There’s a lot going on. There’s a lot on my mind, so of course I’ve been googling my exes (they’re all doing great, for the record) and counting. Convinced that my brain is atrophying all the time (being alive involves wearing down a body), I want to work on my mental dexterity as part of my overall health; there IS dementia in my family, after all, and I am nothing if not a brain-rotted millennial. But as much as shitting on myself is basically my whole deal, I will admit that I do have a very good sense of rhythm thanks to years of singing and musical theater, which means timing and time has always been fairly easy for me to keep track of in my head.

At the same time, I am hilariously bad at math and numbers. I feel like I may be dealing with a sort of numeric dyslexia, but all of this is, of course, self-diagnosed. The only way I can describe it is that my brain and eyes and mouth are not always on the same page about what number goes where and when most times I encounter them. I mostly think it’s a byproduct of my being so inherently insecure that I second guess myself at every given moment, and/or possibly that my brain very often goes too fast and gets ahead of itself, leaving my mouth to play catch up. Whatever the case, 34 comes out 43 and on and on it goes.

Anyway, I am no good at math and numbers but I’m also currently in a place where I am trying to take the slower and/or possibly more friction-laden path, actively trying to work my patience and mental muscles to benefit us all in the future. You know, mental health and longevity; my refusal to lose anymore skills than I already have. Purposefully facing the things that are hard and moving through them, slowly.

So instead of setting a timer for ten minutes, I forced myself to count it out. Sixty second each, ten times, lying in a towel on my bed. Easy enough. It felt like a good meditative activity: easy repetition that worked my timing muscles while also providing me a little bit of silence. I love silence, for the record: it’s one of the few times I can really hear myself think. It’s relaxing; life is overstimulating enough, why add more noise to it, you know? Besides, I enjoy hearing the white noise of my apartment and city. It helps me feel present in my environment even when I’m lost up here in my mind and/or on the metaphorical page.

Turns out? Counting is HARD. At least it is now when my brain has been infected by the digital middle ages. Oh, what a humbling-ass moment to have as a person, just absolutely struggling to count to fucking sixty, on beat, ten times. Whewww! Is this just being forty, or is it just me, specifically? On a scale of one to “this is a signifier of the collapse of civilization,” how upset about this do I have to be? Has social media and the internet gotten me so ding dang fucked up that I now find myself struggling to not get distracted while I counted in silence after only a few seconds? What’s next, will talking in full sentences one day be hard, too?

I was experiencing what I can only describe as mental pop-ups, because, again, broken brain. Little impish interruptions, flashy and loud, usually around second thirteen or so—you know, when the rhythm of counting changes from monosyllabic to poly? (Yes, yes, yes, I see you eleven and seven. But thirteen is where it all really changes). You have to find a new way to say more syllables in the same amount of time (one second) in order to keep the rhythm going. (Everything really is music, huh?)

These pop-ups would often include another number or random word. From there, an internal conversation would ensue while I was also simultaneously trying to keep counting and not lose track of time. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the whole affair led me to second guess myself, like, wait, did I just go thirteen fifteen? Something didn’t feel right about that twenty-seven. Did I skip ahead a few numbers? Am I behind half a beat? Should I just keep going? Where am I at now? Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty- oh god, focus, keep going.

The only time I understand numbers is in regards to musical timing/signatures. Gimmie a beat! as Janet Jackson says. Music is so deeply embedded in my blood and bones and muscle and sinew and everything that makes me a human. My skin feels music on a dermal level, my hair does, too. Maybe yours does also, but how would we know? When was the last time you had a conversation about the way the ineffable feels on a physical, tactile level, eh? The point is, when I second-guess the rhythm, it can physically feel deeply unmooring. Even if all you’re doing is a stupid little mental test of counting a lot while the hair masque seeps in.

Some semblance of the aforementioned internal, multi-headed monologue with myself went on for most of those ten minutes. It was a constant battle to focus on what I was doing (literally just counting) and not the other errant internal dialogues, random thoughts, and self-doubts that tried to interfere. When I was finished, it felt like I had climbed a mountain. Whew! To find counting to be even slightly challenging and not a boring act of monotony? What a shameful and embarrassing thing! The pang of those emotions sending daggers through my head and chest...FROM TRYING TO COUNT? What am I, a toddler watching Sesame Street? Is the purple guy asking me to count the bats with him, and is it stressing me OUT? Lord, what a mess! I took a deep breath, and almost immediately started chuckling. Because like, of course it was hard. Of course. You are a too online ADHD-addled millennial dirtbag. Brain-rotted to the core!

It’s way easier on the ego to just google your exes and see how much better off their lives are without you. (They’re literally all doing so great and so happy in other relationships and no no no no no it’s fine! It’s so fine! I’m so fine!)

Self-flagellating when the going gets tough is my modus operandi. I’m trying to do less of that, while also trying to better myself. Sometimes it feels like you need one (shame) to attain the other (self-betterment).

I want to find another way.

I feel insane right now, so naturally I also feel at my most creative. With whether or not my show sells being basically up to the television gods of Britain, “what’s next” has been gnawing at the ol’ brain stem. Usually, my next idea appears to me quite easily—after I wrote Divine Intervention, Sex Ranch had already been tugging at my hems, and after that the movie script, Let’s Kill Dad felt like a natural progression. That one needs more work, and I’ll get to it. But it’s not the next, fresh new thing that gets me buzzing.

My brain wants to do more than just to write, though. And I don’t know if it’s the astrology, the work I’m doing in therapy, or just what happens after you turn forty (midlife crisis, is that you?!), but I really feel pulled to allow my creativity to be more tactile and imperfectly alive, in the wild—not just me working in a silo alone. I’ve always been a writer, but to be honest with you, I focused on it more because it felt like I was allowed to be a writer and be fat: everything else I did felt barriered by my body. Remember when I used to sing? Remember when I used to act? Shit, remember when I used to host things like my own show and a storytelling hour? You probably don’t, because I’ve tucked away those parts of me and only reference them as my past. But I have never feel more alive than when I sing; being on the stage brought something out of me that I feel like my whole being has longed for since I left it all behind me in the name of practicality, which is where, I was told, security resided. Not inside of me and my abilities, but outside—over there, where the people with the power and the money all resided. Ha ha ha.

Before I was counting, Charli xcx’s new song “Camera” was making me emotional in the bathtub, which feels like a terribly vulnerable thing to admit, but no more vulnerable than it was for her to write and release a song about wanting something so cringey and exposing as to be and make art with yourself as the vessel. So here we are:

(Fun fact: Vincent Cassel was my first-ever in-person on-camera interview subject.)

It feels impossible to try and plan or even look towards building a future/new era for myself because, well, have you seen the state of the world? Have you seen the numbers in my bank account (they’re bad!)? Chances are, if you’re reading this you are also a burnt out millennial, and therefore you know that this world is bullshit, that we were told a lie about how to exist, and have the battle scars from trying to navigate several once-in-a-generation level crises while simultaneously “building a career” and, ha ha ha, “having a life.” So maybe you, too, are wondering what are we all doing here, exactly, and why have we given up so much of our power to external forces?

So no, I don’t plan anymore. But sometimes I like to wonder about how this life will all play out for me. I daydream about potential scenarios: ones where things go super well, or super poorly, in varying regards. It’s oddly soothing and even a little bit reenergizing, because every scenario reminds me of how resilient I am, how capable I feel, how amenable to the varying styles of life I imagine myself to be. It’s basically creative writing. But I never let the thought experiments go on too long, though, because there’s a powerlessness to living right now that often brings me grief. It is in this cognitive dissonance that everything feels, well, really frustrating.

Even more frustrating than those few exes who are not at all searchable and therefore unknown.

The thing about creativity (and what is ex-stalking if not a creative use of a search engine? To self-harm, sure, shhhh) that I always come back to is that it is inherently empowering. Because it’s creating something out of nothing. It is imagining possibilities where there previously were none. It offers a new perspective—and sometimes that’s all you need for everything to change. Sometimes your creativity is all you will have in this life. And I’m grateful that I know how to use it. To be able to rely on yourself is a gift most people don’t believe they have, but they might if they allowed themselves to let loose and be a little more creative.

A squirrel was stuck in my apartment last week. I posted about it on Instagram (because of course I did), so maybe you already saw. Trapped in a vent above my oven, the little fella must’ve gotten in through the roof, lured by the scent of black sesame brown butter chocolate chip cookies baking (who could blame him?). For a full 27.5 hours, I tried to ask for help in freeing this tiny critter. And for most of that experience, I felt completely, frustratingly alone in it. My building would not help me, my roommates did not help me, animal control said wildlife was out of their jurisdiction. At about hour 25, I lost my cool, and it unloaded in an expletive-laden monologue onto someone in my apartment complex’s front office. I was tired, I was punchy, I say the word “fucking” a lot even when I am not angry.

I am! A passionate! Girl! And I am no longer apologizing for it! Even if my reactions are outsized to you, a person who does not burst forth living on the edge of her nerves, like me!

(Don’t worry, I apologized to everyone for having a moment of imperfect humanity.)

By hour 27, after I had just finished crafting myself a Rube Goldberg-level contraption of squirrel containment (it involved taping a garbage can to the CEILING and THREE KIWI SLICES), two men from my apartment’s maintenance department appeared, I guess feeling pity (read: probably bullied by management so that they did not have to pay an outside contractor the projected $200-600 for the job) after I started crying and melting down in the “experience department” office that no one would help me when it was absolutely my landlord’s problem.

After barricading my heroes into the kitchen (with the kitchen door that leads outside wide open) to un-tape the garbage can trap from the ceiling, Chauncey the squirrel ran out of my apartment and into the sweet arms of freedom. I gave the nice maintenance men some water and popsicles for their valor and got on with the work of cleaning up 27.5 hours worth of squirrel piss and shit. Imagine if I’d just trusted myself to solve the problem from the jump and saved myself the days of frustration and anxiety, and just got Chauncey out of the house sooner. But then again, it could have gone worse, and there’s still a few more days before I am outside the incubation period for the various diseases you can contract from coming into contact with rodent urine and feces, so who knows? Maybe this way was all for the better. Or maybe, just maybe, if I had trusted myself from the jump, Chauncey and I would have both been freed from this bullshit a lot sooner.

At this point, if you are still reading, you may be wondering, where are you even going with this, Alicia????? And I promise the answer is not just “Crazy! Wanna come?” Because I feel like something’s shifted. There’s a lot going on and I have been radicalized by the muchness of it, in tandem with my Big Age in life. Something about the sheer onslaught of things going on in the world and with me (there’s so much I haven’t mentioned, because even though I overshare, I don’t tell the world everything! A girl needs her secrets!) has broken my brain. Cracked it wide open, like a pomegranate bursting with seeds. I don’t want to exist as if I’m an embarrassment anymore. Not when I’ve proven myself to be more than capable. I know that timing is everything—I just have to trust the rhythm, and myself. That’s always been the thing.

Besides, if sidelining who I really am has brought me the fucking OPPOSITE of the stability I was promised if I gave up on my creative dreams, maybe I need to just DO the things, yafeelme? Like, maybe it doesn’t fucking matter. Maybe nothing matters and that’s AMAZING! Maybe I should just follow my curiosity and see where it leads me. Maybe instead of spending my whole life trying to fix what is “wrong” with me, I instead dedicate some of that time breaking down the walls I’ve put around what’s “right” with me. Just let it all fucking go, money be damned, life be damned, everything be damned! Because it already is! Nihilism as positivity! Let’s light this brain on fire! Maybe if I follow that instinct for awhile, things might actually go better than they have gone thus far.

What am I even doing if not exactly that? I wonder.

It all started with Ivanka Trump. Sorta.

I come from working class workhorse people. Nurses, mail men, cops, telephone linemen (and women), and teachers. Sure, I may be from Connecticut—a state that brings to mind the wealthiest of the Old World, Old Money set—but that doesn’t mean I lived that upper class fantasy life, much to the chagrin of easier narratives. Everyone in my family had to work long, hard hours for the majority of their life just to get by, with most of my ancestors moving to this country at the turn of the 20th century. In the ’90s, getting by meant being able to afford to own a modest home, take your three kids on vacation once a year (in our case, Wildwood, NJ), pay your bills and buy groceries. It meant stability, sanity, and safety. It’s a world to which none of us who are millennials, or those growing up now, can relate.

When the 2000s hit, that energy shifted, and the existential dread of a new millennium brought about something far more nefarious. Worrying that the world would end when our newly digitized world’s clocks and computers had to go from 1999 to 2000 (messing with their binary coding systems); being shook by the attacks on 9/11 and the subsequent Iraq war. By the time I graduated college into the Bear Sterns mess that became the 2008 recession, I could feel the sands of possibility slipping through my fingers; the ground moving, shifting, and quaking as I walked the well-worn path towards The American Dream.

But still, I held on to the delusional belief that if I worked really hard and tried by absolute best to do good work, I would be able to afford a comfortable life. I’m not sure why I believed it, except that old habits die hard and I was raised in white suburbia, where everyone told me since I was small that that was the case. The American dream, or whatever, is handily available to you—especially, sub-contextually, if you were a white person from a place like Connecticut. (I don’t make or like these rules, but I am educated enough to be aware of them.) So I did what I was told, and then some—because, damn it, I am nothing if not exceedingly extra and a child of divorce.

But I digress—let’s go back to the turn of the century (lol/yuck) and Ivanka Trump for a second. It was 1998 or 1999, and I had applied to Choate Rosemary Hall, an exceedingly elite preparatory academy for kids with last names like Kennedy, Rockefeller, Carnegie, or Vanderbilt. I remember walking onto its gorgeous, sprawling campus in absolute awe that this is where some kids got educated. All of the buildings, all of the knowledge, all of the freedom—I wanted, desperately. It felt like knowledge existed as a sort of magic here. And I believed it was achievable for me to attend and make something better of myself and the life I wanted to live, because I was a dedicated try-hard who was told time and time again: you’re so smart and talented, just work really hard and you can achieve anything.

“Because Not Everyone Can Go To Choate” was emblazoned on the t-shirts of several students I saw around campus. It was a level of elitism I decidedly did not admire, but felt like they had somehow earned. On one hand, I was so embarrassed for those kids in those t-shirts, desperate to feel ensconced in their elitist version of sameness in a decidedly elevated space. Simultaneously, I deeply wished I could be one of them. I wanted to be special, to be seen as someone capable of greatness. Someone who deserved to and belonged in rarified spaces, because I had good ideas and I was an intelligent creative.

“I went to a $30,000 a year private boarding school in 1999 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt because my family didn’t make their money during the gilded age,” more like it.

(There’s a reason I related to the Little Mermaid so much as a child.)

The interview with the admissions counselor was a breeze. Even as a tween (maybe even more so than now), I knew how to work a room and make the adults smile and laugh and feel endeared to me. I was charming, funny, smart, and thoughtful—all of the things that made for a perfect Choate Rosemary Hall Candidate, or so I was told. The counselor took my mother in to speak with her briefly while I waited for the student assigned to my campus tour showed up.

A perky blonde junior picked me up for my campus tour. “Hi, I’m Ivanka,” she smiled cheerily. Ivanka Trump was animated and chatty in that way most teenagers are. She was sweet and charming, and my mother was impressed. “Oh, I just love your father,” she told to Ivanka, who I imagine smiled politely. “He must be so proud” For 20 or 30 minutes, Ivanka guided my mother and I all across campus—showing me the dorm rooms for boarding students (alas, I would’ve been a commuter), the classrooms strewn across several buildings, their expansive gymnasium, the chapel where the choir sang, and even the Arts Center, an impressive building designed by world-renowned and award-winning architect I.M. Pei. The whole time, I felt as if I were dreaming: now this was a place where I would really learn. I was in awe of Choate and the possibilities it seemingly provided to a completely different world than my own. It was tantalizing and intoxicating, to imagine yourself allowed onto that particular pedestal. I could see my world opening up and getting bigger if I went there. I imagined myself becoming smarter and more capable, elevating myself outside of and above the spaces I grew up in. The me that went to Choate, I imagined, would become the next Christiane Amanpour, or better. I wanted so, so badly to feel like I belonged in that world. That I was destined for that world—that that world would save me from ending up a broke single parent like my mother.

“Maybe I’ll see you next year,” Ivanka said, cheerily. “Good luck with applying!” Ivanka skipped off to meet her friends for lunch. She had a car on campus at a time when that was not allowed for other students, so they often went off-campus for bougie salads or sandwiches. Even in the upper echelons, there was a hierarchy.

As we got into my mother’s (far more modest) car and started driving home, her mood instantly, if brokenheartedly, changed. “It’s a beautiful school, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she told me. I bristled at this, assuming that what she really meant to say but couldn’t was that I wasn’t good enough to be accepted. I got emotional and teary-eyed almost immediately, my reaction undoubtedly borne out of the familiar sense that I was too fat, too ugly, too loud, and too annoying to be accepted for who I am, by anyone. That it would never matter how smart or kind or capable I was—I didn’t look the part, or come from the right sort of family, so I was never going to get it.

My mother tried to assure me that was not the case. “The counselor had nothing but good things to say about you,” she insisted. “She said you were exactly the sort of student they would accept here. She also said that because you’d need financial aid to go here, the chances of you getting in are very, very slim.”

I did not believe what she was saying. How could that be possible? I shot back that she was probably just saying these things to me to make me feel better about being not good enough. I poked and prodded her as we drove home to my grandparents’ house, the multi-generational home in which we lived after my parents got divorced and my mother lost everything. “The first question she asked me was how much we were anticipating to contribute,” my mother admitted. “And when I told her I thought tuition was more than enough, she told me that’s not how it works here. Families are expected to exceed that in donations to the school’s endowment.”

I was devastated. Angry. Confused. But also, somehow, undeterred. Because back then, I still believed in the American Dream and that being exceptional was real. Sure, I did not get into Choate—because not everyone can go to Choate—but I did get into another, very prestigious private high school in Connecticut called The Hopkins School that was “basically a pipeline to Yale.” They, unlike Choate, happily accepted me into the Class of 2004 and gave me the financial aid to do so. I took AP classes, participated in a thousand extracurriculars I loved—shit, I even did sports (mostly because I had to, but also because my friends were on the team)—and worked on campus as an assistant to the choir teacher in order to keep school costs low. I even became a tour guide, just like Ivanka Trump. I spent my summers and weekends working, be it babysitting the neighbor’s kids, stocking shelves at Pier One Imports, or helping the office manager at my mother’s job in order to make enough money to pay for books and lunch and gas/spending money for my 30 minute daily commute to school.

The thing is, having to do all of that (and help around at home with chores and my younger siblings) meant I only had a B+ average—and even coming from my private high school, it was not enough to get me into the colleges I wanted to attend. Elsewhere, friends with worse grades and less extracurriculars were getting into the Ivy League—some because their parents worked there, others because their last names were notable, like Hellman or Blackstone. (And yes, some got in because they weren’t anybody special but their scores and grades and achievements were just undeniably that good—there’s always an exception to prove every rule.) Waitlisted everywhere, I finally accepted a last-minute slot at Drew University in the summer of 2004, a week before move-in, after receiving my final rejections from Northwestern, Brown, and Yale.

Life continued on like this for the next 20 or so years. But I didn’t mind—I just assumed it all meant I needed to work even harder. Hustle even more, grind culture before it had a name. Graduating into the 2008 recession meant my literal first day at work at my first-ever post-college job—scheduling commercials at MTV Networks—was the same day the network’s parent company, Paramount/Viacom, laid off 800 people and instituted a hiring freeze that would last for most of the four years I was there.

My friend Mariel, who had started a job at Comedy Central (also owned by Paramount/Viacom) a few weeks earlier, met me for coffee at the Starbucks near our Times Square offices and told me the news as we waited in line. She warned me that the energy in the building was admittedly weird because of it. I remember panicking, thinking and saying, “Oh my god, am I going to get laid off on my first day of work?” After all, I’d just spent every last penny I had moving to New York to take a job making $32,000 a year. I was finally, finally going to be able to live my fully independent adult life—was it always going to feel this frantic and frenetic? Was instability always going to be the name of the game? Ha! Ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa.

