Does This Window Open? With Chloé Williams

#006

Jerry Silvester

Sep 27, 2023

#006

You can call me:

Chloé

How I occupy myself:

By making typos and, on occasion, writing paragraphs. I am motivated by the very ordinary beauty of the world. I like to notice it and then write it down.

What keeps you up at night?

My dreams of love.

The first 3 things I usually do when I wake up:

Check my phone (unfortunately), wash my face, drink tea with my sister.

If you met me you’d never guess:

How reserved I am. I think by nature my sharing my life through writing makes me appear more outgoing. I think I do tend to have moments where I feel confident and can be entertaining and outgoing, I’m not sure what circumstances bring it out in me. Mostly though I am in my own head, very to myself. I prefer my alone time and being alone. I even prefer sleeping alone.

Five words that best describe my personality are:

Soft, stubborn, empathetic, optimistic, witty.

I find it hard to:

Feel big or “bad” emotions without intellectualizing them first. I’m analytical. I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt so I never get angry, I skip to understanding very seamlessly before it occurs to me (before my therapist tells me) I haven’t felt anything.

I find it easy to:

Be kind.

My favourite book/bedtime story as a child was:

The lorax, my dad read it to my sister and I all the time.

I last cried because:

I was reading My Brilliant Friend. A story in which every woman is punished for her girlhood in the precise way you always are.

My favourite number is:

What has been one of the hardest things for you to get through?

My period. I feel a great burden with it, as I’ve always had really terrible pain leading up to and during my period. On top of that, when I was a girl, I wanted to stay a girl. I didn’t want boobs or anything. When I watch movies where little girls want to buy bras I feel like I had a totally different experience growing up in which puberty was an interior disconnection from my body that lead to my becoming trapped inside it.

My relationship with social media is:

Strained. I like the people I know from it, and my readers are very generous, but in recent years I find I forget about it easily. Its not hard for me to not post or scroll.

My relationship with myself is:

Loving, gentle, and kind. My mother taught me to do this. When I have a hard day, or a hard feeling, she always tells me to be gentle with myself. I don’t think I have any adolescent lingering malicious dissatisfaction with who I am. I like everything about me, and what I don’t doesn’t bother me because I have a lot of compassion for myself. Especially when I realize I’ve seen the world wrong. I feel like I could not write the way I do if I weren’t self accepting.

Which simple things bring you the greatest joy?

Windy days. Knitting. A very cold coca cola. Waking up before 8:30.

I would tell 12 year old me:

You’re right to mourn your introduction to womanhood, but there will come a time for celebrating. We won’t rush you though and I will walk with you to the party when you decide you’re ready to show up.

I feel most in my body when:

I’m in my bed or in water.

I’m most proud of myself when/because:

I remain soft and strong despite the many who wish to crush that softness in me.

My favourite tv show growing up was:

Malcolm in the middle.

I admire when others are able to:

Speak and listen to people without enforcing their own ideas on the subject or the person they’re talking to. Being able to hold more than one reality without the violence of thrusting your world view on someone is a real skill I want to do better.

I have felt misunderstood in the past when:

I needed more time. I’m not stupid, I just like to think, and my silence is not a retreat, I’m trying to figure out what it is I want to say to you.

The last thing I googled was:

(the truth) NYT hamburger helper recipe.

(what I did google recently that I wish was the last thing I googled) Goddess who fell in love with sleeping mortal.

I feel most myself when I:

That moment where you’re at dinner with friends and you’re looking around after everyone laughs at a joke and you realize that they see you as a fully fledged person. And for a moment all the plagues and torturous parts of femininity, the cages, the anger, the disappointments, vanish and it feels worth it.

A word that I made up or used “incorrectly” as a kid:

Exasperated. A teacher called me out for it and it was very embarrassing, but I read it in fanfic so I was doing my best with context clues.

The best way to decompress is:

Dream.

Whose opinion matters to you?

Almost everyones. I unfortunately care a lot about what other people think. Not so much with me as a person, but the things that I do, the books I read, the shows I watch, what I enjoy. If someone says a book I liked wasn’t good I feel as though I’m on the outside of something. I feel like everyone secretly thinks I’m unintelligent. I’m mortified that I can never unshare my goodreads and what people might think of me because of it.

The last 3 things I usually do before going to sleep:

Day dream, yearn, send my daily gratitude list to my mother and sister.

I am most inspired by:

The changing of seasons.

Life got easier when I realised:

What it felt like to be moving against yourself. Not so much self destruction or even ignorance, but just the assimilation of life. How you do something because for so long that was the way you were told you were supposed to. Or even the way your own expectations and routines no longer feel true. Knowing what it feels like when something no longer works, or never did, is probably the best thing you can ever become familiar with.

What change would you most like to see in the world?

Less hater energy. More earnestness. Sorry I know it was the funny joke but it never made me laugh.

The best advice I have ever received:

“Our pain doesn’t get smaller, our lives get bigger.”

The flowers in my window box would be:

Poppies

To be me is:

To find every minute of a wednesday precious.