Dishes

Every day, at some unexpected quiet moment, I make time for my heart to break.

In all appearances, my heart is whole. I carry out my obligations. I get up early, stretch on the floor, cuddle with our cat and have coffee while looking at the sunrise from my window. 

I prepare my son’s lunch box. A sandwich with ham and cheese. Some crackers and a piece of cheese. A few apple slices. When there are cookies, I pack three of them in the small compartment of the box. 

I make sure he gets up on time and gets dressed, and I kiss his head. I reassure him that everything will be OK at school and that he just has to think of me across the street when he feels his anxiety creep up. I kiss the top of his head again as he leaves. 

I get changed and make the bed. I brush my teeth, comb my hair, and try to be presentable, even if it’s just to myself. I go to my office downstairs and work on my consulting job. I feel less and less capable each day. So I clean the kitchen during breaks. 

I sweep the floor. Then, I wash the few dishes on the sink by hand to have more time to think. I clean the sink and empty the little food holder that protects the drain. I empty all the little bits of food stuck to the metal mesh in the organics bag. I wash the cloth and wipe the counters. Our cat looks at me from the kitchen table by the window.

Again on my computer, I put on headphones to quiet the boredom. It usually works too well because I get high on the music and become even more distracted. Then, as the album ends and I finish sending another email signed “thank you!” with one exclamation mark, I sit in silence. And then I feel the heartbreak. 

It’s acute. It’s a pain that starts in the chest and then moves towards my arms and hands. The pain is made of regret, loneliness, and guilt, but mainly, it is made of broken dreams. 

I hold the shards of these dreams in my hands. I’m not shocked anymore that the dreams broke, but I still feel the cuts they leave in my hands. A deep sadness envelops me, like pulling a blanket over my shoulders, but instead of warmth, the blanket emits a piercing cold.  

I thought I could live a different life. That I could be exceptional in my own way and write my way out of mundanity. Because I reject mundanity, I’m good at it, but it’s never where my head is. 

My head is always in an abstract place made of ideas and overwhelming sensations in response to art. I never want to touch the ground. I’m horribly annoying in conversations— I get carried away and always talk too much. The truth is that I escape reality this way.

A few months ago, I found a draft of a blog post. It said, “Despite everything I have ever told myself, art will not save me.” I was startled that seven years ago, I was already thinking about this—that my obsession with art isolates me rather than connects me to people, that I have slowly built an enormous wall between me and the world. I barely leave my house. My physical life is small. Everything happens in the mind or online. 

This may be why books spill over from piles everywhere in our house. They are part of the wall that protects me from the mundane, from the messiness and unpredictability of relationships. I do not want to deal with the realities of the physical world, its needs and wants, and everything that’s required to live in society and remain alive. 

I fantasize about being pure consciousness, about living a life of contemplation in isolation. But I’m a mom, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a partner, a friend. I must remain tethered to the physical world. And this is when I realize that art will not save me. I will neither make a living from it nor become a better person through it.  

So, in between the dishes, and the emails, and the tweets, the lunchboxes and kisses on my son’s head, the heart dies a slow, sad death.