📍notes from nowhere: #7

the emotional hangover of overwhelming gratitude

Dear ones, please forgive the fact that I wrote the below all the way back in September (with the best intentions to share it with you much sooner!), meaning that my location as represented is no longer accurate. Maybe just go back in time with me a bit and remember what September was like for you, too? Many thanks. Where am I now? That’s coming in the next dispatch ☁️

Happy sunset, friends, from my backyard Bay! Mike & I are back in Florida after a years’ traverse of the country, and the water still rushes past like it’s trying to be a river, when what it really is, is a Russian nesting doll of water. What I mean: down just a few paces from us, we can see Little Bayou, a carve-out which nests inside Tampa Bay (below). Tampa Bay nests inside the Gulf of Mexico, which, of course, nests inside the Atlantic Ocean. Russian nesting doll! I hope wherever you find yourself today is offering you some kind of mischievous perspective.

Are you trying to zoom in to see what I was reading? Allow me. 

The emotional hangover of overwhelming gratitude

“Of all the pressures laid upon us by the wedding industry, the longest-lasting is the pressure to report only positive feelings about your big day.” 

Mike offered me this wisdom when I told him about the premise of this essay, and it so well captures my perspective that I’m re-stating it here. He’s right, and as a person who got married twice this summer, I’m here to report that there are positive feelings, yes. But there are also sad and twisty ones—and one in particular that I’m calling the emotional hangover of overwhelming gratitude. Of all the wedding-related feelings I could explore, I’m most interested in this one; I hope it speaks to you, too. Here goes.

In general, the experience of having a wedding perplexed me. On one hand, I felt very jazzed to be publicly celebrating something I celebrate in my own head all the time: finding a dynamite life partner in Mike. On the other hand, I felt frustrated by the wedding industrial complex, and confused by the role I was playing (wanted to be playing? should be playing?) in it by having a wedding. 

Amidst this mélange of feelings leading up to the thing, I also wondered about how I’d feel after. Relieved? Blissed out? Convinced, for good, that it was all worth it? 

Mike and I hatched an unusual plan to celebrate our decision to get married: we’d split the celebration into two. Part one: a small gathering, for family only, in Hawaii, in the backyard of the house where my dad grew up. Part two: a slightly larger gathering, for friends only, in the Catskills, representing where we met and our love of New York State. 

We planned it this way before we knew about COVID, and that we’d have to postpone by a year—and even then it felt like a way to keep things manageable (a backyard family hang? Low-stakes! A friends-only party? Also low-stakes!). The unique structure of our plan helped me feel like I was operating outside the confines of traditional wedding culture, while also giving myself and the people I love the joyful opportunity to celebrate. What I didn’t realize is that we’d essentially need to organize every wedding detail twice. It was … quite hard. WHOOPS! 

But, it also meant double the benefits: double getting to wear a really cool dress, double getting to stand across from Mike and share the ceremony we wrote together with the people we love, double getting to bust into any dance circle to discover you know every person dancing. And it also meant experiencing the “after” twice.

Have you ever felt a gratitude so big you were scared to look at it? That, if you looked at it too closely, it would reveal something about yourself that you couldn’t unsee? That’s how I felt after our weddings. 

Immediately afterwards, I felt completely overwhelmed by the ways people showed up. My brother spray-painting my favorite Hawaiian drug-store flip flops white, so I could wear them with my wedding dress. My sister-in-law scrubbing the literal floors to calm down my mom during her house-cleaning frenzy. My cousins getting enough surfboards and a shitty truck so that six of us could pile in together for a sunrise surf the day before. My parents sitting with me for hours, making and checking off endless to-do lists. It felt like a big community project, where Mike and I were the fortuitous beneficiaries.

When everything was over, I had nothing left to do but sit with this immense gratitude. It was like someone had built a house for me; I felt so grateful, it hurt. I think this scared me because staring your gratitude in the face is to acknowledge how much you need the thing you’re grateful for; how badly you want it. And the sense of community I felt, of belonging, during our weddings—it turns out, like any human person, I really fucking want that.

I spent so much time before the weddings being mad at the traditions for being anti-feminist, or resentful at the industry for making me want everything to be so extra, or annoyed at the planning details that required parts of my brain I wasn’t used to flexing. But what I wasn’t seeing is that a wedding—regardless of whether you make it traditional or bizarre, expensive or DIY, extra or “low-stakes”(lol, not a thing)—is really just an excuse to be in community with the people who love you. And that, last time I checked, is the whole point of being a human. 

Have you experienced this type of overwhelming gratitude? This year is certainly an interesting case-study: so much turmoil offers daily reminders to feel grateful for what we do have (a job, a safe place to shelter from a global pandemic, a perfect meme). It also presents opportunities to look that feeling of gratitude in the eye and see, for a second, what it would be like not to have that thing. 

As a way to cultivate their gratitude, stoics used to practice a technique called negative visualization: as you go about your day, imagine, for a fleeting second, what would your life be like without the thing you’re about to do?

Like the late comedian Norm MacDonald said: “It’s the greatest gig in the world, being alive. You get to eat at Denny’s, wear a hat, whatever you wanna do.” I’m totally with you, Norm. The gratitude is overwhelming.

Joy blaaaast (📷 edition)

Well, nothing to do next but offer up a bunch of photos from the wedding days, if you’re the sort that likes to dive into those (I always do, even if I barely knew the person. What is up with that?! IDK but I do know that looking at wedding pictures is fun). Since I shared a glimpse of Hawaii in my last letter, here’s a flavor of New York—and here’s a bunch from Hawaii and New York if you want the deep-dive.

My best friend Zoey read an excerpt I’d written about Mike in an old journal, which was mortifying and hilarious.

If you get this letter, you helped me feel all the juicy feelings I’ve just put on display—so thank you for celebrating with us, for helping me sort through it all, for showing up. 

Cooks, reads, listens (🎧 edition)

• This 4-minute audio story, “They’re Made Out of Meat”, written by sci-fi writer Terry Bisson, was originally published in 1991, but is so hilariously relevant today

• This very good podcast episode by The Argument on whether being a football fan is unethical (hope you’re enjoying football szn!)

• The best rendition of the Jurassic Park theme song I’ve ever heard (don’t skip this)

A poem-share

This letter’s poem comes from Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman (I know it’s the second Walt I’ve included in this letter; the heart wants what it wants!!!). It’s one of a handful of favorite poems we included in our ceremony. Whether you read it with the context of a wedding in mind or not, I love the way it frames the journey, and what it means to ask someone to be on the journey with you.

Listen, I will be honest with you …

I do not offer the old smooth prizes

But offer rough new prizes

These are the days that must happen to you:

You shall not heap up what is called riches,

You shall scatter with lavish hand

all that you earn or achieve.

However sweet the laid stores, 

However convenient the dwelling,

you shall not remain there.

However sheltered the port,

However calm the waters,

you shall not anchor there.

However welcome the hospitality that welcomes you, 

you are permitted to receive it but a little while.

Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road

Healthy, free, the world before you

The long brown path before you,

Leading wherever you choose.

Say only to one another:

Camerado, I give you my hand!

I give you my love more precious than money;

I give you myself before preaching and law:

Will you give me yourself?

Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Channeling Norm by wearing a hat and eating at Denny’s (well, eating an ice cream sandwich—but, same idea).

If anything’s been causing you an emotional hangover of overwhelming gratitude lately (or any twisty feelings, frankly, or, yes, any totally pure and good feelings), I’d love to hear about it. I cherish you and your feelings!

Becca

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