There is a loss of control in the world that bleeds into how I deal with myself. I don’t believe this is some sort of phenomenon. I am not the only one realizing I desperately want to find control of the wheel. Yet each time I do, something pummeling happens to me. I keep thinking about how my summer was going according to plan, and then my cat passed, which caused a somewhat random, devastating blow. I began saying yes to more things at work, and I suddenly realized that last week I haven’t sat still. The one day I did stay home, after my face fully slammed into a wall, causing me to panic and think my nose was broken (spoiler: it is totally fine), I spent the day poring over that Rolling Stone article, delving into the deranged details of the drugs, the deception, the death. Not in a way that felt gossipy, but in a way that I felt I had to prepare myself.

Last week, when I got my haircut, a woman who was getting her hair done before me gave me the advice that if and when a man approaches me to attack me, I must immediately pee on him. She said it with such firmness. This was what I must do. At first, it felt bizarre and hilarious, but she was right. I have control over my body, and in a moment where someone tries to take that control, I must do something.

I must piss.

I am trying to pivot my thinking in that direction. Rather than, I guess, I must die. I guess I can’t go on. I have fully done something so shameful that I no longer deserve to navigate this life anymore. I am trying to remember: well, this is what I can do instead. I don’t have to die in a moment of desperation. I actually can just let go and let the pee flow.

I find myself repeatedly trying to return to something painful that provokes some form of conflict, dismembering myself, landing me in my place of shame over and over and over again because it is the place I know best. Even though I yearn for control, the truth is I have never fully known it because most things are not in my control. Each day, a new surprise. Sometimes deeply horrifying, other times a morsel of sweetness. But the taste I let linger the longest is one akin to shit in my mouth. I skip over the good to hyperfocus, hyperfixate, obsessively try to self-correct whatever tiny first-world issue I created on a drunk night out. But most of these little things I do don’t matter, I guess. It almost feels narcissistic to think what I create is even capable of causing such a huge chasm in anyone’s world but my own. I am not as powerful as my shame has led me to believe! What a fucking relief!

I can now re-navigate back to focusing on the rage that is deserved! For the abusers! For the imperial state! For the horrifying people in power! Etcetera!! And hopefully, within reason. Gather the information, understand the situation, learn to prepare to an extent, and move forward. Let go knowing the limit of my impact. Do the job, wipe front to back, then flush the rest down the tubes.

I am sad. It is embarrassing. I wheel and deal my humiliation from one friend to another, asking for help. For support. I admit to each friend that without Beans, I am alone. I wake up and no one is waiting for me at my door. I come home and no one is trotting toward me, scolding me for daring to ever leave. I now cook meals in peace with no one to jump on the counter and sniff the produce. I can leave my bathroom door open, knowing he will not run in to suck on each faucet, roll around in the sink, then the tub, then back to the sink.

It all happened very suddenly. One evening, while I was trying to do dishes, he leapt in front of me and I scolded him. The next, he wouldn’t leave his hiding spots in the dark corners of my apartment. His body felt heavy and warm, despite me moving him directly in front of the AC. I refused to believe something dire was happening, though. Beans was dramatic. He was firm in his actions even as he switched minute by minute. It was a long few days that landed me with an even longer bill.

In the past few days, I have been thinking about companionship, especially on these erratic weather days. I have been thrust back to 2020, when I was tucked away and alone in my Bay Ridge studio apartment, far away from everyone. I would hold my phone up to my face, watching people in Bushwick take distanced walks together, couples trying new recipes, people and their pets. I don’t think I could ever do that again. Actually, I KNOW I cannot do that again. When I moved to my place a few months ago, I knew I’d never have to. Not just because of Beans, but also because I chose a space in close proximity to people I love who actually show up. But the loss of Beans has shone a spotlight on the glaring feeling I try to bury in the depths of hell, that I am alone. I don’t live with anyone anymore (thank god). I don’t have a partner or kids (thank GODDDDD).

I liked having a cat. Beans, despite his attitude issues, was a low-maintenance companion. I knew he would just be there to sit through the movies I chose, the records I put on, the nights I stayed up writing parts of novels that eventually got discarded for being more biographical than fiction. We rewatched all the seasons of Sex and the City ad nauseam together. I wasn’t ashamed of my daily behaviors or my limitless mistakes. The bad texts, the nights crying, the hookups I snuck in late at night. Roommates and partners and friends haven’t witnessed the intimacy Beans did. It felt comforting to have that witness, that type of sharing. And now, there is no one in my day-to-day to that same capacity.

Beans came into my life a few days before I got doxxed by right-wing Indian men, which coincided with me getting dumped mid-panic attack. He saw me through several breakups with the same guy. He was with me last May when I spent the entire month in isolation as I slowly got dumped by an entire friend group for having a breakdown from my CPTSD. He was there when I jumped from job to job. He helped me move through buying my own place while dealing with a grifter roommate. And when I got my home painted and fixed up, he kept the painter company, watching him wallpaper and limewash. He passed away a week after my last paint project concluded.

Beans leaves me at a time where I feel settled at work. I have a routine. I have people to call for plans, even if it is last minute. Yesterday I couldn’t stop crying, then sleeping, then waking up to cry again, so I texted friends in my neighborhood. Within a few hours, I was showered and out of my house, sipping on a beer at a bar that is 10 minutes from my home. I have been doing this thing, which I always felt hesitant to do before my April 2025 collapse, reaching out specifically to people and telling them the brutal truth about how I am doing mentally.

On Saturday, James, Tessa, and Karolena came with me to be with Beans in his final moments. At first, I chose them because of the longevity of our friendships, but I think subconsciously I knew they would add levity and weed. We oscillated from giggling to sobbing. They watched as I held Beans while we listened to “Night Falls on Hoboken” and then “Homesickness.” As Beans was lulled off to his next journey, we formed a circle around him in silence. It felt religious. Some form of affirmation that even in this strange, deranged moment, I am grateful. I am grateful to be able to tell my friends, “I feel alone even though I know I am not alone.” Friends who cried just as hard as me, despite Beans having swatted at each one of them several times. Each time, they still came back to my home and let him sprawl across them again.

There is a testament to loving something, someone, so difficult. It is not for the weak. When the vets at the emergency room called with updates, they continually told me he somehow still had so much feist in him, meowing and attempting to throw his paws up at them. They told me it wasn’t my fault. Beans was good at hiding his pain behind a big personality. There was no way for me to have known that cancer had quickly run through his entire body. I loved Beans because he was strange. He wanted to lay on top of you for hours. He didn’t want you to be on Zoom, but he never minded a long movie or hours of me being stoned, dancing with him to records. He loved to lie on countertops and drink out of my wine glass. He ripped through my rugs and shower curtain. It was hard to live leisurely in my home. Glasses had to be out of his reach and doors had to stay closed. He clawed at doors to try to come in, and he wanted to take up the entire bed. He humped pillows and stuck men’s big toes all over his face.

It is an honor to also be difficult. I too am tough to love, have strange behaviors, and swat hard, even in my most vulnerable states of mind. And still, people come through, refusing to let me believe I am fully alone.

Admittedly, I participated in the circle jerk too. Not only did I participate, I actually semi created some of the circles themselves, bringing in fellow creative types together to meet to collectively grow our egos and pose for photos taken on film cameras. I spent an incredible amount of time, energy, and money self-promoting and self-defiling in hopes of being promoted into the coveted role of Professional Artist.

That shit was fucking debilitating though. I take full responsibility for how I landed myself in my own squalor. How I believed finishing first in a rat race would help me achieve. I bounced from one group of artists to another, wanting to climb the rung at theaters run by grifters, needing the validation of people who were deemed worthy of being published, starving for the gratification of anyone with clout and access.

I thought by being close would hide the struggle I often felt which was that I could never just be An Artist. I have always needed to have A Job. A Real Job. Whether that real job was being a shitty hostess during brunch shifts, a full time nanny, working backstock at a fast fashion retailer, getting underpaid at bookstores to know too much, I have always held jobs that felt outside my art practice and it, quite frankly, often felt like a failure. And that failure became a point of deep frustration and jealousy. I was envious of the people around me who took the risk of just never having a job, never knowing how to write a resume or gain any ounce of useful workplace skills beyond their artistic skills.

