The sky outside is literally on fire, just a world full of smoke. I’m choking on it. Not a metaphor, New York City is entrapped in smoke. The sun looks blood red. It’s making me feel sick.

I woke up with a rash on my face. Yesterday I got caught in the pouring rain for fifteen minutes. I didn’t stop or anything, I just kept walking until I got to dinner and then wrung out my dress in the basement of Buvette, in the wine cellar. Obviously now I’ve got to wonder if it was acid rain or some shit because of all the toxic atmosphere, and whether the rash is due to that.

My makeup bag got stolen. I’m not even angry at my misfortune, because I believe it’s possible these are the dying gasps of a curse that was put on me. And, likely, the best reaction to a curse is to rise above it, not let it affect you. I’ll have to buy new makeup.

If it aint one thing, it sure is another.

Got a parasite during a 6 show run of The Importance of Being Earnest and almost vomited myself to death. Ended up in the hospital with dehydration, anemia, tachycardia, low blood oxygen, a kidney infection, a urinary tract infection, and a fever. I was on the ground of the theater still insisting I could go on and do the show, and then I vomited into an H-Mart bag. After some more convincing I decided to go to the emergency room. It was the Fourth of July. I laid down on the couch in the lobby and sobbed, which was a total sort of relinquishing of control. The nurse working the front desk told me it would be alright, and she told me she was from Georgia too.

“Georgia girls,” I cooed miserably.

“Us Georgia peaches got to stick together,” she said. It made me feel a lot better.

The next day I performed the show twice.

If there is a curse on me, I will not let it win.

I’m constantly letting out these kind of horrible sounds all the time. But I should be allowed to. I’m in my own house. I’m in my own house, and I’m in my own life and I shouldn’t have to just try to be sweet and quiet and lovely all the time.

When my friend Eli and I were younger I would make these sounds and he would say “Chloe, don’t make that sound in my house.”

That’s kind of a whole theme of my life. People telling me not to make that sound in their house.

If there is a curse on me, I will not let it win. I am determined to persevere.

Let life spool out like yarn, dyed some gorgeous amalgamation of color. I have no control over anything. I am a bubble in the sea foam. I am nothing but a bird on the wind. I am simply one drop of water in an oceanful. All I am is soon to return to what it was. All I am shall be erased like writing in the sand. I can relinquish all control. It was all going to go away sooner or later anyways. This makes it easier to let go.

In a continuation of hex-like events, I discovered my entire makeup bag full of all my nicest makeup was stolen. I’ve been building this collection up for years.

I have taken it as an opportunity to reimagine my beauty rituals, and I am starting my collection over from scratch. It’s good because I can decide what kind of beauty tactics I want to take part in, and which ones I don’t care about. Right now I mainly care about not having this rash on my face anymore.

I went to an 1800’s themed traveling circus in a cemetery the other day, and on the way there my eyes became so irritated by the smoke in the atmosphere that I was blinded in one eye. Experiencing the 1800’s cemetery circus with one eye was a sort of pirate-like experience. At one point one of the circus performers went up and sang a song about how six planets are aligned right now, and how there is a spirit in the cemetery, etc. I was like “I feel like this could be breaking the curse on me.” This woman painted white and dressed like an angel on giant stilts walked past me. When we made eye contact, she turned away. I felt like she could tell I was not pure of heart, mostly because I could not stop laughing at the absurdity of the situation.

I ran into my neighbor on the sidewalk today, while she was walking her big dog who looks like Ferdinand the Bull. He loves me- my neighbor calls me his girlfriend. He barked at some passing men to protect me, and then leaned against me affectionately. My neighbor told me that there’s some sort of major astrological phenomemon happening right now, and I told her this could account for some of the things occurring to me personally. It’s something to do with the planets being aligned, just like the circus person sang.

She told me it is a good time to take inventory of what I care about. Goosebumps raised up on her arms.

“I have chills talking about this,” she said.

So I’m sitting here now trying to take inventory. And researching anti-fungal face creams. If there is a curse on me, I will not let it win.

I’m constantly doing nail maintenance. Addie told me that when I feel like this it is important for me to write. “When the lonely monster visuals you must call out to the universe,” she said.

Every couple days I wipe down the floors, the hallway, the baseboards, the countertops.

Skincare, hair care.

I unclogged the drain in my sink, which is an experience I shall not recount. I unscrewed the drain in my shower and chipped away at the calcium deposit buildup in there with a screwdriver. Extremely satisfying. I clean the bathroom floor, I clean the shower floor. I bleach the shower floor and scrub each of the tiles with an old toothbrush and then I wipe and rinse. Then pine sol and water and scrub. Rinse.

Use a carpet brush to collect all the hair and dust and then vacuum it out. Use a lint roller to collect anything the vacuum missed.

I took down all my old journals from my shelf and then wiped them all down and then wiped down the shelf and then reorganized them. Years of my life wiped clean and neatly stacked.

I brush my hair over and over again, apply oils. I notice myself thinking “I want to get all of this off of me” about all of the hair I shed into my brush. Wash my face, apply SPF, apply makeup, wash it off.

I buy cleaning products and then use them and then buy more.

I do oil pulling and then use floss and then brush my teeth and then use a tongue scraper and then use mouth wash. Organic of course.

I keep hand sanitizer in all of my bags, in a refillable container. I go to the refill store to refill my hand sanitizer container with organic hand sanitizer.

I bought glass soap dispensers, and I go to the refill store to refill them with soap which is a dupe of a much more expensive soap.

I take my old clothes to the thrift store to sell them and then I use that money to buy more clothes from the thrift store. When I see my old clothes int he thrift store on the rack I feel extremely uncomfortable. Like my interior life has been turned inside out and mingled with the outside world. Or like the past I thought I was letting go of is sitting here, an option, tempting me to take it back.

I crawl around the living room on my hands and knees wiping all the corners of the room. I have bruises on my knees from doing this. I guess I bruise easily.

I lay down on my acupressure mat and it helps with my back. I stretch every day if I can. I take my vitamins every day. I take an herbal supplement every day, for my immune system.

I file my nails, I have to remember to get my hair colored. The roots are growing out.

I have a small chip in my tooth, I can feel it if I run my tongue over it.

The wrinkles in my forehead and around my eyes are getting deeper. I use an electric microcurrent device on my face every other day.

I use a mask in my hair in the shower once a week to keep it from drying out.

I wipe down each individual stair on the staircase.

I use a caffeine serum on my undereyes and then a cream overtop of it.

I keep a pair of small silver hoops in my ears.

I am memorizing my lines for the play. I memorize my lines so that I can say them.

I write down my plans in my day planner to keep track of everything.

I have therapy once a week and we work on processing. We talk about the parts of my brain, the parts of myself. This part has been dominant lately, the one that cleans a lot.

I notice something is dirty and I clean it.

I notice I’m starting to look more like my mother, like both of my grandmothers. I notice how my body changes when I don’t eat and when I do. I notice someone’s eyes, shockingly blue. I notice how those eyes look passing through my thoughts. I notice a sign that says “welcome to the Bronx.”

I notice all the trees, how different they are from the trees in my home. I feel like a stranger to this land. These are not my trees. Those are not my mountains. Suddenly my heart breaks from homesickness.

When I get home I have to work through a list of rituals to feel calm and grounded. Every day, every hour, every week, there’s this list running in my head. And I chose all of this, and it’s what I need.

But I also

I crave the feral, simple, visceral, age old fairy tale story. I want my life to fit into a different kind of box. I want to feel connected to the old witch in the woods, or to the wolf lurking in the darkness of the forest. I want someone calm and wizened to let me sit at their feet. I want to be a creature of the earth, an alive mumbling crouching growling bundle of warmth and elbow grease and soft fuzz. I want to rest, alone, in a patch of warm sun on a rock by running water. I want to rest alone. I want to rest. I want.

I’m noticing how I feel tired. But I couldn’t sleep until I did everything I had to do. Everything I had to do in order to be able to live the life I currently live. In order to keep it all going. I have no idea what things I would do if I was living some other life. Maybe it would all look different. And probably it would. It is so baffling to me that this is precisely where I am. I feel a sense of panic sometimes. I look to abstraction to make it feel like my own.

I am letting my hair dry before I go to sleep because if I lay down on wet hair it will get all messed up. And tomorrow they will be taking pictures of us during rehearsal, and I want my hair to look good in the photos. And every day it’s like this. Being seen, and preparing. And touching things, holding things, putting them down. Worrying. Washing my hands. And seeing people. Noticing what my face does when I think of people. Of person.

Julesy said to me “If I walk past the apartment and see you looking wistfully out of the window I’m going to be upset.”

“Where else am I supposed to look?” I asked, staring out the window.

This will be about myself, which I guess everything is when I’m writing.

Lately I have to spend time on the floor just working on my body before I am ready to leave the house, and then once I get home I have to do all of it over again. Rolling out my muscles with a lacrosse ball. Stretching. Laying on my acupressure mat.

I have a photoshoot next week for Macy’s and I spent hours today just “normal woman”-ifying myself. Shaving everything, getting the callouses buffed out of my feet, getting my toenails shaped and painted. I felt like one of those stray dogs who gets brought to the groomer and has a before and after video made of them. Mainly just because of the sheer amount of hair that came off of my body.

A few months ago I took the train to an acting class where my downstairs neighbor was doing an assignment in which he performed as me. A few weeks earlier he had interviewed me in my apartment, and it was his assignment to study my mannerisms and then perform this interview in character. In character in which the character was myself. It was interesting to see myself refracted through the lens of someone else’s perspective, someone else’s body and voice.

I sometimes think of myself as an amalgamation of all the people I love and admire. As if I am constantly doing impersonations. I am a gleaner of mannerisms, sayings, affectations.

But seeing someone else approach the character of me, I wasn’t really reminded of any of those people.

Everything gets filtered through all these lenses. Our bodies, our experiences, the sensations and pain and weight and memory- they create so many layers of depth to refract and shade our self expression. I’m mixing metaphors here, but it was just trippy.

Afterward I went to see Adele Aproh’s exhibit at the Scroll gallery, which featured the same character painted over and over again as if she were many circus performers preparing to go onstage. Tons of this one girl filling every canvas, dressed in different costumes, helping each other get ready, smoking, looking in the mirror. It made me think about all the versions of me that live inside me, getting ready to come out for different occasions. What parts of me need to show up when I need protection, or when I need to be “on” socially.

The me that is myself- is that person always present? Or will she always be abstracted through the context of her circumstances?

Something that happened a couple of weeks ago in my playwriting class was that I wrote a monologue that was basically just myself telling a story that actually happened to me in my real life, using the real voice I pretty much speak in. Another person in the class read it aloud, as is done in playwriting classes. The teacher of the class said she loved it because of the “unreliable narrator.” Obviously I keep thinking about this.

The story could not have been less abstracted through fiction. Not even by memory. It was about something that happened to me pretty recently. But it made me think so much about whether I can trust the way that I view my life.

I just really have to take the pressure off myself somehow, find a way to keep writing. I like to sit on the floor. I don’t like to not know what comes next.

My playwriting class went by so fast, I can’t believe it. I wish it would keep going, it feels a little bit like summer camp. When I took that writing camp in Piedmont Park over the summer when I was a little kid- that was one of the best experiences of my life. I wonder if that teacher was a lesbian. I kinda forget about her. I kinda forget a lot. But I remember sitting on the dock, actually laying on my stomach on the dock in the park, learning about Edgar Allen Poe, and writing in a big notebook. I love to write. I wish I could find some of that same carefree safety I used to have. In my little green world. So safe and young in my round green world. Warm and wet and green, the city of Atlanta. I was smaller then, smaller than I am now by a lot. But to write and write I could just go on forever. And being in nature, being in the green world of my city, my park, it felt like perfect. Like perfect. ?.

But that world is gone now in a way that I can’t get back to. Even that park. It feels kind of unsafe to me now. Like the overhead light is on there. The world isn’t so small and shaded as it used to feel.

Sometimes a person can be a place. Some people are a place I cannot go back to. A place with music, with settings, with rules. So many rules. And now I am in my own place. And I am sometimes lonely in my place. I am kind of alone in my place. But I am around many others in their places.

