Part 1: The beginning

Hi Friends,

If you saw my last post, you’ll know that I’m starting to do a series on Substack that is longer form writing. I want an outlet to tell the story of the past few years of my life in essay blog form. So, every other week, I’ll be sharing an installment– an unpolished part of an essay, if you will. I’m reserving the right to change course and to find out what it will become as it becomes it. Thank you for being here and being a gracious audience.

I will still be sharing poetry here so don’t worry about that (I’m thinking, I’ll send out poems the week I don’t send a blog).

So, here it goes:

Part 1: The beginning

This story starts in March of 2020, but, like so many stories, starts before the story starts. For the purposes of today, though, I’ll start then. At that time, I was living with my boyfriend, Nikhil, who would eventually become my husband and the father of my daughter, although all of that felt pretty far off then.

I met Nikhil at a wedding when I was twenty-nine. When we met, I had been living with friends in the heart of Boston for the past five years. It was a life I had I dreamed of but did not know was a dream. In college, I think I had dreamed of cohabitating with a boyfriend in my twenties, but in fact, that would have made me miss over half a decade of some of the most joy-filled moments of my life. Living with women in an airy apartment where people were always in and out, visitors staying, where there were always new conversations to be had, thai food takeout to eat, late night movies to watch, was, in fact, a dream come true.

At twenty-nine, I knew I wanted to find romantic love, to get married, to have a deep and personal and unique relationship with someone, to have children, to have a family, but the gnawing feeling in my stomach wasn’t that I wanted it now but the what if it never comes? I was in the phase of putting feelers out, casting my net, being open to the possibilities. What that meant in real life? Giving my phone number out to anyone who sparked my interest.

So, we met at a wedding, we shared some laughs, danced together and I sent him a message on instagram after the wedding with my telephone number. Long story short, we began texting, talking on the phone, visiting each other (he lived in New York and I lived in Boston) and eventually, decided to give dating a shot. He moved to Boston after we had been dating for a little over a year and we immediately moved in together. 

One of our first dates in New York.

I’ll come back to that, because there are many stories there, but the one thing that’s important to the beginning of this story is that Nikhil is a dreamer and someone who encourages everyone around him to dream big. He’s not the kind of dreamer who tells you big plans he has and then doesn’t follow through. He has spreadsheets and gameplans and wants people to do the same. If you tell him something you want to do (start a business, write a book, run for office, star in a movie) he’ll say I love it. Now what’s your plan?

This kind of thinking changed me. I went from having big ideas and figuring they would all kind of happen at some point in the nondescript future to living with someone, having my closest confidant be a person who loved to hear me dream out loud and then put a project plan to my dream. 

So, back to March 2020. In about a week, I, along with everyone else, had my life completely change. I went from a busy day job, work travel, an evening gig teaching children’s theater, a packed social calendar, several upcoming trips for fun to…well…nothing. In the middle of the week, my office decided people would work from home for “a few weeks”. That Friday afternoon, I walked to a library in our neighborhood just to feel like I was out in the world. I remember seeing a sign that said the library would be closed for two weeks, so books could be returned then, and feeling this deep unsettling pit in my stomach. I walked home in the early March evening light and entered our apartment, in a big building in Cambridge, Massachusetts where we were living at the time. I remember sitting down in bed around seven p.m., waiting for Nikhil to finish working on his laptop so we could order takeout and thinking how weird it was.  We didn’t have any plans that night, or for the rest of the weekend. We didn’t have friends' houses or restaurants or even coffee shops to visit. Everything was closed. And that evening, as I sat in bed and felt anxiety looming in nearly every corner of my brain, I did what I had done so many times throughout my life when I started to feel anxious or sad or any combination of overwhelming emotions. I started to write. And the next day, I made a plan.