Here I was learning different POS systems and there they were spending days writing and noodling on their instruments. I felt jealous that they seemed to not have the same survival instinct gnawing at their necks, hemming and hawing in their ears begging to make money, save money, OR ELSE. The need to be an adult, to provide an anchor of stability for myself and the future of my family loomed over me as soon as I turned 30. I felt it heavy on my heart so much so I let it corrode me and my relationships.

There is an odd pressure I have felt to prove myself as a creative. It is a pressure I put on myself but don’t seem to put on my loved ones. I am always telling the people around me the ways they are artists, but while doing that, I distanced myself from the title because of how I had, for the first time in my life, gotten a full time job. It felt like I was being deceptive once I stopped performing weekly to claim the title of comedian or performer. I don’t have work published despite working on now a second novel and continuing to write this self-serving Substack that maybe 3 people tops read, so I even stopped calling myself a writer.

However, everything above is the complete opposite of my actual belief system. The best artists, in my opinion, are working class people. It is folks who have experienced rather than observed and somehow have figured out a way to create pieces that combine both actions. I know that in my heart and since I cracked open that vessel last year, I have been able to remind myself of the importance of the work I have experienced, the work I do day to day. THE WORK is what fuels what I create. I have suddenly struck a balance and recently I find myself feeling… euphoric? It feels like the first time I did mushrooms and watched Labyrinth - scary and intriguing. Powerful and psychedelic, wondering how many socks Bowie stuffed into his crotch. (For the sake of maintaining my teen crush fantasies, I was hoping 0.)

I believe work is necessary. There! I said it! Je suis un Kardashian!

Accessibility is one thing but I feel like I so often have been met with accessibility being framed as a way to skip the work. How can you be fighting for the working class if you refuse to be a part of us? If you think you are above taking a restaurant job because you insist that you need to play one million gigs at shitty bars across Bushwick until you make it? It reframes an artist to be above certain types of work. I too was someone who said I could never have a full time job because I Am An Artist. But what if I am both? What if I am a skilled laborer and a writer and an organizer and a homemaker and and and…

What if, to pull an idea a comrade mentioned last evening to a group of us, what if I am a “swiss army knife” of sorts? Why reduce ourselves to a singular focus? Perhaps this is where my gemini moon comes into the spotlight, or perhaps I have a pretty good point which is that the work and the struggle are necessary to not only growing our creative practices but also growing our capacity to move through hard moments together.

I see this in my parents who, admittedly, have a problematic relationship to work (as most immigrant parents do). They are pro-over-working yourself. My mother spends her weekends sending strongly worded emails to colleagues across the globe and believes that is just a part of life. But on the flip side, it is that same type of work ethic that trickles into her interpersonal familial relationships. A ride or die, a soft heart, an immense capacity to forgive and understand. I can see in her how one part of her life informs the other.

It is that same tenacity I have found in moving through a variety of work that has strengthened my spine into teflon when it comes to my own art. Recognizing that has not made me cry at every single rejection letter I have been receiving from agents. It has also funnily enough made me experience dating in a much lighter way. I no longer grip onto people and artwork in a “this must happen or I’ll die” type way. And in that same fervor and ethic, I can navigate the workplace and this treacherous world with more humor, which then, you guessed it, makes me a much sharper comedian.

I thought work and structure would flatten my identity. I thought no longer being surrounded by only performers and full time artists would remove me completely from that part of my own identity. I had a fear I would become deeply boring. Cliché of me to say, but I was afraid to lose my spark when I began to clarify my world, set boundaries, and leaned into the regimens I have always desired. Instead, and this will be something my therapist will fucking love I am writing out, the boundaries have made me feel limitless.

In a single day I can make a chia pudding, write parts of my horny novel, assist in my workplace’s budgeting, and go on a date with someone with several skull tattoos. How excruciatingly boring! How infinitely fun!

The mall doesn’t beg for commitment. It does however, demand your desire. It requires you to exist in a liminal space where the wandering enables the performance. You must be able to imagine all the possibilities- what it would feel like to order the full plate of chicken you just sampled from the Panda Express, how your ass would look in a thong with the word PINK splashed across your vulva, catching your crush purchasing you a band t-shirt for your birthday. The mall holds the first place I could physically envision a story being played out. It is the birth of fiction in action for me. Of course, my first instance of fiction is through books and music which are, I think, more traditional forms of storytelling. But the mall is where I got to see it all happen just not to or for me. It seemed like it was happening for everyone else and I was merely a witness, a background character paid nothing but I was happy to have had the experience under my belt so I could be prepared for when it was my time.

To be a spectator is not something I take lightly. I enjoy logging the details of these everyday experiences. I watched mothers purchase their daughters expensive dresses to wear to Bat Mitzvahs. I saw first kisses in the food court. I dug through buckets of bracelets while hearing friends get first piercings at a Claire’s. In hindsight, I may have been a somewhat creepy tween but at the time, I was yearning. I wanted so badly to experience. And I wanted so badly for those experiences to carry meaning.

Recently, I have had to grapple with the hard truth that most people don’t carry any strong feelings towards you. Most people move within the realm of neutrality towards you. Neutrality is fucking uncomfortable though. Being hated gives me direction, being a nobody leaves me in a space where I have to create and believe my own truth. Even people who once held love or deep disdain for me may in fact have completely moved on into a scarier place: forgetting my dumbass even exists. I have done that to people. Some days I suddenly remember people who I was close with in 2010 and rather than feel the need to reconnect, I reminisce to myself for a moment then quickly move on with my day. I now yearn for things beyond that, I suppose.

What? You thought I was going to say and now I no longer yearn? That now because I understand I am but a fleck in someone’s life story I understand that desire creates self importance in a narcissistic way that overshadows the truth of how things actually occurred in real time? That moments that were big to me may not even be worthy memories of other people? Wrong!!! What has been significant to me remains just as such, but I am trying to no longer rely on reciprocation.

I can be shaped by these small moments that barely hold a flame to people. I think about the mall a lot. How it was a pressure cooker for so many of my desires. One of the malls I frequented during high school had a movie theater in it. We would all meet up and eat at TGI Fridays and then go to the movies hoping to see our crushes. I watched boys sit shoulder to shoulder with my friends. Then we would all run around after the movie, hopped up on caramel swirl drinks from Starbucks, chicken tenders, and popcorn, until someone’s mom would pick us up. My body would be exhausted from the animalistic flirting I would do with both my friends and their suitors. Prancing around hoping someone would turn to me and decide my manic ass was the object of desire, not the girl in front of them with the wispy hair and calm demeanor. No, I would think, they definitely think it’s sexy I am a teen girl acting like a god damn muppet. I would go home and lay in bed and listen to my Discman I decorated with whiteout and stickers. Loudly in my headphones something dramatic and sweet, songs in desperation about being seen, about hating my body but loving you, whoever you are.

Most of these people are married by now with babies. I don’t doubt these memories perform differently for them, and I don’t doubt that they still yearn too in a much different way. I like to think we still think about the mall in all its iterations we experienced. Maybe the mall where the escalator to upstairs was a direct pathway from the cookie cake stand to the Delia’s, my Mecca. Or maybe the King of Prussia mall that had the Betsy Johnson store I used all my saved up money from working at a kids gym to buy my pink prom dress that was so ugly in comparison to my peers, it got me romantically rejected from my date. Or the mall with the movie theater where I pretended to like The Dark Knight. The mall, while yes, is a source of capitalism, the place where money must be hemorrhaged in order to sustain, is where things I had read in books, listened to in songs, watched in movies became acted out clumsily in real life. Where I saw things with my eyes and let them become bigger and bigger in my brain until I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I had to put it somewhere. It spilled out of me in jokes and song and dance and now it continues to do so in my day to day, whether that be in my writing or giving me a slap-across-the-face type reality check that things aren’t always what they seem. Sometimes it is just another day at the mall.

