Dear Reader,
I have loved sharing and connecting with you through this epistolary project. It gave me a much-needed creative outlet during a very weird time in my life, and it helped me explore my queer identity and engage with some really challenging topics in a disarmingly whimsical sort of format. I hope you have gotten a bit of a kick out of it as well.
Last weekend, M. and I spent the day with a friend meandering through the Art Institute of Chicago. At one point we were chatting about a question that must confront all artists: when is the work done? When do I call this finished? How do I know? Or is “done” always just a matter of when I decide to put down the brush?
I don’t know how other creative types answer this question for themselves, but it turns out that for me, sometimes “done” is a matter of my brain moving on to other topics. I have loved writing this newsletter, but I think I’ve crossed that threshold. I couldn’t have told you what exactly I had set out to say, yet in the shape of this collection, I think somehow I said it.
Life has lows and highs. Over the past two years, I managed to ride out a very low time in my own life, in part by feeding my brain a steady supplement of fiction that captured different aspects of radical optimism, straight-up unabashed weirdness, and the joyful exploration of queer happy endings. And in the meantime I made some changes, and the shape of my life started to change accordingly. I changed my career path. I moved to a new place. I started building connections in my new place and found new opportunities to explore.
As a romance reader, and as a writer, I feel a temptation to tie this off by saying, “Reader, I’m happy.” What could be more satisfying than a real-life happy ending? And I am happy. And, yes, ok, here I am wrapping up this newsletter, which I guess makes this my delivery of the happy ending.
Only let me write you a little epilogue. This is a fiction, since I can’t predict the future. But in some ways, all personal essay is a little bit of a fiction. There are the things you choose to leave out, or the details you elide for the sake of story, or just sheer human boneheadedness. We are all unreliable narrators.
The epilogue is this: More life stuff happens. A story doesn’t end with the ending, after all. I take a road trip back home to see some old friends, attend a family memorial service, wear a blue dress in the sunshine. When I get home, I kiss my partner hello and I missed you, and then I roll up my sleeves and get back to work. I’ve been finding a balance, taking gigs and juggling new responsibilities, but now I open a notebook. There’s a new story that followed me home, whispering in my ear, and this time I’m ready to hear it.
Thank you for sharing this journey with me.
Love,
Beas
P.S. If you’d like to follow me for future writing projects, I’ll be picking up the thread over at So Many Moving Parts.
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