Lovesick/Homesick/Heartsick
Letters to the Ether, S2E4
Dear whomever,
I had an interview today.
I’ve had quite a few interviews over the last week, finding a job feeling like a job itself—even when what I’m looking for is just a temp one, just something to pay my rent over the next few months while I decide what I want. It sounds as though I have many options to pick through, but they are really just two, and one is dependent on the waitlist I sit on for my dream school, which means it’s dependent on how many people turn down my dream school—my dream school, which is probably everyone’s dream school. So really, I’m simply at the mercy of God or the universe or luck or whatever is looking over me, which means I am mostly helpless, and unbearably lonely within that feeling.
I’ve had a bad month, can you tell? If you’ve been following my emails, my reader, you know. I try to always have a positive play about things, but unfortunately, my skill with words is making them depressing and sensual. I love making blood sexy.
Anyway, as bad as my anticipation anxiety is, I think I do well on interviews. Like I do well on planes—it’s the leading up to things that terrifies me, since my brain must assume every possible horrible scenario. As a kid, I thought life was so unpredictable that if I predicted the bad things, they wouldn’t happen, because… all the bad things always surprised me. So, now, I have a brain that is trained to list every possible way I might die in whatever the next action I make is. The walk towards the gate, the moment I turn on my car, right before falling asleep, I must go over the unbearable list of What ifs. It’s the What ifs that always kill me.
I walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator, trying to get used to the sound of my heels against the floor. I like wearing heels, just don’t feel comfortable with the attraction they garner—the click clack that should only come from a powerful person. I am small and pathetically humble; I worry sometimes that I wear the shame on my face. But I am trying to Decide things these days. Decide to wake up in the morning. Decide to keep walking. Decide to smile. Decide to change my perspective on the pain in my chest—maybe it can be excitement. Butterflies, not anxiety. I am free, in many ways. Free to do so much. I’m trying to frame it that way, because what else is there to do? Keep wallowing in my misery? Eventually, it gets tiring.
This was the second of the face-to-face interviews I’d be having, others happening on Zoom or Teams. As soon as I sat in the office’s makeshift waiting room, I knew I’d made a mistake—that I should have listened to my heart when it told me to cancel earlier today. Their budget was obvious. They probably wouldn’t even pay me enough to cover rent. But practice is practice, and hey, let’s face it, money is money.
They make me fill out a form in Arabic. I know Arabic, but so many words fall together, so many of the sounds are so similar, and I stare at the page with the panic that seeps through the beta blocker I’d taken a few hours earlier. The secretary asks if I need help, but I don’t want to admit that I don’t understand the language when it’s in this form. Swallowing my pride, deciding it doesn’t matter, I force myself to ask if one word means Degree or Institution.
My interviewer comes in just a few minutes before the 1:30 appointment. I was early. He walks straight into his office, and some commotion commences as the girl prepares the papers, presumably my two-page resume and the form I’d just filled, which asked questions like what my last pay was and why I left my last job. When I’m allowed to come in, I’m met with a familiar sight. An Arab man, an Apple watch shining on his wrist, and iPhone set in the middle of his desk. Hands in that triangle the Tik Toks tell you to make, to infer power.
He asks me many questions, but doesn’t look at my resume, only the form I’d filled out, which just listed things I didn’t think sold me well. But he liked me, I could tell, but knowing the place’s preference with Arabic, even though he said I was free to speak English, I kept switching between the two languages to get my point across—like when I speak to my uncles, which made me feel childlike, which I felt is what he enjoyed most about me. The obvious infantilization should have bothered me, but I was there, and for some reason, I wanted to play. He told me I was wrong for the job—which I didn’t agree with—and said he’d want me for something else. PR, he suggested, since you like writing so much. But we’re still working on our budgets.
And then he asked me about my dreams.
The informality of the interview struck me. I often lead with my love for Literature, and he had asked why I didn’t work within my degree. I had to make the common reminder I do about the misconception: I studied Literature, not Language (well I studied both, but when people hear English Literature here they assume I was just learning Grammar and Speaking), and Literature is everything around us. It is history. It is psychology. It is propaganda. It is life. He liked the fire I had when I spoke about this, leaning closer, elbows against his too-big-of a desk. His phone kept going off, along with it his Apple Watch, which he kept silencing with a click, rather than putting it on Do Not Disturb. I felt an odd sensation. Like we were flirting, maybe, that he was trying to impress me, perhaps, but that is not a rare feeling when sitting across from any man. He could be anyone else, and there would still be a sort of repressed attraction, because it is the way of things. Sometimes, it helps you. Especially when he asked about my dreams, which isn’t a common interview question I get. He said, “When you went into Literature, what did you dream of being?”
“A writer,” I said, my instinct taking over. “A storyteller.” Which, regardless of my instinct, was still right for the job, even if he didn’t understand it—and, well, he didn’t.
“Then why would you want to do this? Wouldn’t you do better doing something you love?”
“Well, that’s why I applied.”
“I don’t see how your experience translates to doing this. You didn’t study marketing. You studied… well, writing.”