I am excited to live alone again. I remember sobbing leaving that studio apartment in Bay Ridge where, two months prior to the move, I had been pondering ways to off myself. Eventually, obviously, I didn’t do it. At first I struggled with what to wear and whether to burn my journals and laptop filled with secrets. Long lines of self-sabotage and desire. Then I remembered the consequence of suicide. How would my parents feel? What about my brother? How would my cousin explain the whole thing to my niece?

And then I recollected how, in death, you have no control over how people post and portray stories about you. I will be damned if some bitch I hate wrote something that portrayed anything other than my hatred of them for the sake of grieving or sentimentality. Nothing motivates me more than spite, so I stayed alive.

So I am still here. Despite the attempts, the rebuilding, the solitude, the rerouting, the rebirth, etc. And I am constantly reminded that there are better things ahead.

I am excited to live alone again. I like my little organizational and cleaning systems. I like knowing I have the space to myself. I don’t need to ask permission for people to stay over. I make my own mess and I clean it. No one else’s shoes are in my way. I don’t feel hesitant to walk out of my room and tiptoe around. No one’s girlfriend is using the utilities and no one else is watching the TV. I can do my work in peace. I can deadlock the door as soon as I enter. I can sneak lovers in with no witness.

And yet today, on the first beautiful day of 2026, I am sad. I am in my yard and I am fucking sad. I am fucking sad to be leaving this huge fucking yard.

The truth is this apartment is too big to live in alone. I had dreams of one day living here with a partner but, at the time, my partner had only lived outside his parents’ place for college. Other than that, he still slept in a carpeted room above his sister and mother and father. There were many, many issues that wouldn’t have made it work, but the possibility of having this yard slipped away with each failure of relationship for me.

I knew I had an end date to this place.

Slowly, over the past few months, as a hard year unraveled me, so did various things in the apartment. The door to one of the cabinets never stayed on. The heat never worked fully. I developed asthma again and got paranoid there was mold in my poorly ventilated bathroom. Random things would just one day fall off the wall. An omen.

I have felt ready to move. Hell, I felt practically pushed out. My home felt colder and stranger by the minute and I am sure the harsh winter wasn’t any help. But suddenly today, with the sun pressing into the astroturf and the white buds appearing on previously dead floral vines on the fence, I am trying to take note of all the things I need to remember.

I will remember the mornings reading back here. Watching my ex through my window smoke cigs before he headed back to his house. I will remember when I bought the grill and learned to cook things beyond just the basic burgers and dogs. I must’ve fed a hundred people in this home, a lot of whom don’t even like me anymore but never had the balls to tell me to my face— most of them quietly disappearing, never acknowledging my labor or my personhood.

All of the parties with people’s puppies running around. Doing mushrooms under the big tree when it reached full bloom. Writing a complete novel for the first time. Sending ten query letters in a day, then realizing they all had the same typo, feeling like a failure, then ripping from my bong to drown out my mistakes.

All the horrible roommate stories. The cleaning up of cat puke. The ending of it all being me at a loss of thousands of dollars for trusting a friend. Those few times Beans ran and hid under parts of the yard where I couldn’t grab him. Playing Uno and getting too aggressively. Listening to friends’ break up stories. Friends listening to my own. All my little outfits. My garden crocs. Drinking orange wine. The red cardinal that sat on the shed every morning once each April arrived. The laughing, laughing, laughing.

And the crying. I cried a lot back here, especially last year. I felt trapped in many ways.

I am happy to be leaving. I have plans to paint the walls—yellow stripes, deep blues, pink tiles. A more organized system for my VHS tapes, books, and records. New corners for my tchotckes to nestle into, new corners of walls for Beans to paw at. I’ll be close to several parks, with one quite literally outside my window. I already have plans for people to stay over. It will be enough space for one person and some change.

I am happy I got to have the most beautiful Brooklyn backyard. When I tell people I am leaving, it is the first thing they mention. But in the end, my honest truth is, the biggest most beautiful things are hard to maintain when you are alone and I have felt that way here for a long fucking time.

pic by Bridget Badore

Admittedly, this is a frightening thought for me. I don’t think I am a traditional overachiever (albeit I am living in comparison with my fellow South Asian counterparts who tend to hold multiple degrees in engineering and medicine). I wasn’t ever a top-tier student. I know a lot about a very little, but even in those niches I still don’t know enough to extend myself to the level of expertise. I feel very mediocre. My writing has almost been picked up by agents. It has chomped at the bit but never has it been swallowed whole. The rejection letters pile up from agents who, at first, found themselves interested but in the end couldn’t place it anywhere. I have found myself oddly forgettable in other people’s narratives. I am quick to connect people and then realize maybe that was my only role.

But none of that is bad. It places me squarely where I am, completely and perfectly alright. Comfortable, even! A place where much of the world is not! And my comfortability doesn’t even live in permanence! It is just that most days, I am comfortable. My pain is managed, I am fed and housed, and even though I receive threats and have faced violence as recently as a few weeks ago, I have a firm sense of reality and safety.

I think my on-and-off addiction to needing to be some sort of beam of light, with people at a party like moths flocking to hear me talk about how I exist in chaos, was a result of capitalism. My unwieldy nature and my disregard for another person’s feelings, so long as I landed the joke, became my currency. No one was sacrificed, not even myself. I erased lines, gave up privacy, and let everyone in to take a slice of my resources, my relationships, my home, myself, my energy. All of it draining, just to make sure everyone had a sip from my cup. That pattern bred severe, secret animosity. And that resentment was the only thing fueling me.

Lately, nothing particularly remarkable has been happening. It has made me feel a little embarrassed when faced with the question, “What are you working on?” Because even though I am always tending to something, it doesn’t feel like anything notable. There is nothing I am eager to broadcast. I keep my work, my time, my energy close to my chest.

I have created secret small portals in the crevices of my life that was once filled with a hunger to be seen by everyone and everything so publicly. I was working with my perceived palette that was social capital and entertaining presenting as my only means of survival. Now I can stretch my days in a multitude of ways.

I am learning are portals does not call for the performative. I know they exist in my bedroom, with my family, at work, within my org, in one-on-one time with friends, when meeting people’s new babies and pets, work from home days with one tab open to YouTube videos teaching techniques to paint walls for my new home, watching a documentary on a blow-up mattress with glitter from Mardi Gras stuck to my chest, attending a pilates class where all the women beside me on black rubber mats are also trying to get ass cheeks lifted and even, going to things alone and leaving without ever saying goodbye.

Portals. Hidden passageways. Spaces where I get to encounter/create different versions of myself outside of the palette I once believed were the only materials I had to work with were things that had to be publicly performed. Rather than spread myself thin, I spread myself out. Pieces of me scattered across the rooms and relationships I inhabit.

Not to sound like I smoke as much weed as I do, but being alive is not necessarily supposed to be this big, electric thing every day. I had previously convinced myself that because I no longer have a partner or a passion that flings me on stage each night, I somehow will disappear. I will somehow wither away into nothingness, into meaningless. Much of life is monotony. It is going to work and wiping your ass and eating the same salad three days in a row. And between those rather boring but necessary rhythms are sudden bursts of beauty.

Some of that beauty I am excited to share immediately. I post pictures of my New Orleans outfits and my time with Molly and Carlee. I share birthdays, music, calls to urgent intervention, suggested readings. Other parts are just for me. Sacred rooms I never thought were things I could enter. A feeling like a dream, even if that dream is deeply ordinary. There are experiences I once believed were not available to me.

In the past few weeks I have had to ask people to write me recommendation letters. I have been moved to the point of tears to what people have said about me and how they hold such a firm believe in my abilities and character. It is not the claims of my humor or uniqueness that has moved me- it has been the very simple very mundane things I never thought I could be described as: responsible, kind, caring, a valued addition to a community.

Rather than being the beam of light attracting moths with my unwieldy tales, I have grown into something steadier. Not a spectacle, but a pillar. Not to boast because, in all honesty, I am a very weak pillar at best (you can ask my pilates instructor about my complete inability to lift 2 pound weights while pressing my hips up and down for 30 seconds at best). One of those middle-of-the-room supports that, if removed, would not cause the ceiling to cave in, prompting people to question the architect who says, “It’s just for extra stability- you can move it if you want to.” and if you do decide to move me, I will find a new place to hunker down, wash my ass, and eat my veggies.

