Organizing the Spice Rack

Hello Invisible Audience,

 

Elizabeth Gilbert said once that the first step to writing a book was organizing the spice drawer in your kitchen. 

 

In my case, the steps it took to sit down to write to you were many. I had to finish unpacking boxes from when I moved in May. I had to shred a bunch of files I didn’t need to keep from 10 years ago when I unpacked those boxes. I needed to clean my house and make food for lunches for the week. I had to organize my bookshelf by author. And this morning, I had to reconcile my books for the two businesses I don’t really run anymore so that I’m ready for tax season. Oh yeah, and I had to get through my first semester of grad school, and take my car in multiple times because suddenly the gas tank wouldn’t let me put gas in it. Despite the fact that I drove 7 hours round trip in the pouring rain, the new battery I got for my laptop hasn’t kept the thing from draining to dead in a couple hours, so I’ve spent far too many spare minutes with customer service trying to figure out what the fuck is going wrong while every single one of those customer service people has tried to sell me a new laptop instead.

 

God I miss writing, Invisible Audience. I told someone the other day that there is no doubt in my mind what I am on earth to do, and it is to write. Which feels silly to say, when AI has taken over that little pastime for everyone. When I am working so hard doing everything but writing. But there’s also a very important reason why I had to do all those things I talked about before I got to the part where I could actually write to you, Invisible Audience.

 

It's because this isn’t fucking working.

 

Six little words. They look so nonchalant, don’t they? The way they’re just marching across the page, as if I didn’t spend months procrastinating because it felt so hard to write them. As if the courage it took to type those words, one letter at a time, didn’t include some ice cream multiple weekends of anxiety and some walks and swims and who-knows-what-else while I first tried to feel my feelings and now to write them out loud, to you, after months of radio silence.

 

Because this isn’t fucking working.

 

If I’m going to be honest, it feels like I’ve been in an abusive relationship with the American Way my whole life and it’s finally coming to the point where I’m admitting that the relationship is dead in the water. What am I saying? I’ve flirted with other countries multiple times—even found some happiness abroad—only to be pulled back to what is familiar. But I’ve just spent 460ish words to get to the point, so here it is:

 

I am working part time. I am trying to go to school part time. I cannot afford to live off the amount I make, mostly because of medical expenses, which went up $600 a month when I got my job and was making more money than I had been. I cannot afford to pay for school with what I make, and despite applying for about 30 scholarships, I didn’t get enough to even cover a single semester’s worth of tuition, so I am relying on student loans if I want to do this program. They are already accruing interest. I tried working a second job during the semester, and almost wore myself back into chronic fatigue. I went to the dentist and they said the reason my gums were bleeding so much was probably because of stress. 

 

But here’s the thing, Invisible Audience: people do this shit all the time. People work full time and go to school full time. They take out student loans to go to school. And if they talk about how much that sets everything back—as far as saving for retirement, having time to enjoy their lives, even managing a healthy balance—it must be in rooms that I’m not in. Because it doesn’t fucking work. 

 

It may be because I am trying to do this to create better financial stability, but here I am, forty-four years old, wondering how exactly I’m supposed to save anything substantial for retirement when I am trying to pay off debt from both student loans and the time I spent trying to keep afloat with chronic fatigue. 

 

Do you see why I feel gaslit, Invisible Audience? When I was shredding those files I mentioned earlier, I found medical bills from 10 years ago—because, if I’m honest, there really hasn’t ever been a time when there weren’t medical expenses. Trying to juggle all these pieces at once is actually impossible, yet even admitting that makes me feel like I’ve failed in some important way. What about my boot straps? What’s wrong with me that I can’t seem to pull myself out of this huge, deep, messy hole with them? I am already trying to figure out what needs to change to make my life more manageable. But damn it if it doesn’t feel like my choices are a Catch 22. Do I leave the town and community I love so much to try and find somewhere new in a different country, where medical costs—and probably school costs—won’t be as high? Or do I stay here, try to make it work, and just pretend like I’m not about to drown?

 

Love and spicy kisses,

Morgan

 

Can We Talk About Death?

 

Hello Invisible Audience,

 

It’s been a really long time. I want to apologize, but I won’t. I haven’t had the energy to write, and that’s all there is to it. However, in the last month or so I’m finally feeling a lot better and different than I have been, so I wanted to write.

 

And why tiptoe in? Why not dive?

 

Today I want to talk about death.

 

Recently, a friend recommended a book to me that I can’t stop thinking about: The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett. It is an amazing book, about a woman in her 80s who spent most of her life taking care of her mother, never married, and has decided she is going to go to Switzerland to a clinic that helps people who want to die.

