To Be Well in Our Wounds
- Miranda Wylie
- 11 hours ago
- 2 min read
“If I call, I’ll sob,” the text read. She preferred to text, and I was asking to call because walking my dog who yanks me around and texting produces messages that look like a toddler got hold of my phone, and voice to text is its own tangle of typos. I knew what she meant, though, and respected it. There are some people with whom we cannot keep up walls or wear masks; we hear their voice and our body feels safe to let go. To hear my voice would invoke tears, and she just couldn’t go there, not then.
Once this beloved and I found ourselves at a bar after the show I produced and hosted. It was an extraordinary show, the kind where the storytellers cracked themselves open on stage and the audience held them in rapt attention. I had been in what I refer to as femme drag: hair coifed, face painted, heels clicking, skirt short and tight. I am forever and always a femme, but I only pulled out this full lewk that requires a team (hair, nails) once a month for this show. As the host and producer of this show, I held the container of the space. I shepherded people through the night, kept the energy moving, and set the tone for vulnerability to be shared among the storytellers and audience. It’s a particular kind of performance, part stage presence, part emotional labor, part ritual keeper.
The comedowns are hard after a night like that. After communing in the ritual of storytelling and confessions, after being “on” for hours, I need to decompress. To shed the drag of it all.
“I don’t want to go home,” I said, staring into my drink that I’d barely had, the tears percolating.
“I can’t go home,” I stated more emphatically.
She looked at me with concern.
And then I said the thing that made me sob: “He won’t be there.”
Read or listen to the rest of the story on Substack.
Audio recording by me.
How to be well in our wounds.
