But, anyway. Elvira: mistress of the dark (1988) slapped hard. It was so fucking funny. I love a good campy horror movie. The schlock horror works. My first impression of Elvira was that I would love to be her for Halloween, but I don’t have the physical assets to pull that off. Which is a shame, because I feel like I relate to her a lot. Maybe not on a superficial level. My body doesn’t look like hers. My clothes or my house decor don’t, either. It’s her humor, mostly. She has this habit of joking at her own expense first. I do the same, I think? Of course, she can afford to. She can brace the impact, and she does. Face first.

Something about Fallwell’s community too? I don’t mean the ultra-conservative folks. I mean Bob — he was a very chill guy for being cool with Elvira’s witchiness; and the herd of teens that followed her around. Now look. I am no witch, and no one ever tried to burn me at the stake like they tried to burn Elvira. But I have felt kind of out of place in a small town too. Weirdly, I’ve felt cursed, at times. So I find it endearing to see people’s offputtingness being fully embraced, not feared. That’s a nice emotional payoff. And that’s what the movie left me with. As in that acceptance exists, and is within reach. If I were a witch, it would be cool to have that same support yknow.

It was a Saturday or maybe a Sunday afternoon, and I had time on my hands. Watching Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001) was the obvious choice. But I felt disappointed from early on. The spell broke. It honestly didn’t have the same pull. I was sitting and trying to understand what was missing. At some point, I wondered if I was being prejudiced toward Cassandra Peterson. She was 37 (I think) in the original movie, so she would have been 50 in the sequel. She had obviously matured since then, both her skin and her confidence. But that didn’t make any sense; she was still as hot as before.

I think my disappointment was just covert selfishness. I wanted Elvira to stay as her original self, but Haunted Hills flipped the whole script. It starts by changing the timeline and the setting. It was set in the 1800s, and in Transylvania. Elvira was travelling from Carpathia to Paris along with her maid, Zou Zou. The humor is on familiar grounds, but Elvira isn’t in any rush to beat anyone to the punch.

In the opening scene, Elvira and Zou Zou run from the inn after spending the night. They couldn’t afford to pay the innkeeper, so they escape from a window. It’s a tiny, tiny window. Elvira struggles to push and squeeze Zou Zou, who ends up taking a header into the ground. You know, regular slapstick. Writing this, I think it didn’t sit well with me from the beginning for that reason. I don’t vibe with slapstick all that much. Also, 1988’s Elvira pokes fun at herself first, at her edge as a sex icon, at her quips as a struggling performer, and at the male gaze. Haunted Hills punches down. She was still struggling in many different ways, but Elvira was not as charming when Zou Zou’s the butt of the joke.

And that’s not a sin in itself, even if it’s not my type of humour. If we’re being honest, I watched maybe 50% of the sequel. Maybe I didn’t give it enough of a chance. I watched both movies in the same afternoon, interrupted only by a quick break to get more ice cream. And I stopped watching the moment I lost interest. But for Cassandra, 13 years had passed since then. She’s been acting as Elvira since the early 80s; she doesn’t owe anyone to keep poking fun at herself. It isn’t as charming, but it’s a lot cooler. I think that is something I can leave with too, even if I didn’t see it right away.

thanks for reading <3

Blaming my phone was misplaced anger. The algorithms are easy targets, but no amount of social media breaks could fix this feeling. I think it’s more about whether being online for so long may have messed with my sense of self. I know what I like. But like, do I? I’ve been staring at screens since I was a teen. I really was born in the right time. I love moving images and noise.

It used to be fun. The ungodly amount of unsupervised time on Tumblr used to be fun. YouTube used to be fun. I wasn’t sure anymore if I genuinely liked things, or if I was pavloved into liking what’s on my feeds. But that’s silly, I think. Nothing is ever mine. Thank God it isn’t. I owe most of my music taste growing up to the playlists on that secondhand iPod I got from my brother. All taste has to come from somewhere, right? I am at peace with that.