 

She starts the application process, and is simultaneously swept up in friendships with two of her neighbors—one a young girl who recently moved in next door with her family—after spending many years mostly alone. The book is beautifully written. It flashes back to some very hard things she went through in her life that have shaped her into the cantankerous, judgmental woman she has become.

 

Yet throughout the book—there are some spoilers here, so if you want to read it, you might go do that first—her hard exterior is slowly chipped away by these friendships and she slowly becomes a lot more of a caring, feeling human than she appeared at first.

 

Nevertheless, she’s decided she will be less of a bother if she goes ahead with the assisted death, so she lies and tells these people who care about her that she’s going on a trip. Her friend Stanley takes her to the airport, and as they sit and have a final coffee, he finally gets her to tell him why she’s going to Switzerland.

 

He says a lot to her, but one word in the dialogue stood out to me, Invisible Audience.

 

Coward.

 

He called her a coward for leaving. For not trusting that her friends would want to be there for her in her last moments—that they wouldn’t take care of her.

 

Since I’ve already spoiled some of the main points of the book, I’m going to spoil the ending: she stays, and dies at home, with her friends around her.

 

There’s a reason this book hit home for me, Invisible Audience. It’s because I have thought about doing the same thing when I am old.

A big difference between Eudora Honeysett and I is that she lives in the UK, where they have a lot more social services available for a lot less—or zero—money. I do not live in the UK. I have a friend in assisted living nearby who is paying $5000 a month to basically live in a motel room that offers three meals a day and will come to her aid if she falls or needs help; where she can stay until she dies. She chose this place after her husband died, knowing full well that she has dementia, because she didn’t want to burden her son by living with him on a property that would be hard for her to get around on because it’s rocky and uneven and she uses a cane, to say nothing of how hard things will be when her dementia gets worse.

 

She has a choice I do not have, Invisible Audience, because if assisted living is $5000 a month now, there is no way I will be able to afford it when I am her age in 40 years. And I don’t have the choice of whether or not to live with a child.

 

I spent nearly all my savings and went into significant debt trying to heal from Lyme Disease. In hindsight, most of that money was wasted, but there was no way to know that until I tried every possible thing to get better—when the system is so broken that paying for help was the only way I could find any, let alone get someone to even consider Lyme Disease as a possible reason for my huge array of symptoms. And thankfully I’ve recently found some things that have given me back my working memory and executive function, but only after spending about a year terrified that I had early-onset dementia myself. Dementia, more than physical deterioration, scares the ever-loving shit out of me: how will I advocate for myself if I can’t remember who or where I am?

 

To be honest, the whole reason I’m looking at going back to school in the fall is to try and create some financial stability in the second half of my life that I haven’t found in the first half. But after looking at the debt I’ve accumulated and savings I’ve spent trying to get better, I am still not looking at spending retirement in style somewhere. And after all the health problems I’ve had already, it feels foolish to assume I will be in good enough health to take care of myself as I grow old.

 

Does it seem so strange that I am relieved there is a way to choose my own death, knowing all those factors? That, if I get a dementia diagnosis and they have yet to find a cure, I have an option that will give me the peace of mind of knowing I will not be stuck in a terrible facility with sub-par care because it’s for people who can’t afford to be anywhere else?

 

Does that make me a coward, Invisible Audience, or simply a realist?

 

The average life expectancy of someone in the U.S. is about 78 years, so I’m over halfway there. Sure, there’s a lot that can change in that time. But can you blame me, in the current political climate, where social services are being slashed, for wondering what will happen to me when I’m too old and potentially ill to take care of myself?

 

I am not going to make platitudes now to make you feel better, Invisible Audience. As a single woman with no kids, I think about this a lot. It has felt like a secret I’ve kept to myself—my fear, and shame that I haven’t been able to create more financial security for myself already. But I can’t be the only one thinking about this. I am certainly not the only one that our policies affect. And if it’s cowardly to consider traipsing off to a foreign country to end my life on my own terms, it is also cowardly to pretend it is not something I consider to be a better option than many I have available to me.

 

Love and somewhat cowardly kisses,

Morgan 

 

P.S. Thanks for reading, Invisible Audience member. Interested in reading more and supporting me in the process? Check out my profile on Patreon. Pledge as little as $1.50 a month to get access to more of my ponderings and become one of my Semi-Invisible Patrons. When I can't find time to post both here and on Patreon, I prioritize posts on Patreon--there's always more to read there.