I didn’t want to go over the misinterpretation of what a Literature degree entailed, because I didn’t want the job, and I was already tired of trying to prove myself that way. Instead: “Okay. A story,” I countered, “is the only thing that sells your product.” I pointed at his bestseller, which sat at his desk. “Maybe the ingredients push it as well, but it’s mainly the story that gets people’s hands reaching for it. Even the stores.” And the job was just that, working with agencies and marketers and everyone, convincing them they should sell what he had.
This, he liked, but we were both unconvinced by each other from the moment we began. The conversation went on, anyway, for the hell of it. Storytelling, Palestine, ingredients, marketing. Once he started explaining the PR job more, which, sure, I’d do well, he wrote down on the top of the page the money he was going to offer me, and I said, as kindly as I could, that it wouldn’t even cover my rent, and felt a sort of power that I expected that number when I first walked into his little office.
“You live alone?” There goes the infantilization. Now, I’m a woman in his eyes.
“Yes.”
He inferred on his own that my family lived in the US, and I didn’t correct it. He asked why I wasn’t with them, which is a question I get often. I said what I always say: This is home. I didn’t like America. He smiled, and agreed with me. He didn’t like America, either.
“Rare reaction,” I responded, to his smirk. “People don’t usually like that I chose this place over the American dream.”
“Why did you?”
“هون، الناس لبعض”1
He nodded, in agreement, a glint in his eyes that almost made me like him. I left shortly after, thanking him for a genuinely nice conversation. I like the ones that forget corporate, and go human, even if the subtext is that he thought about fucking me, however briefly.
هون، الناس لبعض
I thought about that phrase on my way home, about why I basically ran back here with nothing but a carry-on and 1,000 dollars of debt. The sentiment is lost on me lately, since the closeness of the people means the lack of them hurts more. At dinner with my extended family, I feel small amidst their sounds—the crying babies, the siblings fighting, the awkward newly-weds smiling at each other. I feel a burst of green, disgusting jealousy: at the father feeding his one-year-old some yogurt, then giving his wife a taste, and they share a smile, the little family. At my cousin asking her new fiancé what he wants, already learned her duties as a wife, copying the way my aunts always serve their husbands their food. At the two siblings whispering some secret, then glancing at their dad with sinister smiles.
It’s so much noise, I think I’ll faint, and I sometimes wish I would. Though they don’t say it to my face, my mothers’ side believe I came home for a lover. When I’m amongst them, it bothers me, because it’s so far from the truth, and it dirties my image, because the culture. I wish I had one, though, it would be better, perhaps make me stronger, a lover hidden somewhere in my room. Hell, I wish I had one, unhidden, by my side, to ask if he wanted an extra plate, to sit beside me on the table. Someone to play House with, to pretend-adult with, to plan a life with, to be corporate-Arab around our families, sit beside him and smile at his jokes, let him counter my annoying uncles’ repeated joke about Islam allowing three wives; he’d say that one was enough for him, and glance at me, and my aunts would grin and tell him Good job, that’s the right answer.
I know someone will stop for me on the street if my car has a flat, but the other day, despite all my efforts to have someone take care of me, I drove myself to the ER in the midst of what I thought were my final moments. And when I came to, I was alone. I’ve become jaded by the dogma I’ve held onto since I burned down my families American Dream—since I disappointed them so—I came back for the people, but a strangers kindness can only do so much, over years and years. And, really, in a country that runs on Bedouin traditions, you are nothing without a family. And me, I am very much that nothing. A confusing contradiction that they invite to their dinner parties, mostly out of pity.
Who knows, if she never showed up, what could've been
There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen
She had a marvelous time ruining everything
—The Last Great American Dynasty, Taylor Swift
This piece may be affected by my last post, which was so sensual. I’m feeling sensual lately, admittedly. And, reader, the interview itself wasn’t inappropriate, it was just so interesting to me. I felt seen, somehow, even if it was also kind of dirty. He did not see me the way my old supervisor saw me, telling me that I should make the powerpoint because I knew about colors, distracting me with “creative” useless tasks because she didn’t know what to do with me, and always using that word—that ugly C word—as more of an insult. She kept telling me I was a creative the way people have always told me I was sensitive—with a hint of disappointment, and definite infantilization. No, instead, he saw me for almost what I was: a girl that wanted to write. That had a story. Some kind of fire.
I have a fire, I know this, but it’s hard to translate such a fire to a workspace. It’s such a rare fire, too, almost so useless it’s more expensive to keep it going than it is to just clean my hands of it. Even my aunt shook her head in disappointment when I told her I had applied to an MFA in Creative Writing, but got waitlisted, so fingers crossed. She liked the word Masters. Probably hoped for Business. Lost me at Writing. “So you’re really holding onto the Literature thing. What good will that degree do for you, Amal? What do you think you’ll be, a writer?” There was the usual scoff, and I couldn’t hold my chin up either, because I just lost a good job at a famous company that was the only thing keeping me in good standing with them.