I used to throw these huge parties at my apartment. I’d fill thrifted platters with cheeses and spreads. I curated playlists and lent out sweaters I loved to people I loved when it got a little chilly outside, always texting everyone yes, of course! Bring whoever! Front door is open! Using all my weekly allotted grocery money to feed my fellow artists who, in exchange for racks of lamb, miso-glazed veggies, and other recipes I tried my hand at, brought a bag of kettle chips, maybe some PBR. Countless summer evenings I spent dancing over a grill, flipping beef patties (my Hindu ancestors’ worst nightmare).

This offering was supposed to land as an unspoken softness. To make up for the imbalance of my entire personhood. To blur my sharp edges. To cover up the exhaustion I had felt from constant performance. The performance in my relationships, at my many different jobs, and on stage. All of which have slowly diminished. The charade was to cover up the completely unsocial, unlikeable qualities I possess. I am a highly critical person, of both myself and the people and places around me. I don’t love much. I like a lot of things, but that is very different than love. And sometimes when there have been things I so desperately wanted to love because it seemed valuable to be loved back by them, I overdid it. I always overdo it. I constantly have to restrain myself from the all or nothing mentality. It has never proven to be truthful or successful. Most things just quietly sit in the middle, which is often portrayed as murky and gray. It is a question, not a destination, and questions tend to throw off the idea of being on solid ground.

But it is in that strange loopy area, that floating and uncertainty, that questionable space, that I have been able to inhabit anything but grayness. In the process of restraint, I have found resurgence. Most nights are spent in my apartment covered in lush fabrics and jewel-tone colors next to my chatty cat, writing, reading, watching movies alone at a high volume, hiding under a heated blanket. Others are spent still not understanding my middle ground and taking my nights out on overdrive, but not with a full crowd, just with a friend, maybe a regretful suitor. Those feel far and few between. There are fewer birthdays and fewer obligatory shows in Bushwick basement bars. There are more nights out alone seeing jazz at the Guggenheim while on an edible, my hips pressing against the spiral ramp, my bird’s-eye view catching one of the performer’s kids sitting near the grand piano playing something on their iPad, colors ricocheting, bouncing off pieces featuring stacks of books by James Baldwin. I forget to charge my phone. I forget to see if anyone I know is at the event. I leave alone and stop at the Shake Shack off Barclays Center on the way home, catching a cab with my to-go bag in hand.

In the car home, driving down Atlantic Ave, I momentarily miss making music with certain people. I have my slippage of the brain, thinking it would have been nice to invite someone, offer to pay their ticket, and then I stop in my tracks and take a slug of my Oreo milkshake in the back of the car. There is this feeling I have often held heavy in my heart to give, to prove I deserve. Hibernating this winter, both willingly and unwillingly, has forced me to sit and remember I do not need proof of anything. I don’t need proof to see I am not evil, albeit I am deeply reckless and broken, but so is everyone’s favorite TV character.

I spent a lot of the past few days falling down rabbit holes of the news. Evil perverts and fascists physically and emotionally dismembering people for entertainment. And I feel sick. Sick of how self-congratulatory they all are and sick of how I have made myself feel so lowly to the point it manifested in physical pain and aches. The stress boils over and creates ailments in strange crevices across my body and inside my brain that would not have been able to be healed without this middle space I am swirling in.

So, I lied. I will still cook you dinner, but maybe not the whole thing all by myself. Maybe one of you will bring a fish to cook and a couple of you will do the dishes. It won’t be a big party and I won’t text to say bring everyone. It will be a couple of people. Afterwards, I won’t do it again for a few months probably, and I won’t feel bad about it. I will spend the months between the dinners cooking for myself or maybe one other person. But not another lover, not for a while. No matter how much I want to show off my culinary skills. No matter how much I want to prove my worth at the first sight of affection.

Maybe I was unjustified. I overreacted to what was being said to me. I threw that drink because I am crazy. The times I had given so much, to the point of feeling used, are delusions of grandeur. What if the person I think is doing DARVO to me is on the receiving end of me doing DARVO to them? What if we are both ping-ponging DARVO back and forth? They are Marty Supreme and I am… whoever else is in that movie playing ping pong (haven’t seen it yet).

I am wondering what is DARVO versus standing up for yourself. I have made mistakes before, thinking I was engaging in real conversation for mutual accountability (barf), that I can now see is some form of DARVO, that reversal victim-offender shit. The reality is I try to enter by being like, well, we both did bad shit to each other, let’s talk about it all. In the end, I am sure it is taken as me, with my pointer finger up toward the sky, my nose reaching upward at the same angle, a smug look on my face, slowly saying, “Actuaaallllyyyy.”

There isn’t much room for mistakes when we are talking via tip tap typing to each other all day. So, to avoid mistakes, we regurgitate therapy speak, little birds passing the same chewed-up food to each other, another game of ping pong. And while the therapy speak includes things about disposability and abolition, it finds its way back around to do just that: dispose of people and doom them to a space of permanent punishment. KNOWING that I have previously come off defensive, I then look into the mirror, wiping mascara off my cheeks, my hair a mess, and ask myself: was I the DARVO-er?

I think everyone is allowed to stand up for themselves and give their POV and reasoning. Then, once both sides are explained, if one person continues to prioritize their POV over the person who initially brought up the bullshit that was annoying the fuck out of them, then THAT is DARVO. Does that make sense? Darvo darvo darvo darvo!!! I have been scared celibate this year, and the lack of dick hitting my IUD once a week has caused me to ruminate over a stack of self-help books late into the night. Rather than dreaming of a crush pulling down my dollar store Hanes in the back of a movie theater, I am waking up, back drenched with sweat, screaming DARVO ME, DADDY.

Just because I fucked up, do I deserve to have my own back? Do I deserve to be mad too? To be upset at people’s hypocrisies? Or is my punishment that I no longer deserve agency? That I no longer get to have a side, an explanation, a reason? Because all those things would fall under DARVO.

I know it is bad to make blanket statements, but I think every woman and NB person I am friends with has been a victim of actual DARVO, myself included. As a former comedian with an undergrad degree in music, I have met my fair share of narcissists. I ask my therapist through tears almost weekly if I am a narcissist. I have narcissistic qualities for sure. I love to post a little partial nudity online. Someone once asked who in my life makes me laugh the most, and I honestly answered… me! While my self-esteem plummets, I am able to maintain a steady level of pretension, with a harsh vocabulary to pair. I genuinely am trying to be nicer, though. I have friends look over messages before I send them, editing for tone, making sure I don’t sound like a bitch, but no matter what I do, it still comes off like I am the problem. Because I am a problem. I am not built for second-by-second scrutiny. None of us are, really.

I think of the women I have loved the most. Fiona Apple, Helen Morgan, Nina Simone, Amy Winehouse. Women who dabbled in drugs and other illicit fanfare, who were often crass, experienced moments of being reprehensible, but were ultimately celebrated for unbridled brilliance. I think about how they probably don’t have a full text thread of every single bad thing they did. They didn’t have group chats of people collectively talking shit and planning interventions, or all deciding in tandem that the best thing to do for everyone’s sake and public image was to drop them completely.

My morality wavers in these moments. It is good to talk to people about what is happening, to confirm your reality and gain perspective. But I don’t think we need to set everything in stone.

I read recently that over-communicating is a form of begging. I decided that I can only wait for people for so long before taking them to the chopping block, but quietly. I silently disengage with no fanfare. Block numbers. Unfollow. Disappear. It is the only response I think people can’t point to and call sharp or mean or aggressive. I now get to have my piece of the narrative.

Last night, wanting to knock myself out of my nightly routine of taking “am I a narcissist DARVO daddy or just someone who made a mistake in the way I spoke?” quizzes, I got super high and ordered Van Leeuwen’s ice cream for delivery, like the pillow princess that I am. I finished watching the docuseries Telemarketers, where, at the end, there was a celebration that the two former workers who started the project finally got to share their POV with the world. Their experience exposing a scam charity foundation they worked for in the early aughts felt earned, despite their deeply messy lives, riddled with addiction and incarceration, and despite how futile people around them, especially the people in power, thought it was.