Every day of being a millennial trying to be an adult has felt like that first day of work, has felt like that interview at Choate Rosemary Hall: being told one thing while something decidedly different was going on underneath. Being able to see the lie and dualities and hypocrisies of the American caste-and-economic systems didn’t make navigating them any easier—it just made me hate myself and think that the problem was me all the more. After all: if you work hard and you’re smart, the American Dream is possibly for everyone, remember. I was a child of the 90s and that message felt inescapable. But internally, I felt inept and incapable in my fury; always seeming to just miss the boat. My brain a constant churn of If only, if only, if only… thoughts made all-too-easy to feel and use as a shame cudgel after the dawn of social media made us all present as little more than glossy highlight reels with which to compare one’s self. Does any of it even really matter? Even if I try? If so, then why try at all? Rise, rinse, repeat.

This didn’t just happen all at once, of course. But it did happen so insidiously slowly that it was impossible to not internalize it as a “me” problem rather than a systemic one. And I doubt that I’m alone there. With every little injustice, every little micro change to our day-to-day habits (cell phones, social media, and the increasingly addictive ways in which technology has been shaped), we encounter just one more little hurdle to jump over. But they’re all so small, we think as we notice said hurdle. So we say “OK,” and keep going, keep fighting, keep jumping through the seemingly unending line of new hoops, slogging through the injustice and ineptitude running the show above us, hoping that this last little bit of fight will be the thing to land us “on top.” Only… “on top” doesn’t really mean what it used to—now it just means “to feel comfortable, stable, and sane.” And that those feelings exclusively belong to the 1% and, well? You can see how the cognitive dissonance grows into something far more ferocious and dangerous.

In many ways, I’ve been wildly adept at “switching” between different versions of myself, versions of myself that grew out of living between the unspeakable divides of American caste/class systems. Code-switching is a term mostly reserved for people who have to navigate white spaces and “switch” how they talk/act/behave, but I think the terms also works when it comes to moving between class/caste lines, too. I had to behave differently around my rich friends and in rich people spaces—and I learned how to do so at my private high school. And it caused tension between my mother and I: “you think you’re so much better than everyone else,” she would often say whenever we fought during my adolescent years. And it’s not that I thought as much—quite the opposite, in fact—but there is a way in which the upper set moves in the world that has an air about it, probably due to the ease with which they can navigate our systems.

In America we don’t talk about these socio-economic divides and the barriers inherent therein, because if we don’t talk about them, they don’t exist, right? But they do exist, and they run roughshod over our lives in ways overt and not, macro and micro, interpersonal or otherwise. It’s just that the people in the upper castes don’t want to acknowledge the privileged system into which they were born: it’s untoward and gouache. It’s just not done, because it’s rude to acknowledge reality that makes rich people uncomfortable about the origins and reality of their wealth.

Shame and guilt truly propel us all, don’t they?

Coming from the high school I did and living in the places I have, means I’ve encountered and become friends with people who live lives far different and more luxurious than my own. And when I am gainfully employed, those differences are easy to ignore—or at least they aren’t as striking. Because money may not buy you happiness or true friendship, it can buy you a cup of coffee, or brunch, or a night out with friends to ensure your relationships stay connected and alive. Especially when you know you’re getting paid a certain amount every week or two. Money buys ease and a sense of security that—when you don’t have it, becomes increasingly hard to ignore. Ask me what it’s like working for the child of a billionaire (or, at least, multi-multi millionaire), and you’ll get an earful on this.

I’ve probably had more friendships fade/end due to my lack of funds than anything else—more so than my full-on menty-b in 2016. When I left/lost my job as Managing Editor at Nerdist in 2018, a lot of my relationships in Los Angeles changed. Some people stopped talking to me because I was no longer “important” or had a job that could benefit their careers. Many friends from that job dropped off because they were more loyal to the brand than me, terrified to be associated with someone “tarnished”; another told me that some of my old friends were just “waiting for me to be fun again” and that I was “too sad” right now given my lack of buoyancy in the face of essentially losing my entire life. Another still said it was awkward to try and stay connected when “asking you to do stuff you can’t afford to do makes me feel like shit.” A lot of my friends were people, I realized, who had only ever really known stability, both financially and mentally. And I had decidedly not been gifted such a hand, which made me feel bad about myself and slightly resentful towards the limits of my friends’ empathy. All of this shit really grates on you when you’re already a fairly insecure person, financially and mentally. (Doubly so if you have uh, complicated relationships with many in your family of origin. Don’t worry, I have been in therapy for 8 years.)

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Granted, LA is a very specific and particular brand of city, but its size and scope means it’s also a sorta perfect microcosm, representative of so much happening in this country. Work has never taken up more of our lives, and the cost of living has never been higher. Most lattes in Los Angeles cost $10. A plain coffee is more like $5-7. Gas, parking (if you can’t find anything free nearby), time: all of these things add up. You can’t get a cheap meal with someone for less than $30. And these are all the “cheap” things to do when you’re a 20, 30, or 40-something in America. When the gainfully employed can’t even afford to do the “cheap” things that life allows us, you know that there’s a big fucking problem. And yet, we’re all working so much (regardless of socio-economic status) and so burnt out from said work (and having to always be connected to work), that most of us can barely afford to keep up with our friendships. Very few people have the time or money to do much of anything anymore—but if you say that out loud, you’re a downer, you’re self-pitying, you’re just someone who is clearly not trying hard enough. So we either hermit away or YOLO ourselves into colossal amounts of debt, hoping that the dopamine hit from the social media likes, or something on the other side of our fiscal irresponsibility will fix what is so irreparably broken: the promise of an affordable, stable life, filled with friends, family, and activities/free time to exist outside of our jobs.

(Don’t even get me started on the bigger problems happening in the world. All the wars, genocides, ecological collapse, and worldwide injustice are even blunter cudgels, overwhelming our nervous systems and flooding us with feelings of fight or flight that manifest in a myriad of specific and fascinating ways. If all we are is working while robots deliver sustenance and entertainment to those privileged enough to afford it, it’s no wonder most of us feel like shutdown, inhuman creatures—unworthy of feeling safe and secure, or even just being alive. It’s no wonder, because it’s by design. We literally have less free time and autonomy than those that lived through the feudal systems of the middle ages. The system was designed to isolate us.)

This is why interpersonal relationships also get siloed off by class/caste in America, too. Because guess what? It’s exhausting to have to constantly contend with the cost of everything in order to have a life. It’s easier to remain friends with people who “get it,” “it” being whatever financial state you find yourself in. So as your economic standing changes, so too do your relationships. This is at least one of the ways in which echo chambers come to exist. I have multiple friends who make good money, who have admitted to me that they don’t invite me out to stuff because they know I have no money and cannot afford to do as much as they can and they don’t want to make it awkward. I will often try to do whatever I can do make these things work—usually by putting myself into financial distress—in the name of maintaining my friendships. But sometimes that, too, becomes a burden, like, ugh, why can’t they just agree to take a walk with me and my dog? Also, ugh, I’m so tired that going on walks with my dog is the only free activity I can afford to do anymore. And suddenly, it’s been months since you’ve seen these people and you feel like you don’t want to annoy them by continually reaching out and trying to still be friends anyway.

In those moments, I have often hermitted myself away to focus on “bettering” myself, perhaps a bit too much. Perhaps because there’s only so much self-betterment you can do to exist in a deeply broken system. Because, to be frank, nothing short of a full on, French-style revolution is going to change shit here. The wealthy have more money and power than even the greatest of the Gilded Age families did, and everyone else has way, way less. Technofeudalism and the digital middle ages are operating as designed, and still we take on any failures as something personal. Because it makes us feel better, especially when we win: it means we “earned” this and affirms that everyone else who doesn’t have “this” has merely not worked hard enough.

The truth is, we’ve all worked too hard to prop up an American Dream that has largely only ever existed for the wealthiest (and whitest) among us. The exceptions that exist not only prove the rule, but do so keep the rest of us complacent, locked into working with a system they call “inevitable” and “the only way”—an exercise in ego and incuriousness if ever I’ve heard of one. As if humanity has never existed except in This Way we are now.

There’s no neat way to wrap this all up, because we exist at a crossroads between What Was and What’s Next. And we’re going to be fighting for What’s Next for years to come—because power and money are intoxicating aphrodisiacs, rewiring your brain and nervous system once attained and secured, and those that have them are going to fight like hell to ensure they and their next generations don’t fall out of the comfort trap their ancestors ensconced them in. When you have so much, it all becomes so relative, and anything that takes away from your muchness feels like an attack or act of violence. This is why they also want us to be less educated and intelligent.

When the real violence is the system that got them there in the first place. They just don’t want to contend with the fact that their complicity in the system is in its own way a very violent act against the rest of society, even if it doesn’t involve them literally bludgeoning a bunch of poor people to death. Because guess what? Money is fake and all of our systems are made up—and in a way that makes it very expensive to be poor. Nothing lasts forever, and so much of life is up to chance. What feels like permanence only exists for a privileged few, but deep down they know that nothing is permanent or forever, a feeling that morphs into a scarcity mindset, keeping us all locked up in the patriarchal, capitalist cycle, our chains endeared to us by our Christo-nationalist past masquerading as “decorum” and “the way things always are.”

The only constant is change. Some changes are harder than others. Some come at you fast, others slither in beneath the surface and make their insidious way into your heart. The American Dream was always a fallacy, but that doesn’t mean that with a more focused aim we can’t shoot for something different, and better, and build off of what’s borne from there. We just have to stop letting our egos and feelings run the show: because those are the insecurities that are going to keep us from creating real stability. And it is only when we are free of those burdens that humanity will be able to leap forward and evolve our world into something better than it was before.

I keep thinking about all the things I’m going to do once I sell my show. I allow myself these daydreams because I’m saying “when” and not “if,” which is huge for me (a person who barely believes in herself) and the brain I find myself in. I also know it’s absolutely and realistically an IF and not a WHEN, but that’s a worry for an Alicia that comes later. For now, I live as if the mindset I carry into this wild endeavor might help me to manifest its being.

After all, I do live in Los Angeles and like to read about astrology. What else am I supposed to do…be realistic? In THIS ECONOMY? Baby, I may be a Capricorn Sun, but I am also an Aries Moon and a Leo Rising—delusion is in my design!! Maybe even a divine right!!!!

I have a lot of ideas about who I am going to be after I sell my little comedy show, and only some of those daydreams involve me looking glamorous on a stage making a BAFTAs acceptance speech while all my ex boyfriends watch on regretfully. (Some involve a bidding war between HBO and AppleTV+ to air it in the United States.) Most of these daydreams involve me being a total boss-ass-bitch on set (god, I fucking love being on set), crafting alts for funny lines and jokes, yukking it up with the rest of the below-the-line. In my mind I’m just like Ava Coleman in the series finale of Hacks. I imagine the actors I think would be perfect for these roles saying lines that I wrote, occasionally allowing myself to imagine playing Bette myself (the lead role in the series, named after my grandmother. It’s something one of my friends really, really wants me to do—a thought of which I am largely terrified). But mostly I just like to think about lighting and music cues and what it will be like when we’re shooting it and whether or not I’ll be allowed to bring Winston to set (he would look very cute in a tiny director’s chair, would he not?).

More than anything, I daydream about what it might be like to be financially stable, even if just temporarily (because, lol, let’s be real). Like…imagine making more than $18,000 in a year (what I made last year, to be perhaps too frank). Imagine not having to worry every single day about paying your bills, or clients cancelling on you. Imagine not chasing invoices or begging them to be fulfilled any minute you are not working your ass off: IMAGINE NOT HAVING TO CONSTANTLY WORK YOUR ASS OFF! WHAT SORT OF LIFE I MIGHT HAVE, even if only for a couple of months!! It’s the sort of soothing balm that allows my brain to take an un-panicked breath and unclench. It feels warm and comforting, like the perfectly salted bathwater. It feels like the word “finally.” It feels like the adulthood my generation was promised but never really got the chance to achieve.

When I’m feeling really indulgent, I think about the vacation I will take as soon as I get paid THE BIG BUCKS for having created and written and sold this show. And that’s when I get really overwhelmed and feel like crying. Because I haven’t taken a vacation that wasn’t a working one since 2019, when I went to New York to visit some friends and attend a wedding. That’s seven years ago now, and there’s only been two honest-to-god vacations in there since, and both of them involved a lot of working while ostensibly “being on vacation” in order to make them work.

That’s…not a vacation, folks. That’s just working in a different locale.

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I’m afraid to dream too lavishly, out of fear that the crushing weight of reality will break me when those dreams do not come true (which is the far more likely path). But I’m also desperate for a bit of brain candy to take the edge off of living. A lil mental cigarette for the aching. In the past few months, I and the people around me have been dealt some incredibly devastating blows, and my job for a lot of that has been to manage those situations—to quietly and stoically carry as much of those emotions as possible, to help make other people’s lives easier by handling the things they can’t or don’t want to do. I may not be a mother, but I am constantly mothering (and not just in the Too Online definition of the term): I am cooking and cleaning and organizing and errand-running and driving; I am making decisions that put the wants and needs of others above my own.

And that’s OK, it’s part of my job—sometimes literally, but also because it’s part of being in a community. And I wouldn’t trade being in community with other people for the world. But I do wish I had a little bit of time and space and money to put myself first once and awhile. To care about my own body as much as I care about others. To scrape by on an hour or two a night where I am not working is, well, not working. It’s a metaphorical bandaid over the ol’ bullet hole, ya feel me? I need space free from the guilt of constantly worrying about from whence my next paycheck will come, y’know?

That’s why I am obsessed with selling my show and talking/thinking about it (within the confines of how much I am allowed to talk about it. And, OK fine, there are also other reasons, like how passionately I feel about this lil comedy show being one of the most potentially necessary stories of our modern times, but I digress…). Because this show, Divine Intervention, is the only thing keeping me going right now. It’s the only sliver of hope I have left. If selling this show doesn’t work out like my producers seem so confident it will…I don’t know what will be next for me, to be frank. Because my tank? Oh, it’s all outta gas, baby. I’m running on fucking fumes and rundown brakes right now. The fumes of fantasy and the possibility of “what if?” I don’t know who I am if I am not a writer, but being a professional writer in 2026 has nearly killed my spirit and belief in the good of the world. I truly cannot believe my life has amounted to…this. And if I think too hard about it for too long, I want to throw myself in The Drink.

I’m being hyperbolic because I’m tired and hungry. But also…

So instead, I dream of faraway places and fancy hotels: I dream of mountain fjords and northern lights. I dream of Grecian coastlines and French patisserie (and being able to tolerate it as a gluten-intolerant person). I dream of alpine wilderness and ancient cities built in unwieldy places. I dream of unique vistas I can’t even fathom yet, and how fresh the air of them feels in my lungs. I dream of floating in water. I dream of hiking with my dog. I dream of padding down cobblestones and discovering new corners. I dream of temples and reefs and lakes and waterfalls. I dream of birds of many colors and rows and rows of staggered, salty terraces. I dream of the blue lagoons of Iceland, I dream of snow banks that tower over my head.

But mostly, I just dream about feeling secure and comfortable, and how romantic it must feel to live in a world like that all the time.

I shaved today my face today. For the first time ever, after staring at my pores for too long in the mirror, I took a blade to my skin. Usually, I let my fingernails and the occasional tweezer do the dirty work of extraction. But usually that work involves black heads and pus-filled pimples of various size and readiness (fully formed head on the surface of my skin be damned), not just hairs. If I can see it or feel it, it has to go—immediately. God forbid I let my visage exist naturally: look at this place (my face)! Look at this mess (also my face)! I have to get rid of it all! The impurities, Harold! The IMPURITIES!

It’s compulsive, obviously. And I think I come by it honestly: a maladaptive coping mechanism that soothes me, even while it, ironically, irritates. self-harmed dressed up as self care—my very messed-up version of having a skincare routine. My grandfather is a picker, too; he of his scabs and me of my face (but also my scabs because, let’s face it, that shit is very satisfying to remove from one’s person, too).

An obsessive thought underlies the act of removal though: you are gross, you are full of literal and proverbial impurities—pimples and cysts—and must excavate them all as soon as you see them, lest they get worse or even simply stay the same, marking you as unclean and gross and ugly. Lazy. Unfeminine. Not a real woman worthy of feeling valid. Gross, disgusting, invalid. Not real.

Those thoughts don’t just stay focused on the surface, though.

It was during one of these pick sessions that I noticed it: my sideburns and growing chin hairs. The tiny mustache at the corners of my upper lip. All clear and blonde (for the most part) and soft, but still: very much, very visibly there. New, at least to me, which made me wonder how many people have noticed them before I had—so often too afraid to look at my face too long lest I pick it all apart—and I feel a bubble of shame begin to rise to the surface. I don’t put enough effort into my femininity, my looks.

I’ve really been trying to not let my ex’s words get under my skin (har har har). But I would be lying if there wasn’t something there, bubbling up below the surface of his words. What I think he really meant but was clearly too hard to verbalize. Ultimately, none of this happened because I “don’t put enough effort into my looks or wear sexy underwear,” but rather because, well, I really don’t like myself, and it shows with how little I care about myself in so many regards. I focus on the wrong things, and it’s heartbreaking and frustrating to watch someone with so many things going for them get in their own way time and time again.

The best of intentions, the worst of impulses.

I’ve spent too many years trying a variety of different ways of achieving a version of myself that other people might like. I tried changing myself, I tried lying, I tried being like others, I tried being less, I tried being more. For while there, I even tried being myself, but that always seemed to be the worst option of all. In so many ways, both literal and metaphorical, I was told I was doing it wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG.

I am having a hard time balancing the act of becoming a better person with overthinking about how I am being ALL the time. And as someone with an ADHD brain and a CPTSD heart, it can be hard for me to see the forest from the trees, and all of that takes me on a LOT of detours at inappropriate times, rendering me far too naval-gaze-y. Often, I lose sight of what’s happening right in front of me because I’m trying to keep up with the imagined 4D chess I assume everyone else is playing.

Because I’m so worried about how I am being and/or being perceived. I know intention can sometimes mean very little. And I am worried I am not being self-aware enough, not trying to learn and grow fast enough. And then the whole thing just feels like such a fucking scam, or at least an un-winnable war with myself doomed to fail from the start. Maybe even built to fail by design. But I also don’t want to stop growing and learning and changing and surprising myself and other people. So what’s a girl (woman) to do?

I don’t know. But I do know the answer is also somehow “forward.” So forward I will go, but not in the way I am used to doing: by erasing myself to become the version of me “they” imagine will make me feel secure and confident and happy. (Whoever “they” is that week.) Because that is also another form of crazy-making, when the daily mental math of being alive in 2026 fascist America is already exhausting. And like, I’ve learned so much in these past few years. Going back to old habits and patterns AIN’T IT, doll, and I know that means what comes next is unknown and therefore scary. I know that means life may not look like what I or other people have wanted for me, but it will be better than the self-harm of the past. Of the not doing and the fear and the worry and the cycle of self-hating and ultimately isolating mental meltdowns. Because all that is is a coping mechanism gone sour.

Right????

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The loop I’ve been on of late is so clear to me and probably everyone else around me: I don’t make time for the things *I* want to do because I am afraid of what others might think, or how they might make others think/feel, and/or randomly inconvenience and/or annoy anyone at any given moment. I worry about being loud and taking up too much space. I worry about sucking all of the air out of the room when I get too excited. I worry about making time because there are better ways I could be spending my time that have more purpose, or would make me money to survive. Sometimes it feels like the only reason I cook elaborately and as well as I do is because it’s a creative medium that also serves a function: everybody’s gotta eat.

But too often, I get myself all anxious’d out and/or into a self-hatred spiral, and end up doing nothing instead of anything. Because I am convinced that the people who invite me to things would have a better time if I weren’t there. I convince myself that I will be annoying or awkward or someone people will have to do “the heavy lifting” of socializing around me. I worry I’ll become a bloviating narcissist who won’t stop talking about themselves, and that it would be better for all involved if I were to just stay home and keep myself locked up in isolation.