It could be that my identity is not a fixed state or a flat surface but rather a place I go that develops, a landscape. It makes me think about acting, playing characters. When I play a character I am sort of going inside myself to find that person, looking within to find someone that is outside of me.

Girl, idk.

I am mending a shirt. The act of seeing where the shirt needs to be mended, working on these spots and being guided by them, by the history of damage, allows me an opportunity to try something new. To get creative.

It’s an old flannel from the 70’s, falling apart in different places. But the fibers are so soft and beautiful- faded purples, reds, greens, and the fit is that perfect old cowboy shape. The material feels raw and real, not plasticky. The fact it has survived this long is a testament to the integrity it was made with.And although there are holes all over it, even burn marks in some places, I felt called to buy it. I wanted the chance to fix it. I didn’t just pay for a shirt, I paid for an opportunity. The opportunity to be creative and practice mending. The opportunity to create a piece that is one of a kind, that feels personal in a way that allows me to feel rooted in my life.

I am following the damage in the shirt to give me a roadmap of how to handle it. Each hole I sew up and then find a patch to cover it. I attached wool crocheted patches to the arms where the fabric tore and gaped open over my elbows.

By engaging in this process of intuitively mending, of following the damage’s lead and finding inventive ways to repair and protect- I am training my brain that through care and attention, old things can be made new again. And this applies not only to items, but also to my life itself. By paying special attention to the frayed threads of my own narrative, I can breathe new life into my story. By learning to repair our relationships and make them new, we can have long lasting bonds. Human relationships require attention and mending- the longer you let a hole fray, the harder it is to patch. But things can be saved.

When you spend money you’re not just paying for the object, you are buying the opportunity. The opportunity to get creative about where you will wear that dress, the person you could become in it.

The opportunity to transform a garment, to transform yourself. To cook, to smell, to listen. To feel like a certain type of character, to see yourself in a new way- to affirm your identity.

That is why it’s so important to be in control of what you are buying, to be the brains behind the operation. What doors are you opening for yourself?

Every feeling, every desire, that’s a door. Lately I’ve been trying to focus on the door rather than the destination- open the door, see where it leads, open the next door, etc.

When I buy something, I try to be conscious of the opportunity I am purchasing. Am I buying the chance to wear something once or twice before the garment becomes unwearable? Or am I buying into a long term investment in myself, visualizing, creating and building the life I want to live?

I am investigating the obsession with purity and perfection that has been ingrained inside me- this isn’t something that is of my essence. I have been taught over and over by marketing that purity matters. This forces us to buy things new, to dispose of things with any error.

This feels tied into the disposal of people not deemed perfect- we are obsessed also with purifying the human experience. Getting rid of pain, odor, disability.

Stepping out of the constant cycle of throwing things out and buying new ones- instead, trying to buy things that are sturdy and then care for them- it’s a healthy feeling thing. Even in my relationships with people, I can practice this. Giving things space to be flawed, finding the meaning in the damage. But it takes two people with this mindset to engage in this practice of mending.

Perfection is not possible. There will always be pain, history, context, mess. It is not my job to wipe any slate clean, to heal perfectly and completely. It is my job to listen and be guided.

Follow the damage, follow the damage. Sit with the pain. Listen to it.

This feels pertinent to me especially now, as a human woman with a chronic illness. I am in pain. I have an autoimmune disease, and I am suffering through a painful flare up. This foggy, depleted, flattened out experience of my life happens every so often, wiping away progress and positivity.How can I fit into this world as a person with damage, a garment that is lovely but needs repair? How do I follow the roadmap of my pain and illness, when all the signs just read to me as “AAAAAAHHHHH!”

Pain, illness, heartbreak- none of this is something I can plan for through choosing objects that will curate a life. This is where it all breaks down a bit. If I am constructing the set, the costumes, the props of my life- my body and those of my loved ones are live materials, a liability. Or maybe these things are the plot. The hand of God.

Instead of punishing myself for this pain, I can listen to it, and let it inform me of my next step. The damage can be a roadmap, a signal, instead of being something taking me off my path. The pain is a part of my path. In the same way emotional distress can tell me things about what I need, so can physical distress.

In imagining a world, an infrastructure, that listens to people’s pain and illness instead of ignoring it and snuffing it out, we can create so much. We can be of a mind that people who are damaged and broken, sick, or disabled, elderly or suffering with addiction…that they are not disposable. We can alter our world to accommodate them. This is the work of mutual aid, mental health first aid, crisis response. There is so much room for renewal, change and innovation, if we sit with what is damaged. If we honor what hurts, what aches, what whines and cries.

Wearing this shirt that is partially mended, and will likely rip again, feels comforting. Under the shirt I have scars on my breasts from a reduction surgery. Under my skin I have arthritis in my spine. Damage is constant, and so is repair, layering on top of each other the way it has always been.

Eventually everybody’s bill comes due. And recently mine has been due big time. And I am paying, day by day.

I mean karmically, I guess. If that’s what you want to call it. It feels like I’m dealing with years worth of sludge, carving it out of my soul and washing it out and seeing what lies within: bones, old trinkets, keepsakes. Deciding how they should be reorganized. And what I can let go.

Today I spent about 30 minutes brushing our cat and there was no end to the hair she was shedding. This is what it feels like in life now- just shedding and shedding and there’s always more.

I’ve never had a girl animal before. I love that our cat is a girl. She has grown so comfortable here lately, she chooses new spots to sit in all the time. And I have grown more comfortable too. I’m investing in the space. Investing in the thoughts I think, choosing what’s worth the investment. Which thoughts will reap the highest reward? Typically it’s the kind ones.

I’ve started work on a tapestry, something to pour myself into. The repetitive motion of stitching connects me to something that feels ancient. I think of all the women whose hands have made these same motions. So often they were sewing out of necessity, instead of for pleasure.

I ran into Maria Jose at the pottery studio and we talked about embroidery. She said the action of sewing, needle and thread into cloth over and over, is like a prayer. A ritual. And as you slowly sew something, you are embedding into it your thoughts and intentions. So as I embroider this tapestry, I try to be present with my feelings. My feelings about the images I am creating.

It feels necessary for there to be some physical object I can return to when I think of this time. Things change so much. And I really long for the past a lot.

We had a tragedy in my family last week. It feels too heavy a burden to bear. I woke up to the news, and spent some time crying, shocked. And then I reached for needle and thread, because I had to do something with my hands, with my body.

When I am struggling, it can help to remind myself to “go through the motions.” Even if it doesn’t seem to make sense, there are actions I can complete, that live in my body from years of habit and ritual. Even when it feels like dragging yourself through mud or rough ocean water to do it, you can sometimes drag those limbs into brushing your teeth, sipping water, walking to the store. And it helps. It adds up.

The motion of sewing is one that surprised me in its ability to ground and comfort me. I used to sit and sew as a child, I loved how it made me feel like I was living in some other time. Like a pioneer or a medieval handmaiden. I hadn’t sewn in years, but about a year ago, I decided to start again. And my hands remembered so much.

I felt the same way at the pottery studio. I worked with clay often as a little girl. My hands recalled things that I didn’t. And the feel of the clay under my fingers brought to life a little piece inside of me.

I’ve been thinking of that child lately, the creative and curious child I was. And how I would like to honor that self in who I am now, to love myself as the grown up version of her.

Someone asked me recently how I am doing and I said I am really enjoying myself. But I meant it like- myself is the thing I am enjoying. I am enjoying being with my self. I’m enjoying focusing in on what I want, what feels good, and how I can make my body and mind a safe place to be. How lucky I am to get this chance at paying a long overdue bill.

I’ve had moments of peace so overwhelming lately. And moments of sorrow so shocking. Joy and laughter that feel like a high I want to chase.

And when I start to feel unmoored in all this, I can tether myself with the repetitive motions that are built into my life. These rituals.

I often think of the Joan Didion quote from The Year of Magical Thinking, a book I love and took my time reading:

“I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those souffles, all that creme caramel, all those daubes and albondigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them. That I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of life as a wife and mother did not seem inconsistent with finding meaning in the vast indifference of geology and the test shots.”

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

At night before I go to sleep I think about the coffee I will drink in the morning. I go to the same bulk refill store to fill up my glass soap dispenser with hand soap- it’s an errand I like to run. I choose one cup to carry my water around the house in until it needs to be washed. The objects I choose to hold, the patterns I move my body in- all of this makes me feel real.

Do you know what I mean by that? Sometimes I feel so unreal, so disconnected. But touching things, grasping them and loving them because I chose them, it makes me feel connected and embodied and present in my life.

Needle and thread over and over and over. Typing with my fingers on my keyboard. Filing my nails and seeing them grow out again and filing them once more. Shedding, shedding shedding. These are the anchors that will hold me down as I move through sorrow, joy, grief, love, forgiveness, and euphoria.

It’s how I keep myself company when I am alone.

How many women before me have sat by themselves, or surrounded by other women, putting needle and thread through cloth? And how did they feel? Love for the person they were sewing for? Weariness at the labor, the aching hands and pricked fingers? Did they talk and laugh while they worked, or did they sing? Listen to music? Scold the children, cry to themself, think of someone they had loved or lost?

I like thinking of the journey of the thread- starting as wool on a sheep’s body or as a cotton plant, then being dyed some very specially chosen color, being brought to the art supply store, bought by me, and crafted into something that came from my mind. It’s all a part of some ancient tradition. Here we are, I am alive right now! As blinding and painfully overwhelming as it can be. As exuberant and sloppily grinning as it is.

Today, my back hurts and my coffee has gone cold and I am sewing. Soon I will go to the store to refill the soap dispenser and then I will have to think about what to eat. Like the spinning of a thread, it just keeps going. Until it stops.

This feels like a personal attack. Just look up the latest redesign of American Girl Dolls. They’re wearing mini skirts, they practically have bobble heads, and their limbs and torsos have visibly shrunk. These are supposed to be little girls. They’re all under the age of twelve.

I’m seeing this just a couple months after I was told by my modeling agency that there’s just not any work for “curve models” right now, and I might be better served looking for an agency that specifically focuses on bigger girls. I’ve been modeling for almost 9 years. They told me they know the industry trends will swing back around, and they will be wishing they still had me!

“Well, I am still here,” I said. Just because the work disappeared doesn’t mean I did.

I traveled an hour in the cold on the day of the Verizon cell service blackouts to have this conversation. My phone was on the fritz, my fingers losing were feeling, and in a sick twist of fate I also randomly looked up from my broken phone to look into the face of a girl who was once my ex boyfriend’s lover. God was laughing at me.

After making it to the meeting and being told that I was not skinny enough to receive their attention, they had me stand so they could take my measurements. Because I had actually shrunk another inch everywhere across my body. After losing almost sixty pounds in a year, I am somehow still too big to stand in front of a camera wearing clothes.

News flash: everyone wears clothes, even fat people. Having been a fat person for much of my life, I would actually pay more for clothes than some other people because it is such a hassle to find pieces that make me look like the beautiful young woman I am instead of a working mother of two.

I have had to get very creative over the years to find clothes that work for me, and I’ve developed a unique sense of style because of it. I have often thought over the years that if I was thin, I might have a completely different way of dressing. I scoured thrift stores across Georgia for old ladies’ church clothes. I experimented with balance, shapes, lengths, accentuating my waist. I was dressing for my body before most girls my age even knew what that meant.

Not to get weird about the dolls, but American Girl Dolls were one of the only dolls you could get as a child that were just little girls instead of teenage glamazons. Thoughts of not being thin enough, not having a woman’s body, didn’t really enter my mind when I played with American Girl Dolls. Not in the same way they did when I played with my Bratz or Barbies.

But now I guess nothing is sacred in the face of the overwhelming tide of every woman shaped creature needing to be smooth, thin, plucked, and somehow both a baby and a sexy adult.

Whatever. I wonder if I have a daughter one day, who will she look up to? What toys will she play with, and what dreams will she play out with those toys? If an American Girl Doll snatches her waist in a forest and no one is around to hear it, did childhood innocence really get destroyed?

I’ll cut the drama.

Everything just feels so MAGA Barbie, Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Ad, Labubu Wuthering Heights, Dubai chocolate, Glass Skin, Clean Girl, Preventative Botox. I want to zoom out.

