An Unsanitized Life

That's the one I want

Apr 27, 2024

Earlier this week I received an email from Lawrence, whom I do not know. It was quite a thoughtful email—full of concern and care for my feelings. Honestly, who sends letters like that anymore? Most digital correspondence reads like brief status updates with mundane questions thrown in that no one expects an answer to:

‘I should be there in 20 minutes’

‘At the store - what do you need?’

‘How are you doing? I’m great - we’re going to Austin next weekend. I’ll reach out after that.’

So what a surprise to receive an email from someone communicating their wish to ensure that they do not make me uncomfortable in the coming weeks. Yes, right there in my inbox—Lawrence, whom I do not know, informing me of my options to navigate through the month of May with the least amount of disturbance possible:

Hey Angela,
This is Lawrence reaching out from Cosy House Collection. As Mother’s Day draws near, I understand that it can stir up a range of emotions for many of us.
While we cherish the opportunity to celebrate our loved ones, we also want to honor your preferences and respect your space. If you feel overwhelmed by the influx of emails during this time, please know that you have the option to opt out by clicking here.
Rest assured, even if you choose to opt out of these particular emails, you’ll still continue to receive our regular updates filled with Cosy inspiration, handy product tips, and exclusive offers.
Wishing you a wonderfully cozy evening.
Warm regards,
Lawrence & the team

I don’t even know where to begin with this.

But let’s start with Lawrence himself. I don’t know how Lawrence and I got connected, though I do purchase a lot of merchandise online, so it’s very likely that somebody somewhere thought he and I would like each other. (It might even have been me one night while tipsy-shopping.) Anyway, here’s Lawrence, whom I do not know, writing to me to ask if I would rather not hear from him during the short period of time of the year when the United States honors Mothers.

On paper, I’m an excellent candidate to receive this email. My mother is dead and I was unable to conceive a child of my own even though I wanted to be a mother since I was a young girl imagining my future self. Lawrence probably knows both of these facts because his “team” (who obviously also care deeply about me) are sure to have access to the myriad of personal information that is readily available online. Also, I am middle-aged which means I get really angry sometimes, and am much more likely to communicate my anger than when I was thirty. Given all this, it would seem that this pre-emptive email to avoid backlash was well targeted. But it wasn’t.

Even if I were a person who is in favor of issuing trigger warnings (which I am not), this email would have stirred me up. Because: Lawrence, ok. Here’s the thing. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you can protect me from my feelings for the next three weeks. But what then? What about the rest of the year? How will you help me during Christmas? My mother’s birthday? How are you going to swaddle me in a safety blanket so that I never have to accidentally hear a piano concerto or a Doobie Brother’s song? How are you going to soften the jagged edges of sadness that I bump into during the parts of the year not focused on Mother’s Day?

Well you can’t, Lawrence, and I don’t even want you to. I don’t want the neutered, numbed and uncrushable life. The sanitized life—where no one can potentially say or do anything that would hurt my feelings or make me question my own judgement on occasion; where there’s no possibility of loss because there’s no room for risk; where no new idea can bloom because I’ve squeezed myself into the mid-range spectrum of the unoffensive an unoriginal perspective. This is not the life that I want.

I want a life that feels like something. I want a life that burns sometimes and can curl my toes; one that is so meaty and thick that it can’t be easily picked up and thrown away. I want all the laughs, connection, and elation I can get my hands on, but I’m not afraid of the bad days and the sad moods or the murky hours when I can’t make sense of what the fuck is going on. Of course I hope to have much more of the former than the latter, but if life doesn’t pierce you in the gut on occasion, it’s not worth a damn. If you don’t let life’s unexpected lightning bolts knock you down and force you to re-open your eyes, then what will you have learned that’s invaluable? What will you know that’s worth knowing?

So, Lawrence, thank you for your concern, and for your offer to assist me in avoiding the feelings of regret, anger, sorrow and homesickness that I’ll be wading through in the next few weeks. It’s really nice of you. But I don’t want something nice. I want a bruise-able, original, unmitigated, real-life life. And nothing less.