Good morning, and welcome to Wednesday. This week’s themes are Process and Parallelism—two ideas that I am excited to explore in today’s fifth Process Diary, as well as through the two essays I will be sharing this Saturday and Sunday. If you haven’t already, consider upgrading your subscription and becoming a paid subscriber to Dog-Eared. You’ll receive access to subscriber-only threads, to two additional essays each week (my Process Diaries & Saturday Mournings), and to a smaller and more intimate community of readers. As always, I am so very grateful that you are here.
Process Diary #5: On How Everything, Eventually, Flows Out in the End
On Wednesday mornings, Japan Standard Time, I wake up at 4:50am for therapy—an appointment that, despite being remarkably too-early, has become one of my most cherished weekly rituals. The sessions begin like any other long-distance video call: with pixelated faces and delayed can-you-hear-mes; my therapist, with whom I have shared nearly five years of my life, lagging into view, smiling and waiting. We exchange professional pleasantries, and then we start—often with a few seconds of breathing, followed soon after by a recounting of my week. Of how I haven’t been sleeping, or how I haven’t been processing any number of things. And this happens, of course, before the sun has even risen—my living room a still-dark tableau of a night’s sleep interrupted. A mess of blankets, a single lamp, an array of half-drunk glasses of water.
Today’s therapy session marked the beginning of what I can only suspect will become a months-long processing. The packing up and the leaving; the touching down and the arriving: all of the predictable but nonetheless agonizing aspects of a life lived abroad. I feel unequipped, if I am being honest, unready, and a little scared—as I am choosing to do something not as a consequence of anything in particular, but as an intentional step toward an unchartered, but promising unknown. Life with family, with friends, and with love. A life lived nearby instead of far away—one that I can share with others, and not just with myself.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Dog-Eared by Rachel Joan Klein to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.