My journey as a professional model started at a sleepaway camp in the Pocono mountains, the summer after I graduated high school.

The term plus size used to feel dangerous and scary to me. It brought to mind images of women on big blown up posters in the bleak and soul crushing fluorescent lighting of department stores- these women wore shapeless professional wear, or unflattering and matronly blouses with long jeans that covered their entire leg but also hid the shape of their butt. Even worse were the floral muumuus that seemed to be the only other choice for women in the “plus size.” I didn’t want to fall into this liminal space, fashion purgatory. The bodies and fashion senses of the women around me sizes 12 and up did not reflect the clothes I saw marketed to them.

I really love clothes. I always have. It just didn’t always feel like clothes loved me back- or rather that clothing companies didn’t.

I didn’t grow up with that many friends who were the same size as me. Anytime I met someone I could share clothes with it was a revelation. I was used to hiding my body, dancing some careful dance so no one would ever know my secret. My secret that I was bigger. It’s magical thinking, to try to shy away from something that’s just out in the open. When you’re constantly thinking about hiding yourself, you start to believe that everyone else sees you for the fraud you are. But really, everyone else for the most part is working on hiding their own secret.

Working at sleepaway camp was the first time I’d ever really been naked around a bunch of other women my age. Everyone showered openly, flinging off their swimsuits, showering as a group so everyone got a turn before the hot water ran out. I saw bodies that looked like mine for the first time in my life. I’d always had a lot of thin friends. I felt completely liberated by seeing soft stomachs, full thighs, boobs that weren’t just flat to the chest. There didn’t seem to be any hierarchy around bodies. I had never felt so comfortable in myself.

For the past maybe six months before I’d arrived, I had been eating dangerously. I’d declared myself vegan, and was barely eating, enjoying watching myself shrink. My body felt like something I could control during a time where everything else was spinning out- my relationship, my family, and I was about to move away from home and everything I’d known. I watched myself take up less space in the bathtub each night and felt some sense of peace that I had ownership over this one thing.

When I suddenly got hired as the drama teacher for a sleepaway camp in the Pocono Mountains, I was thrilled. I’d never really done the sleepaway camp thing. I didn’t like to be away from home and my mom as a kid. I could barely even do sleepovers. This would be a fresh start, a new adventure.

When I got there I was so thin. The thinnest my grown woman body has ever been, which is about a size 8. I remember looking in a full length mirror and thinking “This must be how it feels to be one of those girls.” The girls that didn’t worry about their bodies. The ones who could just show up without thinking about it. The ones without a secret. I was wrong of course. I was thinking about my body all the time, every meal.

Truly everything changed when I learned I was going to be the counselor for girls ages twelve to fourteen. It was like I woke up. I realized I’d be sitting with them at every meal. How could I possibly expect them to feel normal about eating if I was sitting there picking at my food like a bird? When I met the girls who were to be my wards for the next 8 weeks, I was struck by how vibrant they were. Some were tall, some were short. Some quiet, some outrageous. I found that through encouraging them to be free and confident, I found a strength I’d never known before. They were at that tender age when I had learned to hide myself- and if I could be some small part of letting them know that it was okay to be in a body, I really did feel healed by that.

I began letting myself enjoy the camp food- pizza bagels, ice cream sandwiches, roast chicken and potatoes. During the day I lounged by the pool, taught improv to eight year olds, played soccer, explored the woods around camp, wore short shorts and sneakers and felt my legs getting stronger from walking up the tall staircase to my cabin. At mealtimes I ate freely and laughed.

Some people at camp started asking me if I had ever considered modeling. During the days of my childhood and teenagerdom no one had ever told me this. I grew up feeling like my body was something to be tolerated while I toiled constantly to change it. Something to apologize for. Suddenly, out of the context of everything I’d known, the people I had spent my whole life with, and maybe out of the stricter beauty standards of the South…I could see myself as something new.

I moved to New York in the fall and started college at NYU. I remember one of my classmates telling me that she could see me being successful, because my “look” was so “in right now.” Plus size modeling was blowing up at that point. Women who were sizes 12 and above were headlining major campaigns. Iskra, Barbie Ferreira, Ashley Graham, etc. I had always felt comfortable in front of a camera, and had done many “photoshoots” with my best friend who loved photography. I thought it was worth a try, and I decided to submit to a bunch of agencies. I got signed with one a couple months later.

At my first job, one of the stylists was taking my measurements and she said “You actually have a really small torso.” It was that actually that both flattered and repulsed me. That was the beginning of people talking about my body to me and in front of me that I would get used to in professional modeling. Sometimes it was a relief to just detach from self consciousness and allow my body to be the product, or the canvas. Sometimes that wasn’t as easy. My skin got thicker, but sometimes I was still very fragile.

I had never existed in the industry during a time when work was sparse for women my size. My body had taken me far and wide, and I started to feel that maybe it was a gift instead of a weakness.

But in the last few years, I’m seeing it dry up. Even the girls I know who always seemed to be booking are complaining that they have to get second jobs or can’t get work at all. Everyone is shrinking. Even the dolls.

Over time I’ve tried to curate my digital world so that I see people of all body types on my screens. I think it really does make a difference. And people out in the “real world” will always exist at many different sizes. Detaching from seeing one’s body as it fits into larger cultural trends is really important, but in an industry like acting or modeling it is nearly impossible. Maybe you have to take the emotion out of it. I don’t know. I don’t know what the point of any of this is, really. My value has always been in my mind, my heart, and my connections to those I love. Being a woman and navigating having a body often feels like walking through a labyrinth. You don’t want to continue trying to find the center but there’s no other way out. Or maybe there is. I’m still looking for it.

When I was a kid I broke both of my arms and both of my legs in the span of three years. My mom asked the doctor if I had weak bones, and he said that I was probably just clumsy.

Once when I broke my leg, I was briefly in a wheelchair. I had to take the elevator to class at my elementary school. I was riding up, and then the elevator broke down and plummeted all the way to the school’s garage, where they stored all the decorations for the Halloween carnival. I felt really scared, and I quickly wheeled myself back around to the school’s entrance.

Last night my leg was aching in the exact spot where I broke it 18 years ago. Sometimes this happens when it’s very cold or about to rain.

The other day I was appearing as a model on a daytime television talk show, which is something I do sometimes. When I got to the giant ABC Disney building in Tribeca there was a line outside, of people waiting to meet Kate Winslet. She was on The View or something. As I was checking in with security, the security guard said “When I heard it was gonna be the lady from Titanic here today, I thought they meant like the old lady. The real old lady, you know.” I was like “you mean from the actual Titanic?” and he said yes and I said “So she would be dead, right?” Obviously, I knew she would be dead but I felt like I had to pose it as a question because I didn’t want him to feel dumb and because he was the one letting me into the building.

I was on the show doing a “holiday giveaway.” I got wheeled out on Santa’s sleigh wearing a red light face mask and waving at the crowd. I couldn’t stop nervous laughing under the mask, and through the eye slits I could see the entire studio audience screaming and cheering.

When I first got to set I was sent to the hair and makeup chair, because every time I appear on this show, they remind me that I don’t know how to do my hair and makeup properly. As I was getting my hair styled, I asked who was the guest on the show that day. The stylist named some people I’ve never heard of, and then she said “Oh and Stitch. From Lilo and Stitch.” For some reason instead of asking what that even meant, I said “Oh yeah okay.”

The rest of the day I kept wondering what she meant, and asking people if they knew anything about the Stitch situation. Nobody knew. At one point I heard some murmurs of “Stitch” and I called out to my fellow models- “Did you hear that?! They said Stitch.” As I was leaving the set for the day, Stitch drove by in a convertible onto the soundstage. He was laughing like a maniac. Of course this was a robotic Stitch because Stitch is not real. But I couldn’t see anyone controlling his laughter or his driving. It was really jarring, and I was laughing a lot.

The whole thing had me questioning a lot of my life choices. One of the other models told me he auditioned for The Lion King on Broadway for six years before he finally booked it. I had tears in my eyes for a second. It felt like a message not to give up on what I want, but then I had to get up because it was time for me to hand out red light face masks to the screaming studio audience.

I’ve been finding it hard to write lately, on account of me basically being in hibernation. I was not born to be cold. Usually when I write it’s about experiences I’ve been having out in the world, but since it’s so cold I’m mostly in my house. What I did this last week was have a Julianne Moore movie marathon- I watched about six Julianne Moore movies in five days.

Julianne Moore is so striking. I could watch her do basically anything. She has the ability to embody a character so fully to the point that she makes an entire movie watchable.

What else? It snowed. I finally got a haircut. As big chunks of hair fell off of me onto the ground and my arms and shoulders, I said “it feels so good to get all of this off of me.”

Julesy and I went to go get a Christmas tree. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that in a New York City apartment. We got lights and tinsel and Gus threaded popcorn on a string and now we have a beautiful full sized tree in our living room.

As I do every year approaching the New Year, I start to worry that my harvest has been fruitless, and that all the things I did during my burst of energy in the fall have amounted to nothing. But I’m still sitting down to write because writing is something I can remain dedicated to. I have my writing, I have healed bones, I have other peoples’ logins to streaming services so I can watch movies in bed.

All I have is this life that I have built. I thought that the other day after I left the Disney ABC building, while I was sitting by myself at the bar of a French restaurant. It was raining outside, and I was drinking a glass of red wine and eating a burger with gruyere cheese and caramelized onions. I kept typing it out in my notes app: All I have is this life that I have built.

I’m trying to cherish the moments of this life I am in, one that wasn’t quite exactly the one I chose. One that isn’t quite exactly the one I choose. I think of the guy who auditioned for The Lion King for six years before he finally got it. If something you want isn’t choosing you, does that mean it’s not meant for you?

As I write this, my right wrist is aching in the exact place I broke it nineteen years ago. It’s getting colder, and the leg fracture is starting to make itself known again too. The places I am broken are whining in the cold weather.

I woke up in London with my head in a nest of pillows. I was cushioned on all sides. Before waking I was having the most upsetting dream I’ve had in years. The first couple of hours of being awake was mostly me convincing myself it hadn’t actually happened. Sometimes things are buried deep in your memory and then something happens to make it fresh again. Maybe my brain was trying to protect me from the unknown by crafting narratives based off things that have happened to me in the past. Thinking my way out of the unknown. Or maybe I just like to suffer while I slumber. I wish my brain would craft amazing positive narratives instead of bad ones. I wish my brain would craft me surfing or singing an opera.

Anyways, I thought it was time to go out and do something with the day.

At the Brick Lane vintage market I saw all sorts of true morsels of fashion deliciousness. Alyssa, who I was with, held up this adorable vintage baby dress. It was so beautiful. Often when I see dresses that are made for very fancy babies, I think that I would wear that in present day as an adult. I told Alyssa that I think that if life goes kind of wrong for me, I could see myself becoming the type of person who dresses their little dog in fancy clothes. She said she was relieved I said dog because she was worried I was going to say doll. As in I would become the type of person who has dolls they dress up in fancy clothes. “No,” I said. “Luckily that will never happen to me.” Which I believe to be true. And hopefully the dog thing doesn’t happen either, it’s moreso just if things go wrong. Which I hope they don’t. I spend a lot of time wondering how things will go and what kind of person I will become. If I think through every possible scenario and prepare myself for the worst, maybe it will be easier to bear whatever comes.

Tried to go to the Emily Kam Kngwarrary exhibition at the Tate in an attempt to feel close to someone who likes that sort of thing and the workers were literally picketing outside. Unfair wages.

“Fuck,” I said out loud.

I texted Tara asking if she thought I should cross the picket line or not. “I dont know I wish god was more clear” she responded. I texted back “That’s kind of been the general vibe of this whole time is like- wish god was more clear. If god could only understand that I came all the way over here and now it’s like…the only other thing to do right here is The fucking Clink”

“Don’t go to the clink. Not again” she said.

I walked up to this truly adorable old man who was protesting, and I asked him about what was going on. He explained how he and his colleagues have such love and appreciation for the art, and this love is being exploited by the museum, who won’t even pay them a living wage. He said they would greatly appreciate it if I supported them by not going into the museum today. He looked like a Who from Whoville, with his small and pleasantly upturned face. I watched as people crossed the picket line uncomfortably. I didn’t want to be one of them. I told him okay, of course I will not go into the museum today. His face lit up, and he thanked me. I told him good luck, and several people applauded when I walked away.