I used to have an easier time deciding things for myself, and that’s what’s really been irking me. That is the crux of it. I find myself worrying about what other people think about what I like. What are my friends laughing at? What are people talking about? I want in. I want to be included. That should be a good thing, but I really want a time out. Thinking about this gives me a headache.

And I can’t even blame anyone! Sure, apps are specifically designed to hook people. To keep em coming back. I’m the one who has been using phone apps as oracles to tell me who I am or should be. A quick and low-effort way to stay in touch with people. I don’t want to be sitting by the bar, looking over my shoulder at everyone having fun. Like that time my friends were talking about this kind of viral reality show, and I had no idea what they were talking about. It wasn’t a big deal. But for a few seconds I actually panicked a bit. I had nothing to add, and it sucked. Why did it even matter so much? I can witness my friends’ joy. And I wasn’t even left out. We still gossiped and laughed about other things.

I’m trying to remember that, to stay sane. The whole night was fun. That was just a fragment of the whole thing. What stands out the most is the warm flicker in my chest at my friend’s over-the-top celebrity impersonation, not the moments of silence.

I enjoy making my friends laugh. Hits like a slot machine win. Lasts just as long. That’s not all that friendships are built on. But my object permanence sucks. I think about being forgotten, and I panic.

The occasional story. The occasional meme in DMs. I didn’t forget how to type ‘I am thinking of you, hope you’re good’. And then there are the people who are not really around anymore. The world is so big. What if I don’t ever run into them? Keeping social media accounts is kind of like keeping a light on for those people. The ones in between, not really a call away, not really out of reach.

AAAAAAH, the headache again.

So, deleting apps makes me feel restless. I stop knowing what to do with my hands. This is my version of exposure therapy. Stickin it through the discomfort. There are people that are dying, Kim.

That’s why I have been writing, I think. It gives me something to do with my hands. It gives me something to do with remembering. ‘Here’s me going through the cardboard I keep with your stuff. You matter. I am sorry for not saying those things to you. If I remember you, will you remember me too?’ Going TAC TAC TAC on the keyboard is weirdly grounding, though. I am never giving it up.

But hey! Maybe, at the end of the day, it’s not even that deep. I don’t plan on going off the grid. My laptop is my witness. Man, I just want to have fun silly times online again!

I can and do still access the ether. How else would I be posting this, silly?

I am normal and can be trusted with a wifi connection :)

thanks for reading! <3

u a real one for that

She remembers a lot. So much more than you could tell by her rough, hardworking hands. The type of hands that don’t shy away from a slippery eel, a heavy barbel, or many. Better if many. A knife in her pocket at all times, reduced to a thin blade. Not that she minds it.

Firm, gentle, calculated. Strong, but not really into proving it to anyone else. Oh, and always so warm. The warmth she got from God knows where, but never let go of. She doesn’t see this. She tends not to. But she should. God himself has nothing to do with anything, she’ll say in the daytime. I know she prays when she can’t sleep late at night.

The earliest mornings, for so many years. She didn’t like it, but it mattered all the same. A schedule her body has learned by heart. She doesn’t like it now, either, but well. It came in handy.

A wallet she grows, like a well-fed dove in her hands. Coins from this and other times, the vague scent of fresh water, blood, sweat. Sometimes too loosely open, sometimes too tightly closed. Her discernment makes sense each time.

Smart. And cunning, if she needs to. Though why would you make her need to?

Sometimes she will laugh about her hunger. Hunger for more than sustenance. The river always provided, in many ways, tethered her in so many others. No old days were ever romanticized nor resented. Now’s the time; it should be her time again. She would even get a tattoo or two, after all. A rose, maybe, like the ones by the patio door. She ignores you when you remind her that she still could. She’d never go anywhere near piercings, though.

She made her truce with time. A husband, two children. A house. A boat made of wood. Green, red, and cyan blue. The boat name was picked on a whim. It didn’t mean what that young couple thought it did back then. She had no say in it; the paint had already dried. It became a funny story she owned, too.

Her stories and her mischievous laughter collapse the decades her skin doesn’t really try to hide. A taste for restaurant glasses. One or two ended up wrapped in a napkin and smuggled home inside her purse. She probably tipped, maybe. I don’t know, let her have this. It could be worse.