There are people pushed out and to the side, deemed broken, failures, difficult to cure, who deserve their day. Us low lives must live on. Hold fast and steady to our POV and our truths, because if I don’t, I fear my already too-soft brain will be pounded down into a fine dust.

Frankly, they make me look fucking crazy. I can already see the recipients showing them to their friends, affirming that yes, I am the narcissistic, pretentious bitch they all think I am. For some folks, I do not care if that is how they perceive me. This year I sent two big emails. One to my ex, just to let him know he fumbled me. Another to a former friend I intentionally chose not to confront. Someone I left unbothered and without explanation, who in turn decided to create and push a narrative about me to multiple mutual friends. That one I low key regret, but alas, you cannot click undo send three months later.

My drafts are filled with emails I have wanted to send to confirm relationship endings. A goodbye. A listicle of arguments laced with my own apologies. Ultimately, an empty gesture, because there is only so much language can capture. And there is also so much information people do not deserve to know.

There are also the willful misreadings of texts and emails. Moments where I try to be clear and it is heard as defensive, and I cannot blame anyone for doing so. Clarity can feel harsh, but so can avoidance. I am trying to toe the line between both. I learned from former suitors how avoidance and delusion live in the same pocket of our brains, and that I should try to embrace that pocket.

Avoidance has a bad reputation, but I admire it. It has been a great protector for me this year. Rather than thinking I am being a bigger person by leaving folks an open road back to me, I have freely clicked the block button. Before this, I thought I would have to announce an FYI that I was blocking someone. Instead, I just do it. I do not explain myself to anyone, and recently I have not even been telling people who I am blocking. I simply do it.

It is strange that we live in a world where we think everyone should know where we are and what we are doing, which in my case, even if someone is blocked, they can safely assume I am at home getting stoned and watching an entire season of a show that originally aired in 2001.

Most of my work is the art of oversharing. I love to overshare. That is what this stupid little Substack is about too. I think it helps me reveal myself to me. It helps me backtrack and recognize what I have done wrong and take ownership of it, rather than act like I have not made the decisions that landed me in my own peril.

I think that is why I like watching sitcoms from episode one. Recently, I finished The Nanny, and now for the first time in my life I am watching Friends. Sitcoms are formulaic, and being able to watch the full timeline from start to finish provides a simple map of choice. The complete ending of these shows cannot happen without mistake, then forgiveness, then mistake again. My therapist keeps telling me repair is more important than conflict. I think this concept is watered down in the narrative arc of a sitcom. Over nine or ten seasons, we watch repair happen over and over again in different ways, and the same cast of five to ten people find a way to exist in the same room despite the conflict, largely because those five to ten actors want to remain employed by a network television channel.

That all is fun and flirty for entertainment and employment purposes, but in reality, no one is obligated to stay in your cast of characters. No one is owed repair or reentry, even if I was the one who caused the initial blow. I do not need to write a closure arc. I do not need to over inundate people with explanation. All of that can stay in the drafts.

Which is to say, I am trying to learn to shut my big stupid mouth. This is hard because, as previously shared, I am a Leo stellium. I also literally have a tattoo that says I LOVE GOSSIP, which I still do. Gossip has been diluted into something frivolous, but I think there is a difference between productive gossip and gossip for gossip’s sake. Productive gossip discusses real danger that has occurred. It acts as a warning signal. Gossip for gossip’s sake feels more personal. Just because I had conflict with someone, and vice versa, does not mean they are a harmful person. So I am trying to cut down on the latter.

I am trying to remember that no amount of oversharing or over explanation can dig certain situations out of their demise. Some things are already done. Some endings do not need narration. I guess I finally understand the saying let sleeping dogs lie. Let bygones be bygones. Do not poke the sleeping bear. Keep it in the drafts, babe!

But that does not remove agency. It does not erase choice or nuance. In true abolitionist form, I am trying my best to counteract and forgive my beliefs of the past, especially my judgments. How quickly we have all been to point a finger at somebody acting out during rock bottom, deeming them crazy, clutching our Telfars while saying “well I would never!”

But how could you know? How could you honestly know how you would react in moments of desperation, on the border between psychosis and insecurity? What fear pushes us to do and forces us to forget under a mixture of substances and adrenaline? And how dare we let those images of mistakes keep a person frozen forever in our minds. I think that when I have done this, it is because I have not believed in my own capacity to change. I like being stuck. Stuck is cozy. I know what to expect, and the loop of disappointment acts as a heated blanket, warming my insides with the satisfaction of knowing what will happen. The frozen image of a person allowed me to frame morality as whatever that person was not.

Recently, I reconnected with a friend I had not spoken to in years. During our fallout, I focused on behaviors rather than reasoning because the behaviors affected me directly and more immediately. I think reasoning requires more nuance. I think zooming out requires a degradation of ego. I think ego can be upheld by groups of people who validate the frozen image we keep.

I have always oscillated between wanting to be part of a group and wanting to break free from any singular social circle. It is a push and pull where, no matter where I have settled temporarily, I have felt a deep loneliness in the pit of my stomach. Lately, I have not felt so lonely. I am learning to understand the difference between community and a group of friends. Sometimes, those ideas overlap but they don’t always have to. Thanks to my sertraline and weed addiction, I can accept my flow of things. I can be buoyant and social one day, then spend the next two moving from place to place in silence.

This process of reflection has led me to reconsider the people from my past I had so quickly villainized. That villainization was so immediately supported by a group and rather than any of us moving individually to maintain our relationships, we abandoned then in tandem. Realizing that has forced me to take a step back and look at people I have frozen’s “bad behaviors” with more complexity, rather than flattening them completely as if I am the only person who can hold multiplicity. I wonder why I, and so many other people, believe some sins are more acceptable than others.

I do not mean on a larger scale of demonic shit. I mean the simple sins of existing under the capitalist oppressive regime that forces us to label Good versus Bad. Sins that hold more complexity, like getting too mentally warped by a workplace or getting too drunk. How can I demonize a person for their sins and deem my sins not as bad? It feels like I had been playing God in those moments, striking down my spear upon those who had made the wrong turn during a mental haze.

And I am anything but God. As I mentioned before, I am a world class fuck up. I repeat my mistakes at nauseam. I have done things for reasons that quite literally helped lead me to my diagnosis of CPTSD so while that itself has been painted as an excuse, I suppose I paint that as… everything happens for a reason!

I was called mean and controlling by someone who, frankly, I never tried to steer in any direction they didn’t already want to go. People often conflate me stating my opinion in a sentence that ends in a period with trying to redirect them toward my ideology. That’s never my intention, but I’ve learned it’s often received that way. In reality, I’m hoping for dialogue, a little pushback, a fun tussle in the mud. It makes getting what I want more rewarding.

This same white woman completely ignored my existence when I saw her in person. To which I say: I’ve had white women erase me before their own eyes for as long as I can remember. Not even a simple “hello, how are you,” just a complete looking through my silly little ass. No niceties, no acknowledgment that I too am here, on the same astral plane.

I am not an apparition of shitty friends past. I am a full being, wrapped in my own mistakes, a product of a multiplicity of abuses and identity crises.

I speak of my own baggage relatively freely, and in doing so, I’ve learned that the people around me believe it diminishes their own experiences. Well, I invite you to share your shit just as loudly as I do. I invite you to crack yourself open and fuck up just as largely as I have. I am not going to take responsibility for your discomfort if you don’t say anything about it to me.

Six months ago, I didn’t know if I could crawl my way out of a disappointment of my own making. Six months later, I feel the best I ever have in this life. I do my own thing and it fucking rocks. I work out more often and my closet is color coordinated. Sometimes I go out and sometimes I stay in. I am not worried about who in my group chat is judging my lifestyle. I am not beholden to going to a slew of birthday parties and performances where I have to pretend to care about everyone’s “art.”

