Nov
28

Warning: This One Has a Gooey Center.

I’ve had an email problem. I could blame Gmail’s “starred mail” function, because it gives you the illusion of having dealt with something when really, you’ve just shuffled it into a different receptacle. Or I could blame the anxiety disorder, the ADD, the perfectionism, or my bone-deep laziness. But whatever the cause, the effect was that as of yesterday morning, I had 1310 messages in my Inbox, several hundred of them starred for reply. Of these starred messages, some date from just before my wedding. Which was in May. Of 2007.
How it generally works is this:

1) Read message.
2) Gracious, I really want to reply to this one, but I don’t have time to do it justice.
3) Add star to mark for later.
4) As more mail comes in, message is pushed out of view.
5) Forget about message entirely.
6) Two days later, visit Starred Messages folder.
7) Oh no!
8) Well, now that I’m so late in responding, my reply has to be especially well thought out.
9) …So I certainly can’t write one now.
10) I should wait until I can properly devote myself to composing The Great American Email.
11) More days pass. Revisit Starred Messages folder.
12) Fucking hell!
13) I will need an epistolary masterpiece, to make up for my tardiness—I don’t have TIME to write a masterpiece today.

Two months later, while scrolling through mailbox:

14) GOD DAMN IT!
15) No point in replying, as they certainly hate me now. I’ll save the message, and some day, when I’ve been told I have two months to live and am thus putting my affairs in order, I’ll write a heartfelt, apologetic response.

So as you can see, I am completely insane.
Worse, if I told you the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about these messages, and my poor beshitted Inbox, and mentally chastising myself for same, you wouldn’t believe me. So yesterday I decided it was time to end this once and for all: I would declare Email Amnesty and start fresh. After all, if I weren’t constantly trying to make headway on responding to old email, I could easily keep up with the new mail that comes in! I don’t actually receive very much, you see, but once it starts building up, exponents seem to get involved.
So I started going through my Inbox and starred mail, archiving things (not deleting! never deleting!) older than a month or two. And because I am the sort of girl I am, I reread messages as I went.
And that is how I came to spend Thanksgiving crying quietly on the sofa.

After Ames died, every email was like an arm around my shoulder (okay, yes, that would be a lot of arms, and probably more uncomfortable than reassuring—work with me, here). I wanted to reply to each one, but I never seemed to know what to say, and they have been languishing in a Gmail folder ever since. Then there was bedrest, and people wrote to check on me, to distract me, and to give me the facts and statistics and studies and information I so desperately craved. I had a virtual army cheering me on when Simone was in the NICU—you wouldn’t believe some of the amazing email I got, and every single one buoyed me up and carried me forward. I have saved them all, and reading them again yesterday brought me to astounded and grateful tears. I remember very vividly a comment from a group of Scottish NICU nurses who referred to themselves as S.C.O.T.S, which stood for “Scottish Contingent Of Tiny Simone Supporters” (I believe that they were supporters of Tiny Simone, not merely Simone supporters who happened to be of diminutive stature). People sometimes tell me how well they think I have handled the events of the past year, and if I did so, I think it was because I had all of you with me along the way.

I remember a grief counselor asking me about my support system, back before Simone was born. She seemed concerned, and I tried to explain about my website, and I don’t think she understood at all. Online relationships are often discounted. One of the common threads in the email I receive is people wondering whether I think they are “weird” or “stalkerish” for writing, and I have to tell you, the thought has never crossed my mind. One of my very best friends, with whom I have now shared real life conversations and very corporeal Gilmore Girls cake, is one I met through my comment section. I met my husband online, and it was through blogs that I more or less diagnosed my infertility, and gained the knowledge I needed to advocate for myself to my doctors. While Simone was in the hospital, other mothers of preemies wrote to tell me that they had been where I was, and it helped me so much that finding ways to support other NICU parents has become something of a preoccupation of mine—I write about our experience, I am trying to involve myself with programs that help current families in our NICU, I am becoming active in the March of Dimes, and when Simone is older I hope to do more. After all I have been given, it is the least I can offer.

I spent yesterday whittling my Inbox down to a few recent messages, a task I expected to be arduous and entirely free of the spirit of Thanksgiving. We had more or less given up on the holiday anyway, as I’d forgotten to go to the grocery store for ingredients and simply did not have the energy to fight the scrambling hordes that morning. We ate ravioli, fed the baby, and I sat for hours with my laptop burning its way into my thighs. I thought I would feel terrible about all of the messages I had utterly failed to respond to, and I did, but more than that I felt supremely lucky, thankful even. I pity the poor pilgrims: you all are better than maize any day.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |