5/13/26

How long has it been? If you're reading this please text me

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8/28/24 

This time can be different or it can be exactly the same. You can grow up now or you can grow up later. Hard now or hard later. It doesn't actually matter which one you pick. It's fine to wait to be better, you just can't complain about something you did to yourself. Once you learn this everything gets easier. Harder, but easier. 

I'm one week from starting classes, one month from moving, I got back from Puerto Rico a few days ago, before that I went to LA two times in ten days just because I felt like running. It was fun. My only goal this summer was to get my wisdom teeth removed and I succeeded. My four-year saga of mouth infections and weekly low-grade fevers has finally come to an end, a saga which managed somehow to align perfectly with this now-closing chapter of my life that began when I left home for New York and started my remote job. Friday will be my last day. On my first day I sat at L's dad's desk in the fourth-floor office of her parents' house in Philadelphia holding a Lobel's Steakhouse icepack to my face in between zoom calls to bring down the swelling from my inaugural mouth infection brought about by six Bang energy drinks consumed on some stretch of highway between Baltimore and Wilmington, followed by three bottles of orange wine served by a downtrodden twink on a roof in south philly, then more bang energy and a full pack of cigarettes on 43rd and locust. Three weeks later I got a citation in the mail for "violent crime" from the state of delaware for blowing through a toll booth with my head stuck out the window. I used to know how to live. I paid the fine and finished my course of antibiotics and began. What started then is ending now, another course of antibiotics complete, this time just preventative, four years and four teeth gone just like that. I told my parents I would do it again if I could, horrified my mom with detailed recounts of the bone cracking and neck twisting and blood and little shards of teeth sprinkled all over my sweatshirt, watching them roll off of me and scatter onto the ground as I got up from the chair and stumbled into the lobby. My parents forgot to pick me up so I stood in the sun on Santa Monica boulevard for fifteen minutes thinking This Is the Life. I thought about how lucky I am to have experienced torture and felt nothing at all. How rare to know pain and not feel it. This is the life, I told my parents in the car fifteen minutes later and they laughed but I meant it. 

When I first moved to greenpoint I used to look for the church steeple to find my way home. I had a hard time getting around. In LA everything is easy, ocean is west and everything else is east. In Philadelphia it was mostly the same, the schuykill cuts through the city and you always know which side of it you're on. In Brooklyn the East River is west, everything in this city radiates from Manhattan. My mom always called Manhattan "New York," she'd come to visit me and ask if we were going to go to New york today. I'd get annoyed and say we're in New York right now and she'd say oh you know what I mean and I'd say that's not how it works, but actually it is. It's so hard to admit the world doesn't revolve around you, that's why you look for steeples when the signs are written for someone else.

When I leave this apartment there are things I'll want to remember and others I'll want to forget. I'll want to remember the grass overgrown in the empty lot next door and the sun on the deck. I'll want to remember last year on st patrick's day standing in the kitchen and the beam of light that reflected tiny rainbows on all the walls and the ceiling from the rhinestones on my shirt. It was stupid and I cried and sent a picture to my mom. I'll want to forget the tiles so brown and crusty you could never tell if they were clean. I'll want to forget the smell of death and the monster flies that tormented me for weeks while some animal decayed in the bathroom wall. I'll want to forget the yelling and hiding and walking on eggshells. I'll want to forget a lot of things, but I won't because how else do you know it's getting better? I'll want to remember the bottles breaking and when enough was enough and the midnight drive to the urgent care and the crying in the bathtub while I waited for the drugs to kick in. I'll want to remember the quiet and the dark and the memorizing new words to pass the time and the moving of the laundry from the bed to the floor and over and over and over again. 

R and I were texting about how life is just one big surgery, it's just adding and taking away. R said hers is like a boob job, glamorous and hedonistic, and I said mine was like an appendectomy, pain and suffering brought on suddenly for unexplained reasons but easily fixed if you just do something about it. It's not a very good metaphor but it made sense to both of us at the time. I thought it was funny R chose boob job as a symbol for glamour and hedonism since we saw a lot of boob jobs in Puerto Rico that seemed neither glamorous nor hedonistic. Mostly they looked like bags of saline or fat hanging off peoples' bodies out of obligation. R and L and I loved being there, though, even if we didn't have enough artificial parts to attract the attention of anyone above a certain tax bracket—or below it for that matter. None of us wanted to go back to New York but we all felt we had to. Did we? R's job is remote, L is unemployed, I still haven't paid my tuition. I never had a reason to be in New York, I just packed up my car one day and went, leaving the city wouldn't be any crazier than coming here in the first place. There are people and things that would make leaving hard, I guess, but staying doesn't always feel that much easier. I guess living in New York is kind of like a boob job. Something that seems glamorous and hedonistic but in practice just feels heavy on your chest. But it was your choice to do it in the first place, so, you keep on carrying the weight.