Sometimes, I’m embarrassed by how badly I wanted to go with the flow and pretend to respect people I honestly didn’t—and don’t. Which is no shade to them. I was more concerned with keeping up the facade of having a large group of folks who all made beautiful things in this world and were “radical thinkers,” when the truth is I genuinely don’t like most people and I genuinely don’t like a lot of things. I am particular, and when I lean into the authentic people and things I love, I am a better person.

I don’t surround myself with people who don’t share my values. I don’t go see empty art or attend gatherings where everyone trades surface-level quips in lieu of substance. I don’t think I’m better than anyone who does, but I just don’t belong there. I thought the forced shrinking of my world would suffocate me, but in reality, the peeling away of things I felt pressured to do (by myself) has been an unravelling from a cocoon.

I think the dislike goes both ways, but I’m detaching from it. There is a difference between disliking actions and disliking personhood. A dislike of actions can lead to admitting mistakes and moving forward. But if you don’t like me as a person—the way I speak, the lived experiences that shape me—then I can’t help you there. I can’t turn into a soft-spoken, gentle individual. It’s a bit too late for that now. I tried, and it resulted in my safety being at risk.

Also, I am not here to play victim. I know I am difficult. I know I have a sharp tongue and can poke too hard. I am not for the weak or the meek. I am not for the easily offended. I am not for white women protecting racist fathers or for rich people who lie about their wealth. I am persnickety and inquisitive and, more often than not, I am wrong. I change my mind more often than people think, even if I initially come in hot. I am a better listener than people assume, and I don’t desire to push or drag things out of others if they aren’t willing to share. That is not my business, nor is it my job.

Previously, I thought being in a group would protect me. That people would be soft around my point of view. A few years ago, that illusion shattered. I was yelled at publicly by a man in front of a table full of people who sat there and did absolutely nothing, then afterwards blamed me for the altercation. I groveled and apologized, thinking it was my fault. I received no apology in return—from a man who consistently said unhinged, sexualized, and racialized things to me.

That type of friendship, that lack of having my back? Babe, you can fucking keep it.

It will be 7 years since Ry passed on the 9th. Because I have a haunted TikTok feed, I have learned that 9/9 is some sort of portal and then 2025 = 9. SO, this year it is a portal. And 7 means something that I forgot already.

With that being said, I would like to remind everyone that absolutely nothing is real and everything has been made up but also:

• There is a deep loneliness of being the one who survives that feels so inextricably linked to who I have chosen to be in my life previously. Setting myself up for disappointed has given me all the things I have expected: misunderstanding, abandonment, and Friday nights alone watching The OC for the first time.

• I think there is some sort of brutality in the experience of being the one who feels “too much” in spaces that reward composure. Keeping it together gives you a little gold star socially but the unraveling has been rewarding in the most random of ways. I feel softer towards my parents. I have had more space to care for my home and friends. I have more time to read. And most importantly, I now have abs which is huge for me.

• Despite all of this, I feel some sort of rage/envy watching people move on when I have struggled to do the same. I take several steps forward then suddenly get jolted back into a space from months ago, from years ago. Whether its seeing a certain person or looking at the calendar and realizing it is a few days away from your best friend’s death anniversary.

Which is all to day, if this portal is real, I hope on the other side is some productive usage of these thoughts other than treating myself to some form of gluttony every time I move through the above- there are only so many shoes I can buy and so many cupcakes I can eat in one sitting to drown them all out.

xoxo

This year I saved some of my coins and got help with cleaning up my yard. The weeds that had overgrown, with roots dug deep and tough along the fence, felt impossible to deal with on my own. In early May, I tried with my hands, shovels, even a fucking saw, but every time I went back out to finish the task, more weeds had grown. Different debris piled up in corners, ants covered the furniture, my grill was shrouded in vines crawling over from the neighbor’s yard.

Years of living in this apartment and being unable to maintain it properly had built up. Countless parties filled with faces who eventually disappeared from my life, but the tops to their beer bottles still lay embedded in the soil. My final straw was seeing a rat hiding in the corner. It was time to get help, so I contacted a local guy who frequently posted about yard cleanups. After sending him photos of my overgrown mess, he quoted me a price that felt exorbitant at first, but I went for it. It was time.

He did the job I’d been trying to do for years in just a few short hours. He showed me what were weeds, helped move the furniture around, cleared every corner. When he was done, I stepped into my yard and felt a rush of emptiness. It felt suddenly bare. The big, bright greens that had grown so tall they bent toward the center of the yard, gone. The dead leaves, the debris from birthdays and BBQs past, all gone. I could, for the first time in years, see the mulch along the perimeter, raw and exposed. But I was assured that now, the plants and greenery I want will be able to grow. Now that there’s room.

So I began to sit in my yard every day (other than the rainy ones- despite being an ennui-ridden millennial with limits). I sat with coffee, with books, with friends, with myself. Waiting. The thing about trying to witness growth in front of you is that it becomes a disappointing endeavor. The truth, at least for me, is that one day you just wake up, after small routines have started to take root, after new joys begin replacing the old, after you settle into solitude or lean into new arms, and suddenly realize everything is... okay. In fact, somehow, everything is better than you expected.

When I got back from my short birthday trip, I was grilling myself a gourmet dinner, aka multiple hot dogs in potato buns with a side of ears of corn, when I looked over and saw them. Big pink blooms with deep purple centers the size of my face. I had never seen them in my yard before, and I’ve been living here for a little over three years. I didn’t know what they were or where they came from, but there they were, shooting up toward me where the weeds once crowded them, perhaps inhibiting them from fully becoming themselves.

After I slogged down a couple of glizzies, I got to Googling. Hardy Hibiscus. Known for being dinner-plate sized. Known for surviving winters. They die into the ground and, even after the harshest cold, find a way to grow and burst by mid-summer, sometimes even early fall. They are big and dramatic. They require a bit of room. They demand attention. And despite their vibrance, they’re considered easy to grow. Just some sun, water, and a little bit of space.

It’s hard to trust what clearing can do. It’s hard to trust what the fuck time can do. It’s frustrating to feel like I have to keep a log to prove to people that things are growing; even if they can’t see it, or maybe are refusing to. And maybe not everyone deserves to see it.

Maybe the pinks and purples are just for me.

I appreciate the drama of this shit: the bloom, the deterioration, the return, the becoming. Even after the bleakest of winters, it still finds a way.

My therapist told me she is worried I am building a wall that is too strong, and rather than feel concerned about how future relationships might go, I felt impressed with myself. I was once a 21-year-old moving into a janky apartment in Brooklyn, unable to assemble the cheapest piece of IKEA furniture. And now here I am, 34, singlehandedly stacking bricks around me. It is amazing what I can do with a toolbox and a grudge.

I think femmes need a superiority complex. Without it, all the harassment flung our way and the constant demands to tone it down would drown us out. We would grow millions of little arms to hold everyone else’s hands, forgetting to hold ourselves in the protections we deserve.

I’m not using this superiority complex to believe I am better than everyone else. I’m using it to stay close to myself. I clock my own dysregulation, when I’m too tired, too overwhelmed, or just over it, and I do something about it. I speak in sentences that end with periods so there is no confusion about what I mean. I invite others to do the same. If someone thinks that is aggressive, that is their feeling to manage. I have mine, and I’m finally giving them the attention they deserve.

More than anything, I feel freer. Freer to believe that most things are just not that deep. Freer to let go of petty bullshit. Freer to move at my own pace. Maybe it shrinks my world a bit, maybe it makes me less likable, though this behavior in a man would probably earn him the label of genius, but I digress. Still, I feel like I am expanding. I am reading more, sleeping more, exploring more.

Up until April, I had been dealing with over a year of relentless breathing issues and severe congestion. I was also having nightmares several nights a week, reliving SA. But in the last month and a half, I have slept full nights. I have not needed to see my ENT, before this I was going every few weeks. My nightmares have softened into surreal dreams, eating fluorescent ice cream, swimming naked in bodies of water I have only ever seen in all-inclusive resort commercials.