A loquat tree that isn’t there anymore. A few other orange trees whose roots fought and still couldn’t break through the cement beneath the earth. Orange blossoms that multiply regardless, swell, and bolster the ground.

She’s as kind as stubborn. Immeasurably so. Her pain is unrelated to the passing of time. A diagnosis that tried her, and lost. A bug that didn’t scare her enough to stop her from visiting her husband in the hospital. She doesn’t brag now. She didn’t brag then. She didn’t defy anything. She didn’t actually do anything. Rarely spoke about any of it. I think that was her secret.

She keeps portraits of her grandkids in her bedroom. There’s the one whose photo made it to the back of her clear phone case. There’s one who knows her best; he’s the most frequent outgoing and incoming call. The youngest one, she loves to make up for the time she can’t promise. Her pantry is full, just in case one of them comes around.

But she won’t ask them to come by. She tries not to call any of them that often. She prefers to stay away from big, heavy words. She puts you in your place, but she keeps your place. She bickers, of course. She grumbles. I think that’s as far as she allows herself to go.

thank you for reading <3

First things first: I am well, well aware that I am currently writing this from a laptop with a built-in camera and a microphone. Right next to my laptop, I have my iPhone, and it too has all the tiny cameras, the microphone, the AirDrop, and the Bluetooth connection. Also, the mobile data is always on. The Wifi in my bedroom is always mid-shit, worse if my roommate is on his desktop at the same time. So I have an unlimited data plan. I was getting overcharged so often by my provider that I figured that was the best option. So like, as far as surveillance tools go, I am wired 24/7. It’d be incredibly naive, dumb, or hypocritical of me to pretend otherwise. Don’t come at me with the sunk cost fallacies, though!

Anyway, the rant.

The other day, I was listening to Kurtis Conner’s podcast episode about those Soulja Boy AI glasses1. It was as funny as usual. Kurtis did this thing where he tried to purchase them from Soulja Boy’s official website, but hit the paywall the wrong way. He couldn’t get the purchase to go through, so he tracked the SKU and found the (allegedly2) exact match elsewhere. He took the glasses to an empty park, tested the navigation tool, tested the mic for calls, the usual spec check.

Turns out those AI glasses were not only not very user-friendly, their features were also subpar. Dude was losing his chill. By the end, Kurtis pulled what looked like a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarer dupe sunnies and wrote Soulja Boy on them in white ink. You probably know the bit.

The fact that they were subpar made the whole thing funny and entertaining. All these promises of augmented reality fell short, and I hope to God that not that many people fell for it. I couldn’t find that model online anymore, but Google tells me it goes for $64.50. You could probably buy a big fat bowl of açaí to share, eat it in the park, and still have some spare change.

To Soulja Boy’s credit, I don’t think his AI glasses were advertised as a Meta dupe. For all I know, it’s his own product, in his own right. And harmless, for the most part. I think? But the original Meta glasses aren’t always harmless, are they? They come in Ray-Ban or Oakley frames, with clear and shaded lenses. Despite the lofty price point (starting from mildly expensive at $299 to really fucking expensive at $799)3, they managed to sell over 7 million pairs in 2025 alone4. That’s 7 million people walking around God’s green earth wearing them, or worse: fewer people who actually bought more than one pair.

Why am I annoyed? Let’s not forget that in the end, these Meta glasses are just tools. And that’s the beauty of tools, they can be used, adapted, and updated in ways we may not even conceive of yet. For better and for worse.

There are valid points in favor of these glasses, and not only at a strictly individual benefit level (I do not gaf about the hands-free POV spiel unless you make art and are trying to film the process, maybe; In general, if you can use a phone, why not just use it?).

But there are very legitimate uses. I imagine it can be useful for anyone hard of hearing or visually impaired, or even for surgical assistance or remote paramedic support. The augmented reality can become useful for anyone with physical disabilities, too. Intersectionality matters here. Anyone with a stoma bag and low accessibility to a phone would really appreciate a customized map highlighting clean public bathrooms nearby. Or map overviews with flat routes, to assist anyone who relies on a wheelchair for transportation. This is not a comprehensive list; I do not know all that there is to know about this type of tech.