I told Tara about the applause and she said “that’s god.”

I was like okay. What now.

I walked out to the path by the Thames River. There was a street performer wearing a hat he’d painted flowers on, making these giant bubbles with a stick and a string. I walked over and started watching him make the bubbles.

“You are from Poland?” he asked in a thick accent. I told him no, I was from America. I was from New York.

“Oh, I thought maybe you were from my country, from Poland. You look like you could be.” He then asked how long I was in London for and I told him I had been there for a while but was leaving in a couple days.

“So I never see you again.”

I said “well…yeah probably not.” He looked sad.

“Maybe you stay in London and make bubbles with me. Even though it is a stupid job. I am a silly man.”

I started to assure him that bubbles was an important job, but then he said:

“The real problem is with the world. This world is so wrong. But the robots are coming to make a paradise.”

Alright. Sometimes you think you’re dealing with one thing and then you realize it’s another. I said:

“But I don’t think it will be a paradise for me. Not for humans.”

“Maybe for humans and robots alike,” he replied. “Maybe will be better. Robots are better than humans because humans have weakness.”

He pointed at his heart when he said “weakness.” I understood what he meant.

“Mmm, yes. I don’t like that. I don’t like that weakness,” I said. Then the bubble man hugged me and I said “Oh!” And then I walked away.

At my birthday lunch there was a woman at a table across the room whose birthday it also was! She was turning 80! We got the same dessert. It made me start crying. Another November 24th birthday girl out to lunch at the same restaurant as me. When Sarah saw me start crying (which was the second time I cried at lunch) she said “Oh you’re crying, yeah. Mysteries of life and all that.” Sarah’s gotten considerably more British since moving back to London. She also stopped compulsively trimming her own hair when she’s PMSing, which is a sign to me that people can change and that life maybe does get better.

Also on my birthday I was walking through a tube station and I stopped to let this older lady (probably in her 70’s) go before me. She turned around and said “I love your plaits. I used to have them when I was young! You see them very rarely but they’re lovely.” My plaits!!! If you aren’t familiar, she meant my two long braids. I told the woman thank you very much. As she walked away, I noticed that she had shiny tinsel threaded into her hair! It made me so happy. Girls being girls being women having hair. Maybe I will be okay when I become old.

On the last night of my time in London, I booked a special after-hours tour for Sarah and I at the British museum. It was an audio-described tour of the mummy exhibit. For days I told everyone we were going to a special audio tour of the mummies. When we showed up we noticed that someone was walking with a white cane. And so was someone else. And another person. Actually, most everyone had them. And then there were the seeing eye dogs. We were at a tour for blind people.

Sarah looked at me and said “We have to go.” She started to turn and walk out, but I was like “We’re here. We should see the mummies.” No one seemed upset that we were there. Everyone was convivial and the museum was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The ancient relics felt cold but alive in the empty cavernous building.

We listened as the guide described in vivid and thorough detail a number of sarcophagi, actual mummy bodies, and drawings of scenes featuring gods and goddesses with hieroglyphics.

There was something so gentle about listening to it all described that way. There’s a lot of expectation in ‘looking’ usually, that you’ll have an immediate understanding of what you’re looking at. And you do, in a way. But we don’t always really notice when we see. It’s sometimes too much to process. The blind persons on the tour were asking questions about the specifics of what things looked like that allowed Sarah and I to see the things more clearly ourselves. Everyone was interested and enjoying themselves. Besides, being in the completely empty museum after hours was an experience in and of itself.

The guide told us about how the brain wasn’t valued during the Egyptian death ritual, as it was removed immediately and without sentiment. The heart, he told us as he held a fist over his heart, was where they placed all the value.

Heart over head. Sarah glanced back at me meaningfully. Heart over head. I thought about the bubble guy pointing to his heart, calling it a weakness. I thought about the employee at the Globe theater reading his coworker’s tarot cards, telling her to value logic over emotion, to be like the sun god. But the Egyptians worshipped the sun as a symbol of renewal. Rejuvenation, new beginnings with the rising of the sun. In Egypt, the heart was more important than the brain. The soul. They believed that in the afterlife, if your heart was weighed in scales against the weight of a feather and proved heavier than the feather, your soul would be consumed by a demon. “Vacuum sucked up” by the demon, our very British tourguide told us.

Earlier that day I had told Sarah how I know logically the way I should proceed with many things. I can process rationally what’s going on and what is the right thing. But I can never ignore the way I feel. The big feelings I feel.

“Well maybe that’s what you need to focus on,” she said. “You’re a very logical, thinking person. Sometimes overthinking. You think through every scenario and that makes you think you know what will happen. But you don’t know. Maybe you need to put your heart over your head and just throw caution to the wind and see what happens.”

There’s really no way to know what will happen. For example, those mummies didn’t know they would end up outside of their carefully created sarcophagi, fully exposed in just their wrappings, in a museum thousands of miles away from their tomb. That’s actually sort of worst case scenario for them in terms of the Egyptian death ritual. Just bare bones and dehydrated flesh and muscle wrapped up in a temperature controlled glass case, being described to a group of the blind and two young women who signed up for the wrong tour. No multitude of gold painted cases you had decided on, one inside the other like Russian nesting dolls, protecting you from evil spirits and from hungry bugs.

The shrouds we use to protect ourselves rarely last, no matter how well intentioned their preparations were. We all end up exposed, when it becomes clear that all the control was an illusion, and it’s time to see how our hearts measure up against a feather. And it is clear that it was lightness that mattered more all along.

But I don’t know, really. I’m not an ancient Egyptian. I don’t really know anything.

In London. Tara and I are sitting in the elevated park near her flat eating some pastries when she tells me that someone was murdered here recently. In this elevated park surrounded on all sides by apartment buildings. Someone had pointed a bow and arrow out of the window of their apartment and shot someone sitting in the park. “I thought you’d like that story because there’s some whimsy to it,” she said. We looked around at the apartment buildings around us suspiciously.

As we walked out of the elevated park we noticed a sign that said “be careful.” Tara looked at me and said “I wonder if that’s because of what happened. Be careful not to get shot with a bow and arrow.”

Yesterday I went out in the morning to several different pharmacies trying to find medication to help Tara not be so dizzy, because of her being so ill these days. While I walked, that big giant famous egg building loomed over me. The Gherkin. This woman at Boots pharmacy told me that most anti-dizziness medications in the UK need to be prescribed, so she would have to see a doctor. I said “There’s no dramamine in this country?” and she proceeded to say “no.” I said “But my friend is suffering RIGHT NOW.” I felt like that scene in Terms of Endearment when Shirley Maclaine is yelling at the nurse to “GET MY DAUGHTER A BED” in the hospital.

I’ve ended up spending a good bit of time alone here because of Tara being ill and Sarah busy with being in love and moving into her own flat. Life contains multitudes, I’m realizing. It’s a spectrum.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to put into words my whole obsession with the past since I’ve been in London. I went to an exhibition all about Marie Antoinette and her fashion, and her life, and her eventual beheading. I also walked to the Tower of London and stood outside thinking about the wives of Henry VIII and their eventual beheadings. And it sparked this intense desire to feel close to the past and to understand it better. I’m talking about the distant past, not the immediate past. Although I have also been thinking about that because of this unexpected thing that happened at Logan’s birthday party the other night.

The unexpected thing about the party was that I got told some highly disturbing lore about my ex boyfriend of ten years ago. You wouldn’t think that traveling across the world and attending a party would lead you to a highly disturbing lore discovery, but for me it did. People know each other. It sounds like he had a bad reputation for being kind of a dirty dog, scoundrel, etc. And he was bold about it, and that sounds like him. Bold about being sort of evil. Most men are actually shy about their evil tendencies, so maybe it’s refreshing that he just laid it all bare. I guess I should be relieved that I wasn’t the one he was doing those things to. And I am grateful. I just wish I could’ve known at the time that he was behaving that way, so I didn’t have to spend time during those years wondering if he’d changed. The thing about perspective is that it never comes really at the time you need it, but rather way down the line. But at least I’m not Marie Antoinette or Anne Boleyn, because I have a head attached to my body that I can use to think about this perspective, instead of having gotten myself into the type of situation where I’d get beheaded.

I also walked to the Globe Theater yesterday (the one where Shakespeare’s plays were performed during his time and are still performed now) and stared at it. I went inside and walked around the gift shop. It was completely empty except for me and the two employees around my age who were reading each other’s tarot cards behind the checkout counter. One was advising the other to use logic and reason and not to let emotion cloud her judgment. This was because she drew the “sun god” card. The other employee also told her that in her future, her dreams are coming to fruition. She said “that feels very true.” I went up to them and asked if they had any recommendations for things I could do in the area. For guidance I told them I enjoy fashion, history, and “spooky things.”

That last one is what led me to The Clink. The Clink Prison Museum was a medieval prison museum which was genuinely horrifying. I got there and a woman dressed in what I can only describe as “peasant garb” sold me a ticket for 8 pounds. The giant heavy wooden door swung open with a cartoonish “creeaaaak.”

Immediately I realized that this was going to be a difficult experience for me because of it being completely packed full of highly disturbing lifesize wax figurines of medieval prisoners and prison guards.

And because I was alone in there. And because of it being underground. Also, they were playing sounds of people moaning in pain, screaming, and begging for help on a loop. It didn’t feel good to be in there or to hear those sounds.

I walked around reading about what it was like to be imprisoned, tortured, and killed during olden times. I kept turning around and looking behind me to make sure none of the figurines had come to life and were following me around. It felt like one of the wax executioners or the wax prison guard who fed rats and then ate them (!!!) or the wax prisoner woman begging for change through the bars of her cell were going to come alive and start talking to me. After a certain point these other two women came in and then I started moving around a lot performatively so they didn’t have any concern that I was a wax figurine come to life. I left The Clink within about ten minutes and went immediately home.

Ever since I went to The Clink I have to keep telling people about what I learned at The Clink. This is a thing I do where I have to find meaning in every sort of bad experience because I can’t cope with the fact that I spent precious moments of my life doing something unenjoyable. I’ve basically started to equate the entire concept of “The Clink” with just the idea of one’s sort of personal worst case scenario.

Lately I’ve been kind of constantly hovering above this pool of despair, and sometimes I randomly just get dunked into it. Other times I am happy and amazing things are happening all around me, but I am still aware that the pool is there below. I’m realizing in real time that this metaphor is coming directly from a type of torture I learned about at The Clink, where they would put someone in this cage/chair above a river, and then repeatedly dunk them in the water for short periods so they would almost drown but not die. This was for lesser crimes, not quite as bad as the ones you’d be hungdrawnandquartered for. Women would not be hungdrawnandquartered but were typically burned. The last burning of a woman in recorded history was actually just a ceremonial burning- she was hanged first and then her body was burned. Tradition, I guess. Women were constantly getting totally screwed back then, which is a reflection that came from the Marie Antoinette exhibit as well as the whole Anne Boleyn situation, amongst other things.

When Marie Antoinette was beheaded, her hair was shorn and she wore a simple white dress. She, who had been this symbol of fashion and excess and beauty. She played the harp for her friends and wore wigs covered in braids and bows. Anne Boleyn wore a custom “B” necklace with little pearls hanging from it. That these women who enjoyed cute, lovely things like I do also existed in a time where they could die by beheading is tough to wrap my head around. But human suffering has always existed in a myriad of horrifying ways and maybe I need to toughen up a little in terms of my general fear and disgust. Bad things are still happening. The soundtrack of human misery exists not only in crappy little museums, but in many places in the world today. I’m learning to take in not only the bows and braids of my life but also the things that are hard right now. Like my friend and family member being sick. Losing people I love. I told Sarah she used to squirm a bit when I’d tell her some heavy news, or that her eyes would glaze over like she couldn’t take it in. But now she looks me in the eye and listens, and nods. We’re learning because we have to.

As I was walking through the elevated park again today I realized that the “be careful” sign is double sided. On the other side it says “be curious.”

