How to Collapse Hope's Fixity

A Poem on the Beautiful Yet Painful Capacity to Hope

Dear sexy people,

At the beginning of last week, while visiting a lovely new friend in Los Angeles, I drafted a hopeful post on desire, writing about a recent surge of longing to reopen myself to its intoxicating machinations—its buoyancy and volatility, its possibilities for expansion despite near-inevitable wounding.

After the second doctor’s appointment of the week and a couple slow shifts, though, my emotional landscape transmuted from hopeless romanticism into, well, a flirtatious hopelessness, my desire for deep connection tempered by fearful ambivalence. (The technical term for this mixture, I learned from a previous therapist, is disorganized attachment LOLSOB. Also, premenstrual hormonal fluctuations exacerbate ADHD symptoms, particularly emotional dysregulation, which didn’t help the situation.)

Then late on Friday night I listened to Raechel Anne Jolie’s “the lives we choose,” twice on my bedroom floor while unpacking my stripper bag and sorting my things after a rough slow-season shift. Jolie’s moving piece speaks to the core of this intimate ambivalence, holding close the beautiful yet painful capacity to hope.

Before listening to Jolie’s words, I felt alone with the quiet knowledge that I am far from the stability I seek, financial and otherwise. Now, I am sitting with these fears while remembering how just the tiniest glimmer of possibility—the comforting words of a friend who gets it, a customer begging me not to leave in front of my new boss—can brighten my whole outlook. How what accompanies pain can also amplify pleasure. After a really great Saturday work shift, I feel more excited about than exhausted by my life choices. The difficulty of drafting biweekly public posts, I’ve found, is that for me writing is a slow process, a recursive reckoning with shifts in mood and perspective to unearth patterns rather than concretize reactions.

And, after impatiently waiting on Wednesday to see an ENT physician, I realized the tumult of recent personal upheaval has yet to leave my body, quite literally, as some scar tissue from a trauma continues to bother me. At the same time, my increased attunement to and care for my body indicates healing. I am no longer ignoring what my body tells me, and its time takes precedence over the clock, whenever possible.

But I missed my beloved ballet class that night because the appointment took about four hours longer than I expected it to, and I know I’ve been running about four or more days behind on posts, as well. Moving into August, as my work schedule solidifies, I hope to create more structure for myself and thus more punctual posts. Until then, thank you for your patience with me.

All of that to say, in lieu of my original post, which I’ll share at a later date along with the backstory to “A Strip Club in Virginia,” today it feels right to share another poem from my hybrid creative nonfiction project.

“How to Collapse Hope’s Fixity” seeks to capture not only the coexistence but interdependence of despair and hope, grief and desire. I for one needed a reminder that where there is pain, there is possibility, too.

Sending my love to y’all—and more soon.

xx,

Alison

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