An Essay For Every Feeling

There’s a scene inĀ Mad Max: Fury RoadĀ when the escaping women watch satellites in the night sky from post-apocalyptic Earth and say, roughly, “Every one of those used to be a show. There was a show for every person.”

I don’t watch a lot of prestige TV but I do read a lot of personal essays on the internet, and there is an essay for every feeling. This is one I found recently and it is beautiful and painful and how we are feeling at the moment. Here If You Need Me: Learning to Be Present While Fighting for Your Father, by Beth Kephart, on Catapult.

When fighting on behalf of someone you love, the fight must end, the love must be the art of being present. I am slow to learn, but I am trying. Pastrami lunches. Riverbank afternoons. Conversations in the shade of village gardens…I feel myself wanting more for him, more for us, more (the wanting hurts) for me.