It’s so November out today. The sky is white in a way that makes me want to go to Sleepy Hollow, and the leaves are very yellow and red. The trees look especially dark, and some of them have green wet moss on them which I love to see. I’ve always been a big fan of moss. As I walk to get coffee I see a big train moving through the trees from afar, one of the really good trains that carries actual stuff and not just people. Lumber or whatever. Feels like that movie Inside Llewyn Davis.

“This is Bob Dylan’s New York,” I think to myself as I limp around. I’m limping because I had a weightlifting training session four days ago and my body still hurts. By “weightlifting training session,” I mean that I went to the gym with Esme and she taught me some of the weight lifting exercises she does. I can’t believe how strong she is, she’s so small. She kept referring to the butt as a “shelf.” ‘Build that shelf, etc’

I’m definitely getting stronger. I’m going to have to carry all my bags myself for a while. It’s not the first time I’ve had to do it. There were years of that, actually. Years of carrying bags up stairs and onto trains and planes and for blocks and blocks. Years of sore shoulders, rubbing my neck.

Lately I’m reclaiming the blues. By “the blues,” I of course mean blues music. Those guys just got it. It’s not my blue period, but it is my blues period.

I’m going to get dim sum with some people I haven’t seen in like six years right now. I don’t even know what I will say. Someone is smoking a cigarette on the train. Well, that’s just great. I’ve inhaled so much smoke that I wasn’t smoking in the past few years.

What was I doing, and what am I doing now? Who am I? I’m about to eat dim sum, that’s who I am. I am a person on a train. I am a person made of secondhand smoke. I just inhale whatever other people give me. I’m just so hungry to be given to. I’m just open hands, just open hands grasping.

I want to be so beautiful that nothing bad could happen to me.

Anyways, I posted on Instagram asking if I know anyone with connections to the Paddington musical who could get me tickets (it’s sold out) and within ten minutes I discovered I know multiple people with connections to the Paddington musical. Actually made me feel way better about my life, like surely I’ve achieved something if I know more than one person who can get me into Paddington the musical.

Clearly I’m having a weird day. Once when I was doing this theater program in Amsterdam I said “I feel so weird today.” My friend Kristina said “You say that every day.” So I guess not much has changed.

When I was a camp counselor I used to say “something’s off” and “something’s in the air today” and my 12 year old campers picked it up. A bunch of 12 year old girls walking into the mess hall or into arts & crafts and saying “Something’s off.” I’m very sensitive to my emotions, and children are very sensitive to influence.

Hundreds of leaves blowing around in the wind. Guess we’re saying goodbye to those fall colors early this year. Had drinks with Kelly last night and she said she’s worried it’s going to be a bad winter. It was karaoke night at the bar we chose and we had to pause our conversation every time someone performed a slow or emotional song because it was honestly really quiet in there.

I’m watching Watchmen now while I wait for a package to be delivered. It’s so funny when a character is supposed to be, like, a physicist, and she’s played by the most gorgeous, thinnest woman alive (I actually said this to my friend though, and she told me that her mother is a thin, beautiful physicist- so maybe it’s on me to assess my biases). In movies everyone is thin and gorgeous, and therefore no one is thin and gorgeous. I can’t tell who’s supposed to be beautiful when I watch movies anymore, because everyone is. Show me a normal person. Show me a normal looking person.

I just bought stocks to try to feel better. I’m so sore from weighlifting that I can barely walk. The cramp in my butt persists. I don’t know why I’m being punished for trying to take my health into my own hands and build a stupid shelf that can support my lower back because of my arthritis. I’m sitting at home compulsively checking my email over and over again. I’m not expecting an email, I just don’t know what else to do.

On the subway today I was packed in tighter than I ever have been. Because it’s the day of the New York Marathon, so many people are riding the trains. They want to watch the running. I am sat next to this guy who’s watching his own Tiktoks on his phone. At first I think it’s annoying but then I am endeared by it because I realize he’s been on some sort of journey around the whole world, and he’s watching back videos of his travels. He’s still on the trip right now. One of the videos he watches is just footage of him walking through a subway station.

I act really angry as I walk through the streets which is something I do a lot when I’m in the East Village because there’s so many people who act like they were just born and that their only destination is to get a bagel. My destination is to meet up with my friend, who just got sober, to go to the farmer’s market. Normally we wouldn’t meet up on a Sunday morning at the farmer’s market, but now that she’s sober the activities have changed. It’s really amazing to see people through changes in their lives. People go through so many stages. If you just hold onto someone long enough you’ll experience a lot of different versions of them. When I was a kid I would get anxious about not getting to stay close with my friends for my whole life because I was so curious how their lives would play out, and the lives of their families too. I always thought about who their siblings would end up becoming. I didn’t want to miss out of anything.

At the farmer’s market my friend gets asked out by this guy selling expensive cheese. It feels like a really positive omen for the sobriety. The cheese guy showed no interest in me and that is okay. I have interest in myself.

Speaking of siblings of my friends, we met up with my friend’s younger sister. I hadn’t seen her since she was about fourteen, and now she makes six figures and is dating a professional athlete. She gives me financial advice and tells me what machines I should do at the gym. She told me it’s good to see me because she loves seeing people from the past. “I’m from the present,” I replied.

After I parted from them, I looked for some new rocks for my rock collection. When I picked out my rocks the girl working the register told me that I’d have to pay the same price for the bag of rocks regardless of how full it was, so I could get more rocks if I wanted. I said that I had looked pretty carefully for a long time to select these rocks, so I knew these were the ones I wanted. She said ‘yeah what are you going to do with a bunch of rocks you don’t want anyways.’ And I said ‘yeah I have a rock collection so I already have a lot of rocks.’ Then this other girl walked up and said I have good taste in rocks. And I said ‘thank you.’

For some reason I keep thinking this about lots of stuff: What are u going to do with a bunch of rocks you don’t want anyways. What stuff are we supposed to hold onto and what do we let go? I’m someone who holds onto things. I am a collector of people and books and rocks. I select them carefully. I like these rocks because they are pretty and they remind me of feelings I have had, like the feeling that purple doesn’t alway look how you’d expect. Or a reminder that the world is mysterious, because a rock can have such a cool pattern. They don’t really do anything for me. They’re rocks I want though.

I kept on walking and I walked right into a church. It’s a really beautiful church and sometimes I go in there to sit down and rest and think about things. I took off my hat when I walked into the church because I have respect and I was raised that way. I happened to walk in while the choir was practicing, and it was truly just me sitting in this big church listening to their voices blend in with the organ and the violin. I felt like I could actually see the sound lifting up to the vaulted ceiling, sliding back down and spreading out to fill the room.

I cried listening to them sing. Weirdly I was crying because I felt so connected to some other world, like to medieval times or something. The stained glass windows, the sound of the music, the architecture. And I was remembering how when I was a kid I felt that there was this other world that lay just beyond a thin veil. A world of magic and history and wonder. I believed that I could peer into it by reading or learning new things or just living in my imagination. But now it doesn’t feel so close. The world I live in is full of things to be curious about, and I love living in it. But I haven’t felt close to that other world lately. And I’m not really sure how to get back to it. Certain objects make me feel close to it, which is why I collect them. Movies and music, a really gorgeous piece of pottery. All of these things can take me closer to that veil, make it more translucent.

I used to think of magic and adventure as a destination that I would reach when I was old enough. Now of course I look back and see that these things have been threaded throughout my life, instead of being a portal I got to step through.

All the church pews around me are lined with pamphlets that say “This is the gate to heaven.” I get up and leave, nodding goodbye to the security guard. He’s also sitting and listening to the music. He sees me and the tears in my eyes. He nods back. As I walk to the train, I pass by people who have just finished running the marathon.

Today I have to go to Coney Island to get my fingerprints taken so I can start my new job. The nearest location I could get this done was Coney Island, so that’s why I have to go there.

I woke up this morning from another weird dream. Lately it’s weird dreams constantly. Also lately I wake up and forget about The Thing That Happened for about a second and then I remember and I have to adjust. It takes time.

I cleaned my room and washed my sheets yesterday so I’m feeling way more real and normal. It’s crazy how that works. I got down on my rug and scraped out all the hair and dust and vacuumed it up with my handheld vacuum. I love my handheld vacuum. I also used a toothbrush to scrub the floor of my shower, and now it looks nice and clean. I transitioned seamlessly from cleaning the shower to getting in and cleaning myself. Then I got dressed and I put my duvet inside my duvet cover- the most efficiently I’ve ever done it. This is a task that mystifies me, but it’s possible I’ve finally gotten it down. Then I took out all the trash, including the trash from the big bins outside. Then I came in and my whole body was kind of shaking from the effort of the duvet and the trash and the shower and then I watched the David Harbour Lily Allen Architectural Digest video. And then I watched the one from 3 years before of just him before they were together. It’s wild when men have an extreme glow up while in a relationship and then they decide it’s time to pursue other women (Barry Keoghan, Jeremy Allen White, Bill Clinton). He had that apartment all to himself, he couldn’t have gotten it out of his system? I guess I don’t know all the details.

Yesterday I also worked from a coffeeshop. I had to read a book for work, and it was pornographic almost to the point of being disturbing. I was reading a part where the heroine of the story is riding a motorcycle while she has a butt plug inserted and then I got swarmed by several bees inside the coffeeshop and got up and walked home in the cold.

Recently I found out my cousin is pregnant at our other cousin’s bat mitzvah in the East Village. She told me as we were filing out after the service, and I burst into tears in the aisle of the synagogue, surrounded by twelve year old girls who all looked literally 4 feet tall. I was overwhelmed by the prospect of new life. “There’s going to be another person, and he’s here in the room with us right now already,” I said. At the service I did pickleback shots with another nonpregnant cousin and I ate about six sliders.

Also recently I attended my friend’s engagement party. She and her fiancee seemed so peaceful and happy. I drank two Manhattans (even though we were in Queens) and ate two deviled eggs and two oysters. Everything in pairs except for me. I talked with my friends who used to be together and now they’re good friends (which is miraculous) and we discussed how we rarely get to eat deviled eggs. They usually happen upon you. We also talked about David Harbour and Lily Allen. “We talkin Pussy Palace?” another friend asked. The affianced showed us her engagement ring and everyone literally went “Oooooh…ahhhhh.” I thought the ring was green but when I shone my phone flashlight on it, I saw that really it was blue. It was the perfect ring for her. I used to have photos of engagement rings saved on my phone but I deleted them.

I’ve been watching a lot of cartoons recently because it’s the only thing they play at the gym that I like to watch. I pick the treadmill directly in front of the television screen that plays cartoons and I stare at it the whole time I am walking uphill. Walking uphill walking uphill. Watching cartoons alters my state of consciousness a lot. They’re actually so funny. The past three times I’ve gone they only played Amazing World of Gumball which I had never seen before. I watched the episode where Gumball and Darwin think their dad is cheating on their mom but it turns out he is actually just crossdressing as Blanche from Golden Girls. He finally confesses to the other Golden Girls that he’s actually a middle aged rabbit man and it turns out all the other women are also just lonely middle aged men crossdressing so they can engage in the joy of female friendship. I was able to increase the incline on the treadmill up to 11 during this episode which is the highest I’ve ever gone.

It’s almost time to go to Coney Island now. I put on two layers of shirt and my favorite sweater, and a pair of jeans that used to be tight on me but are now quite loose because I lost a bunch of weight which means I have to spend money on new clothes. Other things I have to spend money on are: a haircut (my hair has gotten Amish level long recently, but I’m historically terrified of cutting it and have to do days of research in order to find someone I trust to do it), some tights for winter, a plug converter for when I go to London, and fingerless gloves so I can use my phone while I walk outside.

I stare into the abyss to prepare for my journey to Coney Island. It will take me an hour and a half to get to the fingerprint place. I look at my fingers, wondering if they’re ready to be documented. While I wait for it to be time I go on Instagram on my laptop because I no longer have any social media on my phone which was not my choice. I learn some things: Hilary Duff announces she’s now making music to impress queer people. Hundreds of witches will paddle board along the Hudson River this weekend. Jennifer Lawrence’s body bounced back after her first pregnancy but not after her second, according to her. Cynthia Erivo has been “mothering very hard this week,” according to her. Pink Pantheress called Mamdani “a fine ass piece of trade.” I decide to go ahead and just leave two and a half hours early for the fingerprinting.