Understandably, a superiority complex masks insecurities rather than erasing them. In other words, I’m keeping my sweetness to myself, tucking my soft belly inside my cancer crab shell. It’s there, protected, easier to hide from people who might misread or misuse it when it’s exposed. Instead of taking people’s critiques of me as cruel or mean as a reason to change myself, I’ve learned it’s better to accept that we are simply ill-fit. No harm, no foul. Not good versus bad—just different modes of protection. My wall surrounding me is sturdier, an upgrade from all the versions of me I have poorly tried to build.

So, there I was, two days before my birthday, by myself, slathered in bug spray with no wifi. The trick, for me, with mushrooms is taking them and then forcing myself to forget I ever took them. That way, when the trip hits, it’s like a surprise party in my brain. Lungs puffed up, eyes wide, realizing there’s still so much out there. So many bursts of color unfurling from the soil. Squirrels fucking in the trees above. Boundaryless. Eating a block of cheese straight out of the wrapping. Listening to an entire Fleetwood Mac album.

At one point I decided to try starting a campfire, which is not something I have ever done. In retrospect, this was risky. But under the magical mushroom cloak, I believed that nothing could harm me more than I had already harmed myself, so I had to try. I had to believe I could do the things I was never taught to do. In that moment, that meant flinging matches at wood, ripping pages from my notebook to help stoke the flame. When the wood finally burst into bright orange fire, I cried. I sobbed. I don’t know how long it took because, well, I was high, but I must have lit at least one million matches. I used my hands to move the wood as it burned, trying to help the untouched pieces catch fire. Not safe. But I let go of control, which is something I usually only do in much more harmful ways. I leaned in and let my face feel the warmth of what I created.

Long after the sun had set, I stayed in the chair, watching the stars slowly bounce toward me, each one kissing my forehead. A thank you for still being here, even in the throes of my own mind. A thank you for taking action even when I felt like an empty vessel. A thank you for knowing myself, my fuckups, and also, my worth. I deserved this escape just as much as I deserved the overpriced peaches I bought at a farmstand earlier that day.

I am not a child of nature. I am an academia-driven suburban child turned free-jazz-listening city creature. I enjoy the finer things in life: refrigeration, streaming services on a big-ass TV, and the ability to call an Uber. But in the past few years, I have found my way into a limited amount of nature. I am still persnickety about needing warm shower water, but less averse to bugs. I have learned to sleep on thin mattresses with the sounds of crickets croaking behind a screen window. I can now go days without fully washing my hair. And, I think more than anything, I feel less scared of risk. Less fearful of death. Because there have been points in my life when I have wanted nothing more.

Knowing that death is eventual is a feeling I can now sit with in solitude. It is a feeling that’s usually intangible, but one that came into physical form when I was able to escape into myself on the cusp of my new year.

I’m not going to say it was some profound spiritual awakening, because, to be honest, I also diarrhea’d in an outhouse after almost lighting my Tevas on fire. I sent my friends a way-too-long video of a single tree not moving. I was totally goofy, Google-searching whether the plants I touched were poisonous, drinking red wine out of a ceramic mug while reading a novel, and convincing myself that every rock in the nearby stream looked like a pearl, only to wake up the next morning with a dull, gray stack of them by my bed.

In the end, despite what my TikTok feed insists I needed, it wasn’t an ego death. It was just a little solo trip.

Sometimes I miss those days of ignorance. There is something so sweetly simple about pretending everything is wonderful, my heart at one point swelling with hope. Of course, that all was a mere facade. A gurgling, a bubbling under my surface, pulsating and ready to burst as I continued to try to push my way through further abuse in largely white spaces. A suffocating. And in response to needing to find some ways to breathe, I developed some horrible coping mechanisms that were often overshadowed by my incredible outfits and adorable charm.

I have felt the most alarming amount of danger when I approach peace. Peace feels so fragile that even the prospect of it has made me feel terrified. As I approach 34 and as I received a diagnosis a few months ago, I feel clarity along with humiliation. I now know context and I now know that peace is something I deserve even if I stumbled my way toward it. I wish more people knew about the very real disruption CPTSD causes. I wish I was able to unfurl in a more graceful way that didn’t burn bridges as I settled into my new routines and understanding.

I am turning 34 in a week. It feels both like an accomplishment and deeply lonely. But my loneliness is a bit of a choice right now. I don’t want to divulge too much of what I’ve been up to lately. It feels special to have my world to myself, my little joys, my little indulgences, my secrets, my opinions to and for myself, my truth. It feels so different than how I have been operating, always on overdrive, oversharing and welcoming everyone into my unwieldy love life and shoving my opinions onto people’s newsfeeds. Substack feels a little safer since it is less consistent for me. Part diary, part keeping up the practice of writing to share as I continue to work on my projects in private. Rarely do I see people who ask what I’m up to. Rarely do I see people, period. I hope in my new year I continue to be selfish and keep things to and for myself. I hope to stop overextending and overoffering things that lead to my disappointment and resentment, harbored in my stomach until I explode with explanation. I hope my skin continues to stay moisturized and my abs continue to get stronger. I hope to show the friends who have continually supported me and cradled me into my mid-30s, made fart jokes between helping me find my way, the type of care they give me. I hope I judge myself less for all the bad dates, the one night stands, the Friday nights alone watching documentaries, the weekday mornings moving through my very boring mundane routines that keep my ten toes on the ground.

I think above all I want to forgive myself for all the bad shit I do and will continue to do. I want to look at myself and be like actually, I’m so glad I’m not still with that guy with the weird voice, forcing myself to talk to a slew of white people about Philip Glass. I hate when people tell me it’s never too late because to be honest, for me at this point, it is too late for a lot. But dealing with this diagnosis and reaching this level of understanding has arrived for me right on time.

It had been a couple of weeks since I started the generic brand of Zoloft: sertraline. Those first mornings on the medication tossed and turned my stomach, stirring up nausea. Luckily, I’m an early riser (read: I have so much anxiety around productivity that I wake up at 6 a.m. to feel like I’m doing something with my fucking life), so I take my little crazy girl pills first thing, giving my stomach time to settle before work.

Anti-depressants had made me feel seriously ill before I adjusted to them. It was a dizzying experience that, by the afternoon, launched me into a kind of deranged elation. I caught myself laughing alone while changing the toner at my job, speaking to people for five minutes straight without blinking, and being unable to eat anything more than a couple of slices of toast and some fruit.

But I had to push through it. I wanted to push through it. I wanted to feel okay. I wanted to move past all the uncertainty in my relationships. I wanted to be in reality. I wanted to be okay with the truth: some people don’t like me, and most people won’t understand me and that is totally okay. That doesn’t determine my self-worth.

I know this in my non-lizard brain.

Spoiler alert: no amount of pills has the power to get me there. I’m still working out the kinks on what, if anything, will.

The morning I shit myself, it was the first truly hot day in NYC in a long time. The kind of summer day when wet hair refuses to dry, curls springing up and sticking to my neck and forehead, the ends unfurling into frizz within minutes of being outside.

I’ve never been one to use an air conditioner. It makes my living space feel stale—and skyrockets my electricity bill. I prefer the gentle whir of a fan, circulating air with a soft hum. Most summers in my 13 years of living in New York, I never used AC. Even when I had one. Even when I had guests in my bed. I like the feeling of slick sweat on someone’s back after the deed is done.

One thing they tell you, something I ignored because I tend to be a know-it-all, is that heat heavily affects your body on antidepressants. It lowers your tolerance and messes with your body’s ability to regulate internal temperature, which, in turn, affects all the guts and other crap inside (speaking in medical terms, of course).

The problem with me is that even when I do notice something’s off, I have trouble listening to my body. I push through red flags to appear functional. I ignore my endometriosis for the sake of getting things done alone. I ignore my exhaustion from grief so I can seem hyper-social. I ignore, ignore, ignore—until I publicly shit myself. Until I’m stewing in my own feces, a mess of my own making, with no one else to blame.

On this particular day, I ignored it all. I kept sipping my coffee even as my stomach lightly churned. I thought, this will pass. Once I get to work, it’ll be fine. I waited for the bus under the beating sun, wearing a pair of breathable cotton, light lilac slacks I’d thrifted. I felt a gurgle but convinced myself I could make the 20-minute ride to the office, where there was AC and secret basement bathrooms where I could shit in peace. If I just ignored my irregular bowels, then they didn’t exist.

