Cosmic Pussy and a Mug of Hazelnut Tea

Dear Capital ‘S’ Self,

I am writing to let you know that I’m becoming the person I’ve needed my whole broken life; a life which is now no longer broken but made whole by equal parts effort and cessation of effort. I am becoming truer, softer, harder, kinder, more cut-throat, easier, more joyful, and more serious—a deeper version of myself—the little shard of spirit lodged in me glinting in the hot July air, smiling—if spirit even has a face with which to smile.

I’m becoming an old woman in a Kawartha cottage, in 1997, handing a ten year old Ada Dragomir a hot mug of hazelnut tea with the reassurance of stone, the care of a thousand crones, the force of a wall of gnarled old women standing shoulder to shoulder having seen all there is to see, each with an over-washed apron and a sturdy wooden spoon. The fleshly representatives of cosmic pussy, each Mawmaw, Oma and Bubbie embodying more calm grounded Big Dick Energy than all their garbage husbands put together.

Lately, this part of me has started showing up for others—for friends, for siblings, for the people around me. I am seeing myself as if for the first time and I am leaning in hard.

Dear Capital ‘S’ Self,

Yesterday I sent a text message that held, in one fragile whoosh, a person’s deep humanity without sacrificing mine. I said that our relational peace depends not on my forgiveness but on their actions. Yesterday I said I wanted to hear an unqualified ‘yes’ to the question “is there space for me in your life?” from a lover and then I dumped them when the answer was maybe.

I quit a job I hate. I said no to a person I did not wish to spend time with, I deleted old messages, then instagram, and then tens of drafts in my notes app for each carefully crafted reply. In saying no, I have said yes! yes! yes! with the same voice that comes out when I’m getting fucked into oblivion, because it’s the same feeling. Cosmic pussy.

Dear Capital ‘S’ Self,

I have ended so many relationships this past year, and I have only just begun. I can hear hope and peace, play and levity, in each knuckle crack and rustle of a sleeve being rolled up in preparation for another ending—which is to say another beginning.

There is a part of me that continues to live in the body of a terrified ten year old kid holding a box of unthinkable horrors like so many others’ boxes of unthinkable horrors deep in my chest. There is another part of me that is sitting on my verandah in Kawartha, greying and calm, a gentle breeze kicking up off the lakes, waiting for the end of 1997 beside a pot of hazelnut tea.

May we become who we once needed most. May we recognize cosmic pussy when it’s in front of our eyes. May we see every no as a chorus of a thousand yeses.

Pointing ever to life,

yours &c,

Capital ‘S’ Self