Love you and your screwy jaw 💗💗 actually mind boggling to think about this procedure, even in the slimmest of detail. Sending you gentle baby butterfly kisses right on ur gums
I can’t tell if the second half of my comment made it through or if it just fully died after “gentle baby” lol. If it didn’t make it through the internet, I said “gentle baby butterfly kisses right on ur gums” or something like that. And if it did make it through, then double the gentle baby butterfly kisses 4u
I woke up from my tonsillectomy WHILE IT WAS GOING ON when I was like 5 in 1996. Apparently I punched a doctor in the face out of shock but it still freaks me out. Like that’s not supposed to happen!!!
WAIT OMG IN CLASSIC MADELINE FORM I STARTED COMMENTING AS I READ (TO BRING BACK THE SPARK OF THE LIVE TWEETING DAYS) AND THEN I SAW THE KEYCHAIN SHOUTOUT!!!! thank u!!!!
I was surprisingly sad about Andrea’s death too, Erin, and you put it into words so well—I don’t think I’ll ever reach their level of aliveness, compassion, or talent for putting beauty into words, and it makes me feel extra sad about losing them. Thanks for this post.
I had this awful realization the other day that the past is never behind me. It's always right inside. People say this, but it hit me hard when I felt it for the first time. I'm not some heroine who has gotten free by running forward. The only way to get free is to relax into what happened, let it transfuse into the love and safety I feel now. Jaw surgery is not something I can imagine. I watched a friend go through it on IG--the liquid diet alone was harrowing. I mean that sincerely. How do you relax after physical rearrangement? I don't know. Keep crying, Andrea would advise.
I had been told that I am not allowed to write about how I never got over the loss of a woman I loved 50 years ago, despite both of us later marrying other people. Betsy never went away from my mind. I never, ever felt that I was over her, never put our one-time relationship in the past ... she never seemed "in the past," perhaps because I never knew what had happened. During the summer of her 20th year her parents sent her on a 6-week tour of Europe; she wrote that everyone else on the tour was middle-aged! This was long before the Internet, so we had arranged that when I would write to her I'd send the letters to the American Express office in each city she was to visit. That was how you could communicate back then. We each wrote at least once per week. In the last message she sent, she wrote that she had gotten up before dawn to walk up the Acropolis to watch the sun come up through the columns of the Parthenon. She concluded with, "We should do this kind of thing together," and I was thrilled ... at the prospect of such romantic activities, and at knowing that she was still enthusiastic and loving about us. Soon she returned, and something had happened. I was thrilled that she was back, but she did not seem to be so. As weeks went by we were less and less in connection--she was no longer enthused--and eventually it was over. We were very young, and the only way I knew how to deal with the situation was to be in denial, and then to be bewildered. 35 years later, I called her. We talked for over an hour. Her husband was at work, two of her teenage kids were home. When she said she had to start making dinner I told her I had been in love with her for 35 years, and she told me--immediately and adamantly--that that was not true! I repeated it, and she sloughed it off. Later, I wondered why I hadn't asked her why she thought I had called, if not for caring so deeply for her. But I didn't ask.
A few months ago, I finished writing a novel in which a character remarkably like her is the first, and ever-after underlying, character; and the circumstances of our first meeting were how we had, in fact, met. It took 18 months to write the book, rewrite some, and edit all, of it. When it was finished I sent her the first 25 pages--they were all about her, and us--along with a message about the book as a whole. She did not respond, which had seemed would be the most likely result.
Love you and your screwy jaw 💗💗 actually mind boggling to think about this procedure, even in the slimmest of detail. Sending you gentle baby butterfly kisses right on ur gums
I can’t tell if the second half of my comment made it through or if it just fully died after “gentle baby” lol. If it didn’t make it through the internet, I said “gentle baby butterfly kisses right on ur gums” or something like that. And if it did make it through, then double the gentle baby butterfly kisses 4u
hahah evi I am cracking up at the visual of baby butterfly kissing my gums. thank u I love u
“I am a chicken finger”
I woke up from my tonsillectomy WHILE IT WAS GOING ON when I was like 5 in 1996. Apparently I punched a doctor in the face out of shock but it still freaks me out. Like that’s not supposed to happen!!!
also ur face n toes are great!!!
OH MY GOD that is horrifying!! maddie!!! did you ever find out what happened? do you need more sedation than most people?
Yes!! I don’t know why, but I always have.
At first I thought the animals in the first paragraphs for metaphors - it’s much more fitting that you’re a fairy princess!
So excited to start this journey with you tomorrow Erin! And so honored to have it included here❤️❤️❤️❤️
WAIT OMG IN CLASSIC MADELINE FORM I STARTED COMMENTING AS I READ (TO BRING BACK THE SPARK OF THE LIVE TWEETING DAYS) AND THEN I SAW THE KEYCHAIN SHOUTOUT!!!! thank u!!!!
hahah yessss the keychain!!! thank YOU!
I was surprisingly sad about Andrea’s death too, Erin, and you put it into words so well—I don’t think I’ll ever reach their level of aliveness, compassion, or talent for putting beauty into words, and it makes me feel extra sad about losing them. Thanks for this post.
I had this awful realization the other day that the past is never behind me. It's always right inside. People say this, but it hit me hard when I felt it for the first time. I'm not some heroine who has gotten free by running forward. The only way to get free is to relax into what happened, let it transfuse into the love and safety I feel now. Jaw surgery is not something I can imagine. I watched a friend go through it on IG--the liquid diet alone was harrowing. I mean that sincerely. How do you relax after physical rearrangement? I don't know. Keep crying, Andrea would advise.
I had been told that I am not allowed to write about how I never got over the loss of a woman I loved 50 years ago, despite both of us later marrying other people. Betsy never went away from my mind. I never, ever felt that I was over her, never put our one-time relationship in the past ... she never seemed "in the past," perhaps because I never knew what had happened. During the summer of her 20th year her parents sent her on a 6-week tour of Europe; she wrote that everyone else on the tour was middle-aged! This was long before the Internet, so we had arranged that when I would write to her I'd send the letters to the American Express office in each city she was to visit. That was how you could communicate back then. We each wrote at least once per week. In the last message she sent, she wrote that she had gotten up before dawn to walk up the Acropolis to watch the sun come up through the columns of the Parthenon. She concluded with, "We should do this kind of thing together," and I was thrilled ... at the prospect of such romantic activities, and at knowing that she was still enthusiastic and loving about us. Soon she returned, and something had happened. I was thrilled that she was back, but she did not seem to be so. As weeks went by we were less and less in connection--she was no longer enthused--and eventually it was over. We were very young, and the only way I knew how to deal with the situation was to be in denial, and then to be bewildered. 35 years later, I called her. We talked for over an hour. Her husband was at work, two of her teenage kids were home. When she said she had to start making dinner I told her I had been in love with her for 35 years, and she told me--immediately and adamantly--that that was not true! I repeated it, and she sloughed it off. Later, I wondered why I hadn't asked her why she thought I had called, if not for caring so deeply for her. But I didn't ask.
A few months ago, I finished writing a novel in which a character remarkably like her is the first, and ever-after underlying, character; and the circumstances of our first meeting were how we had, in fact, met. It took 18 months to write the book, rewrite some, and edit all, of it. When it was finished I sent her the first 25 pages--they were all about her, and us--along with a message about the book as a whole. She did not respond, which had seemed would be the most likely result.