I need to reorient my relationship to myself and to the habits and efforts I put forth in my life. To question and push myself towards a deeper understanding of why I am like this and be kindly welcoming of whatever pops up. Because being in my last relationship gave me a lot of interesting clarity about how I am perceived—both good and bad. On the positive side, my ex really revealed to me how truly talented and creative and multi-faceted I am. He made me believe I was interesting, engaging, and fun to be around.

On the negative side, though, I saw how hyper-independent (to my detriment) I can be. How at times controlling, other times too amenable, because I’m not as in touch with my feelings and emotions as they’re happening as I would like to be—although to my credit I also think it’s just because I’m so exhausted from having to make all the decisions for myself and other people (in a work capacity) all the time. I also saw how distractible I am, how forgetful, how angry I am deep down. And at the heart of it, I saw how deeply insecure and fearful I am, the beating heart of those core wounds instantly activated at the smallest drop of a hat. Having greater clarity about these things is something I’ve long, well, longed for, but have been too afraid to ask of the people in my life. Because, well, it feels really really self-involved to ask people what they think of you and/or how you might be perceived. I’m convinced all I would get is a positively slanted bit of flattery. A lie dressed up in half-truths, people thinking that that’s what I was desperately grasping for rather than the hard truths.

I’m also, frankly, terrified that all of this self-reflection has made me a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy: my fear of becoming a self-involved narcissist fulfilled by the act of trying to not be one. Which then begs the question: how and in what ways can I break these cycles and patterns of thinking so I might just be able to sit and exist as a person and just be, even if I have no idea what that means???

Exhausting, crazy-making shit, no?

It all feels very vulnerable and necessary, but also not sometimes, too. Because like, doesn’t the answer of who I am simply live inside of me? As I exist, so does it be? In the act of becoming, I am, or something like that? I am no guru, but! Point is, I really want to interrupt the cycle of this negative thinking and self-talk. But to notice brings about its own set of issues (see above).

“Don’t shave your face!” my little sister begged. “It’s just going to make it all grow back even worse.” But what is actually worse: ignoring the things I don’t like about myself, or trying something different to make a change? What’s worth noticing and changing, and what isn’t, and how do you know the difference when your internal programming is all messed up and infected by the voices of others you’ve long embedded into your own subconscious as The Only Ones to Listen To?

I used to get in trouble for noticing things: the weed pipe in a tin of Altoids, the way my father looked at that woman at his work. So I tried to train myself to stop noticing. I smoked too much weed to try and forget. The only problem is that when you do that, you stop noticing things...and you forget things. But that doesn’t keep you safe, or make for good art. It also doesn’t make for a good person—no matter what the person who doesn’t like your noticing thinks.

I want to make more time and space for noticing. I want to hone in on what my body feels and thinks and does it when it notices something. And I think I want to use that metric, and that system, rather than something external like comparison to others (a thief of joy or so I’m told!) to guide me on this part of my journey. But I also think that means cutting a few things off that make it easy to do so (social media scrolling, weed smoking, my mildly agoraphobic tendencies, thinking rather than acting, etc), rather than just focusing on the superficial, like the hair on my face and temples.

I am often pulled to the act of diaretic writing in public, even when simultaneously repelled and uncomfortable about it. I don’t like what it says about me: that I am naval-gazing and self-absorbed or narcissistic. I worry, far too much, about the judgments of other people. But writing has always been how I’ve learned to process shit and understand that which is happening around me. For a long time, it helped me craft a lot of coping narratives, from which I am now trying to break free. Because they were not honest or compassionate towards what my tiny self was experiencing. And I am trying to be honest, and understand myself, after decades of running away from the little girl I once was, maybe always will be. I want to heal the cognitive dissonance she was constantly assaulted with on the daily, about the world and who she was, and why it felt so hard to be in it when it seemed like everyone else found the act of being alive so easy.

Because I get it now, at least I think I do a bit better than I did before. Decades more life experience and a generally insatiable amount of curiosity has allowed me to face, accept, and move through some of my darkest shames, most complicated memories, and moments of wrongdoing. And writing about it has been helpful for me. Allegedly helpful to others, too, which makes me so emotional to talk about because it feels like part of the reason we’re all here and why we do what we do however we choose to do it. Something something the loving collective of individualized communal existence? I don’t know.

I wrote something last week. I don’t know if you read it? But the whole experience was a true lightning rod moment for me. Of allowing myself to be angry and expressing it—both to the man involved and outwardly to all of you reading this. It all galvanized in me something that’s felt truly foundational and lacking within my soul: confidence and self-assurance. You see, for most of my life I’ve felt like I did not have permission or the right to be confident in myself, who I am, and my abilities. Which, yes yes yes, I know, is making you all roll your eyes right now, but that doesn’t make it any less true. I was made fun of and ostracized by a lot of people, some even purporting to be my friends and family, for being outspoken and creative (and seemingly good at it) and curious. I grated a lot of nerves, and probably had a lot of confidence because, frankly, I had a lot to be confident about: I was smart, thoughtful, artistic and creative. I was inquisitive and curious. I was a great listener. I could sing, act, write, and did…all the time. I couldn’t do math and I couldn’t sit still. I was tall and fat and had curly brown hair at a time when my mom had none and stick straight blonde hair was all the desirous rage.

And over time, the confidence that I had in all of that, the joy that it brought me, the desire I had to engage with it, all got stripped away by tiny acts and words. By so, so, so people telling me I couldn’t because of how I looked, no matter the level of talent. And then there were all the attempts to attain thinness and being deemed conventionally attractive. Oh and also constantly being told that everything about you and your personality is very annoying and exhausting and if you could just try and be less maybe we will like that version of you. But also ew, don’t do that, because now you’re being a super try-hard desperate weirdo which is so obviously inauthentic and we HATE that. So lose, lose, lose, you LOSER! That’s all we really want from you! To just feel bad and not do anything of value or that brings you joy, so we feel validated in our inability to do anything but submit to the bullshit, too.

Fuckin’ christ, I’m exhausted just from writing that. Certainly you are from reading it and/or possibly living some side of it, too. Aren’t you? Don’t we all deserve better than that? And a system that creates the possibility for better than that? Writing it all out and releasing it out into the world releases me from it and makes it all feel a lot more feasible—or at least, that’s the hope. I certainly feel better for having written what I did about my ex, for example: even if it wasn’t the quietest, nicest, most perfect thing for a human to do. Even if part of me wants to text him and say, “We had a couple of beautiful months there, didn’t we? I’m thankful for what it was and wish nothing for the best for you, too.” (While another part still feels a little “fuck you” about the whole situation.)

Because the act of living and being alive is hard. And complicated. And often imperfect and constantly changing. It involves a lot of failure, which is how you learn and grow (ugh, annoyiiiiiing!!!!). It’s also how other people learn and grow, too—not just from their personally experienced failures and imperfect moments, but by seeing/hearing/reading about the trials and tribulations of others. It was for me, and it is the same for many, many other people I know. Why do you think so many forms of entertainment are “based on a true story”? And while I may not know much I do know that at my Big Age of 40, I am deeply tired of having regrets and living my life in a way that feels so held back and half-stated (even for someone like me who never shuts the fuck up). Existing in survival mode and vacillating between fight-flight-or-fawn for so long, caused me to forget myself and who I was. I tried to annihilate my feelings and it cost me basically everything. So I think the only way for me to remove the power that shame and regret carry is to speak, or write, it all out loud.

A big lesson I’m in the middle of learning involves regret and shame. Those feelings cannot be eradicated, and may always linger in the body. (Semi-related, if any of this resonates with you, please read What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo.) And the sooner I accept that, I think, the less those things will hold me back. But what gives shame and regret their power is their ability to exist in the shadows, in the secret confines of your mind. These are the things that police my vulnerability and keep me from being fully honest or imperfectly human and authentic to my internal experience. And those feelings have only become more magnified in the era of perma-surveillance and social media. I get why the kids of Gen Z don’t dance anymore. And I hate that, so consider me a sacrificial lamb of embarrassingly public lived experience. The Court Jester of surviving an imperfect, publicly lived human life for your amusement.

I think I do this writing because I feel like I have to in order to free myself from the shackles of anxiety and shame. I feel compelled to write about living a life, warts and all, as it’s happening—not with the shiny, narratively tidy and self-preserving gift of hindsight. Because I think doing so removes the idea that we must present perfection at all times in order to be accepted. We all deserve the right to privacy and to experience and process things as we need, but we also deserve the same right and respect around the decision to talk about things imperfectly and openly. It removes the power and shame that experiences hold over us. And ultimately I think us humans would all be better for having a bit less anxiety about being seen and judged in public.

It’s like, okay, so you can see how embarrassing and cringe and imperfect I am. Oh no! Now you’re all going to cluck and crow and gossip with your friends about how weird/loser-y/insert-insult-here I am, aren’t you? (Or maybe, alternatively, you’re not and you don’t care! Or maybe you even secretly love it. But for now let’s not go there.) OK. Cool. So what? Do you feel better and/or superior now? Great. Now, let me ask you this: is that how you talk about yourself and/or your friends when they are imperfectly human? If so, who hurt you and told you, explicitly or not, that you are only acceptable as a human if you adhere to some idea of what “perfection” is? Who amongst us isn’t a person who has lived embarrassingly and imperfectly, possibly in front of other people? Who hasn't lived with that shame or felt the complicated emotions that come from looking back on the person that you were through the lens of the person you are now? Is there a benefit to limiting the scope of your empathy? Or would that force you to question too much?

We’re all so fucking curious about each other’s lived experiences, we all want to know about them, try to absorb as much information and/or gossip as we can about other people, it’s why reality TV is so huge. Fictional or not, knowing about other people’s lives are gripping, normalizing, interesting, game-changing, and sometimes even funny and poignant and devastating and insightful and and and. Only or cultural and often personal knee-jerk reaction is to lambast or look down on those who do such things. People who use their lives and pain as a source of empowerment, transformation and/or inspiration, especially if they are women, are often deemed narcissistic or too self-involved to be engaged with seriously, let alone given any space for nuance or earnest discussion.

Probably because that’s the projection that’s been passed down onto us. To have curiosity about the internal experience of being human, what it feels like and how it manifests for ourselves and other people—especially in regards to the self—is a shameful, fruitless endeavor. And it is often told to us by incurious people who find that living without self-reflection benefits them greatly. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism learned from childhood. Maybe it’s shame or a survival tactic manifested by the ego or their own lived experience. Maybe it’s a fear of learning too much and not liking what you see. Or maybe it’s just going with the program, because life is exhausting enough.

I get it. I do, really. Sometimes I really, really wish I didn’t do/think/talk/write this much. But here we are.

I used to feel helpless about becoming a “real person.” Lost and awash and in search of something somebody else might deem to be “meaningful enough” but also not so out of left field so as to be deemed “scary”, “weird”, or the dreaded “too much.” I’ve run from all these things, imagining the voices of so many of you reading these words right now in my head, thinking or saying the most ungracious things about me and my writing and the content contained therein. I’ve given so many of you the meanest voices and thoughts as an affirmation that I should hold myself back, do and be less, not share so much. Just be fucking quiet. Disappear. Or at least, find something to write about that’s more focused and useful and interesting to a wider group of people. For once.

And maybe some of you are saying some of that behind my back. Maybe some of you will unsubscribe or unfollow, finally feeling like you’ve had “enough” or all this internal-external handwringing. But what is more likely is that none of you will read this or think anything of it at all. And that’s okay, too. Maybe even freeing. Maybe. Because with every word I write and experience I have, I am growing and learning and evolving and becoming better than the woman I was before, regardless of who has eyes on it and what yours see in me.

He wanted friction, so how’s this for friction?

It was midnight when I turned to my boyfriend and said, “Can I ask an insecure girl question? It feels like you’re no longer attracted to me and I need to know if I am right or if I am just being crazy.”

He was silent for a moment in a way that told me everything. I wasn’t crazy, I wasn’t crazy, I was just right about a man’s feelings. He sighed and ruffled his be-dandruffed hair, flecks falling all over my satin pillow cases.

“You’re right, something’s different and I am no longer attracted to you, and I don’t know why.”

For two weeks, something felt different between us. Ever since I pushed him to let me see his apartment. It’s also when his vertigo started acting up. He refused, for the record: he thought if I did see where he lived it would change my opinion of him. I promised him that it wouldn’t, but if it did, it was also my right to do so: isn’t that the whole point of the beginning of a relationship? We have to be honest with one another if we want to be together.

There were far fewer stolen touches and glances after that. His shame was a palpable influence on our dynamic: less hands on the small of my back, less insatiability in our kisses. I clocked it almost immediately, but he was just getting over the vertigo, of course. So I let it slide, I chose to be gentle.

“If you won’t let me see your apartment you have to describe it to me, you at least owe me that.” So he did: there was a desk and a chair, a few boxes from his ex that his TV sat upon, and a twin mattress on the floor. His bedroom was actually a converted living room. The common spaces—the kitchen and bathroom—were constantly dirty, thanks to his other, more careless roommates to whom he never spoke. I gave him grace and kept on dating him, despite those red flags staring right at me. Sure, he was a man of nearly 40, but you have to understand: he came from a lifetime of poverty. His own drug abuse (sober for 20 years now) and that of an addict parent sending him on a roundabout journey towards self-actualization. I chose to demure because I got it: scarcity can do that to a person. Besides, our connection felt profound. I refused to let money get in the way of that.

Our first date was on Valentine’s Day, where we spent a magical 4 hours wandering the Natural History Museum, a veritable romcom meet cute unfolding right in front of our eyes. Histories and backstories both spilling out of us, we found a shared emotional language and shorthand of understanding almost instantly. It was electric. He wasn’t ambitious, he told me, but who cares? I had enough ambition for the both of us, working on my television show like I currently am. Not everyone has to make their passions their job.

On our fourth date he wore a jersey for his favorite soccer team and a pair of grey sweatpants. Which was fine, I was making us dinner in my home and was in leggings and a cropped bra top myself. Money was tight for both of us at the moment, so staying in and learning more about each other while I cooked a delicious meal felt like exactly the right thing to be doing.

And then it became the only thing we did and that outfit became his uniform. Because it was easy, I was tired, he was broke, etc, etc. Which is fine, I guess. I missed going to nice places, sure, but I didn’t want to hurt his ego by suggesting things that were too expensive or where his soccer jersey might look inappropriate. After all, he never brought another set of clothes when he came to spend the night. And I didn’t want to come across like I was a superficial person. (Because I really don’t think I am.)

When we first got together, he couldn’t keep his hands off of me—to the point that I wondered if it didn’t feel a little forced. The way he would press his face so feverishly against mine, as if trying to prove it to himself more than anything. I would laugh a little and redirect him to something a bit slower and softer, to be more intuitive and sensual. It wasn’t the first time I had to rehabilitate a kisser. “I don’t know what you do to me, but I can’t keep my hands off of you. You’re such a good kisser, you’re so sexy, oh my god,” he would say, telling me he didn’t care if I shaved or wore makeup, that he loved every part of me and my body—my mind and my abilities, my belly; everything about me was sexy to him, he insisted. Over and over again. And that made me feel sexy, with or without makeup. Which was ideal since I did not wear makeup that regularly: it often causes me to break out or feel very itchy. My eyes water and it can take weeks to recover if I don’t remove it instantly upon getting home.

That night, in my bed, when I called him on his notable decrease in desire for me, he hemmed and hawed and stammered and protested. He didn’t want to talk about it, was too tired, his too brain foggy from the weed smoked hours prior. And yet the reason was always on the tip of his tongue, and I could feel it, so I insisted he told me. He didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but I told him it was too late for that, so he might as well be honest. After all, weren’t we dating? Didn’t that require us to be real with one another and deal with the hard things and tough conversations?

I stared at him in the darkness, waiting for an answer. After a minute he sighed heavily, his arms contorted in faux-agony. “Don’t listen to me!” he declared, his brain running the mental math of honest expression as he lay there in my bed. “I...I wish you put more effort into your appearance. You never wear makeup or sexy underwear....!” He was exasperated and put off as he said it, as if it were I causing him a great shame and sadness. I sat there in stunned silence, which pressed him to continue telling me the things he swore he did not have the words for only moments prior. “And I hate to use a Gen Z term, but you’re sort of a pick me girl,” a phrase he likely heard on the internet (because he’s nearly 40) and understood to be a stand-in for “desperate for love and deeply insecure.” Which is, admittedly, not exactly what that term means, but when have men really strived for accuracy and understanding when wielding language?

“There’s no friction with you,” he said to me. ‘You’re just so agreeable.” I laughed and said “so you wish I was more of a bitch?”

“Honestly, you’d be more attractive if you were a bitch. You’re frictionless.”

All I have ever known myself to be is a purveyor of friction. Just ask my mother or my brother or the men that I worked with at Nerdist. Ask the 15,000 people who followed me on Twitter in 2016. Ask the men of Reddit who decided to pile on me in 2021, calling me a fat bitch who should be raped and murdered because I dared to share the reality of several situations. “Alicia is a tough nut to crack,” an old friend’s boyfriend once lamented. Mine has never been an easy entrance fee, and my inability to filter my thoughts and feelings has gotten me into my fair share of trouble, both regrettable and not. Shit, I’ve lost jobs and familial relationships because of all of the friction I’ve caused. Our relationship felt easy in so many ways, and I valued it for that.

He, clearly, did not.

Unable to keep my mind from reeling and the sadness from infiltrating, I went downstairs and left him in my room to stew in what had just happened. I smoked part of a joint hoping it would knock me out and we could finish the conversation tomorrow. But by the end of it, I was laughing at the sheer audacity of the situation. Because after all that, he said he wanted to “keep trying to see if it would come back,” meaning his attraction to me. Which would, one would assume, involve me becoming the very thing I was not, the thing he said he did not need but apparently very much did. It would, essentially and ironically, render me the ultimate Pick Me Girl.

I returned to my room with a chuckle. “Are you okay?” he asked meekly. “I want to be so mean to you right now,” I replied. “Okay, so do it,” he retorted with a resigned sort of affectation.

“I just think it’s really ironic that the man who wears the same soccer jersey to my apartment every day thinks that I don’t put enough effort into my looks.”

“I only started doing that recently...” he stammered in attempted interruption. But I pushed on.

“The man who won’t let me see his apartment, because he’s ashamed of the lack of effort he’s put into his own home, as if that’s different from not wearing makeup.”

“It is different!”

“How?”

“Because I’m poor!”

“I know I make less money than you. I know I do.”

He had nothing to say to that.

“And it’s not different. Because I spent the very little money I do have on making my home feel safe and secure, on making food for the unhoused and on experiences with my friends and loved ones instead of more superficial bullshit like makeup and clothes, which are, by the way, very expensive!”

I went on: “I don’t wear makeup at home, and if you show up in the same soccer shirt every time we hang out, why should I dress up and feel awkward or make you feel awkward because I look better dressed and put more effort in than you while we’re out at the movies on a random Tuesday night?”

He didn’t know what to say to that, either.

“And that you felt this way for ostensibly two weeks and never said anything? Were you just going to talk to all of your friends and coworkers about it and then slow fade me like all your other relationships, because you’re too spineless? That’s so cruel and unkind and disrespectful to me.”

“I’m sorry, I guess it is a little spineless” was all he could offer.

It was 12:50 in the morning when I looked at this man I once thought I might fall in love with and said, “I think if either of us want to have a productive day tomorrow you have to leave. Right now.” “Really?” he said, a whiff of surprise somehow on his breath.

“I mean I can’t sleep right now, can you? Are you able to sleep right now?” “No...” he resigned, ho-hummily.

He texted me the next day saying “I’m sorry” that the conversation was “so hard,” and I fired back at him with screenshots of the definition of the phrase “pick me girl.” I have never been this angry or blindsided by a breakup. “Can’t stop thinking about how much this is not me,” I texted back.

“Let’s talk about it later when we’ve both had some distance.” That would be unnecessary, I assured him, days later. After all, what more was there to say?

