comfort watching wife swap

a debrief on the past few months

hi! i’m back. thanks everyone for riding with me through these trying times. sabbatical is over! (kind of)

I asked my tarot deck why it didn’t give me straight answers and pulled the three of wands.

I’m exhausted like I’m so incredibly tired of being alive. But not in like ‘I’m a danger to myself kind of way. More like, I’m lighter than I’ve ever been but getting pummeled by the needs of life & have no patience. I finally got a new psychiatrist! It went amazingly well & he told me about the cathedral effect and I finally finished writing this after sitting on it for like a month.

The week I finally decided I had had enough, I got a text from that the location was shutting down. Yes, intuition! They were so unbelievably bad that I left a google review. Over the past year, my original doctor (Nurse Practitioner*) passed away, the office didn’t notify any of his patients, and I was passed between an older woman who asked me if I smoked crack (jokingly, of course), an older man who’s inability to fill my prescription had me go through withdrawal, and a younger woman who told me ‘you’re so pretty if I saw you on the street I would never think—” cue my stale face. Once I switched doctors I immediately started taking the months of anti-depressants I had convinced myself that I didn’t need —I also wouldn’t take the risk of gaining weight. Anyways, they made me oversleep and killed my libido so when I slept with someone who always makes me come, I couldn’t and that was the end of that, but at least I felt inspired to try.

In my time away from this space, I wasted a lot of time. Sorry, not wasted, rested. And I didn’t write as much as I thought I’d be able to because I was fatigued as fuck. I’ve moved on from my Real Housewives obsession onto the sleazy depths of early 00’s reality television via Wife Swap; not to be confused with Trading Spouses, remember the ‘dark-sided’ lady? Real Housewives is about tropes & how far we can push the limits of those tropes whereas I think I’m currently more into the extremities that allowed for those embodiments. The premise in case you need a refresher is that two moms switch families for two weeks, one family is _______ and the other is _____ and it’s cute, also terrifying, because the parents most of the times learn something new about their kids and/or relationship. Basically, everyone is able to have some unrealized need met. There’s actually a time where the couples meet to debrief & while sometimes it leads to men in cowboy hats trying to fight the rest of the table there are sometimes moments of self-reflection and criticality. But then they’ll sometimes do this thing where they’ll pair a homophobic conservative with an LGBTQ+ parent which is just not the same. An aside, idk I’ve talked to a few friends and they’re always like there’s so much step porn and I do not think it’s by chance. It’s the enmeshment.

I did manage to scroll but in a ~productive~ way by spending a lot of reading about CPTSD. Something that stood out was someone posting about their inability to write for themselves. Like, because their mom read their diary aloud in front of their family & made snide comments they became incapable of developing that internal dialogue & could only use language as a performance tool. I felt that hard. ( I started writing this like two weeks ago and a still struggling with writing for myself outside of like, my dream journal….whatever).

I think I’m possibly maybe hopefully definitely coming out of my year-long burnout after doing all the things & turning down so many invitations but also responsibly abandoning my routines when I felt overwhelmed. I have to be careful though, I lucked out and have the one room in my apartment that doesn’t have direct sunlight.

When my roommates have their doors closed there is zero light in the rest of the house. I need to see how fast people are walking down the street, if my neighbors are taking off their early-fall jacket or tightening the scarf around their neck. Now, I have to walk out my house, walk down the street & run back up the stairs in my Bratz-y platform boots & try not to get so distracted that I end up staying inside. I wanted to move by like Spring of this year but again, mental breakdown/inflation/etc. So I’m still in my dark gremlin-esque room over the circular courtyard/trash dump with a window facing a literal brick wall complete with a cable(?) dangling in front of me from the unit above with a knocking washing machine & three yippy dogs that sing like a greek chorus at 8 am. If all my plants didn’t die when I moved them into my apartment during an early February blizzard they surely would by the lack of light bouncing off the aforementioned brick wall. In turn, I have 13 mirrors in my room. And I buy flowers from Trader Joe’s — even though I’m starting to feel bad shopping there — to make me feel like I’m not living in a dark pit over a garbage chute.

Did anyone else have a complete brain meltdown this summer?! I have never had SAD in Summer but I absolutely could not do shit but sleep & feel like crawling out of my skin. I’ll take it though, as opposed to my winter depression which reminds me of my 21st birthday when my d*d decided to give me a massive light therapy lamp in front of my entire extended family as a birthday gift.

I hope to move next year, now that I have some semblance hope of stability ( I can occasionally work for 5 hours stretches a day now!). My job isn’t sexy or fun anymore. It’s interesting sometimes, but not that stimulating. I feel like I’m wasting my talents. I know now that I definitely don’t want tit to be my career but it does allow me to wake up, make enough to sustain myself on a part-time schedule & leave to go aimlessly peruse library floors & write and watch sunsets at various piers.

It’s funny when people hint that I’m being exploited and miss that that’s the whole state of working under capitalism. How do people not realize that still?! I beg of you…don’t do that to me. It’s laughable & feels like you’re projecting because it’s the same struggle. It’s wild that this is coming from people that I know are somewhat leftist & have known my positioning for years. At least I’m actually able to uphold my boundaries, turn down what doesn’t work for me, take breaks & work as much or as little as my bank account allows me (lately, as much, it’s expensive to be disabled). It’s precarious as fuck because puritans have declared me a heathen & a financial risk who shouldn’t be allowed to deposit money at banks even though I have to pay taxes on literally every dollar I make since it’s traceable. However, the last time I had a full time job I ended up on FMLA accommodations despite being their best employee. Who wants to be micromanaged & simultaneously overlooked? Also, a-not-so-heads-up we are definitely in a recession.

Oh yeah, honestly, I’ve been feeling weird & apathetic about voting but I know NY is at risk of turning red and I like being able to use banks so we don’t need to risk that energy. Please make sure to vote!

xo, Sydney