Back After This

by Linda Holmes

“Well,” Toby said, “it’s about women…and how they make the big change.” He emphasized each word by slicing the air with both hands, like he was making a stump speech. “Like…menopause?” “No.” “Because ‘the change’ usually means menopause.”

“Look happy!” he said. “Be excited. Eliza says doing the work makes people their best selves.” “You know, every time I hear something like that, it makes me want to quit all this and go be a cheesemonger.” “Why a cheesemonger?” “For the cheese.” “Ah.”

I’d started to think about real happiness as not just precious but owned, kept, borrowed, shared, stolen, divided, and sacrificed. When I was around it, I wanted to eat it, almost, like a cupcake. Happy kids, happy dogs, happy crowds, they were irresistible.

God, maybe I should have been an influencer,” Molly said. “I’m sure I have some kind of wisdom to pass along. Do you think people would watch TikToks of me eating peanut butter off a spoon at midnight after drizzling it with chocolate syrup? It’s the best idea I’ve ever had.” “Self-care comes in many forms,” I said. “I could probably get you sponsored by a funeral home for cats.”

“My point is that stories about people coming back from the dead aren’t going away. Photography isn’t going away. And sound isn’t going away. And I don’t know what your next thing is going to look like, but you’re going to be okay.”

I watched her face, and I believed briefly that I could trace so much of her story there: how she started off making little videos for fun, and then one took off, and then another one, and she had tenacity, and she got on the phone, and she picked and chose and strategized, and she studied her website and agonized over the colors, and there was a book deal, and another book deal, and all she’d ever done was what was next. And just like me, she could feel it slipping away from her, the chance to make money and do as she chose and make something she’d be proud of. She was at the mercy of algorithms that could change at any time, and she wanted so badly to have something that would be her own, and here she was.

She insisted they had their own strange rules and regrettable patterns and as many unmet goals as anybody, they just didn’t make her feel terrible in the same way. “All jobs have some degree of bullshit,” she told me, “but it is so refreshing just to have new bullshit.”