Did he really want me to dress him down and humiliate him again? Tell him how lacking in self-awareness of his own shit he was? How it all felt like a total cop-out and excuse—that either he was lying to me and/or himself, possibly this whole time? That he needed more therapy and a bigger reality check than I or any one woman could ever offer? That if he really wanted to “still be friends” he wouldn’t have shown me such blatant cruelty and complete disrespect?

Is that what love feels like to him? Constant negotiation and friction? Incurious avoidance branded as “letting shit go”? How dreadfully boring and pathetically toxic. How deeply unfulfilling and isolating. That is not the sort of relationship I want, and I have way too much self-respect to waste my time with all that. After all, I may not wear make up, but I am directing videos for major publications while I prepare to sell my high-concept comedy TV show, perform mutual aid work, and create beautiful artifacts for my home—it’s not like I bring nothing to the ding dang table.

I hope he finds a therapist and a clue and a desire for self-reflection around the projections he throws onto other people. I have worked too goddamn hard on myself and my life to be pulled into the sort of ill-fated codependency he so clearly craves. And honestly, I think I look damn good for a woman of 40 without fucking makeup on. And every other man I have dated up until this point would agree.

Generally, I think friction is a good thing: friction allows us all to grow. Friction unearths the dysfunctional stuff so you can work towards becoming the more evolved version of the person that you are. Friction keeps us curious. If we’re lucky, we are always, constantly growing in that regard. But craving friction for the sake of it is merely a learned, unhealed response to all the chaos that came before. You know, childhood trauma and shit.

He wanted friction, and the irony is that I was giving him exactly that in that moment, and he was running away from it. Some men can have literally nothing but they will still have the fucking audacity, amirite?

Thankfully I’ve got better things to do with my life than to be someone’s “perfect” doll.

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Every morning starts with his tongue. Coming for my nose the second I begin stirring, I can feel his tiny body stretch and contort, making his way out from underneath the covers, hurried excitement coupled with a few good, long stretches. Sun’s up, Winston’s up! He paws at my hands, insisting I relinquish my nose, as I have instinctively covered up my face to avoid his morning shower. Tiny teeth gently nibble and lick at any part of me, in the hope that I will leap from bed and get our day started. God I love my dog.

It’s been hard for me to focus on anything other than his love of late, because it feels like the only reliable thing in my life.

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On some levels (many), this is annoying, embarrassing, and cringe. I know that I am too obsessed with my dog. But I also contend that there are far worse things for me to be obsessed with—and also our feelings for one another so far seem to be mutual. There’s so much love for me in this tiny, furry package, and I for him. It’s the sort of love I’ve never experienced before, and it keeps me tethered to reality rather than the overwhelming sense that I am a person who Feels Too Much Too Intensely.

But what a gift it is to be so loved. This back-and-forth of let me sleep/no you get up! lasts around fifteen minutes before I eventually turn to my alarm, turn it off (45 minutes before its scheduled ringing, natch), and make my way into the bathroom to brush my teeth and shake the sleep from my person. He settles into the spot I just left until I am in my closet changing. When the pants go on, he gets off the bed and excitedly jumps on my legs before running to his basket of toys, channeling all his excitement into nibbling on whichever one he chooses first, waiting by the bedroom door to be unleashed onto the rest of the apartment, toy in mouth, too excited to let go lest he need to do more emotional self-soothing via chewing. And so our day begins.

Our love isn’t just words and phrases, it’s tactile and physical. I have always felt that I have so much love to give, and he is the first living thing that I’ve ever felt has really wanted to bask in it, gladly. Now why would I put any boundaries or limits on that? What, am I supposed to hate joy and feeling loved?

So much in life these days feels theoretical and/or ephemeral. And I’ve been feeling the desire to reorient my days and reconnect my mind and body to those things that are more palpable and exist in the physical, aka not on the screen of my laptop or phone. Which is also why this newsletter has become a bit inconsistent. Waiting on significant payments for work I completed months ago has required me to exist in a far more frenetic space; my days mostly consisting of rushed texts and emails in order to secure dog walks and other last-minute gigs to ensure I have enough money to pay my bills. This has created an exhaustion loop that keeps me from connecting with the things that truly bring me peace and joy: namely, creating and being physically activated away from screens. The 3 or 4 daily walks I take with Winston help to remind me of this, but often that’s all there’s really time for—there’s never enough money in the bank to spend a day simply feeling or being or languishing in creative thought.

I’ve been daydreaming a lot about the week I spent in Mammoth Lakes rewriting my pilot in August. How lovely and perfect it was to start our days with long hikes in gorgeous locations; to come home and make something simple and delicious for lunch; to eat it on the porch after a reviving shower, letting my hair air dry while the bunnies taunt Winnie from afar. Spending the afternoon writing and thinking about characters and story while listening to music, before heading to the hot tub for a pre-dinner dip and post-dinner dog walk. I think about all the smells, the flowers, the trees, the water. I think about the winding roads, the seclusion, and how intoxicating the idea of running away to a smaller, slower life is to me in this moment. I think about how much my brain and body seem to desire quiet and how I have been called weird or creepy on more than one occasion for sitting in and enjoying the empty, the lack, the nothingness. I think about how little I care about those comments now compared to how I did at the time, when I felt the need to immediately put on some music or a podcast in order to prove to people that I am normal, just like everyone else: addicted to the distraction that the constant noise provides.

This has also meant that writing has felt difficult the past few weeks. Every idea I have turns to shit the second I attempt to write it down and make it permanent. I’m inspired to do it, and immediately repulsed by the words and sentences that result. This may be writing for most people, but it has hardly been my experience of it. But my brain is running on less than fumes right now, and I am desperate to rehabilitate it: I need to refuel the tank with acts that feel like some sort of luddite rebellion rather than our current state of digitized existence. I love technology, I hate it, and I cannot live without it. Oh what a luxury it must be to be able to opt into but also out of it, whenever the fancy strikes you. That is the ultimate status symbol—maybe even more so than money.

The past few years I have been quietly working on a sort-of memoir project. Doing so is confronting and deeply uncomfortable. At this point I have thousands upon thousands of words written down in various stages of “finished,” a word which will no doubt elicit a few LOLs from the writer crowd reading this right now. I believe I have a story to tell, and I also believe it is wildly narcissistic and egomaniacal to think as much. So, naturally, whenever I work on said project, it feels a little dangerous. And when I am feeling really shit about myself, I beat myself over the head with the mere idea of it. Which is, if you can believe it, deeply not conducive to good and honest writing. Attempting to put these thoughts, experiences, and words down on (metaphorical) paper has caused me to create the sort of overwrought, overwritten dreck that makes most writers want to pack it in completely. To give up on the idea of this memoir about the people I am not and how they made me; the tethers to which I have largely felt bound and trapped. I believe simultaneously that my story is interesting and has value, and is also so common as to be vapid and worthless. But isn’t that, in some ways, the hallmark of a story worth telling? Something so spectacularly absurd but also deeply emotionally relatable that it touches many different, disparate people?

I don’t know if I’m allowed to own my own life experience like this. I also don’t know how to write my own story because I’m in it. And like, so so deeply in it right now, as the themes I’ve been grappling with since childhood are really rearing their ugly little heads right now. I am too close to the source material to be objective, because the source is me and I am in the middle of processing and changing my orientation to so much of it, even if what I am writing about happened in the past. All the worst thoughts I’ve ever had about myself and others come rushing to the forefront any time I begin typing, and I lose sight of what I was trying to accomplish. I get down on myself and the cruelest part of my brain says to me “yeah, this is why you’ll never be successful, and why you’re clearly an evil narcissist who should not be engaged or enabled in this tomfoolery at all.”

What art might I make if this wasn’t how my brain saw all that I do? How beautifully poetic, and funny, and vulnerable, and raw, and real might it be? How fully realized and fully embodied? How unafraid and poignant and affecting? I wonder all the time, especially when I read other writers who have somehow managed to do so—most of them, interestingly enough, come from a lot of generational and/or familial wealth, but not all of them do. Some had to fight, tooth and nail, to give themselves the space to feel and be that. I worry I am not strong enough in spirit, afraid any attempts at being so would become the opposite of my intent given how desperate and hungry the black hole of sadness is inside of me.

Surviving late stage capitalism is some Hunger Games-ass shit and, by design, depletes you so thoroughly so as to not fight back or question the system. It actively encourages your worst thoughts about yourself and others, often enabling them to fester and weaken your sense of self and your bonds to other people. And if you don’t come from the sort of hearty emotional stock borne out of secure parenting, well: good fucking luck out there, champ!

There’s a part of me that knows this is just a passing feeling—a phase and not the entirety of the journey. But I also know there’s a not-small part of me that thinks this is merely all there is for me: that I will forever struggle and never know security (both financial and interpersonal) for even a day of my life. Not just because of the system, but because of my own personal failures and my lack of desire to play the game. To swallow the cognitive dissonance, or take advantage where I can, emboldens my brain to tell me that, see, actually I am just weak and an uncreative loser.

“You just seem so down on yourself, and that makes me sad,” he said. I could not look him in the eye because he was right—I am instinctively always a bit down on myself. “I need to keep myself humble,” I often joke in response to anyone who calls out my lack of self-esteem or confidence. But not this time. Because I can’t, nor do I want to, hide the realities of myself from this man. I look down and sigh, “yeah.” I stop myself from saying “sorry,” because I also say that too much, too. I cling to his body as we entangled; he kisses my forehead and smooths out my hair and I really, really want to tell him how sorry I am that I am like this. That I want to change this thing about myself for him, because he sees in me all the wonderful things I want to think about myself but feel too afraid to admit.

I hate that I need to feel actively loved, and all-too-regularly reassured in that love, in order to feel valid and confident in my personhood. But when I swing that around and imagine a loved one saying as much to me, I get deeply protective of the imagined them. “It’s normal and necessary to feel wanted and loved, we do not exist in a vacuum,” I scream in defense of this imaginary friend. “We are a communal species that has only survived thus far because of love! To feel rejected and abandoned and/or forgotten by those you love is crushing and completely alienating and it’s deeply common and relatable to feel those feelings. We all need love to feel secure.”

Which is why it always comes back to my dog. To Winston. It’s exactly why I love my dog too much and obsessively love on him with such an unbridled, affectionate glee. When else do we get to feel like this? I burst into tears when I talked about this with my therapist upon adopting him two years ago, so overwhelmed as I was to feel that much love from another living creature. Is this what unconditional love feels like? It’s intoxicating and addictive. It’s soul-soothing and comes with the most wonderful sort of reward: the loving companionship of my dog.

But most love is not unconditional. Nor should it be, really. Because decency and care are necessary conditions if love is to survive and thrive. And I think that goes for all relationships, even the one you have with yourself. I don’t think I’ve been so good at that last bit, because it feels too hard, or self-indulgent, or unnecessary to survive day-to-day life. And when I type that out, all I feel is sad—but also angry that we’ve created a world where humans have to live like this.

Which is why—if you’ll let me sound a bit Marianne Williamson about all of this—the most radical and punk think you can do right now is to love, freely and fiercely. To love is, maybe, the scariest, most necessary thing of all. particularly when to love means to have so much more to lose. But if we don’t love and express our love with the sort of gusto and verve that my dog has every morning, we’re sure to fail ourselves as a species. And I want to love this world and myself as much as my little dog loves licking my nose and ear holes first thing in the morning: with the disgusting sort of ferocity that only comes from gleefully loving and expressing that love. I’m ready to fall back in love with love and loving, and see where that takes me next.

She was one of my favorite neighbors. We could rely on one another. I always wanted to foster a community around me—it takes a village, etc.—and thankfully, so did she. So we did. I would help her with gardening, her son’s school bake sales, and other random odds and ends. My roommate and I would feed the cats when her and her family were away. She was one of the first people I ever let watch my beloved Winston. She loved him, she loved all of us—this neighborhood, this community of people we’d created, full of animals and warmth and silliness and love. She loved so much it felt like the sun, burning bright hot and ferociously.

Nearly every morning started with a hello to one another: she while watering her plants or jetting off her son to school, me while walking my dog or being too precious with my own little patio garden. I was so inspired by the space that she created, both literal and metaphorically. She never judged anyone (but herself, sometimes too harshly). She was curious. She was hungry for life and all it could offer. She nurtured. She was so fun. She was searching for her path and how she wanted to return to herself as her child grew up and became his own person. And she had so, so many incredible stories to share.

Because of course she did: she lived life like a lightning bolt. I’ve spent so many hours around tables with her, laughing and sharing tales from our days in NYC, though her NYC was a much different era and she was far, far cooler than I could ever be. A can-do fashion girlie in ’90s NYC? She worried that her fun and cool days were behind her, and I would laugh because how could they ever be when she was still so full of life? Singing and playing the fool. Dancing and partying while considering the multitudes. Looking for insight in order to grow, to understand all that she didn’t in a rapidly changing world. Humility, humor, and a lack of judgment towards all. Curiosity and joie de vivre. A former party girl turned raconteur with a heart of gold. I assumed her well would be full for ages.

When she started writing I was thrilled for her: she had a voice completely her own and I knew that she could use it effectively. I would edit her writing when she asked, giving her suggestions, and telling her what I hoped she already knew: that it was all already inside of her. She insisted I was changing her writing and making her sound cooler, funnier, and better than she was: I would tell her all I did was finesse what was already there, which was all her. Because she was funny, and insightful, and thoughtful, and smart, even if she insisted the opposite was true. She was so supportive of my own writing, too. Constantly asking to read my scripts, which I let her do. Always curious about updates on the show I’m currently shopping, imploring me to keep at it, telling me that she loved the big and wild stories that I wanted to tell. I’m sure I will look back at her texts and emails of encouragement for years to come; I look forward to the smile I know they will one day bring.

I haven’t cried about it yet, but the tears have been welling up behind my eyes for days. When our friend told me the news on Sunday morning, I could feel them instantly forming, but other parts of me insisted I push them down and go a different path: one of strength. For her friends, for her family, and our beloved neighborly community. So I hugged my friends tightly as I told them the news. And I tried to be a pillar, taking on what I could. I found myself cooking: a lasagna, some passionfruit tarts. Planning brownies or maybe chocolate chip cookies for when her son returns home from his cousins’ house, unable to remember which were her favorites, and deciding to just do both. Too afraid to show my face for too long so as to keep her loved ones from consoling me because I think they need it more. I may feel like I do not know how to show up or love correctly (whatever that means) in these moments, but at least I can cook for them and fill their bellies. Warm their insides when all feels so, so deeply lost; the world suddenly much colder and unwelcoming.

I have lost people in my life before, but this one hits different. I saw Tené almost every single day for the past six years that we have been neighbors and friends. That sort of closeness feels akin to something like family, as someone whose family is not close like that and lives thousands of miles away. I have watched her son grow, I have watched her grow, I have met her sister, friends, and other family. I have borne witness to so many things, perhaps greatest of all being her light and love and how freely she was willing to give it.

And now that light is gone and I’m struggling with how to process it. People are complicated, and life is as heartbreakingly sad as it is beautiful. And that’s the rub, now, isn’t it? Tragedy strikes those who do not deserve it all the time. Because who really deserves to feel this sort of pain? No one, and yet it is also inherent. Maybe even necessary in order to appreciate the act of being alive. I think about all the life that she had left to live, and the massive hole she leaves behind in all of us who were lucky enough to know her and bask in her glowing, fiery light. So much light that it felt endless. Which is why it ending just makes no sense to my brain, despite knowing it to be true: that her human form is gone. Forever. I think my body is so used to seeing her that it hasn’t quite internalized what my brain ostensibly knows. It’s like this animal form in which my existence lives is still expecting to see her, face mask on as she waters her flowers and feeds the squirrels in her bikini, trying to give pets from Winston who is too distracted by said squirrels to notice. It echoes in my bones. I smile and want to cry in equal measure. I want to hug everyone who’s ever known her.

I think about her son. About how I know this will chemically alter him for the rest of his life. My own heart hurts deeply in tandem, knowing the pain of a parent disappearing from your life (even if my father’s absence was his choice) and how much it changes you. No amount of therapy or well-adjusted living can make up for that loss at that young an age. I was eight when my father left and it cratered my world—the reverberations still impacting me over thirty years (and several therapists) later. It’s hard for me to not project some of that pain onto her son, knowing that not having his mother in his life will impact his relationship to himself and to others for years to come. I hope that it doesn’t, but I know that it will. How could it not? Especially when that parent was as vibrant and integral to his life as his mother was? All I want to do is hug that poor, sweet boy and be there for him. I am sure all the women in his life, regardless of who they’ve lost, feel the same. His mother was a force. She was good.

Was. Just typing about her in the past tense doesn’t feel right. I know that our energy doesn’t really die after our bodies can no longer keep on living, but that “solace” is rarely, if ever, enough. Nor will it be enough to assuage the hurt that will keep on coming, as grief never really seems to leave us, does it? I just hope she knows how much of a presence she was, how loved she was and will forever be, and how hard so many of us will work to help her family heal from an ultimately un-heal-able loss.

I love you, Tené. And I will miss you for as long as my bones know this earth. I promise I’ll do whatever I can to make sure your family feels and knows love in spite of losing their well of it. I hope you know peace and comfort now in the great whatever-comes-next. Your tribe will take care of your wolf cub, even if we cannot hold a candle to your love.

I am more than a warm body. At times I am a furnace.

You run so hot.
I feel like I am radiating heat.

I muse that maybe all the inflammation inside my body is what’s making me run so hot for what’s felt like so long now, but especially when I sleep. Is it my autoimmune system running on overdrive, attacking all of my joints or skin? Is it my anxiety and constant overthinking lighting a literal fire inside me? Perimenopause is posited. You’re way too young for that, my mother insists. Maybe I am. But am I? Maybe I’m not. Or maybe I’ve always run this hot and just chalked it up to fatness. But now, with 140 pounds behind me, it’s just become more obvious. I mean, it’s not like I don’t get cold, too. I feel like I moved to Southern California and now I’m just cold all the time. The hearty New England stock in me is dying inside. Either of humiliation or…

My brain is slightly too big for my skull: another thing a doctor told me at a very young age. I cringe, then and now, thinking about what having a large brain must look like on a woman like me, or the girl that I was then. You think you’re so much better than everyone else are words that echo in my head—words said to me many a time in what feels like another life lived long, long ago. A life I feel so removed from and still so deeply tethered to, for better and worse. Which is why I am sitting here trying to figure out a way to make my very diaretic (diuretic? diarrhetic? ha ha haaaa…) writing somehow not about me. Would anyone fancy a joke about my brain being too big for its britches right about now? I feel a compulsive need to degrade myself right now, to show you that I’m self-aware enough to know that even though I might be pretty smart at times, I am actually just as apt to be/look stupid or hypocritical. I make myself easy to judge. I see the moments where I might make you, the reader, wince and think, oh, honey. I display them here on purpose (sometimes, but not always).

The Millennial state of being is “arrested.” It feels like I’ve been trying to gestate a new life for myself, to circumnavigate that, for nearly a decade to no avail. I imagine it feels this way for many of you reading this, maybe even a few of you Gen X and Zers, too. It feels like I and many of my peers have experienced many a false start in this life, followed by a few rays of hope that keep us in the grind, even if they have yet to bare any real fruit beyond the occasional middling payday or two. We all, of course, do our best to keep all 57 of our personal and professional life plates spinning so as to cobble together some semblance of what looks like an adult life, …only to be left feeling inadequate and surrounded by a lot of pointy shards from the plates that have inevitably fallen in all the chaos and strife. It’s a cycle that—when coupled with the other varying cycles of grief and frustration both personal and international—feels in surmountable if you look at it with logic for too long. It’s enraging, and it’s ultimately a feeling that is borne from grief. The grief of all that we—meaning every living person alive right now—were promised and all we have lost, and all the cycles of this same song and dance we’ve had to go through because of the constant pivots of the larger world. It also feels worth mentioning that I know my feelings are not facts, and the point of this writing is not to dwell, but propel.