I pack myself a little tin of mints and some lip gloss for the journey.

I’m mothering very hard this week.

As I’m walking up the steps to the J train, a guy turns around and spits on the girl walking in front of me. He yells at her “stop smiling” and he’s holding a big stick. She had not been smiling. If I hadn’t paused for a moment before I started up the stairs, it would have been me he spat on. That’s what my friend Ella calls “destiny swapping.” I decide to literally just walk away and go to the L train instead.

I listen to the Lily Allen album again on the train. A girl sits across from me wearing giant fluffy shoes.

I get to the fingerprint place and it’s so random looking and small. The lady at the fingerprint place kind of manhandles my hands over the scanner. I realize it’s the first time anyone has held my hand in weeks. She then asks me for a cash tip which I don’t have. I ask for a bathroom which she doesn’t have.

The whole thing lasts less than 5 minutes and then I start walking towards the boardwalk searching for a bathroom. I pass the rollercoasters and the Ferris wheel, all shut down for the season. The Cyclone. The Thunderbolt. The spinning teacups.

I pass the candy shop from Anora. I go in and buy some cotton candy. I keep walking to the boardwalk.

There are like a hundred seagulls circling this guy who’s holding up one slice of pizza like a divine offering.

I use the public bathroom on the boardwalk and then go sit on a bench and eat my cotton candy. It gets plastered to my fingers. It’s good I got my fingerprints done before I did this. Suddenly, I see one seagull meet my eyes from about fifty feet away.

Then they’re upon me. I clutch my bag of cotton candy as I’m swarmed by a gang of seagulls. I can’t help but think of my cousin getting pregnant, my friend getting engaged, and me getting swarmed by ravenous seagulls while eating cotton candy in the cold at Coney Island at 2 pm on a Wednesday. They actually don’t even divebomb me. They just get close and stare at me. It’s sort of awkward, the eye contact between us.

I make it out alive. What was any of it for? At least now I can start my new job.

After that I take the train all the way back home. When I transfer to the L train a woman is screaming on the platform and it sounds like she’s doing slam poetry.

I notice a girl who was in the same train car as me when I first left to Coney Island several hours ago. The girl with the giant fluffy shoes. She’s getting on the same train back with me. Now that’s kind of crazy. Small island.

I’m grieving and I’m in Texas and it’s hot and the sun is very bright. I’m in the car with my father.

“Now here you can see the devastation,” he says, gesturing out the window. I look out the window, at heaps and heaps of gnarled overturned trees. We’re driving along the Guadalupe River, where months ago a flood ripped through the area, ravaging the landscape and claiming the homes and lives of so many people. For the last eight months, I’ve been volunteering with the agency my father works for in Texas doing fundraising to support the mental health of people living in the Hill Country. The work has taught me a lot about people and the support they need, especially after a crisis like this flood. I flew to Texas from my home in Brooklyn not only to visit the sites of the programs I’ve been fundraising for, but also to escape the chaos of a personal loss that had uprooted me in its own right.

Like the trees, which had been so deeply and strongly rooted in the ground, being forcibly removed by the strength of the floodwater. Just ripped out and made into a different kind of thing, a thing with less life and less nourishment. The force of uprooting can be so violent. It is no small thing, for trees and for people alike. Roots connect us to systems, systems that give us life and community. Here were these massive stacks of trees—exposed, piled up and hauled away by machines. Being hauled away by people. They had gone from being living and well connected beings, which provided shelter and shade, whole ecosystems…to debris.

What’s left in the wake of disaster is clean up. I’m realizing It’s never just the rush of the flood, the violence of the attack. When things go very wrong, it’s the clean up crew who show up in the wake that lasts far longer. The years that follow, the years of picking things up and carrying them away. Of rebuilding. The people who show up in that time are crucial.

And in the flood zone, people are showing up. The work they’re doing is not only the act of connecting survivors with supplies and resources, it is also being deeply concerned with their emotional state. They are going out to houses, driving out in ATV’s and cars and on foot—to see how people are doing. Letting them know “we aren’t going anywhere.” Checking in and building lasting relationships with individuals, to help guide them back to normalcy.

We drive down the road along the river. We’re going to see the different flood relief efforts. In Texas it takes so long to drive anywhere, but I am relieved to be in the car, being driven by someone else. Having my days structured by someone else. I wear the signature green t-shirt of the organization every day I am there, walking around matching with my dad. We’ve never matched before, but it is nice to not have to think about what to wear. As we drive, I allow myself to look at my reflection in the rearview mirror. I look kind of wild—eyes wide, skin flushed from the heat, hair long and a little snarled, laying against my green t-shirt. No matter the scale of a devastating event, we still eventually have to start washing our face and brushing our hair again. Letting myself melt into a collective effort makes the days go by easier. I am not just myself, I am one of many helpers in a green shirt. I break eye contact with myself and turn my gaze back to the river.

Finally, my dad and I pull into a parking lot to meet some of the employees who are handing out cooling towels, toys for children, snacks. I notice colorful kinetic sand on the table of supplies. Relief can look like many different things. To our right, two food trucks are giving out free barbecue and tacos. There’s this big gray van parked there, which looks very high-tech. They encourage me to take a look. I climb inside—it is spacious, and the air feels cool. They’ve been using these vans to drive around, and people who are hot and need a break from picking through debris can come inside. They can drink some water and receive therapy. Support on the go. If the people cannot come to you, you can go to them. The way people were showing up for each other created a wraparound effect, a safety net.

They tell me about one man who had jumped down into the riverbank to pull people out of the water and had been injured doing so. He didn’t speak English and was wary of seeking treatment. Many people in his community were distrustful of outside help because of the looming presence of ICE. Even after the flood. It took time for one of the Spanish-speaking members from the organization to gain his trust enough to help him. He received treatment for his injury, and the team also helped him pay for it. This connection allowed others from his community to receive much needed resources. I learned how outreach in times like these isn’t just manpower and money—it’s also language. This man required a translator, but also someone who simply knew the right thing to say. Trust is a very sensitive thing, alive and fragile. It must be tended to, and so easily it can be washed away by a powerful current. It seems to me that you have to gain a person’s trust before you can save their life.

We depart from the parking lot and continue driving. All along the narrow roads are signs with messages spray painted on them with sayings like, “You can do it! We will help,” and, “Hope wispers!” Yes, without the h. This evolves into a mantra for me while I’m in Texas, and even now I repeat it in my head when I need to hear it: “Despair is loud. Hope wispers.” Without the h.

Every day I am seeing how much helping other people matters. Being there for people, for their feelings, makes a difference. Not just interpersonally, but structurally. The infrastructure of our communities, our businesses, the health of our families are all affected by a helping hand.

Hands are the first thing I see when we arrive at our next stop, the Emotional Support Center in Kerrville. It’s a place where people who have been affected by the flood can come for a wide range of support services. The front of the building is covered in painted handprints. People who come to the center can paint their hand and leave its mark on the windows. My eyes rove over the windows. Hands and hands and hands. We go inside. Immediately I notice a book for children with the title, “H is for helping hand.” The idea of teaching children about community support following a disaster seems so hard and abstract, but suddenly, these people were just in it, and it had to be done.

Inside, I learn that the first responders who had seen some of the worst of the aftermath were being actively supported, attending counseling sessions. I am struck by this—there is a cost to saving others, a price to be paid for the support you give. But care doesn’t stop like the end of a rope, it goes on and on like the roots of a tree—it is a network. And the network at the Emotional Support Center includes so many methods of care: art programming, childcare, community outreach.

Looking around, I keep thinking how nice everything is. I’m surprised. Beauty and comfort don’t always seem like the first reserves after a disaster. But then, why wouldn’t they be? We have some control over our environments, to affect the way we feel. Earlier as we were driving we had passed a sign for an aquifer that said “environmentally sensitive recharge zone”—this is what the emotional support center feels like to me.

The counseling rooms are cozy and warm. The lovely people who work in the center tell me about how a local furniture store donated couches and blankets, and that they’re even getting essential oil diffusers soon. There are also lots of stuffed animals everywhere. Items that heal might seem just like objects until you need them, and then they are deeply, absolutely necessary. You’d be surprised by what can be a lifeline. A stuffed cow. A taco. A person, simply sitting with someone in the wreckage and being there.

We listen to some of their stories about the people they’ve met in their efforts. I hear about a man who had lost pretty much everything in the flood. The team stepped in to help, and they found a woman through Facebook who was able to donate a washing machine, a fridge, and other essential items to the man. In delivering these to him, the team learned that he’d lost his son the year before to suicide. In the last year, he had taken time off work to dedicate himself to living his life the way his son would have wanted, to live differently. Then, the flood happened. And almost all of his son’s belongings had been destroyed. It is overwhelming to hear about. Personal loss doesn’t disappear in the face of collective loss—it’s intertwined, threaded together and blasted open. Everyone is walking around with some amount of wreckage they’re sorting through. The keepsakes and the documents and the appliances, all these objects we rely upon. When we lose things, it forces us to do a sort of recovery process—what is left? The team members tell me they’ve been checking in on the man who had lost so much, and that he’s opening his mind up to mental health treatment. I thought about this man’s story, how universal it felt—while any of us are trying to search through the wreckage for some remnant of meaning, it helps to have someone there who cares whether we find it.

We leave the center and continue on. More driving then, and more thinking. I’ve been so consumed by the places I can’t go back to, the people I can’t see anymore. But imagining them being just completely washed away, destroyed and irretrievable…the scope of that feels impossible to wrap my head around.

Sometimes disaster seems so random. The timing, the strangeness of it all. After driving for so long, I’m lulled into a quiet, still state. I am jolted out of this by the sight of a giant pig. I ask my dad to pull over so I can go look at him up close. I guess he is more of a hog than a pig. He really has some size to him. Later, I learn that the pig had survived the flood by floating. He had floated away and then…he had returned. Just like that. He knew the way home. Ten bodies had been recovered on this property, but the pig survived. It seemed so surreal and almost cruel (the dumb luck of it), but here he is, alive and caked in mud and happy. And here I am. Here I am, alive. Sunburnt and my hair unbrushed and letting myself lean on other people. I’m learning to let other people be there for me—and in turn, learning that by being there for others, my pain will be eased. My friend told me on the phone that by supporting me through this time, it helps her because she will be better prepared if she ever goes through the same thing.

The last night of my visit I sit alone in the parking lot of an Outback Steakhouse for a few minutes waiting for my dad. It is my first moment alone in several days. I watch flocks of birds flying through the sky, gliding and spinning. Somehow they know how to stay together in rhythm. I watch the sun setting, and I start to cry. And for the first time, I’m not crying about my loss itself. I am crying because I am changing. Because now I understand that this had to happen. I had to change. Because that’s apparently the way of the world, of nature. Change. Destruction, and then rebuilding. It’s beginning again and again and again. Hands and hands and hands.

The summer after I graduated from college, I became aware of a dull pain in my back, at the base of my spine. It was always there, never horrible but never gone. At first I thought it must have been from riding my bike with the seat too low for a whole summer I spent studying theatre in Amsterdam- I was afraid of being too high off the ground.

I went to see a specialist who said I needed to get an MRI, which I did. As soon as they put me in I started weeping. I had actually been kind of excited for it until I was actually inside the machine and it felt like being lowered into my own grave. It’s just such a tight space, so loud. It’s what I would imagine being put into cryosleep feels like. I’d never felt so compressed. I asked to be taken out and went to the bathroom and stared at myself for a while, then washed my hands and went back in.

I eventually got back into the machine and then a while later I got a call that I had to go in and meet with the doctor. I sat in the office with her. I was wearing open toed sandals- I felt really weird with them on in the hospital, out of place. And I wasn’t shaving my legs at that point either, so I just felt like this Birkenstock goat milk person dropped into the white sterility of the hospital. The doctor diagnosed me with an autoimmune disorder that she said could eventually cause my spine to fuse together and make me all hunched over, and I would be immobilized and eventually this could be what killed me. I was upset at the prospect of being a freaky looking old person. I was also upset because she told me all of this information while reading it straight off the Wikipedia page. She turned her computer screen around so I could also read the Wikipedia page. I stared at my toes and my hairy legs. She seemed mad at me.

