Kathryn Mayer • Writing Out Loud
I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist
Be mindful and present. It’s important to stay in the moment. Practice gratitude. This is advice given for positive mental health from well-meaning therapists, doctors, friends, and yoga teachers, but I don’t want to be present. The present is far too painful to be mindful of and to experience this is to pour not salt, but nail polish remover, into the open wounds which cover all of me. I want
I sit in the 1970s upholstered MadMen-esque chair directly opposite therapist lady, half my size, twice my age. I sit. She sits. And we sit. I say nothing. She says nothing. For far too long. I need you to say something, I say. I can’t sit here in silence all the time. Why not, she therapizes. Why does it bother you to sit with your own thoughts? I don’t want
Boiled meat is nothing to be proud of, but that doesn’t stop people that I love from dumping a half hock of some sort of pink – very pink – wilderbeast, a mammal of some sort, I think, into a lobster pot –– OH THE BLASPHEMY – dumping a mystery-meat shrink-wrapped slab of what looks to be my Costco-strong, not orange theory strong mom-thigh, dimpled overly exposed supersized thunder thigh
(Written a year ago Dec 2020: when my sister was dying in the middle of a pandemic. Posting it now, with her permission, because one year later, she’s not dead yet.) To save her life the first time, they drilled a hole in her heart to insert a valve or sump pump or some sort of plumbing not available at Home Depot but readily available at the cardiac thoracic care
I watched Adele on regular ol’ network TV on Sunday, didn’t know that’s still a thing, but it apparently is. Obviously I’m paying some astronomical monthly fee to have access to regular broadcast television when all I do is maybe watch the Bills if they happen to be playing on TV, which they are not, not ever, because networks don’t value skill and scores and instead run the Giants and
Why isn’t this working? Hello? Is this thing on? Hello? This thing called my body — what is happening, or rather, why is nothing happening? I am doing all the right things: working out, running, eating less, drinking lesser – and yet still, at a certain age, my age, it really doesn’t matter how hard you work, how hungry you are, the body refuses to budge. Yet still you do
So many songs written about broken hearts, I wonder if heartache didn’t occur would music even exist? There are happy songs of course, but those too break hearts that are currently cracked, because happy songs offer endless scenarios of what could be instead of what is. I have a broken heart and I’m doing all the right things, the things doctors and therapists and well-meaning friends tell you to do,
This essay was selected for Birthday episode of Read650, where writers read, if you prefer to listen. I’m about 17 min in, and highly recommend not just my story, but all the stories. ~klm • Dad’s giant, fat finger slices through the smooth, silky frosting; doesn’t matter whose birthday it is. My dad bends to table level, his thick glasses and bushy beard inches from the cake, whispering to kids
An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and (former) activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of … Read More Here...
kate[at]kathrynmayer[dot]com
xo Kate