One of the most important things a drag queen, or any performer/entertainer, really, is delusion. You hear it all the time on a show like RuPaul’s Drag Race, one of my favorite shows: you have to be a little delusional. You have to think very highly of yourself, your skills, and what you bring to the table, in order to positively push yourself forward lest your “inner saboteur” (to quote RuPaul herself) keep you from achieving your full potential. Greatness can be borne, sure, but it can also be made. Either way, that greatness only sustains when people make the active choice to believe it is possible and act accordingly. And what is that, if not delusion by another name? Don’t try, just do, as my grandmother always used to say. In the face of everything, you must still face forward, huh?

Does anyone else feel like they’ve lived the majority of their life disassociated from their body, permanently burnt out from existing in a constant state of fight-or-flight (or fawn!) in order to just get by? Techno-feudalism has created some real-life fatigue that isn’t just existential. Sometimes it feels like there are, like, 87 tiny women—all little versions of me—running around inside my body in a panic, desperately trying to keep the Titanic (that would be me and my body) from drowning. They’re all different and unique and absolutely foam-mouthed screaming at me about what I should do in order to make it all “right” again. Do I need to cut out sugar completely? Should I be trying to heal my gut? What if it isn’t my hormones or my insulin or or my psoriatic arthritis but a secret fourth thing? What if it’s just how America makes its food? What if it’s a secret tumor or aggressively incurable cancer? What if I’m doing it to myself by merely existing in this perma-worried state?

What if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if what if

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I’m burning up. My face is flush, my brain feels heavy, and there’s a bubbling up of sweat making itself known at the various folds and flaps of me. I want to cut off all my hair, I want to take an ice cold bath. I want to cry, want to scream, smoke too much weed and get woken up when it’s all better. I cannot do any of those things. I don’t really want to do any of these things (except maybe the bath). I wonder if I need some sort of medication, or if one of the two new ones prescribed to me will make it all better. I decide to take a shower and bake something sweet and tasty later tonight instead. I order groceries for pick-up (eggs, cottage cheese, some vegetables, etc) so I can quickly grab them between my work obligations and 8 dog walks I have to perform over the course of the day. I follow up on $1,000 worth of outstanding invoices owed to me and remind myself not to ask about another, far larger invoice, trying to ignore the reality of the demoralizing limbo in which I currently exist: we cannot pay you what we agreed to pay you. Constant delays and negotiations. Worry about whether or not I will have enough money to pay my rent, which is due tomorrow. ping! A notification that a different invoice of $500 has actually come through on time and as promised. A sigh of relief: Millennial Dalloway would be able pay the rent herself today. Again. As she always has, and always will, against all odds, all alone or not. Even if within her a rage about all of this looms ever-closer to the surface, burning something piping hot.

Things will get better. I know that they will. Because I choose to believe as much, even if it is delusional. How else could the human race have survived? Doing and believing that which seems impossible, is a life-or-death imperative. If I’ve really got a big brain in this too-tight skull of mine, I might as well use it. Be it delusional or not.

It’s unappealing and ugly to watch someone slowly melting from the inside, isn’t it? Even the most pathetic parts of ourselves demand to be seen, lest they do something worse by being left inside you, bottled up in your mind and heart, just waiting to explode or implode? How else are we supposed to turn the internal temperature down if not with a release valve? Even if all that valve really is, is words. Sometimes the metaphor is just as powerful and revealing.

I feel like I am radiating heat. That I am a heat source unto myself.

“Why do you care about the bad man?” I care because the bad man is a symptom of our broken whole. I care because “bad” is very often a misnomer, even if incredibly apt. People, in my estimation, are not born into such binary existences as good or bad. Life and our experiences and our epigenetics shape us—and that goes for bad men, too.

I recieved a lot of interesting feedback about my last post. An imperfect post that hinted at, but didn’t fully delve into, why the situation with my bully fascinates me, frustrates me, and still lives in my mind rent free. It’s not because I was particularly, deeply traumatized by this singular man—no, people far closer to me did the lion-share of that—it’s because this man is a symptom. His attitudes and behaviors were shaped not in utero, but out in the world. A world that encouraged him and affirmed his more negative impulses, a world that gave his enablers and fellow bad-behavers a platform to exonerate themselves and gloss over their own misdeeds and part that was played. Because none of us exist in a vacuum. The fascination with it/him/that situation is because it echoes so many other relationships and experiences I have had with men in my life. Men’s bad behaviors were constantly explained away, brushed aside, propped up as more important to assuage. Which can be a real headfuck of a place to exist in if you also love, are attracted to, have friends who are, and/or date men.

After all, I am a by-product of my relationships with the men in my life: a father who left, never to be heard from again, too busy raising another daughter with my exact same name. A boy named Michael who worked with my father, and was 16 at the time I told him I had a crush on him, who took that as an opportunity to sexually assault me when I was 8. A brother whom I drove crazy with my mere existence, driving him to hold a knife to my throat and threaten to kill me after beating me over the head with a wine rack because I dared to ask to use the computer to study for my final exams. A cop who then lied and told my mother that I never told her something I explicitly did in a desperate attempt to avoid being arrested. A family of men who loved me in the daytime but would get drunk at night, and forget that they’d angrily put their hands on me, screaming or laughing in their influenced state. All of it was brushed aside, disbelieved, or simply explained away—mostly by other women—as that’s “just how men are.”

All of these experiences shaped me, in ways I rebelled against…and not. I have felt beaten into submission by the wants and whims of men in this world. And the road to true equity has not felt exactly, well, equitable. Especially when the bad men always seem to come out on top.

And I’m angry because I know it’s not just me who experienced this. We all do. There are undoubtedly millions of women who are told every day, in ways overt and not, to sacrifice themselves and their sense of sanity at the altar of bad male behaviors. To be less so they can be more. To shut up lest they shut down. To make sure their wants/whims/priorities are the only ones that matter. And that all of this is, for better or worse, inevitable. For me, it was constantly being told by my mother how hard my father’s life was before he left; how I should not blame him for disappearing forever without a word and replacing me with another Alicia who would inadvertently haunt my life thanks to our shared name and lineage. In 2023, when I finally spoke to my father for the first time since 1996—he who was/is allegedly dying—I spent 45 minutes on a zoom listening to him talk about how hard it was for him: to leave his kids, to live a life surrounded by a supportive family who loved him. We spent a not insignificant amount of time discussing how hard it was for him that WE, his children that HE LEFT, never reached out to him first—something he assumed we would do because of how “we knew how much he was there for us when we were younger.” The considerations were always for the men’s, well, inadequacies and inabilities—considerations I certainly never felt that I got to even an 1/8th of a degree. And yet.

And yet. And yet and yet and yet. Constant. Constant is the consideration for how we and the rest of the world must bend and break ourselves and our own understandings in order to give special dispensation and consideration to men and their feelings and their shortcomings. Never in a way that empowers them to look inward and fix their shit, mind you—but to coddle and enable them into hopefully one day becoming half of the person a woman is miraculously just expected to be. Or at least until the next Insurmountable Thing or Feeling occurs.

There is, allegedly, a male loneliness epidemic going on. I daresay the men are not lonely enough. Thanks to the manosphere and popular culture’s legitimizing of this utter garbage rhetoric, men who feel “put out” by there mere idea of consequences and/or having to self-reflect and grow based on their actions have a home in which to wallow. They have a bunch of petulant guides to steer their frustrations into indignation and rage. They have a place for their proverbial punching bag (women, society, “wokeness,” whatever) to exist and be affirmed with nary a wrinkle in their argument acknowledged. Never once are they really, truly forced to sit in the true solitude that comes with examining and questioning their own ways of operating—of seeing what part they actively play in their own misery. Because culture has been made and molded to protect them from such inquiries, lest the subsequent spiral that comes from questioning “well if this isn’t true, what else could be a lie?” eat them up inside.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to be swallowed whole by such questioning. It was for me. And though it took literal, actual years to claw my way out of the spiral, the shame, the self-admonishment for my own bad behaviors—I’ve come out stronger, more secure, and more radicalized than ever that the patriarchal forces that push the anti-community, pro-nihilist approach to living, must be demolished in order for humanity to survive. These are, to be clear, systems that I benefit from as a white woman, and I know that my already hard life may end up being a little bit harder (if only for a little bit) in order to bring a better world order to life. But I also see how vital that is to the survival of our planet and our species. I see that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and the long game is worth playing even if I never directly, monetarily benefit from it.

Most men do not do that. Because to do so would be to question everything and see these things for what they are—imperfect answers to a question that needs ever-evolving solutions. And, frankly, capitalism, organized religion, patriarchy, caste systems, and white supremacy do not afford the space for any of that, because they exist in fixed states of being. But that’s not how the world works. And these little boys fail to realize that Mother Nature will simply swat us off (via extinction), take a few thousands years to regrow and recoup, and try again with a different set of self-aware mammals—or, if we’re lucky, a new era of the human race that understands that operating from a place that puts coexistence and love as the top priorities are the only way we’ll survive and thrive.

I’m not really one for cartoons or animated shit, but man do some of those stories hit. Right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Incredibles and Wall-E, and how those stories feel so in line with what is happening now. How we’re letting those without superpowers (in this case, creativity) build machines to mimic superpowers that ultimately take on a life of their own, sucking up all the resources and imperiling us all. How we’re being pacified by screens and unable to see what’s actually right in front of us. How people are so desperate to feel and do things, but unwilling to do the work and deal with the pain that comes from trying. How we’re all so willing to wait around for heroes and believe the men with the most money are that, even when there’s proof that they are anything but. Humanity would rather punish those that question these narratives than question the narratives themselves—at least until there’s a loud enough mob screaming that it would behoove us all to do so. And even then.

Even then, even then, even then.

I’ve been so frustrated by the world and how hard it is to live in it. I’ve been enraged by how many other people feel the same. I don’t think these “bad men” are the reason the world is like this, but allowing them to exist without feeling substantial consequences and the reality of their actions certainly plays an extremely oversized part. And, forgive me, but I just think we all deserve and should demand for something better. We are a genius, miraculous little bunch of minds running around this plane of existence: there is no scarcity unless we create it. And there is also no future unless we do the same—which means we’re going to have to question, dismantle, and rebuild a lot of structures and ways of being. Maybe more than once, learning as we go along the way.

I just wish we humans could see that as thrilling rather than an insurmountable thing. I wish we glorified those not with the most amount of money who “move fast and break things,” but instead “go slow and fix.” We should be shaming these billionaires who believe their own hype machines and those that call them geniuses. They shouldn’t be glorified, they should be called greedy, wealth-hoarding weirdos who are freakishly obsessed with their own mythology and ego. After all, how many of these so-called brilliant men do some of the worst deeds known to man? How many of them lie, cheat, and steal and call it “good business”? And how many of us just nod along and agree that that’s right because, well, we live within a system that we can’t really escape?

I’m tired of waiting for the bad men to turn good. I’m tired of not saying the ugly realities out loud in order to save their sanity and/or good-standing. Especially when it’s making us all go slowly crazy, and completely fucking up the world.

But what do I know? I’m just a stupid little girl with no place in the world, right? At least that’s what they want me to think.

I had to burn the image. That is all I knew for sure. Throwing it out, in my mind, wasn’t nearly enough. It needed to be wiped from the Earth, rendered into ash as if it never even existed. This photo, of a dead-eyed man, taken on a disposable camera from 1998, was no ordinary selfie—this was the selfie of someone who murdered a woman and stuffed her body into the walls of a building, hoping she would never be discovered, and that he could go on living his life unscathed by what he’d done.

He was also my middle school bully.

—

September 2009. I’m a year into working at my first “real” job out of college, a Commercial Operations Specialist at MTV2. I worked on the 44th floor of 1515 Broadway, at the intersection of 44th and Broadway in NYC, also known as the heart of Times Square. A disappearance had taken place at Yale University a week or so earlier, and with every day that the missing woman was not found, public scrutiny and interest increased tenfold. After all, this woman—this PhD candidate student at one of the most prestigious universities in America, if not the world—was days away from getting married. The last she was seen was entering a laboratory. Nobody ever saw her leave, nor was her ID card used to enter or exit after that. Eventually, a body was found.

And then the news hit my Facebook. Someone I’d stayed nominally connected to from my middle school days posted about how an old classmate of ours had been taken into police custody related to the missing persons case. But it wasn’t just any classmate, it was one of the boys that used to make my life hell, who would make me cry and feel like I was some sort of freakish anomaly that deserved all the hate and ire he had in the world, because I dared to be a fat, loud, intellectually curious (and admittedly totally weird) girl. I was a theater kid who loved volunteering and helping people and singing. I loved silly accents and goofy jokes and puns better suited for uncles than fellow 6th graders. But for him, it was mostly the fact that I was fat and ugly that drove him and his friends crazy.

He wasn’t popular, but the popular kids certainly loved him and his ability to talk shit aloud about kids and teachers alike. He pushed peoples’ buttons and any reaction he got thrilled him and the others around him. He, tall and slender, and his two lil henchmen—it’s always two henchmen, huh?—themselves overweight boys, took a lot of joy in pointing out the myriad ways in which I was failing at being a girl.

I remember one of the few times I made HIM have a big angry reaction. After remarking something about my weight, I told him he should give that advice to his buddies Mike or Bobby since they weren’t exactly slim, either. He kicked and punched the locker that was near him; Mike told me to go fuck myself. They both called me a stupid bitch. I kept walking to class, terrified I would face retaliation for standing up to him later. He was not afraid to get physically violent with other students; mostly the boys, but I was big and not like a “normal girl,” so who’s to say he wouldn’t try it with me? Who wouldn’t think I deserved it given the horrible crimes I committed by being a not-hot-girl? I was, unfortunately, used to physical retaliation for using my words, which is why I used them so sparingly around my bully and others like him.

One time during the 6th grade dance—a dance I was very nearly not let into by one of the chaperones there who was convinced that, given how tall I was (and how big my boobs were), I must be sneaking into the dance from the high school—my bully stole my disposable camera from me and tried to run out all of the photos on it. He took photos of Bobby and Mike and some of the other troublemaker boys. He also took a photo of himself, dead-eyed and looking directly into camera, before I was able to get it back. I only found out after I got the photos printed.

Reading the details about how my middle school bully was taken in for questioning around the murder shook me. I immediately ran to Twitter and DM’d a friend. “Holy shit, my middle school bully just murdered someone at Yale,” I quickly scribbled before my lunch break ended and I got back to work.

My office phone rang maybe 30 minutes later. It was a reporter from CBS News. She’d seen my tweet, she said, about my middle school bully being the man who allegedly murdered the Yale student and wanted to see if I would be willing to talk about my experience on air, on television, for all the world to see. Shit, I panicked internally, heading over to Twitter to see that what I’d thought had been a DM was actually sent as a full tweet, thanks to an extra space added before her handle. I deleted it as I was on the phone with the reporter and hoped no one else would notice.

I demurred as quickly as I could, terrified my very nosy co-workers in my extremely open office would hear my conversation and want to know everything. I grabbed my old boss who worked at mtvU and we went to the kitchen so I could tell her what was happening and affirm that my decision to say no to talking about the experience was the right one. She agreed.

Later that evening, I received an email from the reporter asking me to reconsider talking to them. After all, CBS used to be owned by Viacom, so she was sure that my bosses would make accommodations for me to escape work for a few hours to do it. She said we could even do the interview in shadow with one of those voice changers. After all, it’s important to hear from victims and women’s stories. Didn’t I want to help protect women? She tried to relate to me on a personal level, explaining that she and I were similar in so many ways. She’d found my MySpace page, she said, and explained that she also liked to sing and that Evanescence was also her favorite band.

I could feel the blood rising behind my eyes. Not because this woman was trying to manipulate me into talking about something that my body was telling me “YOU WILL GET IN TROUBLE FOR THIS! YOU WILL GET PHYSICALLY HURT AND SOCIALLY PARIAH’D!” No, it was because she mentioned the band Evanescence. A band I—an incredible music snob at the time—absolutely hated. I had no Evanescence music on my MySpace page.

But you know who did? My father’s other daughter named Alicia Lutes. The one he actually raised after he deserted my family when I was 8 years old, never to be heard from again.

I was enraged. I opened up a reply to this email and let this woman have it. No, I asserted, I would not be opting into the media maelstrom around this case. Not because I was afraid, but because how could I trust this journalist when she could not even recognize that the 22-year-old she’d spoken to on the phone was not the teenager whose MySpace page she found? How could I trust someone who could not plainly see that in her attempts at researching me, she’d mistaken me for my father’s other daughter also named Alicia Lutes, and that doing so was an act so egregious, so completely unprofessional, that clearly I could not and would not be working with her and her team on this story??

I got an email back almost immediately with a fairly curt “OK/sorry.”

A day or so later, I was watching Larry King Live. He was, of course, talking about the case, and had gone as far as to send a reporter to my small hometown to speak with some of my bully’s “close” family and friends. Bobby—of Mike and Bobby—was one of them. Another classmate was also on to talk about what a great guy my bully was. How nobody could have foreseen this sort of behavior from him.

“That’s not the Raymond Clark I’ve talked to my whole entire life,” Bobby Heslin said.

“I just can’t picture him doing something like this,” Maurice Perry said.

My anger seethed hearing their excuses, because all these people being interviewed on CNN were actively complicit in my bully’s shitty behavior. And I know because Bobby and Mo certainly had more than their fair share of bullying moments at my expense. It made me regret not saying yes to that CBS News reporter, but I also knew I did not want to be like these fame-hungry, attention-chasing monsters painting a completely bullshit picture that absolved them all of their complicity in their and his bad behavior.

And also because of course that is what happened and was the story being told. Show me a crime committed by a man and I will show you twenty people on TV going to bat for them, explaining how mystified they are, how out-of-character such an act was. Because bad men will always get infinity benefits of a doubt before an insecure woman gets even a single one. Look at history, shit look at RIGHT NOW: nobody gives a shit when you hurt a woman or girl. They only pretend to care when the frothing, frenzied, irritated mob demands proof that justice, sometimes, gets served.

It’s hard to be a woman who has experienced someone’s violent and/or abusive behavior. I think about Sarah Polley recounting her own experiences with Jian Ghomeshi (a popular host and Canadian broadcaster at the time) who was later accused of sexual assault by several women, and how her own silence at the time caused a lot of conflicting emotions within her.

“Many people who have come forward with stories like this get subjected to a kind of analysis,” explained Polley. “If you don’t remember every detail perfectly, if you can’t create a snapshot that is unassailable,” then you are not considered credible, in a court of law AND in the court of public opinion. As someone who had been regularly gaslit by the people who had hurt her in the past, I was terrified at the thought of being dressed down in the public eye like that. I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

—

February 2026. In a witch shop with a friend who is visiting town because she wants to do some spells and a manifestation, and I figure, hey: maybe this is the time for me to finally get rid of that selfie that my middle school bully took. I mean, can’t hurt, right? My life improved considerably after I got a very cursed artifact from a very cursed TV show out of my home—who’s to say that buying a black candle and using it to burn the image of my middle school bully wouldn’t also free me, in some ways, from the guilt and shame and weird feelings I had about this man and this photo, which I’d recently found after forgetting about its existence? Maybe a li'l woo-woo is exactly what my brain needed to free itself from the negative messaging about itself that it internalized thanks to the past.

We got home from the store and I ran upstairs and grab the photo. I showed it to my friend who confirmed the heebie-jeebies one experiences from merely being in its presence. I empty my bag of its contents only to find that the black candle I’d attempted to purchase from the witchy woman was nowhere to be found. Shit, I guess I have to live with this photo another day or two until I can go buy that candle. I put the photo in a paper bag and put it aside. Weeks later, a different friend sends me this post on Threads accompanied only an extremely on-brand Millennial lol:

I have no idea why I decided to respond to this. I have no idea why I decided to reshare this post on my own feed. Maybe it’s the weather, the state of the world, the constant stream of powerful men being ruinous and celebrated for it, or the fact that I’ve been feeling emotionally punchy and Over It for weeks now. But for whatever reason, I thought: fuck it, better out than in. No time like the present to excise these demons from my personal shame drawer.