But here’s the thing: what about the risks to the collective when sophisticated tech becomes accessible to anyone who doesn’t need it, but goes for it anyway? With widespread use, it can be properly regulated, but there’s only so much we can anticipate from such early days. And sure, you (you!) may not be ill-intentioned, but do you know how all that data being collected is stored? What exactly is shared with 3rd parties, or used by private and/or government agencies to fit whatever agenda, when you’re just wanting to film your walk?

Do you live in a body that is susceptible to being policed, or do your loved ones5? Do you smoke a bit of weed from time to time, to wind down? Do your loved ones? Your neighbours? Do you live in an ethnically diverse city, and would you like it to stay diverse? I live in Portugal, so as of today, we have no ICE. But there are still extremist movements on the rise, and many instances of racism and xenophobia that have been left unchecked for far too long. Guess who’d be targeted first under a surveillance state.

So like, I wouldn’t want the government (any government) to have any funky ideas. Now is also a good time for a quick disclaimer: This is a reflection based on my digital consumption habits and my limited interaction with the world. If you live anywhere else where the melting pot may be extra piping hot, you’ll find that it deserves a whole different, higher-stakes conversation. Keep that in mind.

Recently, one of my friends told me he felt uncomfortable posting his same-sex partner on his Instagram stories, on his own account, where he has full agency over who gets access and who doesn’t. He said, “I mean, you never know who may be two-faced and lurking”. He placed those digital walls, and still doesn’t fully trust them. And most digital walls, as we know them, aren’t likely to stay put. Brother, isn’t that terrifying? Be honest.

Do you want to record something? Sure, get your phone out of your pocket and do it. No pockets? You don’t want to carry it? Get a lanyard. Let people know you are recording, and most importantly, let them actively choose to step away from the frame. Not all of us are naturals in front of a camera, and not all of us have to. Cool and innovative built-in cameras on glasses may just turn us into blind extras in a panopticon-themed playhouse. Today, you may hold the power as the observer, but soon you could be the observed.

I wouldn’t like this to stay as a face-first plunge into paranoia-town. Tech IS cool. But isn’t it so much cooler when it invites people in? Will you be proud of the fit check you tried at home? But what about when you catch someone shrinking from your presence alone, if they sense they’re maybe being recorded? How about that, uh?

Thanks for reading! <3

It would be very cool to hear your thoughts on this. Do you disagree and think this is dumb as shit? Well, fuck!

Most locals call this place by the name the council chose a few years back, when they tried to clean it up and rebrand it, hoping to attract some tourists here and there. There’s a campsite nearby, so some redirected traffic wouldn’t hurt.

But I call it by a different, less marketable name. So do my oldest friends. So does my family. The exact spot in this picture is a bit of a hidden gem. It’s accessible, but you’ll have to wait for the tide to lower enough, and you’ll get mud on your feet, and let’s be honest, that’s not a great selling point. Like, I am not really into muddy shoes myself either. But this afternoon, a few years back, the sunset complemented my friend’s features very nicely, and I convinced her to model for me. So we waited. And we got our feet in the mud. It was worth it, she looked beautiful ngl.

It must be said that the council did a nice clean-up job. Just a few meters away from this, there’s a huge old ass fig tree where my older brother had once started to carve both his name and mine with a pocket knife, fucked it up, and tried again. He was a kid, and I was even younger.

The bushes and weeds got so out of control that we couldn’t reach that tree anymore for a few years. It had been so long, I began to doubt whether that was an actual memory or a dream that managed to stick during waking hours. I hoped I could find the tree again, but even if it was real, odds were it would have been chopped down too. I don’t even remember it ever bearing actual figs.

But the fig tree survived the rebrand. And I ended up finding it. Don’t really remember when. I was looking for it, but was surprised anyway. The tree has since swallowed part of the carvings, but the failed attempt is still there, and so is the one he got right.