I sat on the bus by the window, clenching my stomach, each bump in the road a small agony until halfway through the ride, it happened. Not even a fart to warn me. Just a splat. A warm wetness spreading out from the crevice into my cheeks.

I panicked. I stood up, slung my tote over my ass, and ran off the bus, sprinting up Bedford Ave in search of the nearest bathroom.

I’ve never been lucky, per se, but I’ve always appreciated when humor finds me instead of me mining for it. So I bolt into the first coffee shop I can find and who do I see but someone I fucked three years ago. I saw their face immediately. Still wearing the same eyeshadow as years ago, now paired with a hat I’m sure they found in a box labeled FREE. Rather than stay to exchange niceties and ignore my situation, I ducked and kept running up Bedford with an ass full of liquid shit.

What luck.

I always imagined I’d run into them again looking unimaginably adorable. Thriving. Flawless. Booked and busy. Not smelling like a portapotty, wearing a sweat-drenched shirt, my leakage of shame.

Not to state the obvious, but somewhere between capitalism and the need to assimilate to my peers, I lost the ability to listen to my body. I didn’t want to appear less than or incapable of being autonomous. I didn’t want to seem unemployable or irresponsible. I still feel this way often. I still believe that if I mix and match the right pills, I can override my limits. I can forcibly change my capacity.

I can’t stand that word, capacity. It feels so overused, like trigger. But just because people throw those words around casually doesn’t mean they’ve lost their meaning. It doesn’t mean I don’t need to slow down and understand what they actually mean for me.

I hate slowing down. But I also hate publicly shitting myself. So, about a year later, after doing the latter multiple times in multiple different ways, I’ve decided to slow down. I take the time to read in my yard most nights, write a lot, watch bad TV (thankfully, Love Island is back just in time), and enjoy a nice orange wine in front of a fan after my multistep skincare routine. That way, if I run into someone again, whoever they are, I won’t be drenched in my own shame. I’ll look exactly how I want to be remembered.

There’s a real emotional toll to prolonged tolerance. Over time, it’s chipped away at me, hardening parts of me that once felt open and soft. I often think back to a version of myself who felt free, carefree, really. Just flat-ironed bangs, a statement necklace, and no formative plans for the future other than the hopes I can make it to work on time the next day. But somewhere along the way, all that patience I extended in the wrong directions became a quiet form of self-betrayal. Instead of speaking up and telling the truth about what I’ve been carrying, I convinced myself that I could outthink the discomfort. I sat with it in silence, trying to self-reflect my way out of this shit instead of opening my mouth that was so often yapping about my pussy to ask for help.

It feels humiliating to admit the truth: that the years of flinging my body across the city, performing, fucking, hosting group dinners in my apartment with food I could barely afford in exchange for surface-level company, did nothing to bury my past. The abuse I endured, layered and persistent, has never left. It sits like a rock in my belly, hardening over time. I tried to ignore it, hoping that if I sat still long enough, it might dissolve on its own. I shaped it into jokes, repackaged it as anecdotes, telling myself that through patience, I had transcended it. I entered my 30s feeling grateful for what I’d built in spite of it all, and to be honest, I still am grateful. They opened space. People reached out. I found camaraderie in shared pain. I formed friendships on that secret bond, forged in the dark, reshaped into something we could laugh about together.

But on the flip side, that so-called patience—that belief that I had moved on—was just avoidance in disguise.

And truthfully? I love avoidance. I love denial. I love constructing the version of myself who is strong, who overcame, who forgave her abusers and can intellectualize her way out of pain. It's comforting to believe I’ve moved on. But the reality is: the pain persists. It just finds new ways to appear: through dreams, through doubt, through the quiet question that loops in my mind:
Do I even deserve something good?
Do I deserve to have fun?
Do I deserve anything at all?

I think I’m writing this because I want to be understood. Because sometimes it hurts to be written off, as if what I carry isn’t complex, real, or still present. I still believe patience can be good. I’ve held so much of it for my family, specifically for my brother, who moves between needing full-time care and long hospital stays, over and over again, in a loop that feels infinite. Patience has stretched my sense of time. I’m still trying to figure out where the line is between patience and passivity and when it becomes toxic and dismissive, and when it’s necessary for repair. The line blurs often. But I’m trying. Trying to bounce back. Trying, at the very least, to ask the question:
Is this form of patience worth the cost?

Something about secondhand drama fuels me, distracts me from my own disarray. I loved watching those mothers get riled up. My parents never watched me play sports. They signed me up, made sure I had a ride to and from practices and games and… that was about it which, to be clear, was more than enough. It spared me the added humiliation of having them spend money just to watch my little ass sit on a bench for an hour. Watching a mother teeter on the sidelines of a soccer field at 11 a.m. on a Saturday gave me an adrenaline rush, not knowing if she was going to throw a punch or just sit back down and return to furiously sipping whatever was in her coffee mug.

That same rush hits once I’ve taken my sleeping meds and tucked myself into bed in silk pajamas, hair wrapped, skin freshly washed and smothered in something ridiculous like snail mucin. I dim the lights, put on something mildly traumatizing like Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and scroll. Not through TikTok, and, recently, not through Instagram or Twitter either, but instead through Quora and Reddit. Questions from strangers float up: how to attract your twin flame, what last night’s dream really meant. Anonymous users with obscure monikers asking things so human, too embarrassing to have a real identity attached like how to get over a breakup, which antidepressants don’t kill your sex drive, am I the asshole? And they’re answered by even more anonymous people who, despite having no visible credentials and zero accountability, speak with the confidence of experts on whatever niche topic is being dissected. As I, quietly look on, from a distance.

I find myself lurking in even the most bizarre threads as I wait for my medicine to kick in. Recently, I lost almost an hour to a Quora post that simply stated, “I keep smelling a smell that nobody else can smell.” And honestly? It was riveting. Senseless, but riveting.

Everyone replied with Answers, with Advice, with Assumptions. I laughed out loud, alone in bed. Why would anyone have a definitive answer to a smell that none of us, over the internet, can assess? They were all going off a single screen grab of someone’s vague sensory experience and still felt confident enough to diagnose it. Sure, “I keep smelling a smell that nobody else can smell” is small potatoes—but the same dynamic plays out in even more traumatic threads.

I’ll admit, I first joined Reddit because I found it useful to read about people’s experiences with CPTSD after I was recently diagnosed myself. I watch these threads unravel. I see the desperation, the deep desire for camaraderie, for something, anything, that resembles normalcy. It made me feel less ashamed of my own constant, chaotic feelings. While a lot of what I’ve read has helped me understand my condition, watching people spiral in real time alongside strangers has also made me worry for the world. Worry about people alone in their rooms, too stuck in their own heads for too long. I’ve been there, but I’ve never been fully stuck there. I am lucky enough to not be immovable. Because I’m not alone, not really. People come and go, but I’m never left solely to my own devices. I have tools. I have language. And I move, sometimes quickly, sometimes clumsily, but I adjust. I don’t stay in denial of my material reality.

Still, I feel a bit guilty watching from the sidelines. All these adrift people, trying to gain control. Trying to make friends, to meet lovers. Trying to repair relationships. Trying to find hope.

I scroll and scroll until, even in the most obscure discussions, I find someone affirming:
“Yes. I, too, have smelled a smell that no one else could smell. I, too, know what that feels like, to smell that smell that no one around you has smelled, and I never found an answer. Happy to meet someone else who has also smelled something strange in solitude. I believe you. Because I’ve been that person. What an isolating experience—now recontextualized. So many people across the globe have smelled smells only they could smell. How beautiful, despite how infuriating. An infuriation we all share. Thank you, OP, for posting this. I’ve waited years to share my story.”

How beautiful. A strange tenderness tucked within the digital universe, nestled between all the bad and the sad. I upvote the comment and move on to the next thread- to witness, to gather notes, to take the advice with a grain of salt, to bookmark for my therapist. Sometimes just to quietly think, “Well… at least I’m not that bad.”

And then, a light rush, a jolt of blood to the brain, as I watch people brace for battle, rising from their seats, ready to charge the field.