I will admit, I was surprised by how many of my friends do not know this story and immediately DM or text me with a variety of WTF-y emojis and memes. “ALICIA WHAT”, “Shut the front door!”, “Dude, how have I not heard this story??” came flooding in. I just assumed this was an anecdote I’d told everyone in my life, because it’s such a crazy story and I have an almost compulsive inability to shut up about the wilder aspects of my lore and existence (see the aforementioned Other Alicia Lutes, or my adventures as a teenage merch girl for a bunch of early aughts musicians).

Turns out? My understanding of myself—shaped by the years and years of negative self-talk borne out of the things that my middle school and other bullies asserted were Who I Was And Would Always Be—wasn’t entirely accurate. Turns out I was letting these old stories and versions of myself live rent free in my head and run roughshod over my sense of self and self-worth. These were the things that needed to be turned to ash and burned to the ground, not a flimsy image of a bad man who did a bad thing and made me feel like I was a bad thing for all the reasons I listed before.

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I went looking the other day for the photo, realizing that maybe it was time to finish the deed and burn the ding dang thing. Only…I can no longer find it. It has disappeared into the ether, likely accidentally thrown out by myself in a fit of cleaning, unceremoniously dumped in the trash with little fanfare or ashen consequence. No black candle needed.

I chuckle to myself as I text my friend who had been visiting about how it has, after all that, been lost. “That’s one way of shedding the energy I suppose,” I text her.

“Honestly I love that,” she writes back. “Your subconscious is like, he’s not even worth a ritual.”

And you know what? She’s right.

I’m dying to be angry, but I’m afraid that it will kill or untether me. I’m so afraid of my anger and everyone else’s, my body simply cannot compute it.

I had a friendship end a few years ago because I was so angry I did not know how to deal with it. Years of feeling taken for granted in a friendship that felt predicated exclusively on what I could do for that person, I walked away with nary a word after he asked for repair and I decided I did not want it—I had too much going on in my life to also contend with this. And, frankly, if it meant our friendship looking like it had before, I didn’t want it. But I also didn’t know how to fix it, because looming under all of it was my anger and resentment over not saying what I was feeling out of fear of pushing him away. Or being unkind and not thoughtful enough.

Our friendship didn’t die with a bombastic flare, I let the light go out after he yelled at me in public, berating me for disagreeing with his assessment of a situation and how he felt I “should have” acted. Telling me that I was wrong for seeing someone else’s side in things, exasperated by my inability to be staunchly and exclusively on his side. I was afraid if I stood up for what I thought and felt, I was betraying our friendship, because apparently what he needed wasn’t reality, it was solidarity and loyalty above all else. I knew he was having a rough time.

But the idea of being loyal over being honest doesn’t sit right with me. And I don’t think it’s a fair thing to ask of another person. I also couldn’t continue to exist in our friendship as it was. So I did something I never do: I did nothing. Didn’t try to fix it, didn’t try to explain myself or find a way to come around to his line of thinking. I just…gave up. And I still wonder and worry if I was in the wrong for doing so. But I also cannot deny that my life is a lot less stressful because of it—and in many ways I have his anger to thank for pushing me to confront my aversions and re-assess my relationship with rage and anger.

Because, spoiler alert! There’s a lot of rage up in this bitch. And I’ve been working hard on how to contend with it. But it’s scary! Have you ever been angry before? God, it makes you so hot and itchy! Two sensations I absolutely hate. It all makes me feel so overstimulated and dizzy (I’m assuming that’s the adrenaline).

I’m not disappointed in how I handled myself in that situation, but I do wish I could have been a bit more confident in what I was feeling and knowing at the time. Part of me wishes I could have yelled back, telling him to go fuck himself for talking to me like that, belittling and patronizing and unacceptable as it was. I would have loved to tell him that his insistence on how I needed to feel/act/be regarding a situation that had, frankly, nothing to do with me, was not actually what friends do. That my job is not to manage his emotions or feelings, especially when I think he shoulders some responsibility for a situation getting so out of hand.

But I didn’t do that, because the second myself or someone else gets angry around me, my body immediately disassociates and shuts down. I go into an adrenaline-fueled fight or flight, which is another situation wherein I wish I could tell someone—in this case, myself—to go fuck themselves. Why can’t I be angry? Why am I so afraid of a feeling? Why does it feel like if I express even an iota of my rage, that it will kill me or eat me up inside or turn me into a bellowing banshee of untethered-from-reality anger and fury?

I internalized a lot of bad messaging about what it means to be an angry woman. Because women are not really allowed to be angry—it’s bad for the uterus and future babies and also your brain, or whatever. To be a woman is to be slow and measured and comfort and joy. The thing is, though, is that I was raised by a lot of angry women who were trying really, really, hard to not be angry. But it came out anyway, in really bombastic fashion, because sometimes when you bottle it up for too long, you fuuuuuuucking explode. And so they did, a lot. Often while blackout drunk—maybe the worst part of it.

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For years I would send any semblance of a negative feeling into the depths of my soul, pushing it down with a simply muttered “it’s fine.” Bury it and forget it, as Kate Bush once sang. But it wasn’t fine. Because when you bury a seed it can take root in your soul, creating an entire ecosystem deep underground without you even realizing it.

Isn’t it interesting how men have co-opted anger and re-categorized it not as an emotional response, but something bigger and more manly, and therefore less embarrassing than a girly-ass emotion? A digression, I suppose, but an interesting one, nonetheless.

My anger is the thing I have to reconcile with most. My capacity for rage feels all-encompassing and dangerous—a cliff I must never jump off, lest I lose myself in the waves of subsequent grief and rage and anger. If I allowed myself to feel my anger every time it raised its little head, I would never get anything done. My anger sees too clearly how fucked up so many things are, and it’s not fun or cathartic to be around, necessarily. But I know if I don’t allow myself to feel it, its root system will fester and rot inside of me, becoming something far, far worse.

And, well! There’s a lot to be angry about in the world right now! The fascist white supremacists are winning thanks to the help of the apathetic many and the hateful few. ICE has been terrorizing my city for months now, and I feel helpless in so many ways because I cannot be some sort of all-encompassing superhero for the people impacted by this unhinged tyranny. Helpless anger is a dangerous sort of stagnancy that must be thwarted at every turn—that is the actual anger you need to be afraid of: because that’s where the seeds of something uglier form and grow. That’s where fear lets your brain run roughshod over your neurological system and actual cause you physical harm (to say nothing of the mental which is also very real. Everything is connected, etc…).

So to counteract my rage and hateful anger at the people who seem to insist on living in some sort of christo-fascist white supremacist nightmare surveillance state, I’m doing a bake sale to raise money for LA organizations working tirelessly in the fight against ICE. I’m helping my friends, and organizing my neighbors so we’re ready when ICE returns to our apartment complex and tries their shit again. Because at this stage, that is all that I can do. And that’s OK. I’ll let the anger fuel me forward and show gratitude towards my anger—my anger reminds me that I’m human; that I still have a heart that’s beating and gives a shit about people regardless of how directly they impact my everyday life. Because we have to live in community with one another, god damn it, and that means sometimes we’re all going to be angry. And we have to deal with that, on levels both micro and macro.

Anyway, if you’re in Los Angeles this Sunday morning (Feb 8), send me a message for the address and come through. I make a mean treat and it’s for a good cause. Maybe a little bit of sugar will make you feel less angry about the world, eh? Or in the very least, it’ll fuel you in the fight for a little bit longer, no?

Now is the time for doing. I don’t know what I’m really doing, most days. Not really. Too much, or not enough, is what the assessment might be, more times than not. But I have a few ideas about what I want, and they mostly revolve around a desire to leave this world a little better than how I found it. To make people feel joy, and maybe a bit more understood. To bridge the information and empathy gaps we’re facing as a species, to instill a greater sense of understanding of what might be possible for all of us. And to laugh—oh my fucking god, do I want to make people laugh and feel good. To feel safe and protected, with enough space in their life to actually deeply belly laugh? That is the truest American fucking dream right there, my babies.

It feels less and less possible today, in so many ways. The size of the impact needed in order to even make a dent in anything feels ever-growing and improbable to reach. It feels insane and stupid and pointless and self-indulgent and myopic and unimportant and did I mention stupid and and and

And yet. I keep going. I feel like I have to. That I must. That Sisyphean urge. The intensity of my internal imperative to make art in a time of tyranny is probably exactly why I work in fits and spurts rather than any sort of sustained consistency. (That or the ADHD.) But I’m working on it, and I will get better at it, because that’s what happens when you put in the work. And in that way, we should always be working. But don’t get it twisted, capitalist hustleheads: this is not about optimizing and increased ROI-ing yourself into the Halls of Capitalism’s Finest Douchebags. But go ahead and SEO yourself to death in the name of maximizing profits for your shareholders, if you must.

Right now, though I am often pulled in directions most counter to what I’m after, I still keep driving towards my two lighthouses of action, no matter how circuitous the journey: that of humanity and creativity. For whatever reason, I feel as though I am called to lend my hands to upholding these two pillars; sent on a delusional quest to better one through fulfilling the other? Maybe it’s vice versa. Who can say? Only time will be able to tell me, at (and in) the end. Because what the fuck do I know, eh? What the fuck do any of us know right now?

On one hand: America all-but-declaring martial law on its citizens, taking off the mask and showing itself for what its always truly been. A police state, a capitalist grifter paradise for patriarchal forces intent on imposing their christian nationalist will; a haven for hateful white supremacists with entitlement problems. A place into which I was born and I feel compelled to save from itself in order to uplift the people—ALL THE HUMAN PEOPLE—who make this glorious, miraculous little planet what it is. On the other hand: I want to make stupid art that somehow matters. Silly things that change lives, impact the culture, and embolden us to stand up to the tyranny in our lives both micro and macro, and I want to do it through humor, because what laughing teaches us endures.

That it has taken the larger culture this long to see that the American imperialist boomerang was always on its way back to us is certainly a shame. A real enrager, as it were. ICE is in our streets, harassing every non-white person they see, breaking down doors and murdering harmless people in the name of reclaiming a homeland their ancestors stole. And so many people cannot seem to understand that this is real and should be stopped. That this is happening. A lot. Everywhere, and no it’s not just in Minnesota or Los Angeles or [insert random place that is not your home here]. That the scale of it is just as big as what the Nazis did in Germany (after they learned from what the Colonies did to the slaves). This is not just an idea on a screen. This is real and it’s happening to decent people every single fucking day. Brutalized and penalized for migrating—something so, so many other species on this planet do freely every single day, but ours. People just trying to live, to escape horrors that very often, America itself has had a part in creating.

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I live in a neighborhood where, on my walks with my dog, I regularly hear at least three different languages that are not English being spoken. Sometimes it is upwards of five. And I absolutely fucking love it. People come from all over the world and end up in my (not so) little apartment complex for reasons far and wide (and not just because of Hollywood, baby!). And it’s one of the reasons I think where I live is so special. In many ways, my neighborhood is an imperfectly beautiful microcosm of the world, situated in a city that is in many ways itself, a beautifully imperfect encapsulation of so many different corners of the world. Hollywood magic, sure. Some. But it’s the people who are the real magic of Los Angeles. Tiny communities within the larger whole. It is, in many ways, quite ideal and idyllic, and exactly the sort of America I want to and have long lived in.

A couple months ago, one of my neighbors asked me if I would chat with her occasionally so she could get better with conversational English. As a certified chatty motherfucker, I was only too happy to oblige, enjoying the mental challenge of figuring out ways to define and describe words and various colloquialisms while our dogs played in the backyard. This neighbor of mine has a far, far greater grasp on language than I do. Though I would call myself quite adept at this one in which I’m writing (English), it’s essentially the only one I really know well (save for a vague understanding of some basic Spanish, and a smattering of words in Italian and French).

My neighbor, however, speaks three other languages fluently: Russian, Turkish, and Ukrainian. So does her husband, so do her children. Because that’s just what they do in other parts of the world. (But not here in America. We’re too self-centered a nation.) I can’t help but think about how their ability to communicate with and understand the world is far greater than mine. There’s a dissonance I feel, being in a position to provide context and clarity to someone who probably has a far greater understanding of the world at large than I do. It also feels very American in a way that is not a compliment to America. And now she’s here, escaping a war and learning English in a country that’s feeling increasingly on the brink of war itself.

We don’t talk about her experience with the war in Ukraine often, but it’s come up from time to time. Like the time this summer, when construction teams were putting in a new roof, and the tile-laying and nailing triggered her kids’ PTSD from the bombings. The roof work in my complex started up again last week after an abrupt, several months-long pause. Because ICE showed up and tried to raid the workers. Because of fucking course they did. Because these so-called protectors of the homeland are anything but. They’re professional haters and henchmen. They’re armed and paid-for members of the Proud Boys and other alt-right militias that formed because the Klu Klux Klan needed a more toxic re-brand that widened its own umbrella to also include the self-hating bootlickers that exist outside of the scope of “Straight Christian White Man,” I guess. They’re desperate and scared, poorly educated and ill-equipped beyond the endless well of fear-fueled hate they hold in their hearts. They’re desperate for a black and white binary, and to be controlled—god they all low-key want to be submissive to a seemingly powerful man. Especially if they can do so by cosplaying as a controlling and powerful man.

I’m itchy with rage and anger as I type all this. I could go on at least six different tirades right now, further fueling my overstimulated brain’s desire to self-implode. Which is exactly why I think our salvation from all of this will come through comedy. Through being able to face our errors with humility and humor, to eviscerate and dissolve all the bullshit. I want to tell funny stories in a way that makes us wonder what else might be possible, for all of us, for the better. Because don’t we all feel better when we can laugh about the things that used to scare or intimidate or silence us? When we can all laugh and see the absurdity of our bullshit? For me, good comedy storytelling does that.

(I hope I can one day really talk about the show I’m writing and WHY I’m writing it.)

Life and living and being alive are fleeting things. Sometimes stories are the only things that last, the only thing capable of having the impact needed to change the shape and scope of the world, or our understanding of it. Sometimes those stories come from fairy tales and make believe, worlds that look nothing like ours, literally or figuratively. And sometimes they come from reality, the really real, lived experiences of others. Often, it’s a little bit of both. The best art has a bit of both to it, doesn’t it?

Some stories do live on past their necessity, though. They become something else, corrupted by internal/external forces, or simply irrelevant to a world that’s grown beyond their scope. That’s when it’s time to find, write, and create new stories that usher in new ideas for the new world as we want to see it: free from tyranny, bigotry, classism, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and all the other ways in which we otherize people we wish (consciously, subconsciously) to oppress or silence for our own comfort and convenience and ease of life.

Sometimes I think the thing I am supposed to be doing in this life is the work of a jester. Predominately envisioned as a member of a Renaissance or Roman empire-era royal court, and paid to entertain, maybe I even was a fool or traveling storyteller in a past life. Lucretia the Tumbler or Mary, Queen of Scots’ Nichola. A clever confidant and bag of hot air, sacrificing herself at the altar of ego and shame in the name of bringing humorous enlightenment and joy to the masses. Tearing down old ideas and ways of existing that are no longer relevant. Letting the people in power occasionally really fucking have it.

I write and I share because of what the writing and sharing of the stories of others has done for me. It’s taught me so much, made me laugh, cry, and think differently. It’s changed my mind, melted my heart, rewired my brain, and made me dig deeper, in a multitude of directions that I never would have were it not for a writer’s ability to be vulnerable and artfully tell their truth. To be real and bold and fucking dramatic, sometimes even because, yes, sometimes that drama and passion is necessary in order to REALLY SEE the enormity of what is happening, in all its shades and angles.

Maybe I make art because I want my art to play a part in the undoing of that which no longer serves us. I think we all deserve the exciting promise of a new, blank page.

We used to dance. We used to be a people who went to dances. Who danced by ourselves, with our friends, tentatively touching the body of someone new, someone whose body also makes yours feel electric. Shit, we used to be a proper society! But our current ecosystem has robbed us of this knowledge, dulling our senses down so that we forget the things we know in our bones. We forget how it feels to dance and feel free. So we ignore the messages of our bodies and brains and follow something else: the sweet, sweet song of being techno-baited into giving away your attention and brainpower to something else. Synapses co-opted for who knows what, and lord knows what else. It may take decades and generations of humanity to understand the true impact of what we’ve done to ourselves.

How far have we pushed ourselves, our species, to evolve in a way that’s no longer beneficial? How much has the constant inundation of horrific world news and events forced us, collectively, in a state of fight or flight that’s going to live in our bones for generations to come? And how to we break free of it? Is the answer to live radically in joy? To remove ourselves from the overstimulated overwhelm and stretch the muscles some of us have long forgotten exist (namely, that of physically being present)?

Human beings, semi-rhythmically writhing around to beats and melodies, has been a practice both personal and communal, since the dawn of time. Since we pulled ourselves out of the water and grew legs, they have needed to flail around gleefully. It is catharsis, it is release, it is a moment of presence and feeling so deep, so animalistic, so hard to put into words. To dance is to be the MOST human you could possibly be. It is freeform existence, divinated into being. Tactile, visceral, beautifully spontaneous movement is maybe the freest way to be human. No words, no thoughts, just feeling, expression, and release in one singular motion. Just vibing, as the kids say.

But we’ve forgotten how to dance. We’ve forgotten how to be outside, alive and living and feeling in our human-but-animal sinew and skin. In every fleeting moment, existing and coinciding with other people, we realize and actualize the act of being human. Freely. Frenetically. In our bodies. It’s our bodies that we’ve lost touch with, and I think it’s why we all feel things are so disconnected and confusing. We’re all so in our brains because of the screens that rule our lives, we’ve forgotten what it means to have a body that lives in a tactile, terrestrial world. We so rarely live and feel and experience the imperfect, uncontrollable aspects of having a body—like being sweaty, moving rhythmically and without thought, to beats and melodies both foreign and familiar—that sometimes it feels like a threat to your safety.

I’ve forgotten how to dance, and I fucking love to dance. So I’m going dancing. On Friday, the eve of my 40th birthday, I shall leap forth into this new decade of living, ostensibly the second half of my life, the one where everyone seems to insist on resigning, and I will spend it doing something that will undoubtedly feel so silly and freeing and joyful. If I just let it. Dancing in and around and with a bunch of unfamiliar people who will probably be far younger than I: how embarrassing! So, of course, that means I must do it. The scary thing, the thing I—a nearly-40-year-old-woman—should not be doing? Yeah, fuck it: I’m just gonna do it. Live free with abandon, baby! Exist in the existing, not the hypothesizing and worrying and what-if-ing. Go to the party, be the party, you are the party!

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When the clock strikes midnight, I will force myself not to care about what I look like or what other people might be thinking about me, and just be. Look at this 40-year-old woman, out here dancing. Moving her body, all 5 foot, 11 inches of it, a middle-aged skeleton shaking and shimmying her voluptuous, rotund body all around; living like the rules of society and aging were not made to make all 190 pounds of her feel terrible for existing. I will refuse to accept that inner monologue. And instead, I will just dance, sweaty, erratic, and joyfully free.

Shit, maybe that’ll be inspiring to some young person there, seeing that life is never really over. Not if you run towards it feral and full of radicalizing joy.

I have spent the vast majority of these nigh-on 40 years feeling bad, guilty, and ashamed of this body. Ashamed of its desires, its hunger, its size, its shape, its sexuality, its femininity. I have long felt I had to earn acceptance by the rest of society, that I must hide away or diminish as many parts of myself as I can, in order to be palatable to my family, friends, and the world at large. To be accepted. Being alive and worthy of a fully lived human experience has not felt like something I have ever deserved. It has always felt as if the universe was telling me I was not doing it right: I was too fat, too loud, too ugly, too annoying, too this, too that, too much. And until I wrangled all of those things in, I would continue to not deserve living a fully realized human experience. Best the universe could give me was the experience of being a funny side character in everyone else’s lives.

(What the fuck, amirite?)

Sometimes, though—and I really do not mean to do it most of the time—I make the mistake of attracting attention. Be it my size, my opinions, my passion, my volume when speaking, my clumsiness, my overly familiar and excitable nature, or even (dare I say it) my talents: sometimes it causes people to notice me and pay attention to what I’m doing. To be seen and perceived is a terrifying thing when you don’t have the guardrails of conformity to protect you.

