tip, my mom knew the whole iceberg. She said he was too mercurial, so it ended. She said she needed more homeostasis in her love life. This felt like a side-eye towards my relationship at the time. She was right, but I didn’t want to admit it.
She was a recently fresh widow. About 3 years after she lost her husband, she was able to come up just enough for air and swim towards the light. I like to think coming home that summer was my way of being her lifeguard. I may have not been the real thing back in the glory days of Swarthmore Swim Club, but it felt equally legendary. As much as she complained about sharing her place with me, I think it was a gift for us to hold each other during that raw time. I wanted her to feel safe and encouraged while she was navigating this very new world after being off the market for almost 30 years. She was single and she’d like to pretend I was too. I sometimes wonder if she plotted my boyfriend dumping me outside of an arts and crafts store for me many months later. A relationship I think she was pleased to be over. Although, she still talks sweetly of him to this day. I’m sure she couldn’t believe we lasted three years, but like I said, I was utterly enamored. Who isn't with their first love?
Since I was encouraging (and weak to my mother’s persuasion), I’d get tricked onto a pair of bikes and we cruised toward the closest happy hour stopping traffic on the way. Sweetened up on our discounted bottle of wine, she started to shower me with words of wisdom and motivation. The Ginger Special—only available at happy hour. So, remember, alarmingly verbose, she tells me,
“Glennon I could describe you in three adjectives all starting with the letter “I” and those are..”
She paused, lassoed her eyes around for about 7 seconds, and went,
“You are incandescent…incomparable…AND.. irrepressible!”
My jaw was literally on the floor. I think I shed a single tear, followed by goosebumps and then a chuckle. I was wholly speechless by the talent, but also by the caliber of depth, judgment, and audacious love that helped deliver that in under 10 seconds. She continued to challenge herself high off her last accomplishment,
“OH! And my MOTHER!” she exclaimed, giggling to herself about to body slam me with more vocabulary.
“I’ll use “V”… she had verve, vip, and… VIGOR!”
I think I cooled her down with a gentle round of applause, a cheers to her glass, and a survey around the room to break the third wall with a nosy stranger. I couldn’t accept being the only witness to that scene. I wrote those three adjectives in my journal the next day and stared at them long enough until they stretched out into a poem.
There is nothing more beautiful than the delicate dance of a woman, who finally finds home in the skin she was given. To finally see the irrepressible and incomparable nature of who she is. A woman who rekindles idle embers in the furnace of her heart and recognizes that the beauty of her fire also exists in every person she has ever encountered.
It is safe to say that I continued to let myself be tricked into those happy hours for the remainder of the summer. The ability to see my mother slip back into the foolish cloak of youth was priceless. I had the chance to take her off the parent pedestal and notice she is just as human as me. A person with a scroll of mistakes stretching out behind them but still writing the story. A person who also plays tug of war with fear and love.
Lately, I have been rolling the dice on optimism holding my breath for its validation. Fear and its defeat can ache and optimism can feel like salt in the wound. How am I supposed to find the silver lining when this shit stings? Resilience doesn’t feel like a compliment when it has to be the reflex but to honor that reflex is courageous.
I remember defeat has its teachings. A student can learn its alchemy. A victim remains blind to its brilliance. With eyes wide open, the clever spirit of inquiry nudges us all forward. Fear will wax and wane, love shines a spotlight. How boring life would be without the peculiar way we allow our curiosity to guide us?
Poignant and nostalgic. I remember this Asheville time soooo well. beautiful read glenn