Page 46 of Thanking Her Brother's Best Friends

14

SELENE

Every morning after waking up, I established a small ritual of sorts. I wouldn't necessarily call it productive, because it involved spending about thirty minutes on Instagram.

In these thirty minutes, I would scroll through filtered pictures of people living perfectly happy lives and wonder how much of it had been filtered for an audience.

I was no stranger to this—a lot of my online persona had been made-up and polished to suit the world as well. News flash—Selene Baker wasn't always cheerful.

She didn't like cracking relatable jokesall the time.But I portrayed a practiced image that came with years of learning and unlearning. I knew that the more vulnerabilities I showed, the deeper the cuts would be.

Today, I came across a really sweet video of a mother making a lunchbox for her school-going kid. The comments section was smack-dab full of so much hate, it stirred a world of disquiet inside me.

So much salt? Are you trying to kill your child?

Oh my goodness, look at the oil!

Kids shouldn't have bread.

Don't give them meat, teach them to go vegan right now!

Minutes later, I landed upon another video of a girl showcasing her transformation. She'd lost a lot of weight over a year, and she mentioned how empowered it made her feel.

Now, I didn't equate the scales with happiness because I had been on both ends of the spectrum. After Dave made me feel like a pig on my best days, I went through a long period of binge eating and guilting myself into purging.

Those were the darkest seven years of my life. To the point that when I learned I was pregnant with Ollie, I thought God was telling me to stop, that I had hurt myself enough, and that my body deserved some love.

But for people who did feel that losing weight was a form of empowerment—I understood that too, and I felt happy she’d found her mojo.

Again, the comment section had torn the girl apart from limb to limb, including some people who had the ridiculous notion that she was "consciously running a hate propaganda that was #fatphobic."

I mean...

I sighed and set the phone down. Sometimes, in the deep of the early morning, I felt a gnawing urge to create. This could be anything, from writing to drawing to listening to music to forming new recipes.

Ben liked to say that I was born with the urge to make new things out of nothing. This also included problems, by the way.

Today, as I sat with my pen, staring down at an empty piece of paper, I felt on the edge of my control. And then, I began writing.

Creation. It was a slow, sweet tolerance, wearing on my soul and the solitary nature of our endless, numbered days. When we make, we must dissociate from the world that is around us—even if they are in our thoughts.

The act of creation was, by necessary means, often lonely. It could be sleepless nights, pen stuck on top of the ear, cup of coffee in hand, weary eyes.

It could be dawn after sleepless nights, hanging low on your shoulders and heart, telling you that it was too much, that you were too tired, but you'd have to push, you'd have to go on.

Because without it, without the act of making—which is what women were essentially born to do—where would we be?

Every woman I had ever known was a creator in some way or the other, and this had nothing to do with motherhood, per se. It was in our blood and bones, in the very air that defined the nature of our beings.

Quiet hours were filled with desperate inspiration, glorious rage, frenetic joy, and anguished conversations with people who felt the same urges that I did.

And on days like this, I wished my words could flow and connect me to you—to every person who would understand and feel and celebrate the little things that made us so human.

After I finished writing, it was as if a weight had lifted from my shoulders. I went through the motions of the morning.

Once Oliver was in school, I prepared to visit the set. I had a feeling today would be a good day. Plus, the boys were coming over in the evening, and that made me feel all tingly and excited. Nervous, but in a good way.

I drove my car to the set of Kitchen Goddess. The moment I stepped out of the car, the production crew swarmed around me, buzzing with energy.

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