I hope that one fig tree stays there for a long time, even though it is, strictly speaking, useless. Maybe within a few years, our names won’t even be noticeable. But I will know they were there; I know where to look.

Thanks for reading! <3

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:~)

thanks for reading! <3

I hope the people I have had the luck to love, cherish, and laugh with will be there. I hope their backs are not what they used to be, and that their faces are wrinkled, deeper around the smile lines. If we’re lucky, some of us will have had work done by then. Hopefully, time will have smiled on them, too; and will have been kind enough to allow them to show up on their own two feet.

I hope all of our voices will have grown rougher, but surer.

Maybe one of them will pull out a cigarette, hiding from their own loved ones. I hope someone has a lighter to offer. That would be cool. Maybe the wind will hit them just right, and they will think of when I couldn’t light up a cigarette on the first try.

I hope they know not to bother wearing black, unless they are into it anyway. They might as well wear their favorite colours, to be fair. But I do hope they listen to my playlists while they’re there. Maybe bring out a speaker and a cooler, have some drinks.

And I hope they meet again, somewhere else. Maybe that day, too, can be remembered, eventually.

Thanks for reading <3

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But that song. I knew it before anything else; it meant something. Why was I thinking of you? Right. I recognized the plea to get it right this time. But as I said, it took me a couple more seconds than usual to clock what it was. I just knew that it reminded me of you. It always did. It was yours. Was it your favourite? It still makes it your song, doesn’t it? Remember listening to it in your car on the first or maybe second time I went to see you? Your phone was connected to your car speaker. It was cold and foggy outside, and we couldn’t see much ahead. I was sinking in the passenger seat and was about to ask you to turn the AC on, but you beat me to it. You were humming along, turning the wheel, getting out of the parking lot. I think we were going to your house. Is that right? That part is cloudy; I’ll admit. I mostly remember the warmth. I’m glad I do.

thanks for reading! <3

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thanks for reading! <3

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Rice has always been there. I was a vegetarian for 8 years, and God knows eating out can be tricky. If you go to a Tasca (or Tasco if you’re from the Northern side of Portugal) you’ll find that most dishes lean toward meat or fish. But anytime you get handed a Portuguese menu, and it goes “Arroz de…”, you already know you’re off to a stellar start. If it has a whole section dedicated to rice, you know you hit the mf jackpot.

Arroz de tomate1 is the best. That means rice tomato, if you take it literally, but please don’t. It doesn’t do it justice. It’s more of a loose iteration on (Italians, I am sorry for this) tomato risotto without the cheese. And it slaps. Hard. Rice is usually a side dish, but man, I can have it on its own. And I do, often. If you talk to any Portuguese person, they probably have warm memories of their family’s rice tomato recipe, or maybe carrot rice, and they almost certainly have their own rice pudding recipe.

Unfortunately for my mum and grandma, I’ve been a critic from a very young age.2 I mean, their rice is alright. But it would be better if they just followed the recipe. Which they can’t do, to save their lives; bless them both. That’s what motivated me to learn how to cook for myself. And I will be first to admit: like the maternal side of my family, my cooking often flops. But I know rice. It’s formulaic, actually. There are different grains for different dishes. Just get the right one, measure it, measure the water, and it’s essentially all you need to do. It’s so hard to fuck it up. So I was really upset when my mum cooked rice without measuring anything. It was like playing rice russian roulette. And the measuring cup was RIGHT there.

My mum atoned for her rice sins with arroz de marisco3, though. That’s seafood rice. And again, it’s better than it sounds. It’s a hearty, yummy seafood rice stew. Somehow, without ever measuring a damn thing, my mum always made the best seafood rice I’ve ever had. No comfort food in this world compares. During all of my veggie years, I never really missed anything aside from that. It’s best served right away, straight from the stove. Mum would start calling us like 10 minutes before it was ready, so everyone was ready to go. The best way to thank her for the meal was to have your butt sat at the table when she came out of the kitchen, or it’d ruin it for everyone.