It's not so bad anyway I can feel it lifting. I care less and so much more. The fix was easy, I just had to do something about it. Last night I dreamt I had promised to make shrimp and soba for someone and tonight when I went to buy tofu at the store I thought to myself, "but they really wanted shrimp," then remembered I'm alone. At orientation yesterday I sat around a big wooden table with people who had hearts and brains and cared about me more after five minutes of meeting than anyone I'd met in the last four years. I know pain but I don't feel it anymore. It hurts to realize it's not about you until you remember it's all yours. I don't need somewhere to go I have somewhere to be.

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8/11/24

Every time I'm hungover I think about what exactly it is that I have to live for. The day after T's birthday party a few weeks ago was particularly bad. R had spent the evening charming a young man named Jasdeep. He was a 28-year-old software engineer at Google, but spent money in such a way that suggested he might not have the requisite logic or reasoning skills to succeed in his role long term. He bought R (and anyone who happened to be within a 15-foot radius of him at the bar) hundreds of dollars worth of drinks and, for the promise of one kiss from R, purchased 1.5 grams of M the drug dealer's finest at R's urging. Jasdeep was disappointed to learn that R is only a woman of her word before drink 5 or after drink 9, but he did end the evening with at least one new notch in his belt. As R learned the next day when Jasdeep reached out via Instagram dm wondering who he had sent 120 dollars to at 2:30 in the morning, this was his first time buying or doing drugs ever (he never mentioned the drinks, so I guess that was par for course). Mazel tov, Jasdeep! You're a shell of a man now. And so my dismal state the next day was likely some sort of secondhand karma for that. Then began the hangover-induced considerations, how it is I keep getting on with it, waking up and starting again, when it only gets a little better after it's gotten so much worse. Later on came the classic hangover-relief ecstasy, when I suddenly feel lucky to be alive for the simple fact that my headache is gone. Always like I've overcome and graduated, except I'm nowhere new, just back at square one after a visit to the bad place. And the cycle repeats and intensifies and I ask myself again and again what it is I have to live for. Most of my time in new york has begged the question "why not kill yourself?" which sounds and is dramatic, but comes with a silver lining. Being routinely confronted by the depths has helped me understand having nothing to live for as perhaps one of the most persuasive reasons to keep on living. Because someday you might, and there's only one way to find out. It's really that stupidly simple. 

So many things are ending but what's even scarier is how many things are beginning. Another day another life. More waiting and running late. Ha ha ha. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and make something of myself. Everyone wants to believe that because they feel something they can do something. I feel tired but I can’t sleep.

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5. 

On Tuesday I cried and told my mom I want to become a mechanic when really what I meant was that I want to leave New York. Why me? I think this so often. Sometimes you're a kid again sometimes you never grew up. 

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4. 

I only sound stupid because I'm trying to be nice. Social hierarchy relies on deference, good manners mean a willingness to debase yourself, carry the conversation, laugh at the jokes, remember the names and the titles and the upcoming shows—and never ask for anything in return. This is not an indictment of a scene, this is a fact of life. Those who deny it are the most guilty. Anyone who suggests you simply be yourself, be assertive, never fold for strangers, has only ever existed in a position of social power or has been too dense to realize they aren't. 

Interpersonal success arrives via two major routes: by intuiting another's needs and responding to them—making yourself small when you get the sense someone needs to be big—or by ignoring anyone's needs beside your own—making yourself so big that anyone you encounter begins to doubt their own size. Defer or be deferred to, defense or offense, every interaction has an inflection point, no matter how unconscious: mitigate the threat or become it. And when you're 26 and largely good for nothing, it's hard to think of yourself as anything but prey. 

