Marquette University Intimations Project

Hayley Weeder

“They were tulips. I wanted them to be peonies. In my story, they are, they will be, they were and will forever be peonies…” – Zadie Smith, Intimations

January 27^th, 2021. 

I wrote the date in my notes. Marking it for future thought. Pinpointing the date of still unsettling feelings.

I don’t claim to be a writer, I’d laugh at the suggestion really. But the last year has encouraged me to do just that, to write. To remind myself of the moments in which my emotions evade explanation. What I write is never intended to be read, those emotions never meant to be felt by anyone but myself.

January 27^th, 2021 I wrote this: 

I took a nap today 

I woke up with the window open 

Pushing a cold breeze between the drawn curtains 

I heard voices outside as I awoke

I thought I heard 

Children playing in early spring 

Sunshine melting the last of winter’s frost

Afterschool cartoons left for empty couches 

As hopscotch and house and shouts of childhood fill the air 

But I didn’t fall asleep after a long day of coloring and counting 

I didn’t wake up to neighbors calling for me to play 

I didn’t fall asleep on a lazy afternoon 

I didn’t wake up without a care in the world 

I fell asleep because I’ve been getting migraines lately

I woke to the clamor of a protest outside my building 

I couldn’t care anymore after staring at a computer all day, 

talking to classmates through a screen,

counting which of my friends I could see

I woke up to a life that is so easy to hate. 

…

As my head cleared, I wrote. I sat in my twin bed, numb to the reality of my experiences. At 20 years old, I felt a weight unlike anything I’d known – an eerie realization of my age, my experiences, my reality. This moment still flutters into my mind. –No, flutters isn’t right. It creeps. It writhes. It steals my peace. So, I refuse to let it any longer. I refuse to take that memory as an unfortunate one. I am changing it, right now, into the memory I want. 

Tulips become peonies. 

I want to know what happened. When did driveway games become hate-fueled protests? 

When did laughter become anger? When did friends become hard to make and harder to see? When did this, the reality of the last year, become growing up? 

Even as I write this, my deliberate attempt to change my own memory, I feel a pit in my stomach. An anger, a hunger, a hate for what I feel. But this is the feeling I identified that day, January 27^th, 2021. And this is the feeling I no longer want. 

I fell in love this year. 

I spent a week drinking wine with my great-grandmother. 

I found inspiration in what I study. 

I became a person I like more than I ever have. 

Why are these forgotten? Why are these overlooked? My coming of age story has been shadowed by the grief, the loss, the hatred, the unknown of the last year. And I’m upset. Will all of the good things be hidden? I don’t want my growth and happiness to be diminished. The image of children playing becomes this “good.” It is in those moments of joy that we forget the world around us. I think it is vital to hold these moments close. They are what makes reality seem dulled for a moment, like the haze after an afternoon nap. When the world seems to be falling apart, who is to say reality cannot be found in that haze? It does not have to be dismissed as idealistic romanticism. 

I no longer accept this reality. I accept my own. My reality is so much more than what the last year has given me. Though the unbelievable trials of the year should not be forgotten, I don’t want them to be everything. 

I want my joys, my wins, my peonies to be what I remember.