My grandma’s rice pudding is also praiseworthy. She has somewhat of a recipe, I think she got it from her own mum. But she also eyeballs most of the process. Sometimes she makes it randomly throughout the year, but it tastes better during Christmas. And it’s also divisive. My brother likes his while it’s still hot, whereas I prefer it once it’s cooled a bit. We both go heavy on the cinnamon, though.

I don’t play about rice, so I wouldn’t be writing about their cooking if it wasn’t that good. But it is. I have never tried to make either myself. To be fair, I don’t think I’d get it right anyway.

Rice isn’t glamorous, but it’s always there. It can be a struggle meal too. Some days you’re a broke uni student and have plain rice with tuna from a can for lunch and dinner. Other days, you’re in your late twenties and have that same meal. Not because it’s cheap, but because it’s easy and gets you through a rough day when you can’t bother to put in more of an effort.

Anyway, today I set out to have rice for lunch, and I am proud to say that I did. There’s this chain burger restaurant near my work that is weirdly known specifically for its banging rice4. I don’t even eat meat; I was only there for the rice. And I bought extra to bring home. So now I have rice for days in my fridge. And that makes me very happy. It inspired me to come home and write this, no stimulants needed.

In Portuguese, we say “outra vez arroz?”, or “rice, again?” when something gets repetitive. I actually never related to it.

Outra vez arroz, please.5

thanks for reading!

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Maybe we talked once or twice since my mum asked for a divorce, and I took her side. I was 12 then. Days were quieter at home, and quiet was good. I didn’t call dad much for a long time; he didn’t either.

A few days after I turned 16 or 17, my phone rang while I was napping.

Took him long enough?

I don’t remember much. I probably sat right up and watched as the phone rang and buzzed for a while. Still and stubborn. He should have called sooner. Knowing myself, I must have been stuck on that. The specifics don’t really matter. Truth is: I was angry. I probably saw the chance to throw a tantrum and took it.

Leave me alone, but maybe I’ll pick up if you call twice. Please call twice. I am mad right now, but we have all the time in the world. Right?

What I can articulate now, but couldn’t then: I wanted to act out. People told me that I looked like him, sounded like him, and my temper perfectly matched his. And I was proving them right. Shit. Were we doomed from the start?

He didn’t call back, and neither did I, so who knows what he wanted. I like to think he’d have apologized for missing my birthday and maybe made a few promises he couldn’t possibly keep. That would have been nice.

Those days went by in a sticky haze. What I do remember is the night we got an unexpected call. It must have been after hours. I came out of my bedroom and saw my mum, clinging to her chest. I’d never seen that expression on her face before. I was trying to make sense of what was happening, and she was trying to make sense of what she was hearing on the phone. The screen was showing my dad’s contact info, but it wasn’t his voice coming through. Dad was 48. That was the first time I really knew what grief looked like. It was louder and sharper than it was in the movies; it filled the whole house, pushed all the air out, almost like it whiplashed.

My anger should have softened then. But that was so not how I had planned it in my head. I was supposed to be insufferable. He was supposed to stay. We’d forgive each other eventually. I was sure.

We ran out of time, though.

After that August, I couldn’t stand seeing him in my hair, or hearing him whenever I argued with my brother or backlashed at mum. He would linger long after I fell asleep. I’d stop myself mid-laugh if it was something he’d find funny.

I dropped it when I realized how much I was missing out. I laugh at myself daily. I laugh about that time I had a panic attack during a flight from Dubai to Lisbon. I cried the whole time, as the dude sitting next to me tried to calm me down with snacks and water. I laugh about that period of my life where I was afraid of evil numbers. Once, I tried to break no contact with a self-deprecating joke (it backfired horribly).

There hasn’t been a neurotic episode that didn’t have comedic value once the mood settled, so maybe we are as alike as people used to say.

My friends had driving lessons, graduation dinners, someone to intimidate their first boyfriends, tearful wedding speeches. I have your dumb jokes.

When my brother and I are together, we talk and joke in a way we can only do together. Sometimes my mum joins in.

“Dad would have laughed at this, too, wouldn’t he?”

“Yeah, I think so”.

You were funny, Dad.