I met a priest uptown last week. We were put in contact by a man who knows a monk who knows my late great uncle. For some reason I thought we'd be friends, but I didn't know about the National Eucharistic Convention and this was a deal breaker for him. He told me he hates when priests only think about their parish, that I'm clearly going to the wrong church if they've never said a word about it. And I didn't have the heart to tell him the "wrong church" was actually just no church at all. I tried to ask some questions about the convention but with each one he got more and more upset about how little I knew. He changed the subject, he knew I'd be starting school in the fall, asked what I'll be studying. Religion, I said, and he just shook his head and told me that department has no respect for people of faith. I joked that maybe I could be the one to help them see the light and he said nothing and gave me that all-too-familiar look of disappointment I can't seem to get away from these days. We only have five minutes left, he warned. What is it that I really need, he insisted, and what did I want to know? And I wanted to tell him this: 

I haven't been in the face of this much apathy in so long, or maybe I have just been too deluded to notice. The care can always turn out to be a hallucination, it's just hard to find the motivation to convince yourself otherwise—there's nothing quite as invigorating as building a body of evidence to prove to yourself that you matter. I read something unfair about me on the internet. When I talked to N last week about the coldness and the suspicious looks he assured me it was nothing and I agreed I was probably just taking everything personally like I always do. I stopped writing here because I couldn't take the idea of being criticized, because I'm weak, because I take everything personally, and every time I would try to get the words out it would feel like I was lying. And everything is so fragile, so obviously falling apart, the pain is enormous and coming from nowhere. It's easier to erase, disappear, become a rumor, mourn a couple of years, then your whole life. That's what it feels like, anyway. Stand up straight and talk to people who bore you to death because then it will all be over. There's a cat in my house that belongs to a man without a soul, I want him to leave, but maybe I'll keep him forever. What is it that I really need? Nothing. Remember: it doesn't get easier because it's never been hard. What do I want to know? Even less. Last night I saw my face in harsh light and vowed to shell out whatever amount necessary to stay naive. No more time to be wasted. You only live once even if you live forever. I took nyquil and woke up ten years younger. There are new links and new letters and new lives. There are versions of yourself out there that you've never met before. There are new ways to twist the knife and new ways to stop the bleeding. Everyone is graduating and getting promoted and traveling the world and I am right here, at the start, ready to begin again.

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3. 

I don't feel much of anything for anyone, when I left the bar last weekend I walked in the mist and thought about how nice it would be to disappear, if only I could think of a reason why. It's a terrible way to cry out for attention, no one ever notices you're gone until you return, so you may as well stick around and save yourself the airfare. The world feels less conspiratorial, maybe just because I've grown bored of all this mindless treason. It's not betrayal if you really don't care. I'll confess there is comfort in paranoia. I miss the feeling of being watched, it's better than feeling alone. 

Now I'm tasked with understanding: is there anything left to be said once no one's listening? When the delusions of relevance wane, is it time to admit you just wanted to be heard? The obvious answer is yes and yes, the less obvious answer is how? I've dabbled with obstruction and just ended up confused, there is only so much 'fudging of the details' possible before you start to damage the Whole Point. And if you are so concerned with obscuring yourself, was there ever really a point to begin with? I miss my open heart. I don't think about the summer or the fall. Sometimes I think about the winter but then I forget. I try to imagine the next few months and I can't. I'm angry, then I'm not. If you think this is about you it's not. Everything is so different now.

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2. 

Another day of trying to catch up. Another day of trying to decide. Another day of tabs I can't seem to close. The Dance Studio Mid-rise Pant from Lululemon. The religious studies MA. The Indigo Five-Pocket Jeans, size 27, only 3 remaining. The ssense shopping bag, containing the Indigo Five-Pocket Jeans, because there are only 3 remaining, a show of good faith. So much purgatory to escape. They're cutting service on the G train from July through August. So much purgatory to escape. I wish I knew a better way to structure the hours, but I only know how to fill them. R returns Wednesday night, Thursday is the board meeting then the talk then the return to the castle. After that another week of something and nothing, then it will turn to February and I'll be 26. I said 25 was going to be my year and it was, wasn't it? There was momentum and time frozen still, what more could I ask for?

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1.

so much of life is just trying to distract yourself from the horror of time passing. Nothing ever stops. Days pass and weeks pass and people go in and out, ignore you at parties, you ignore them right back, it doesn't get easier because it's never been hard.

new year new me same old story ....

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