Dancing has been one such moment. It’s brought me attention both good and bad, wanted and not. I’ve gotten very hurt, I’ve gotten very high, and I’ve felt my most powerful, sexy, and beautiful—all while I’ve been dancing. “You really leave it all out there on the dance floor, huh?” a comedian commented once at an old boss’s wedding. I beamed at her through the bathroom mirror we were both staring into with a feral glint and self-assured glee. “Yeah. I just fucking love to dance!”

The midlife crisis is a curious thing, isn’t it? With the exception of Miranda July’s All Fours, have we really ever seen it depicted with honesty from the POV of a woman? Midlife moments of reckoning and awakening often come in the form of men throwing it all away, buying a sports car, fucking random 20-year-olds, etc etc etc. Hurting people, being selfish, being feral and free.

But I am no man. And the circumstances under which I find myself aging into the middle ages coincides with the digital middle ages. The social media-eval times. A time where people have more faith in the mystical and magical than the logic the ruling class insists is such. A time where misinformation and miseducation runs amok, where we aren’t really in a capitalist economy so much as a techno-feudalist one. We believe that we are free: but are we, really? And what does freedom looks like in times such as these?

There are so many old stories that we believe. Things that our brains and bodies have come to accept as truth, undeniable and unavoidable and destined to be. I think all the time about pushing against these things—these old ideas, these institutions and “unassailable truths” that maybe are anything both—all the time. I desire to needle and question and dissect them, picking them apart (with humor and grace and genuine curiosity, hopefully) in the hopes that doing so will actually free us all from their proverbial chains. Because, sure, these vague things might be “true,” but what if they’re not? And what if freedom exists in the other side of acceptaning that?

And to do that, I will dance. I will go dancing, hips moving, knees bending, lower back hurting, upper lip sweating. I will spin and twirl with my arms in the air, lactic acid buildup be damned! I will close my eyes and raise my face to the sky as the beat drops, and I will be sober (probably) and sober (definitely) in the realization that this is it: this is all there is. Our bodies, our minutes, our moments of fleeting freedom and joy and unconcerned glory. Being, feeling, experiencing.

Our dancing is all there is.

I didn’t do it on purpose, but admit it: it’s a perfect metaphor for entering your 40th year, no? A full circle moment for a former leash kid such as myself, willfully ridding myself of the Apple Watch that has wrapped itself around my right wrist for 6 years now. It wasn’t intentional, but it was exactly what I needed.

We’re all running into this new year arms outstretched, brain on fire, and willing to say ‘fuck it all’ in the name of working towards something new and different and hopefully better, right? Or is that just us middle aged millennials? The shedding of old regrets, flames, or situations that no longer serve us. Tis the season, as they say. Earlier in the week, my ex-boyfriend unsubscribed from this very newsletter after my last post about Heated Rivalry. That also felt like a shedding of a sort. A sad but ultimately probably necessary one. (It hurts, letting love go. Did you know? This was my first time being in love so I did in theory, but not in practice.)

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When my Apple Watch broke, my dependency on it to feel in control of my body was laid embarrassingly bare. Make no mistake: this stupid piece of technology gamifying my health by tracking my every step and move changed my life. A hand-me-down from my little sister who is far more tech-savvy than I, she gifted me the watch when I was trying to get my life back on track after a near-suicide attempt and my life falling spectacularly apart. She thought it might help me to see my physical activity and data laid out like that.

And it really did. I went from averaging walking a mile, maybe two, every day, to walking between 5.5-7 miles per day. I have lost 87 pounds since I started wearing it (though most of that was due to the ozempic I was on, mind you), and started to actually give a shit about my health and body in a way that did not come from a place of hatred and disgust and inadequacy. I could see how much sleep I was or was not getting, and make educated and informed deductions about what might be causing me issues. I could see correlations and causations much more easily. And when I worked on it, I felt better, physically and mentally. This watch helped me move on, to start the journey of becoming a better me.

But with a quick snap! as I pulled the watch over my wrist that morning on Nichols Canyon Road, I was laid bare as I stared at my pale wrist, thinking about how many steps I was going to miss since I did not have another watch band with me, and I had to clean the house and walk the dogs, and do so many other physical things that my watch was going to miss.

Panic set in. Which is embarrassing to admit, but was also deeply edifying. Every couple of steps, a shock would run through my system. Your watch, you’re not tracking this, I would think. The thought alone would have been enough to surprise me, but the physical response, the near-panic that set in every time that realization would pop up, absolutely troubled and concerned me. If people can’t see that I did all this physical activity, would they believe me when I told them? Would they laugh and roll their eyes like every doctor I’ve ever had, unconvinced that I was anything more than a lazy liar and an idiot.

My own curiosity helped me to realize that the watch was a passive means of control. It replaced me stepping on the scale every morning to weigh myself, and gave me another tool with which to admonish and punish myself. A self-hatred proxy. Was I only taking care of myself so this watch would track it? So that my work could be seen by others and therefore validated as “good enough” even if I still wasn’t? Jesus fucking christ, I care way too much about what other people think, or might think, or could possibly hypothetically negatively think about me. I am in a constant hyper-vigilant state regarding my perception by others. And when I am triggered in that I feel like a negativity narcissist, so worried and preoccupied with how I am (or could potentially be!) failing any given person/moment/interaction that all I see/hear/think about is myself. Which is, spoiler alert, very deeply annoying and exhausting and not-at-all how I’m trying to live.

This need had gotten so insidious I’d tethered myself to a machine that every day told me how much harder I needed to push, how much better I could be, even if I was already pushing myself quite hard and being better to myself than ever before. Because, to the watch, it was still never enough. It was always about doing more, more, more and being better than the last month—even if you were already really fucking good at hitting all your goals. My Apple Watch data fed into my sense of inadequacy, a constant state of being I am desperately trying to claw my way out of in order to feel like a sane, self-possessed person who accepts her inherently imperfect humanity as much as she does in others.

And, frankly, as technology has shown more and more of its dark side—surveillance, distraction, data mining, etc—my desire to keep it so close and involved in my day-to-day life has waned significantly. I hate the idea of a large company knowing so many intimate details about me, my health, my comings-and-goings, and what-have-you. Lord knows what other permissions and data I have unknowingly given away. For as much of a chatty, over-sharing motherfucker as I’ve always been, I have never wanted any of that. I’ve also just been craving to do less in ways that make me feel whole. To slow down and fix shit in a way that works for me. Even if it doesn’t work or make sense to anyone else.

“Move fast and break things” is the ethos of most tech companies. I don’t want to live my one wild and precious life that way, nor do I want to contribute to its normalization. So here I am, letting my Apple Watch battery die and looking towards the new year in a less connected, less analytical, less data-driven way. Because that is only one way to be, not the only way—no matter what these self-satisfied tech bros think.

In 2026 I want to feel more. I want to talk less but say more meaningful, beautiful shit. I want to be tactile in my experience of the world, be it alone or in community with others. I want to smoke way less weed (which I am already working on), and I want to feel happy and content and way, way less connected to social media and other distractions. I’m so thankful for all that my Apple Watch and these technological tethers have given me.

But I’m turning 40 in just over two weeks, and it’s time to move on. Time to really loosen the leash.

There’s a power to art that is hard to quantify or put into concrete terms—though the technocrats are certainly trying their best to do that. Obsessive little men, playing at god with their AI machines, hoping to be the masters of all domains and abilities. To reap the benefits and share none. But most art and the emotional responses created therein are ineffable, built on circumstantial stuff. Art’s impact is a magical alchemic reaction, operating on levels large and small, from person to person, on levels both micro and macro. In each and every instance, these manifestations are unique, even when they lead to a place that’s ultimately quite universal. But all of it is a magic that can only be wrought from human experience and creation.

Which is why AI is little more than a plagiarism machine, but don’t worry, this is actually a post about Heated Rivalry and the power of good storytelling.

Heated Rivalry is a Canadian television show that just aired its first season finale on HBO Max here in the US. It is a romantic drama about two hockey players who fall in love over the course of a 7-years-long situationship. Yes, it is horny. Yes, a lot of women like it. But to reduce it to little more than fantasy fodder for stupid girls is a disservice to everyone, not just the people who watch and/or made it. To be honest, I think people immediately go the dismissive route because god forbid you have an earnest feeling about anything in this day and age, eh?

Heated Rivalry is so different in so many ways from what is currently out there: it’s a show that plays more like a movie, with scenes that are often quiet but emotionally loud, atmospheric and show-y rather than over-the-top and tell-y. The love story between Shane and Ilya plays out so uniquely to what we see on TV and streaming now: it demands you put down your phone and pay attention. It creates a beautiful sort of tension from the smallest of human moments. It wants you to slow down and bare witness: feel, not just see. Experience, don’t just watch it.

In that way, it’s a prime example of why, when the algorithms, data points and other computer-generated nonsense the executives rely on to keep their jobs tell you to zig, it means sometimes you absolutely must zag, despite whatever screaming is coming from the powers-that-be about how all evidence points to the contrary. Because for as much as we want sameness, we also want something new. And this show is doing exactly that.

There’s already plenty of excellent (and not!) discourse about Heated Rivalry’s queer representation, its fanbase, and why it has become a monoculture moment for the girls, gays, theys, and/or chronically online (B.J. Colangelo is doing some great writing on it, and Hope Rehak even got on TikTok to bite back at some of the, ahem, lesser writing on the subject).

@hoperehak#heatedrivalry #hollywoodreporter

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For me, its representation of men in sports feels like a natural progression thanks to the stage set by Ted Lasso, one of men in sports expressing their feelings and opening up to one another. The tension between softness and masculinity; the presentation of male submission versus domination; the intersection of tenderness and vulnerability in the world of professional sports; the subversion of toxic, homophobic spaces—all things of which the world is in desperate need. And imbuing that world (the world of men/sports) with the language of emotional intelligence and community healing is one of the most powerful things art can and should be doing right now. Spend 10 minutes on YouTube or listening the average dudebro comedian podcast and try to tell me otherwise. The vitriolic backlash of the manosphere to anything that pushes back against well-tread ideas of masculinity and “maleness” is proof that our society needs exactly what Heated Rivalry is, in many ways, serving us. The rise in nationalism, fascism, and white supremacy are all a reaction to the dismantling of old patriarchal ideas about gender roles, identity, and “how to be” that are particularly appealing to a certain subset of men. The death rattle of a dying patriarchy? One can only hope.

Yes, Heated Rivalry is a deliciously horny show. If you’re attracted to men like I am, it’s hard not to get a little hot and bothered by the bodies and intimacy you get to see on screen. And boy oh boy do you see a lot. Even if you’re not sexually into men, though, the discussions around sexuality and queer representation/love stories that have come from the show’s lesbian fanbase also shows us all just how much more nuanced and interesting human sexuality actually is compared to what we’re typically served on-screen.

Which is exactly why I think a series like Heated Rivalry—especially if it gets the prestige and cultural cache points of, say, an Emmy or Golden Globes nomination/win—could be the sort of art that creates a culturally important moment. It would be nothing short of revolutionary to society if Heated Rivalry became a monoculture moment, where everyone was watching and rooting for two queer hockey players to fall in love. To watch The Culture watch Shane and Ilya (and Scott and Kip!) yearn and be intimate, soft, and tender with one another could heal us as a people. Because seriously: sometimes people don’t understand things until they see them. And the world needs to see how many different ways there are to exist and love and be in the world. Normalize men not immediately reacting from a place of internalized homophobia! Normalize more open and nuanced discussions about sex and sexuality! Normalize smut and bodies and horniness and not feeling so much weird shame around all of this shit! If we as a society can laud and celebrate and champion art that centers a man and woman (or even two women—though to a lesser degree) falling in and expressing their love on-screen, why can we not also do that for two men?

In many ways, I think that’s the last frontier of dismantling so many of the regressive social mores and “norms” that humans have internalized through our cultural, social, and/or religious teachings. In some ways, I imagine that’s at least part of why source material author Rachel Reid and the series’ writer'/director Jacob Tierney wanted to tell this story at all. I mean, shit, it’s why I am trying to tell the stories I’m trying to tell (and also why I’m not trying to make my show in the currently hellish and oppressive US television landscape).

A disillusion of norms is what I’m after when I seek out art. A desire to be challenged and changed. To see the world anew via a subversion of the “natural order”; an alternative reality and way of existing that runs counter to those offered up by religious texts, cultural institutions, family systems, and the like. Good art should shake-up of everyone’s internalized ideas of what is “normal,” “good,” “acceptable,” and “right.” Art should challenge whatever other shame/guilt-fueled trigger word that your brain uses to hold you back and make you just a little bit more curious about yourself and the world around you. When I want my worldview and preconceived notions called out and upended (ideally with a laugh, but that’s why I’m a comedy writer), I turn to art and good storytelling to do that work.

And, honestly, I think only art can truly do that in any really meaningful way. Art and stories move people, shift their worldview, and make them brave enough to stand up and fight for a different way of operating in the world. Art and storytelling are vital to a healthy society, because they allow people to think, see, believe, and feel outside of our regimented internal and external systems. They provide a mirror and create a freedom for the mind that unlocks so much more potential than anything a machine regurgitating old facts and plagiarized ideas ever could.

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I’m passionate about these things because, well, I love television. I have studied it, I have written about it, and now I write it, too. And trying to write a television show right now is very hard, because the powers-that-be have a lot of control and say over how your art and ideas should be created. Heated Rivalry feels so exciting and refreshing not just because it features a two hot dudes absolutely going to town on one another’s bodies, but because it goes against the grain of current TV storytelling—one that demands more telling than showing thanks to the inherent passivity of dual-screen watching (i.e. scrolling on your phone while you “watch” something). Heated Rivalry’s greatest and most impactful moments are often small gestures, blink-and-you’ll-miss them vignettes, silent looks that say everything. These are things that demand your focus and attention. You can meme and post about them later, sure, but right now? You’re locked in and you’re feeling something. Probably a lot of somethings. And isn’t seeing, feeling, and loving the entire point of being alive?

For whatever reason, showing—not telling—is the more powerful, demystifying and normalizing force. Probably because we humans have a hard time believing without seeing. Seeing something instantly makes it less scary or unknowable—because you can see it for what it is rather than imagine it with whatever piecemeal information you’ve gathered in your mind (perhaps from scared and/or ill-informed sources). There’s a direct correlation between depiction and acceptance, as we saw with the depiction of queer characters on TV during the fight for marriage equality and have continued to see in the intervening years. (I wrote about it for Bustle back in 2014.)

Which is exactly why I want a show like Heated Rivalry to not only succeed, but become a monoculture moment. In my dreams, straight men are also screaming and cheering when Scott Hunter grabs Kip for a kiss after winning the championship, they’re rooting for Ilya and Shane to fall in love, they’re admitting how hot it is to see two people with chemistry go at it regardless of their gender. Not because I want to emasculate men, I want them to be able to free themselves from the mental prison that gender and/or sexuality shame hath wrought for all of us, but especially y’all. Because if straight men have the space to relax, let go, and not feel so boxed into whatever internalized ideas they have about what it means to “be a man,” maybe the rest of us maybe won’t have to fight for it so hard. Maybe shit won’t get so, well, heated. That’s the power of art, though.

No wonder everybody wants to control it.

I learned to talk before I was one. Which was apparently adorable and not at all annoying. I remember my mother’s friend Carolyn explaining my preternatural ability to converse at the ripe old age of “eight or nine months,” recounting a time she was holding a calculator as I would declare “one, two, three” as our fingers touched the corresponding buttons. Who knows how accurate I sounded, or if that young an age is even true, but I do believe that at least on some level, I have always been an extremely Chatty Cathy.

Not even a lisp could stop me from bursting forth in monologic form, rattling on and on and on and on and on and on and on... To call it compulsive doesn’t even feel right. To speak, to me, is like breathing air. There is no “think before you speak” because if you don’t speak you might not say what needs to be said, or find that moment of human connection. I have never not been a loquacious being, with a million stories and ways in which I want to relate to the other people around me. To make them laugh or think, compliment them or ask them questions: recognize a sameness and humanity in a shared, seemingly insignificant moment.

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This can also be very, very annoying. Tangents are inevitable, my excitement and/or anxiety over forgetting what was sparked by something someone said, can make me the occasional conversational steamroller and/or interrupter—one of my least desirable qualities. Especially because I don’t often realize it. If people are being quiet or I sense something may be amiss, I may ramble out of anxiety, perhaps making things that much worse because what they wanted was for me to be quiet, or give them a moment edgewise. I try to be mindful about it, but I’m not exactly perfect about it, my excitement and impulsivity sometimes getting the better of me. And as someone who tries to be really self-aware, it really stumps and frustrates me when I don’t recognize bad behavior as it’s happening or immediately after it’s happened. I want so desperately to not be too intense, too annoying, too oblivious or self-involved. I don’t want to be up my own ass or come across as self-obsessed because I simply will not shut the fuck up.

The truth is, I spend the vast majority of my time alone, save for a few hours a week interacting—usually one-on-one, and often not in-person—with a scant few people. I don’t have co-workers, I’m often not at home where my roommates and neighbors also live, and my work requires me to spend a lot of time in silence, not engaging with anyone but the 857 thoughts running through my brain, talking to one another. I talk to the dogs, of course (sometimes even sing to them!), but that’s not exactly a conversation. So sometimes, when I see other humans, the words simply pour out of me, like a fucking deluge, as I’ve very likely spent several hours, if not days, existing in near-silence, not saying a word to any one or thing.

Most people, I would imagine, do not live like this. At least, that seems to be the case from my position as an observant outsider. I rationalize the time in silo as both a necessary work need, and/or a way to protect the people who love me from experiencing too much of my manic oversharing, lest I make them (inevitably?????) want to leave. I find that I am more palatable for people in small doses and/or at a distance. I am also, frankly, mentally exhausted (in addition to being exhausting!) a lot of the time: the worries of being poor and constantly struggling to find work (a.k.a. money) doesn’t exactly make me feel like my more fun, social self, all the time. I don’t know which came first, the isolation or the social awkwardness, but I’m not so sure it’s healthy for me.

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I mean, it probably isn’t, is it? Particularly if I want to be better at being social and also a friend/person who listens. I’m just afraid that putting myself out in community more will show me all the ways in which I am incapable of being a person compared to everyone else. Afraid I’ll get overwhelmed by all the ways in which I need to fix myself and my many shortcomings and become deeply depressed or worse. Because, well, it’s certainly happened before.

So I tend to my garden and sing to my plants or the dogs or no one. I send voice memos to my friends who live near, but mostly far. But only on occasion: I worry because I can so often go on too long.

You wouldn’t know anything about that, dear reader, now would you?

Thing is, you don’t learn without living, do you? And living is rife with tension and friction, mistakes and missteps, fights and insights and resolutions. In moments that are of your control and not. This is when I am reminded of Sarah Polley’s Run Towards the Danger, and the insight that she gained from recovering from a devastating brain injury:

“When I first met concussion specialist Dr. Michael Collins, after three and a half years of suffering from post-concussive syndrome, he said, ‘if you remember only one thing from this meeting, remember this: run towards the danger.’ In order for my brain to recover from a traumatic injury, I had to retrain it to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered my symptoms. This was a paradigm shift for me—to greet and welcome the things I had previously avoided.”

I don’t want to force friendship or human engagement, but I need to run towards being out in the world with others and, frankly, committing more social faux pas. I need to feel what it’s like to be told—in words or actions—that I talk too much or am absolutely annoying, and continuing to be loved and/or tolerated in spite of it. Better yet, I’d love to realize as it’s happening that I’m doing it and shift gears in real time. Maybe then I will not let the immediate shame of being told about your least-favorite characteristic by a stranger/outside person cause me to crumble or hermit away to stew in self-hating feelings.

Because it has happened recently (more than once!), and boy oh boy, did it not feel nice, and did I not like the way my brain and body responded to the feedback. And regardless of the way in which I recieved this information, how I react is completely and entirely up to me. And I don’t want to wither and crumble at my imperfections anymore. Even if I’ll never be a perfectly measured and not-talkative person.