I went home and did a ton of digging on Google. I had a lot of time to spiral about this.

What could I do about this feeling of being trapped inside my body? I felt like Alice in Wonderland, too big for the room I was in. But also so small inside of myself. Like I was sitting at the bottom of a well.

I told my best friend Presleigh about the diagnosis and she had an ice cream cake delivered to my mother’s house, where I was staying.

My mother stared at it with her chin tilted down, like a Meryl Streep character.

“Oh god,” she said. “The last thing we need right now is a cake.”

One of the first things I did about my spine was go swimming a bunch and buy a stack of health magazines. Then I joined a disgustingly overpriced gym- you know the one. I also tried acupuncture and went to a chiropractor.

Eventually I engaged in the age old tradition of playing the “damsel in distress.” I decided to call a boy who used to rescue me, in the hopes it might somehow make me feel better.

If he asked how I was I could tell him about how I’d been sick, about all the doctors I saw, and the MRI, how I cried and they had to take me out so I could catch my breath. I laid on my bed and stared up at a blobby gray mass of clouds out the window.

I picked up the phone. I heard my voice go up an octave: “Hello?”

We ended up talking about gender performance for two hours and then he asked if we should wrap up. A little seed of panic sprouted up in my stomach. I hadn’t even mentioned my spine. I steered the conversation into the personal, spilling the deets about my vertabrae. He seemed disappointed or reserved. Maybe he didn’t like not knowing what to say.

As soon as we hung up the phone, I moved robotically to the lamp in my corner and turned it off with my foot. Limply, I slunk over to my bed in the dark and got under the covers. I was so tired. My roommate Addie came in and asked if I was okay. I cried then, hot tears rolling down my face freely, and she said “You wish he had expressed a little more concern”

“Yeah”

She nodded.

I dwelled for hours on the subtext of the conversation in which I had hoped to be saved but somehow was not. What can bodies do but not say? Say but not do? Say without saying? Why did I want so badly for some prince to rescue me from my tower, to slay the dragon that was illness? And in avoiding saying anything vulnerable by having an intellectual discussion about gender performance, I’d really been dancing some heavily choreographed dance of my own gender. My own body. My wellness and my unwellness felt like a careful balancing act that at any point could expose me as unsavory. And when all the performance was done, I was alone in my dressing room. Alone with the pain. The pain only I could take on the task of healing.

I felt that it didn’t matter that I was sick, that it would never matter to anyone but me that I was in pain and that I wanted help, or that I had cried in the MRI or that my body was literally attacking itself.

I had really been at war with myself over my body for years. My weight, my hair, my skin. As many women are. I feared that this was all my fault. Teleological thinking. Could it be possibly that by thinking of my body as a warzone for the past few years, it had simply become one? Or maybe I’d known all along about the sickness, my body had known, before my brain did. Like the boy on the phone himself had said, he was gradually being changed by life and also being shown what had always existed within him. My spine had been attacked by my immune system and so I was now in battle, and yet my body had been a battleground to me since puberty- ravaged by scars, blood, sickness, cramps, broken bones, stretch marks, and pain. Forget about feeling sacred in my body- how could I even possibly feel safe in it?

My best friend, the one who had sent me the cake, described this feeling as “The Big Pain.” It felt so right that I made a playlist by the same name immediately after she said it.

The Big Pain made me think of this monologue from the show Fleabag:

“Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny—period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives. Men don’t. They have to seek it out. They invent all these gods and demons so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here, inside.”

When I imagine my sort of ideal health scenario, it’s being cut loose from having a body at all.

I want to be beautiful. I want to be fluid, I want to shimmer. I am lithe like water, I melt and pool out and the liquefied me is golden and moonlight and tastes like elderflower. I am lovely, I am loveliness. I want to sit anywhere, walk anywhere, and be noticed for beauty. I don’t want people to stare at my stomach. I don’t want to feel the weight of myself all the time.

But the reality is I have bones and callouses and my back hurts. I’m a human being, I have a body. Some days I’m at peace with that.

Accepting that I have a body that only I can be in charge of was the start of my quest to feel good. The quest has brought me to faraway lands, it’s brought me into many health food stores, it has made me douse myself with creams and oils and has made me go into Goop and stare at yoni eggs. It’s landed me on massage tables, it’s found me with needles sticking out of my skin, it has made me read The Body Keeps the Score.

The quest to feel good is a constant curiosity for me, and funnily enough- curiosity makes me feel good. The feel good quest has brought me to bodies of water, chambers of ice, mud between my bare toes, sound baths, therapy, meditation. It’s made me purchase things perhaps more than any other quest. The quest to feel good makes me write, makes me cry, makes me pick up new hobbies.

In some ways, the feeling of relief is more satisfying than having felt no pain at all. Spending money in order to feel relief is something I’ve started referring to in my head as “the relief economy.” I think about it all the time, the ways we can feel better and how much they cost. When they’re free it’s a miracle, but there’s also something addicting about spending money to get there. Everyone I know deals with their own relief economy in some way. Pain connects everyone.

I’m grateful for the ways pain has brought meaning to my life. Pain is not my destiny. It is my body giving me a roadmap. Or at least roadsigns.

I had a lot of dolls when I was a little girl. They all had different purposes, both for play and for my small developing mind. Barbies were a way of pretending to be an adult woman who dressed in amazing clothes. My Barbie had her own house, she had a boyfriend who she often kicked out (cue Ken doll flying through the air), and she had an amazing career. Then there were American Girl Dolls, partners in historical cosplay, always with me at real world events—more like friends or peers than adult Barbie, and not quite my child who I took care of. (I also for some reason drew genitals on these more than any other doll.)

But then there was the ultimate doll. The baby doll. The babydoll was always just my actual infant. Not my friend, not someone to aspire to. I was mother, and I had a job to do. I had one baby doll that I’d feed a formula (yes, I literally mixed together water and powder) and then the fake formula would travel through the doll, and out the other end for me to wipe. I had another doll that was so heavy and lifelike that once a neighbor saw it rolling down our street in an unattended stroller and chased it down, thinking it was a real baby. I was a bad mom that day. As a child, I was God to my dolls. I decided who they were, I was in charge of their livelihood. And certainly they brought me joy, a sense of order to my life, a sense of identity. But there was always a sense that I was the one caring for them. I dressed them, brushed their hair, sometimes defaced them and ripped off their limbs, or gave them nose rings and a tattoo that said “Angel.” I was the one in control.

But now a new baby doll has entered the chat for girls and women alike, and this one is different from the others. This time it has the control. I’m talking about the Sonny Angel. Tiny baby dolls. Naked. Sometimes wearing fruit hats. They were created in 2004, literally as a companion or “little boyfriend” for young working women navigating a stressful world. The past few years has seen a major craze of women in their 20’s buying Sonny Angels and other adorable figurines. Now that my babydoll years are over, but I’m not quite at my actual baby years, I’m wondering where I fit. And whether these little dolls might serve me. I talked to some girls I know who love these little angels to try to find out what it is I might need to comfort collect.

Sonny Angels have taken on a kind of emotional currency. To have one with you brings a sense that the world isn’t a scary place, because here is this small totem of cuteness and innocence that you carry. And when you see someone else carrying one too, it’s an instant conversation starter, a reminder that whimsy exists. Perhaps a new friendship could even emerge. One Sonny Angel luvr I talked to was Mackey, who’s 24. She told me"If anyone has them I’m like, You get it. You love that little dopamine hit and you think these figurines are cute too. I love that." Mackey has about 20 Sonny Angels “littered around” her apartment- but in a classy way. “I have to keep grounding myself and I have to keep being real in the fact that it’s a piece of plastic.”

Sonny Angels are like worry dolls, but you don’t just keep them under your pillow. You carry them on your purse, attached to your phone, or peering over the top of your laptop screen as you work a 9-5. It’s not like you’re taking care of the doll…the doll is taking care of you. Maya, 25, told me they bring her “comfort and joy.” Mackey said she feels especially connected to the ones she carries around with her. “The one on my keychain, it’s like: We go through life together every day. Like, you are coming with me literally everywhere I go.” It’s an adult security blanket you can clip onto your purse.

Part of the whole Sonny Angel appeal is the hunt. Recently, I was walking with my friend Lauren in the East Village, and as we turned onto a particular block, I told her: “Just wait. You’re not gonna believe what you’re about to see.” What I meant was that for every 10 feet there would be at least 2 young women between the ages of 12 and 30 doing an “unboxing” video of a Sonny Angel.

The hunt! Girls unboxing their angel and rejoicing or cursing fate based on which one they got. The crinkling of the packaging, the moment of reveal. My friend Hannah described her unboxing ritual as “feral and manic.” “The high is short lived,” she says “but what a rush it is!” I really get it. You’re creating your own minidrama, all within your control and with extremely controlled stakes. Girls get very into this. Mackey described it like this: "It’s a crazy dopamine hit. You feel like a little high for a second... Sometimes it’s great, you get the win of getting what you wanted, and sometimes you get the one you wanted the least. But it literally is just a little dopamine hit and then you have a cute little decoration for your house."

There are even terms like “boyfriend luck,” which means that if your boyfriend unboxes your Angel for you, you might have better luck getting the one you want. I guess because he doesn’t really care so there’s less at stake in a universal kind of way. I wonder if a girl has ever tried to get a boyfriend just so she can get some boyfriend luck. Girl seeking boyfriend because she craves doll. Do we ever really grow up, or just get a little taller?

The part of the hunt that resonates with me the most is the idea that there’s always something just around the corner that could comfort me. To bring me peace, relief, joy. This is a comfort in itself. This is why people “window shop.” The idea that you need something to fill a void in yourself that you will ACTUALLY be able to find in a store is exciting. I want to feel the rush. I want the comfort! Do I want the actual plastic object though? (In the notes I wrote for this piece, I wrote “Maybe seeking Sonny Angel IS my Sonny Angel.”)

By embracing cute, childlike aesthetics, women are turning away from traditional indicators of adulthood. When adult womanhood feels so marked by pressures to marry and procreate, it can be freeing to choose a lifestyle that prolongs one’s girlhood. Hannah said “ I love being an adult, making decisions for myself, living independently, etc. But I also like the idea of spending the money I make on sweet things that make me happy, so I guess I look at Sonny Angels as bringing a pure and uninhibited joy into my adult life.”

It’s just interesting to note that a lot of these toys ARE babies. Sometimes I scroll through stories on Instagram and I see women my age posting their babies interspersed with women posting their toys and trinkets. Many women who aren’t ready for babies or don’t want them are filling their homes and purses with plastic babies. Even Monchichi dolls have a thumb sucking feature. As girls, a lot of us played with baby dolls in the role of their mother. But now it’s more like the doll owner is the doll’s peer, or even an extension of the owner’s self expression. The baby doll represents you.

I think there’s something really powerful about being able to self soothe, and I’m a total advocate of accessorizing. Hey, at least women are buying trinkets to make themselves feel at home in their identity and a little safer in the world rather than having actual babies for those same reasons. The more I wondered about these toys, I found myself falling through the looking glass of adult collecting. Questions led to more questions. Doors led to more doors. Babies led to tinier, cuter babies.

I learned that cuteness isn’t just a dopamine hit- it’s an entire economy. We’ve seen this before, with kawaii culture in Japan. Kawaii, a term that translates to “cute,” became prominent in Japan after World War II. It started as many trends do, with teenage girls at the helm. Kawaii was counterculture because it was something young women had all to themselves, like a secret language. Embracing kawaii allowed girls to reject the role of adult woman society had laid out for them, instead choosing a prolonged state of childlike wonder and imagination.

When Japan’s economy crashed in the 1980’s companies actually leaned into kawaii products and marketing to stimulate the economy. In their recession, cute was selling even more than before. And despite kawaii starting out as a craze among teenage girls, studies show that by the time of the recession kawaii boom, the target demographic were women aged 18–40.

