Zoey Gallagher

I don’t like writing but I am always glad when I do it. I guess that means I don’t like the ACT of writing and maybe not the writing itself. I actually do like the feeling of using every other muscle in my hand that sits dormant while I type away my life into a computer screen. That is dramatic and let me tell you why, because today I spent $11 dollars on a train ticket to sit at my computer, consume two packets of hot chocolate mix, dry, before getting up and taking a 4 mile and 4 hour round trip excursion to Lincoln Park’s Lincoln Park where I consumed 6 Egg-life egg wraps and 4 blueberry greek yogurt bars. AKA I unintentionally took an in person PTO day. I watched some of Tomb Raiders for the first time after getting an ad promoting it on Tubi earlier that day. The name caught my attention from a Disney World ride I went on back in February. At least I am 70% sure that’s what the ride was called because maybe it was called “The Mummy” but either way it was memorable and this wasn’t a movie I had seen before. Mainly I sat on the park bench and felt happy. I took some deep breathes and it hurt. I don’t know why it hurts when I do that. It hurts in an uncomfortable way like stretching eczema ridden skin or evicting the generational family of spiders that set up camp behind your fridge months after you first took notice to them. Lately I haven’t felt like cleaning anything or owning any stuff. When I get the motivation I’ll chip away and compile another box of things I no longer want to be associated with.

My room is always 100 degrees at night and yet unbearably cold after every shower. My ceiling fan spins at a max speed and yet circulates nothing. Not even the hot air seems to budge. I wake up most mornings anxious and sweaty and I’m not sure whether it’s the heat lamp from my tortoises tank, the fact that my bed faces the door, or if it’s the densely uncomfortable energy I’ve absorbed that’s trying to escape but keeps getting trapped due to the concentrated state of hot and sweaty that my room appears stuck in.

I thought that writing would help me put in to words my current mental state but it all just feels too overwhelming to articulate. I feel the need to just explain it for what it is and not how I feel about it all, but the how I feel about it all is what is preventing the articulation in the first place. Does that make sense and do you understand? I suppose if I start from the very beginning… but when would that have even been and for what manner is that a need on my part to conceptualize and rationalize it all rather than simply feel and exist with it for what is it now?

For your sake and maybe my own I’ll start from the beginning as it unfolded for me:

• In August I moved back home after graduating college
• In September my father stopped coming home at night and together my parents started seeing a therapist
• The September feud fizzled, the therapist disappeared, and for some reason they thanked me for that
• June 9th, my mother’s 54th birthday, he wrote her a beautiful card and gave it to her with his arms crossed and an emotionless expression smeared across his face
  • I’ve never seen him kiss her with genuine intention, only in a joking matter
• On June 10th my sister received photos of him with his hands all over some woman, missing the ring that belongs on his 4th finger, and a note clarifying “Your dad is here and I’m sorry”
  • I’ve never seen him be as affectionate towards anyone. He lied and denied it all
• He lied for four more days and tried to cover his decisions instead of admit to them.
• June 12th my mother saw a divorce lawyer and asked my dad to move out
• I went on a 60 mile bike ride
• Later that day he tore his bicep setting up for my brothers graduation party
• On father’s day we didn’t celebrate and he threw a fit- slamming doors and silent treatments
• June 14th, he moved back in, slept upstairs, and had surgery
• Sometimes my mother came home and went to bed without acknowledgement. Her therapist told her that 53 year old men don’t change
• In June my father took off work, took up reading, started existing in every room, and sending too many texts
• I went on another 60 mile bike ride and the talk of separation circulated throughout my house
• I spent a week in Puerto Rico, meanwhile my parents toured once and impromptu bought a house
• In June, in case you didn’t read that last bullet right and simply to re-iterate for intensity purposes, my parents bought a house!!!!
• In July they celebrated the 4th together
• I spent 3 nights in a hotel and felt like a normal person again for the first time in awhile
• My 21 year old sister, out of necessity, became their couples therapist when they couldn’t decide between takeout or eating in
  • He began regressing
• In late June my brother asked my mom why she would spend her life with a man that only has 1 good day out of every 30. Of course an exaggeration, but not an unrealistic one.
• In July my father started snapping again and voiced his anger over my anger
  • To be fair I am not angry I just don’t know how to navigate through this positively and productively and in a manner I am proud of, so instead I’ve stayed relatively silent. He mistakes my silence for anger but I am not sure how else to exist in this house.
• Last weekend they spent the night at a concert together and it looked normal if normal came with an asterisk at the end
• and I- I started getting fatter

Dear Mom,

I am getting fatter again. Some to do with a decrease in mental energy/drive to fuel a good workout, but mostly because I stopped giving as much care to what foods I put in my body. Most cause has an effect and all actions have consequences — right Mom? When dad cheats (cause) you leave (effect), right? More than no one deserves to be cheated on, the cheater doesn’t deserve to eat his cake and keep it too. All that does it make one fatter.

I can’t understand who is learning a lesson here and who is the intended recipient- because I was under the impression that not all actions have consequences yet I’m getting fatter and drowning in gluttony and picking myself to pieces, always, trying to understand which parts of me appear undesirable but a man with 1 in 30 good days, a baseline stature of criticism, a finite and conditional understanding of love, a disingenuous, destructive, dishonest, and unfaithful construction of a man reels in proportional reward to havoc for the relationships he’s broken in his wake.

Not all actions have consequences, that’s why I am getting fatter and the sinking ship you cling onto will definitely make it safely to shore. Maybe in the bow of some more rocky relationships, lost respect, and distant children. You’ll know you’re almost there when everyone eventually moves out, family dinner rarely hits capacity, and holidays are spent with friends over relatives.

Not all actions have consequences and not all choices are direct decisions and mostly I crave sugar for the quick energy that I’ve lost to my sweaty sleepless nights and for the dopamine baseline that I keep dropping beneath, and I definitely haven’t meant to get fatter and maybe you didn’t mean to get on that sinking ship. Maybe you just can’t see that it’s sinking, maybe his ability to sugar coat reality (a true sails-man) made you believe that the gapping hole in the stern of the boat, the one you saw as you climbed aboard was a figment of your own imagination because why would a man that constantly showers you with love, and tells you how beautiful you are almost obnoxiously too often, and listens to you, supports you, and encourages your hobbies, your values, and core being, ever put you in such a position?

Maybe I’d have more respect and a lower body fat percentage if you patched that hole before you decided to sail away from the life you had the potential to craft carefully and with raw intention, on sturdy foundation and with a satisfying yet realistic portion of cake, frosting, and healthy food ratio.