Yeah, I know, it’s a weird title, but I couldn’t think of what else to call it. Letter to… Chernobyl Resident X? Letter to Nuclear Plant Employee? It all fits but it’s all Weird.

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Dear Radiation Flowers,

This isn’t an apology letter, so don’t expect to find one in here. I’m trying out this funny newfangled thing where I don’t apologize for my meltdowns. That’s an apt term, isn’t it? Like I’m a nuclear plant that usually runs just fine, handling my dangerous chemicals and bottling my radiation as best I can, but there’s that ever-present threat, that just one tick up the dial in the wrong way and I’ll explode, and I’ll take everyone out with me. I guess an instance like that might call for an issuance of a public apology, but— I don’t want to. Like yeah, maybe we (read: me and my brain, all these outdated coping mechanisms) could have taken better precautions to prevent this, and yeah, we should definitely switch over to renewable energy and not seal our own toxic coffin in the face of climate change, but. When a thing explodes, it explodes. There’s no reversing it. And I’ve been holding this all up inside me for so long, when, damn it, I don’t think I should have to do that. It’s just up for debate whether the wreckage will turn into a flowery peace park or a Chernobyl. Me and all my abandoned cities. 

I left you in one of them, didn’t I? Not intentionally. It wasn’t a packing of my bags and a closing of a door, never to see you again— I called you, like, a week later. Yes, we haven’t seen each other in person since, but there’s grad school and a new job and a pandemic to blame for that one. Though I’m not sure why we haven’t FaceTimed or Skyped or something, especially in the era of le Zoom. 

We talked a bit last time about love languages— how we had been trying to say the same thing to each other, all the way back then, but maybe we were just speaking with different accents. Mine, some thick British one I picked up from my thousandth Pride and Prejudice rewatch. Yours, that awful Irish monstrosity you used to embarrass me with on the London streets. We were both wanting to hold each other’s hands (your funny fingers, my ever-cold ones), but we were both waiting for the other to reach out first, and then I got spooked and reached inward, so I could pretend I couldn’t hold back, even if you tried, because my hands were full of this oozing mess in my chest where my heart should be. That’s why I couldn’t give it to you, Past Me insists, from Current Me’s mouth, because I had to learn how to hold the heart soup inside of me. I’m still learning. But part of that learning is discovering I have more than just these two hands, and that heart soup could be heart batter and I could make heart cupcakes instead of just one heart cake. 

That was weird. Sorry. Wait, shit, this isn’t an apology letter. Uh. I’m not sorry for my heart cupcakes! Ha!

Also on that call, I told you a thing I’m not sure you totally understood, or took as a good thing, when I swear it is: I am glad we went through what we went through when we did, because it means we can be what we are now. We got the worst of it out of the way. I know my footing with you now— or rather, I know how to hold your hand, even though I won’t actually be able to for a while, with social distancing and all. 

And I think you know how to hold mine. I scared you in my meltdown, I know, because Chernobyl is a scary thing— you’re not sure what kind of mutant creature is gonna come crawling out of the smoldering remains. But instead it was just me. And I’m no longer afraid to show you that. Maybe that means my present state is already the mutant creature, but hey. You know how much I love the X-Men. 

You teach me that it’s okay to lose my control sometimes. That it’s okay to not know what’s going to happen, and it’s okay to be totally terrified of what is happening, because I’m not alone. Not just “not alone” in the feeling, but also not physically alone. You’re right there. We got our touch-and-go out of the way, and now you’re a sure thing. Even if I chase off everyone else with my self-decimation, you’re gonna stick around to coax me out of the ashes, because you get it. You speak the same language as me. You know all the words. 

So— I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry I’m bad at answering texts, I’m not sorry it sometimes takes me a blog post to find the best way to tell you the things I can’t fit into a phone call, maybe because I want them to be more permanent. You know how terrible my memory is, but with the letters I write you, I can go back to something I didn’t think I would be able to go back to. I can immortalize you, and me, and you and me, because you make me feel like I can survive these things, and isn’t that the definition of immortal? Surviving? And then, after— to be survived by? It’s all the same words, in the end. 

I want to make this permanent. Something that withstands each impact. Because there probably will be another one, knowing me, even after all the work I am putting into rebuilding. But I’m not going to beg forgiveness. I’m trying not to fall back into regretting what I am. A nuclear power plant cannot change its stripes, or whatever. Or maybe it cannot change its past. No one can. We can’t. So all we can do now is tend the flowers that grow stronger in the radiation glow. 

All my heart, always.

xx,

Meg