And I miss you. Sorry for never telling you that.

Both places make me feel very emotional, and also have me going, “Oh my God, this is beautiful. Don’t you think this is beautiful?”, both in my head and out loud.

In a loop.

It was my first time in Clovelly, and it was weirdly warm for an April morning. The walk down the stone path was fine, but I was sweating like crazy on the way up. On the second leg, I mostly regretted how much I’ve been vaping lately. The elderly people around were unfazed. Humbling. We got to see donkeys at the end of the short hike, too!!

I had already been to Westward Ho, but it never disappoints. The sky was clear, and we could see Lundy’s outline across the sea. The water was really cold, but that’s part of why I love it.

I kept thinking my mum would love all of it, so I took several pics to show her. I admit there was a bit of back and forth about which version to post. Black and white? Colour? The sea was unbelievably blue, and the greenery delivered on the green, but I leaned toward black and white (though I usually don’t).

It felt fitting to try something different. :))

My nose is fucked. That’s the raw truth. It looks crooked. Too big for my face, or too tiny, depending on the angle. On a bad day, it looks like someone sucker-punched me. It’s not just an ugly nose. I have a deviated septum, and it’s one of those noses that make you hate the inverted filter. Teen me would dread the mirror and my phone’s front camera.

Getting a nose job used to be my ultimate fantasy, and I even got as far as scheduling an appointment. Daydreaming about coming home, face all bandaged, was always such a guilty pleasure. I used to get Breathe Right strips, not because they drastically improved my sleep quality, but because I enjoyed cosplaying post-op. The surgery was going to be pricy, but I had saved enough. Went as far as dragging my mum to the appointment with me (for accountability). She was reluctantly supportive. She wasn’t going to stand in the way, but I should remember God made me perfect just the way I am. Didn’t God also make nose jobs possible?

Anyway. I ended up backing out. I remembered I am actually terrified of anesthetics. I did ask my doctor if it would be possible to skip the general anesthesia, which was obviously a no go. It wasn’t just the fear of things going south. To be really really honest, it felt too shallow. Fuck.

Okay, right, I am not the first person to hate their nose. It’s probably the most common cosmetic surgery1. But it still felt wrong. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to wish to be prettier. Would God think I was being too vain? I needed a loophole.

Maybe God wouldn’t be mad at me if I got a ball thrown at my face and broke my nose2. Maybe I could trip on my shoelaces. I didn’t care for the execution; I just wanted to wake up with a new nose. Preferably, blame-free. Nobody had to know it had been my fantasy all along. Well. Except for God. If he had a sense of humor, he’d use me as the punch line.

Like it could come out worse, or I could die mid-surgery. No point in trying to cheat the system; the house always wins. Shit. Maybe I could be punished for even thinking about it3. I definitely didn’t want God to get back at me in any way. No botched nose jobs, no sudden deaths. Would God find it funny? If my lesson was to be grateful for what my ancestors gave me, I for sure didn’t want to learn it the hard way. And there are a lot worse problems to have.

Now, good surgeons exist. I know that. I also know that the stats are fine. Allegedly. I didn’t need to latch onto shitty outcomes for dear life. But I did anyway. Just think of the Botched doctors and all of those episodes I used to binge-watch. Right, okay, all of the hopeful people who ended up regretting their procedures. The odds of things going wrong were real. Maybe slimmer than my brain believed them to be, but still horrifying. I thought of all the befores and the afters, the “why the hell would they even get a nose job in the first place?!”.

And then the risk of literal death. Did I want to die? Well, not yet. And not from a nose job. That’s not how I want to be remembered. I didn’t want people from my hometown to gossip about how I went. I didn’t want my tomb to have “rip. if only she had a better nose” chiseled into it.

Weirdly enough, obsessing about cosmic punishment made me hate my nose a tiny bit less. I need a reason to argue with God, when my time comes. Maybe I can use that as leverage to get into heaven.

Do I still hate my nose? It’s still kind of crooked, still kind of fucked up, but it’s mine. And it’s free. Just don’t Airdrop group photos to me4.