What do you think you’ll be, a writer? It’s such a long shot, perhaps they’re right. Perhaps my search for something that both satiates me and pays me is a dream that will never prove true. Hell, I just submitted a test for a position I was very excited about—a test I had so thoroughly enjoyed doing, writing, and researching… something I knew I could do well—and they just re-advertised the position on LinkedIn after a week of silence. Really, I’m starting to lose hope. And I’m only three days into unemployment.
My interviewer today had said: “We want people like you. You have something—something I can’t quite name—but I’m just not sure exactly where it fits.”
Me neither, I’d wanted to say. I can’t figure out where I fit. It’s been my lifelong conundrum. America is so individual, and Jordan, so collective, and my whole life I’ve been stuck between the two extremes, seesawing between them like a hopeless toddler. American, Jordanian, Palestinian. Engaged, Single, Alone, In love, Engaged, Alone. Creative, almost-smart, emotional and sensitive—hard to understand, overbearing, anxious.
It can be everything, I know. I can be all of those things, I know. But my God, I am so tired of being everything—of feeling everything. The only place I feel free is right here, in-between these words, and, well… sometimes, I feel free with Him—a Him that lurks in-between my writing like a ghost, His presence so embarrassingly clear in my work that you probably know Him. A Him that sometimes sneaks into my bed and loves me briefly before leaving me again. Always leaving, running like water, reminding me of my father2, a grief compounded into so many moments, a loss I feel too often, a pain that keeps coming and coming and coming. Almost religion, this Him, this love, that I can’t seem to shake. Like a pill that takes you to God, and then you find him again in a church, and you convert. But I’ve never found that church. I don’t think I will. I’m addicted to the fucking pills.
I found a martyr
He told me that I'd never
With his educated eyes
And his head between my thighs
I found a savior
I don't think he remembers
'Cause he's off to pay his crimes
And he's got no time for mine
—Coming Down, Halsey
The ricochet of Him, that ghost, drives me crazy, and I have enough things to be crazy about, like my heart, which has grown so tired these days: she beats so fast, she’s so out of breath, she’s begging me, begging me, to leave this seesaw, and just fucking lay on the grass. There is too much Everything. Must we add one more?
I have decided that this year I must make a home of myself. It’s the only answer to all these questions, all my behaviors, all my fears. I have to be comfortable in my body, and accept that everything around me will disappear like mist. Perhaps I’ve told you—I bet I have, surely—though it is a difficult matter. I crave a home I do not know, you see, and always think the words I want to go home, though through the years I have not been able to pinpoint that home. Sometimes, I wake up thinking briefly that I’m still in an apartment that sat on a hill behind a gym. Othertimes, I wake thinking I’m still living with my mother, across the olive trees, waiting for her to get home from work. Often, I think that the cat laying by my feet is my childhood one—Cas, who lives in Florida with my mother, only to realize that it’s another, Riku, who I love just as dearly, but the difference is strange, I don’t know where I want to be, what I’m so sick for. I don’t know. The image keeps changing, minute by minute.
The final goal is to just make me a home. I’ve made some steps. I’m far from it, though, because my heart is so weak and so loving and so, desperately, inconceivably craving what I can only assume is a feeling from some past life that followed me into this one. Some kind of karma. I try to tell myself the job search will help me pinpoint what I want to do, and build my confidence, teach me how to interview, but really, with each one, I believe that perhaps I’m good only for teaching Literature, which is all I’m good at, and to have men look down at me like I’m something they’d like to devour. Like an intriguing child, who is fun when she dances, but annoying when she starts crying.
I hate teaching the kids… when I did it, it was hard to get them to look up from their Apple Watches, or make them understand why it was important to learn to spell the word, instead of rely on autocorrect. My favorite, most exhausting, and most rowdy one would tell me, often, “Miss Amal, it’s fine if I make a mistake, my computer will correct it.”
Now, with ChatGPT, I’m not sure I can manage in-between the kids. And I don’t want to. I just want to do this. And this doesn’t pay the bills, nor does it impress the CEO’s behind their desks, phones ringing over and over again.
I’m not sure any of this makes sense, but I have to take my Beta Blocker now, I feel my heart acting up again.
Living just comes with a bit of heartache
Heartache comes with a bit of young faith
Faith stays young till your heart get broken
Hope grows up to become someday
I never hurt no one and no one will ever hurt me
I believe I believe I believe I believe
Faith plays dumb till the doubts all leave
I believe I believe I believe I believe
—Painkillers, Rainbow Kitten Surprise
With love, despite it all,
Amal
“Here, the people are for each other.” I always say this to explain why I moved back. In Jordan, if your car breaks down—in the States, well, you’ll need to make some phone calls, call a tow truck. Rarely, in my experience, would someone stop to help you.
An image borrowed from Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan”. Couldn’t resist.
Making yourself the home you’ve been seeking—I can only imagine how beautiful your inner world already is, even if you’re still figuring out what or how it can be for you. Thank you for leaning into your craft for comfort, and sharing it with us all.
Also, if you do consider teaching again, something like outschool might be more fulfilling!
You are indeed a masterful storyteller, just proving your point.