“When I first met him,” Polley writes in her book, “Dr. Collins had said: ‘When you have a concussion, you don’t have good instincts about what will make you better. You want to lie in a dark room. You don’t want to be social. You want to drop out of your life. That bad instinct, coupled with bad advice, makes you much, much sicker than you need to be.’”

It’s not that I believe that I am sick, but my perception of my limitations in social situations has been infected by the lonely little echo chamber I have put myself in. I also weigh the negative experiences/confirmations higher than the positive ones (because self-hatred feels more logical than self-love), and immediately become the little girl with big feelings who was regularly told to go to her room and calm down and figure it out herself. I need to heal this response out of me—not through separation and isolation, but in communion with other people, experiencing myself and others at our best and not-best, communicating and continuing on with it as best we can. There are worse things to be than a motormouth, I suppose.

Here’s hoping I don’t talk myself out of it. Here’s hoping I go to the party, in spite of my stupid mouth:

When my body hurts, I think of water. Of swimming or bathing. Of effortlessly gliding through it, submersing myself in it, or floating on top of it. Even just the thought of it soothes me. And when I hear and feel the proximity of ocean waves, something changes, deep within me. There is some sort of knowing, a sense of connection and belonging to the water. A respectful fear and adoration of it, in all its many manifestations, this water which has made both this earth and me. Water is a connector, a conductor. Water always wins.

The idea of a deprivation tank intrigues me. Darkness, silence, solitude, floating weightless and free. Being alone in the quiet is an act that soothes me, a person who is constantly overstimulated, narrated by a Greek chorus of an inner monologue that won’t stop clucking away in sixteen different directions thanks to everything it is noticing or feeling. It is exactly what Jinkx Monsoon described when she was interviewed by Ziwe:

But the water, ooh does water soothe me. Putting my ears underneath the surface, it quiets even the most annoying of noises, too. All that remains is the beating of my heart, the breathing in my chest. Maybe the faintest, muffled sounds of the world outside me. But everything else? Gone. Only the sounds of life pulsing in my corporeal cavity remains. It’s humbling and meditative.

Inevitably, a very specific memory and feeling always comes floating to the surface. I’m eleven or twelve, I think, at my babysitter’s daughter’s birthday party. It’s a sleepover at her rich uncle’s house. There are horses in a stable and a pool with water that shoots up and out into an arch. It is magical, it is unbelievable, and I spend hours in that water, just swimming about, pretending I am Ariel in The Little Mermaid, just waiting to break out. Eventually the other girls went inside to watch something I had absolutely zero interest in. I stayed outside all by my lonesome, perfectly content to swim around imagining myself as a mermaid, just waiting to break out and get her voice back. To no longer be lost. To actually be free. I try not to think about seeing the girls laughing at me through the windows after I did a particularly robust twirling leap out of the water, the joy and freedom I felt immediately replaced with shame and embarrassment and guilt that I would ever think I deserved to be so unabashedly showy and happy.

Dealing with chronic physical pain is no fun to read or write about, really. But it’s a reality I’ve been dealing with a lot of late. And for all the squawking and crowing I do, TMIing you all to death with seemingly every inner thought, there’s actually a lot that I don’t talk about or say (wild to believe, I know). But when it comes to dealing with physical pain, I don’t really know what to say because I’m so used to being disbelieved. So I manage how I have been managing, often percolating with a ever-present sense of dread that things are going to get worse because I’m not doing enough to feel better. For the most part, I’m doing alright. But it has been taking up a not-small part of my brain since I reclaimed and radicalized myself to the realities of having a body back in 2023, made all the more imperative when, in 2024, my plantar fasciitis and the start of EMDR therapy forced me to stop disassociating from my body, to bare witness to the pain I was constantly feeling as not at all “normal” or something that I did to myself when my body was 150 pounds bigger.

And thus the journey of self-reclamation of the body has turned into a whole thing, forcing me to reckon with the ways in which I have both held and harmed it, and the ways in which it has done the same to/for me. But what was reassuring to learn was that I’d been doing a lot of the right things all along, subconsciously knowing what I needed even if my conscious mind did not. What was frustrating was how many times the (mostly male) doctors in my life insisted on downplaying it all, only to have another doctor (usually a woman) come into the fold and prove that I was right all along.

Low key, the older I get the more I realize I’m so angry, all the time! And who wants to constantly read or write about that? Not me, that’s for sure. I assume not you, either. But feel free to prove me wrong:

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Water plays a huge part in soothing both my anger and my pain: I have to drink a lot of it, I have to work out and move my body to process the excess feelings AND rehabilitate the hurting parts of me, which in turn expels the lot of it. Then, I very regularly sit in hot bathwater to soothe myself back into a hopefully easier state of physically and mentally being. Water always wins. Unless, of course, you poison it. But that’s another rant, both literal and metaphorical, for another day.

As I type this, Southern California is about to experience an atmospheric river: a slow-moving body of precipitation that will, hopefully, leave us soaked enough to end fire season. At least, according to the meteorologists. Does Southern California ever really stop burning? It’s hard to say, but we still keep yearning for it. “We needed this,” I and every other nearing middle age Millennial in LA thinks as we look out our drizzle-marked windows. The lightest pitter patter of what could possibly constitute a rainstorm beginning to show itself, day one of an allegedly four-day-long affair. Already Winston has refused to poop until it was literally almost scared out of him at the vet’s office, the ground too wet to want to perch upon and squat. I shake my head wondering if my Southern California half-pug could ever really handle living anywhere else. I hope so, as daydreams of a different life lived in upstate New York or the city pop into my head. I wonder about Boulder or Seattle or Portland or Chicago. I wonder about London and possibly living there for work for a few months next year, and what parts of Europe might be amenable to an expat starving artist, who has a fantastic grasp on English but not much else, where I could maybe get the healthcare I need without all the hoop jumping or insurance grifting. The near-constant gaslighting.

I make an appointment to go to a restorative yoga class with a friend, and think about the bath that I will take after, worrying if it’s too excessive to take a long bath two days in a row, in a place prone to droughts. I’m starting to care both more and less, in a way that feels like a reversal in the most positive sense. And that’s a state that feels, well, very fluid. To be more flexible, present, and connected, I need to think and be and act and feel like water. Because water always wins.

“This is, by the way, this is so, such the female existence,” she said, interrupting her train of thought. “Right now I feel like I’m lying. I lived every second of this and everything I’m saying is true, and I feel like I’m telling a lie.”

Listen: I wasn’t expecting to be so shook by an offhanded comment during a Jennifer Lawrence interview on Las Culturistas. But in 2025, anything is possible, and right now Ms. Lawrence is putting to words something I have felt so deeply in my bones my entire life. Something I’ve struggled with, in shame-fueled silence, for years: a sense that everything I am saying and doing is a lie or untrue. Even when I know it’s not. Even if there were witnesses to the experience who validate my side of the story as true. Even if I recorded it. Because if I felt so unsure, clearly that meant that my worst thoughts about myself—that I was a compulsively lying liar who constantly made shit up—was true, right? Because people who tell the truth are steadfast and confident in it, no? Only people who are truly liars ever waver about the truth.

“I kept thinking I was faking it,” Lawrence explained about being in labor, having convinced herself that some of the contractions she was feeling must be made up by her own mind, despite the very clear evidence that she was really experiencing the act of birthing a fucking child. Undermined by our own minds! Jennifer Lawrence, you have always been real, but you are so real for this. Because whewwww, if I had a dime for every time my brain thought that maybe I shouldn’t trust my own eyes and physical experience, I’d have a fully paid-off house and six horses in a barn by now.

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These are thoughts that usually only my therapist hears. As a human who has lived through some truly traumatic and/or unbelievable things and has a parent who likes to constantly say negating things like “that’s not how I remember it” or “well, you are the only one of my kids who is mentally ill,” I don’t always trust my memories or experiences of life. I am constantly worried I’m lying or misremembering unfairly in order to fill in the gaps. My brain has washed away a lot of the details—good and bad—from the times where I’ve endured undeniable strife or emotional hardship. (I am told that this is quite normal.) Sometimes all I am left with is the feeling of a situation, maybe the occasional blast of specific memory. And even then, I’m often left unsure, untrusting of my recollection of events.

In some ways, the doubt casts a shadow that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, the admission that my memory may not be so accurate about certain memories casting a shadow of doubt across the lot. All of it becomes a handy self-flagellation tool for when you’re feeling down, insecure, and unsure of yourself, which—if you have ever experienced this—can be a lot of the time. And after years and years and years of this, the cognitive dissonance becomes all you really know and the only thing that makes sense or feels comfortable. To assert the truth feels like a colossal mistake, or, well, a lie.

“I’m just a bad, bad girl! Daddy might as well hit me now, because I’m just a bad girl!” I understand why the adults in my life laughed at me when I said this. What a dramatic declarative statement for a literal child to make. But everything was a deeply serious, very big deal to me when I was a child. Probably because I was, you know, a child, and therefore experiencing everything for the first time. And, spoiler alert, your first experiences with anything in the world are sure to bring about Big Feelings, whether you express them or not. (I have always erred on the side of “express!” It’s not so much a choice as it is a biological imperative I feel deep in my bones.)

I remember making this bad girl declaration at 6 or 7 on a family vacation. Tear stained and snot nosed, I don’t remember what I did that resulted in this assertion, but it was met with a sea of laughter fueled by the disbelief that my father ever could or would be violent towards me. And it completely deflated and eviscerated me. This moment was just another example of how my family asserted their truth: that I was someone to not take seriously, someone whose thoughts, feelings, and experiences should be doubted at every turn. I was someone—the world taught me—who should be constantly taken with a grain of salt and a side of eye. Because is that really violence? What’s a lil slap or punch or spanking in the name of behavior modification, y’knowwhatimean? Surely it never could or would go past that. And even if it did, you probably deserved it or are misremembering it. That’s just what families who believe in corporeal punishment do: rationalize the bad behavior (if they can even remember it themselves) and gaslight you into disbelieving your own experiences. Bonus points if they turn your these moments into oft-repeated family stories for the LOLs.

After awhile, that sort of external feedback seeps in and becomes the internal voice loop, too. You convince yourself that, hey, maybe you are a bit of a melodramatic over-reactor; maybe what you see and hear and experience of the world is not exactly that, and your sensitive nature and big feelings are creating lies in the narrative. Maybe those parts of you are creating things that are not there. Maybe your assertion of the truth and your “experience” of the world should not be trusted. Maybe you should not trust your own mind, thoughts, and body, either. Maybe you should just brush it all aside and pretend the there is, in fact, not there. Don’t bring it up, don’t talk about it. Because talking about it doesn’t help anything. (A common refrain in my family.)

I didn’t realize that most women might feel this way, although in hindsight I absolutely should’ve. Because women have, historically speaking, never really been all that believed or trusted. And the intervening centuries have not done us any favors, either. After all, it’s 2025 and the New York Times is still running headlines that beg the question “did women ruin the workplace?”

(But don’t worry, guys, they changed the headline to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” with a subhead of “And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?” so maybe just forget about that first one. Thank god we have culture warriors like the rotted fleshsack cosplaying as a sentient human being, Ross Douthat, around to ask the really hard-hitting questions.)

I’m not going to get into that hourlong “debate” of leading questions and bad faith arguments between three conservatives who ultimately agree with one another. Because their central theses inherently and purposefully miss the point in order to—surprise surprise!—blame women for why the world has gone to shit (and not the capitalist hellscape that imperialist, capitalist forces have wrought with their shitty egos and greed). But it just goes to show you that we as a society, species, whatever, are never not looking for a way to undermine women’s mental, physical, emotional, literal, and metaphorical capacity and understanding of the world. Because it really, really grinds against the culture that we have now—and men really, really don’t want that ground down, because it deeply benefits them. Better to grind out half the population’s sense of self and reality instead! After all, they’re mostly too emotional to be productive in the capitalistic sense, anyhow. How beneficial could their healthy minds and sense of self actually be to our society, eh?

No wonder women think we’re lying and ruining everything all of the time. That’s epigenetics at work, baby! That’s year and years of history encoded into our DNA, of society screaming at us that we’re manipulative witches, we’re duplicitous sluts, we’re ruinous, villainous cunts looking for any way to take, take, take all that we can from the heroic warrior men biologically determined to inherit and steward the earth. We don’t deserve to feel confident in our experiences of the world because they don’t align with the patriarchal narrative norms set forth by the directives of all the men that came before now.

And before I get into too much black-and-white thinking, yes: I know that not all men, and indeed some women, are architects of this proverbial prison. But they are mostly exceptions that prove the rule at this point. And until we learn to accept in the grey areas of life—where the nuanced realities of being alive exist—in all their imperfections, we’re going to keep gaslighting ourselves into thinking all of this is inevitable, normal, not what we think, not all that bad, et cetera and so forth. We’re going to neuter our own sense of self and the world in the service of what? Silence? Fear and isolation and some sort of Ultimate Truth (envisioned by men) that may or may not even exist, all things considered?

When you spend your entire life low-key (or even high-key) not believing yourself and your experiences, it’s easy to see how a person may internalize the belief that they’ve built their sense of self upon a throne of lies. This makes everything about being alive feel precarious, maybe even dangerous. Because how can you trust what you know or don’t know, see or don’t see, feel or don’t feel, hear or don’t hear, when you’re not sure of any of it? Suddenly any and all sensory information feels like it is overwhelming your system, and you get pushed into a space of submission rather than assertion. You accept the ebbs and flows and wants and whims of others as the truth, rather than your own experiences. You don’t really get to know the person that you are, only the person that the assertions of others claim you to be.

That is the most harmful lie of all, one that’s taken me decades of hard work to overcome—and even then, the idea that I am a lying liar who lies or, at least, exaggerates the truth, still pokes at me. If I were still in the business of making Game of Thrones references, I’d put one of them here, and end this newsletter with a rallying cry for all those naysayer voices, both inside and outside of me, to sit and spin on that little sword of truth.

The weather is changing and so am I.

Cool winds are replacing warmer ones, and I am once again thinking about death and loss. This time of year tends to do that to a person.

I am thinking about becoming a death doula and how I want to be there for people who have no one. I think about my own death sometimes. Hopefully at an age far greater than I am now. I think about how alone I will likely be—without kids, without family gathered by my side to usher me into the next great unknown. I think about my grandmother, and spending her last full month together, before she was hospitalized and hospice came and she took her final breath (graciously, at home). I think about how I showed up at her doorstep, very nearly having taken my own life a few weeks prior, broken and shattered and convinced there was nothing about me that was needed by anyone. I think about how I found my reason for living while I watched her slowly die.

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I think about her chin hairs. How my grandmother had a biweekly standing appointment at a salon nearby when my siblings and I were growing up, where she would get her chin hairs waxed and her roots touched up. I look at my own chin hairs now as I pluck them at the age of nearly 40, and I think about plucking her own back in October of 2018, touching her face as I did what my mother would not do—how disgusted my mother was at the thought of forcibly removing something she barely even knew herself—having hair—and how much I hated her for it in that moment. How much I understand it now. How much removing even the smallest status symbol of femininity and beauty and worth might hurt someone who was always admonished for not having it. What a disgusting standard we hold the living to when that living person is born a woman. The bald woman and her hairy mother and the kid who won’t stop talking about it.

I think about love and how hard it can be, how absolutely shattering and affirming it can be in equal measure, depending on how you wield it. Or how it wields you, if you’re not careful. And I know, as the daughter of that bald anorexic, how much we are born in tandem and complement to the persons who came before us. I, my mother’s polar opposite: fat with a big head of hair. Loud and unapologetically questioning. Funny and flippant and thoughtful and deeply fucking sensitive: a combination of the two women who raised and came before me. I think about how hard it must be to face a mirror that is the antithesis of you, and yet is also exactly you, in all the ways you hide and shame and hate yourself. It’s all about cycles. Renewals and rebirth. Death and life and being and not. I think about Palestine (which should be free) and how history repeats itself, not always in echo but in rhyme. I think about freedom and what it means to really live in the light, even when it’s scary to do so.

My grandfather entered hospice care this week.

My grandparents are my parents. Were my parents? They are the people who raised me. They were, for all our arguments and issues, the two people who loved me and supported me most. My grandmother loved my singing and my grandfather loved my words. My grandmother and I were voracious gossips and readers; my grandfather and I political obsessives. I can still smell the Manhattan on his breath as he looks at me, charmed by something smart-ass-y I’ve just said as a child. A retort to one of his conservative, politically charged opinions, no doubt. Cutting through his occasionally selfish and exceedingly privileged perspective with a sassy but logical comment was part of our deal—and he loved me for it, despite his deeply Republican leanings. It was always in these moments that he would chuckle, impressed, as he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it lovingly, saying, “you’re so god damn good with words! You should do something with words with your life!” And so I did and I still do and I can’t believe I am here, every day, doing this, and getting paid for it. Even if the “getting paid for it” part is harder to come by these days. (Life do be like that sometimes, though.)

He and I have long had a running bit. Well, we’ve had several, to be honest. But ever since I moved to Los Angeles, he’s told me that he’s waiting for me to buy him a first class plane ticket to a fancy steak dinner the second I have my “big break.” In my eyes that would come the day I got paid to write my first real television script (my web talk show didn’t count, really, to either of us), or sold my first book proposal. Every time we talked on the phone he would say, “well I’m still waiting, you know. For that plane ticket and a steak dinner. One day they’re going to recognize your talent, kid. One day.”

And today they did. The first half of the money I am making for my first-ever script deal hit my bank account this morning. It’s not much by any stretch (I am working with a UK-based company and how they do things in London is very different from Los Angeles), but what it represents is something so much bigger than its financial value. It means that neither of us were wrong to believe in me: maybe I am that god damn good with words. Maybe there’s a place for me and my silly little stories in this world. Maybe it’s good that I insisted on following this deeply chaotic and ultimately incongruous path towards self-actualization.

But it also comes with a sort of heartbreak, because I cannot afford to buy my grandfather a plane ticket to Los Angeles and a steak dinner. Nor can he afford, health-wise, to take a 6-hour plane right to see this big, grand city he never got to see. And it’s sad to see how close you can get to being able to make something so meaningful come true, only for it to not be actually possible in so many ways. But he is sleeping 18-20 hours a day now, refusing food and drink—so I find myself wishing that time travel were real, wishing I could go back in time to the grampy I remember from 20-30 years ago, so spry and young and full of verve. So capable and strong and fiercely, wildly there. But there’s a world of difference between 62 and 92, even if the heart never changes.

So instead we FaceTime and I tell him that I finally did it: somebody is finally paying me because I do words so good, and I’m going to come to where he lives and take him out for a big steak dinner. He chuckles a little, his understanding of time and people and our place in the world more jumbled than ever. But he loves me, god damn it, and I love him, too. My mind wanders to the dementia episode of BoJack Horseman, and I hope desperately that his mind is carrying him to places and memories full of love and happiness. I imagine him talking to my grandmother’s wedding portrait and instead of a photo he is seeing her there, in all her beauty and sass and whip-smart glory. I hope they can be together soon and that when they are there is no more pain and regret for all the hurt they caused one another when they were alive. The cheating, the nasty words, the lives lived separately but together. My mother says he talks to her all the time now, asking when they will get to be together again. Soon now, I imagine. And this, too, makes me deeply happy and deeply, deeply sad.

Autumn in Los Angeles is different from the other parts of the world that I have lived: as the equinox arrives so too come the Santa Ana winds, barreling through the city with their brusque, hot air and potential for chaos and damage. The last gasping breaths of summer, zany and unpredictable, September and October often end up being Los Angeles’ hottest months, before the cooler temperatures and desert air mix together to give us something not quite cold, but not quite warm, not quite wet, but not quite dry. A fallow sort of stasis that allows for new growth to take root. We may not get the bursting colors of dying leaves, but we do get the perfect breeding ground for something bigger to leap forward once winter gives way to spring.

Everything is changing. So many things are dying. So many things are being reborn. And on this, the near-anniversary of my near-death all those years ago, I am choosing life. Even as it kills me—maybe especially so. What that means? Only time will be able to tell us. But the hope of something greater is enough to keep me going.

I hope it is for you, too.

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