I keep wondering whether there will be a cuteness boom here in the U.S. as we head into a recession. Especially with Trump’s tariffs on Japanese goods and films made outside the US, it seems like there will need to be a new American made conceptualization of cuteness, of kawaii. I’m already seeing it. Characters we’ve known for decades are being redesigned to have bigger heads, huge eyes, a smooth round look. Look at the evolution of Mickey Mouse, or even the recent redesign of Shrek and his family in the upcoming Shrek 5. This doesn’t come from nowhere. In the 1940s, ethologist Konrad Lorenz introduced the concept of the “baby schema,” a set of infantile features like a round face, big eyes, large head, and short, thick limbs. Our brains register these traits as cute, which triggers a caretaking instinct. It’s biology, but also marketing gold.

So when women ages 18 to 40 are buying these dolls, is our biology being manipulated by marketing strategy to make us spend money? Or are we rebelling against a society that forces us into the role of mother? Hannah reflected on this too, "I know a bit about the history of the creation of Sonny Angels, that they were made as comfort items for women in their mid twenties. It makes sense that we would turn to something reminiscent of a time of innocence in such a turbulent sociopolitical climate."

This administration also wants to see women giving birth. When women can fulfill a biological desire to take care of something cute with a doll, does it keep them from having children? Personally, I can’t really compare the feeling of having a cute toy with the feeling of having a baby…but I also can’t imagine being a mother in a house that’s full of all my cute knickknacks.

"I was literally having this conversation with my coworker yesterday about how I do not experience baby fever," Mackey told me. "The thought of being married to someone freaks me out because there’s still so much that I’m learning about myself... One day I think I’ll be ready to marry someone and one day I think I’ll be ready for kids but like, right now, I’m just focusing on me and I’m buying my little figurines because it makes me happy, and I have the freedom to do so as an adult."

If we’re going to be expected to care for everything, maybe it makes sense to start with something that fits in the palm of our hand. So I thought maybe it was time to put all this pondering to the test and go get my own Sonny Angel. I went to a store in my neighborhood in search of the coveted tiny baby, but they were sold out. And it hit me that I really didn’t want a Sonny Angel. When I talked to Mackey, she said what doll you like is really what your “cutesy is.” Maybe Sonny Angels aren’t my cutesy. But then I saw it. An Ugly Doll keychain- the very same Ugly Doll I had when I was a kid. Babo. He has yellow eyes and two teeth and he is canonically described as stupid. Ugly Dolls are weird and funny and I like them a lot. So I bought it and it did make me happy. It’s a totem to the girl I used to be, who shaped me into the woman I am. And it makes me laugh. Absurdity comforts me more than adorableness. Ugly doll, pretty world.

Every year when I was a kid, the American girl doll catalogue would arrive to my house around the winter holidays. I’d pore over it, circling everything I longed for. A bathroom set with a tub full of bubbles, a face mask, tiny shampoo bottles. Or a ski outfit with matching skis and a wintry getup for a tiny plush dog! What about a camping set, with a sleeping bag and bug spray for my doll? I didn’t just want these items; I wanted to be able to do all the things these dolls did. I wanted a full life. I was dreaming through the dolls. I was world building.

In the world I created through my dolls as a child, I was extremely independent, a working mother, an owner of multiple homes and cars. Hannah related to this switch up in what she needed from her dolls as she aged. "I played with dolls a tooooon when I was younger.I had straight up baby dolls and I would play that we were in dire circumstances, such as being stranded in the woods or caught in a blizzard and I would have to comfort the baby. Back then I was less interested in cuteness and more so in realism, but now I just like how these little things look." If the toy we crave in adulthood is a plush creature with pointy teeth, or a naked baby with a hat made of fruit, or a Hello Kitty who doesn’t even have a mouth…what is it we are dreaming of? A life with no responsibility or rules. A completely simple existence where I am simply plucked out of the earth of a garden one day, or where my head is made out of a cake, or one where I don’t even have to open my mouth. Safety.

Okay but. I don’t actually want a life of silence and a head made out of flowers and cake. I love autonomy and I still crave things out of adulthood that I make conscious choices to achieve. But I do believe in spending a bit of money to get some comfort and joy. I do it all the time. And there are worse things to collect than babydolls.

Dolls for adult women serve so many purposes. I think of women who couldn’t conceive, who find immense comfort in the lifelike Reborn baby dolls. Women with dementia who hold dolls and are returned to a state of peace from the muscle memory of cradling their own newborn decades earlier. I’ve realized that dolls are kind of like puppets. It takes the hands and the mind of a person to breathe life and meaning into them. The relationship to a doll changes throughout your life depending on what you need from it. And you are also filling that need for yourself by engaging with the object. In a world where women are often forced into a caretaking role, dolls give them a vehicle to care for themselves. I’m curious what that means for me and for everyone I know- when you open up your toy chest, what is inside?

Lately I’ve been staring at my face. More specifically, my forehead. I stare at it and I see where new lines have appeared and I go back and look at photos of myself and look at where those lines used to not be. And then I watch a Tiktok of a girl explaining why she had a facelift at 27. And then I go to yoga and my body can’t move the way it used to, and I go home and fret for hours about how I’m going to stand up from the couch when I’m old. But aging as decay is just one way of looking at it. And even as certain parts of my body are surely on a one way track to atrophy, my mind is a limitless well of infinite potential. Aging in the mind, in the soul, is a process of renewal. If you only let it be. And how do I know this? Greek tragedy.

Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles, is a totally twisted story about incest and murder. But it also tells us things about aging. And about how the process of just opening the door and letting in new light is not only healing on an existential level, but can also heal the actual body.

At each stage in life comes a different conceptualization of “the body.” Different bodies hold ideological power in different ways, especially on the stage. When it comes to the embodiment and representation of the aging body, the Greeks have much to teach us about cycles of life and death. The protagonist of a play is entwined with the body of the play itself, of the theatre itself. With age comes physical decay, and the reflection on one’s past. When this body is in a state of decay, not only an ill protagonist but a protagonist who is aware of his own aging, the body of the theater is endowed with this sentiment, as in Oedipus Rex when the chorus says “the heart inside me sickens, dies as the land dies.”

Oedipus is all about what is generational, what we hold onto from the past, and how learning from the past can teach us about ourselves and give us new sight. It is a play of usurpation. The aging body is in and of this play, as can be seen in the riddle of the Sphynx, the riddle of the aging man. The theme of the foot as a symbol of age can be seen in Oedipus the King. Oedipus’s feet are damaged by being bound when he was a baby, after his father cast him out to die when it was foretold by prophecy that Oedipus would marry his mother and kill his father. As Oedipus grows, he walks with a limp- the damage of the feet we move through life upon acting as as a symbol for the atrophy of age. The worst fate in the world of the play is not to die, but to “drag out all [your] life in agony, step by painful step.” To age with the terrible shame and regret of your actions rather than to simply die. The play enacts all of these concepts, and Oedipus himself embodies these concepts, as in when he says “When I count the days gone by it torments me.” Oedipus looks for himself in trying to reconstruct his past. The prophecy which ruins Oedipus, decreeing that he will “make love to his own mother” and “shed his father’s blood” can only come true as he comes into age, as his life unfolds. Obviously this is horrible and freaky as hell and he doesn’t want it to happen. But as the days of his life go by, he seems only to be on a landslide (Stevie Nicks, you there?) toward his worst fear.

I’m sure we can all relate to letting the fear of our life becoming a horrific failure blinding us from the steps it would take us to stop this from happening. For some people it’s becoming just like their parents. For others, it’s achieving nothing in their career. Or becoming very sick, or hurting others, or ending up completely alone. For me it’s never getting my novel published, never acting on a Broadway stage, or maybe wearing my contact lenses for so long that I go blind. For Oedipus, it’s grotesque incest and murder. (Maybe take a moment to be grateful for the position you’re in.) Oedipus’s life has led him only into further exploration of his past, but ultimately he cannot piece it together so easily. He’s blinded by hubris. And then, when he realizes the truth of what he’s done, aka walked right into the incest murder trap in a kind of classic Looney Tunes moment...well, Oedipus gouges his eyes out and actually blinds himself. (Really wanting to be careful about my contact lenses now that I think about it) But now that he can only see through his mind’s eye, he can enter a new era. He’s in his era of “realizing things,” just like Kylie Jenner in 2016.

He’s not running anymore. The Chorus themselves say that only “time, all-seeing time has dragged [Oedipus] into the light” of seeing. It is with time that Oedipus falls, and yet begins to see truth, and therefore know himself. It is in this new “sight,” the seeing of truth, that Oedipus is no longer king, and therefore the land is healed. Just like Stevie Nicks, Oedipus had to turn around at the snow covered hills in order to see his reflection. And then, as time relentlessly marches on, the landslide brought him down. New snow, reflection wiped away. Renewal. See what I’m getting at?

In Panos Koutras’s 2009 film Strella, a modern retelling of Oedipus, a young trans woman, Stella, reconnects with her father Yorgos after many years of no contact. Yorgos must accept his child as she is now, in this changed body. Stella changes her father through introducing this new self to him. In the end of the film, Yorgos expresses how he missed Stella, saying “I missed everything.” And Stella replies: “And this caused you to change?” Yorgos is redeemed from his shame and regret by the responsibility of caring for his child, and for a new baby who Stella adopts with a friend. New life redeems decaying life, redeems shame. Some other more incesty stuff happens in this movie, but for the purpose of this essay what we have learned is that it’s never too late to change. And often it is age and the reflection of regret that causes this change- years of being blind to your own actions, then suddenly seeing. Think Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. In fiction, characters often receive this reversal in a heightened, spooky, violent, or metaphysical way. But in life, we might have to dig a little deeper to really see. Just don’t gouge your eyes out.

This ties into a concept that exists in psychology and cognitive science called neuroplasticity. It’s basically just our brain’s ability to restructure its neural networks through the experiences in our life. Our choices have an actual tangible effect on our own brains- doing something new, adapting a new thought system, even just taking a new route home from work. You can change the structure of your brain! Hot girls everywhere are “locking in” to their “grindset” so they can be bikini ready for summer, but what about a workout for my brain? Maybe we can learn from Oedipus’s mistake and break out of a one track mindset to see another way. Try something new that could lead you away from your ultimate tragic downfall, blinding, and multi-generational curse. I’m not saying that will happen to you, I’m just saying there’s ways you can avoid it.

When I was twelve I read in Vogue that you should start using a retinol at age 30. I wrote in my diary to remind myself that I was going to get a jump on the whole thing and start using it at 25. At twelve I was already developing a fear of aging, of decay. But in many ways the fear of decay, this desire to freeze ourselves, really only stunts us mentally. In trying to stay youthful and childlike, many of us stop ourselves from learning new things. Sometimes I even go to start a new film I’ve never seen before and I experience this anxiety of the unknown. Like, if I go back and watch Twilight for the hundredth time, I know exactly what type of emotional reaction I will have. A reaction that was revolutionary at age twelve, when retinol was just a word for the future. But letting in new ideas can only renew me, keep me neuroplastic, keep making me a child in the world of ideas. Like Oedipus, some of us toil madly towards a goal that’s actually driving us toward our fear of never reaching it. If we let go of what we thought we would want out of life at age twelve, maybe we can experience more presence by being surprised by what we learn. By who we want to be.

The concept of tragedy evolved from the “goat song,” a ritual performance done with the sacrifice of a goat to Dinoysus. Just as the goat was sacrificed so that the people could be blessed and prosper, in tragedy the tragic hero must sacrifice something in order for the lesson of the story to be completed. So the audience can receive the medicinal quality of the play by learning and seeing. Oedipus banged his mom so you could learn to take up new hobbies and let go of your old ideas. In this release, you can experience the actual proven neuroplastic process of actually restructuring your brain. You heal your vibe, you heal your mind, you heal your body. Life may be a cycle, but it’s also a circle.

1. Sophocles, and Roberto Toretti. Philoctetes. Hackett Publishing Company, 2018.

2. Sophocles, and Patrick Finglass. Ajax. Cambridge University Press, 2015.

3. Sophocles, et al. Oedipus the King. Oxford University Press, 1988.

4. Koutras, Panos, director. Strella: A Woman’s Way. Memento Films, 2009.

5. Edgar, David, and Henrik Ibsen. The Master Builder. Nick Hern, 2010.

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