surprise b*tch - i bet you thought you'd seen the last of me
Let's try this again...getting everywhere & nowhere but hopefully somewhere
Last Monday, I woke up to my heart clawing out of my chest. Unusual, yes? Unsurprising? No. On Halloween, my cat Nomi Malone kicked a toy under the living room couch and I tore my left shoulder cuff getting it out. I took my bougie surprisingly hardcore pilates classes to heart, but I am not strong enough to hold the weight of a couch in one arm. Because ~everything is connected~ all of my muscles have been overcompensating. I’ve had shooting pains up & down the entirety of my left side despite:
a round of painkillers that I never finished, as they opened and turned into a fine powder in the bottom of my knockoff COS quilted bag
three months of “Quiet Flow” at the Flatiron ‘wellness club’ filled with tech+/finance bros, corporate girlies, and those of us with ‘mysterious income’ — sauna x ice baths for 1.15 hrs a week that may have cured my seasonal depression so there’s that at least
physical therapy twice a week throughout the holidays
7 days of steroids
And one cortisone shot, but it’s still too recent to tell… I think it’s getting better?
On top of all that, I have newfound chest pains that allow me to dramatically grasp my chest while crying in therapy and faintly eek out a ‘my heart!’ as I reach for my muscle spasm pills, which according to The Cut, celebrities are taking to maintain their composure at the Met Gala. So chic. I’m pretty sure this is all stress-induced — it’s eclipse season and my life is falling apart, which apparently is the only time I decide to write publicly. In fact, I started writing this essay two years ago, and now I’m back, and it all still applies.
Recently, whilst on the N train in that brief glimpse of daylight you get when crossing the bridge I gazed out at the Statue of Liberty and thought to myself 1) Oh shit, France wants that back 2) I can’t believe I’m in New York during the apocalypse and then I remembered, I already did that!
I wish I had done some things differently over the past two years, like smoking less weed, keeping up this newsletter, or at the very least having the courage to break up with people after they waved bright flaming red flags. Despite all the changes I’ve made, I feel stagnant, or maybe stubborn…definitely Sisyphean. However, I now know I need a surplus of rest because of my deep-fried nervous system. This is a permanent state of being for me now. I can’t go back to who I was, even though I desperately wish I could, if only to more easily earn the cost of living in this city without wanting to k*ll myself. There’s also the subtle judgment that I perceive from others, it shouldn’t matter what they think but ugh, they don’t know that my family curse is a premature, non-genetic autoimmune response that will try to end me as retribution for burying my emotions just like it has my [redacted], mom, and aunt. I’m not in ‘freeze’ anymore, I guess, but it feels adjacent.
I did ‘all the things’ for a bit. The perma-existential dread that follows me faded for a while. I found some semblance of power outside of external validation, practiced self-worth in the most literal sense, and cultivated an identity with values & desires that aren’t just the leftovers of everyone I know. Despite that effort, my world is once again collapsing on itself due to yet another rug-pulling egomaniac. I still can’t quite grasp that elusive sense of stability I crave. I’m too aware now, it feels like everyone else around me has some form of it but me. The ideations creep back in, I can’t as easily tell myself that I can just keep pushing. But I can. I better.
I guess this is my stability.
In trying to restart this newsletter, I reread all my old entries. It is a fact that being vulnerable on the internet is cringe. Having thoughts is embarrassing & eye-roll inducing. You especially know this if, at sixteen your mom reads your diary aloud to your father while your grandfather pins your arms behind your exposed back. She’s mocking you for losing your virginity to your neighbor/secret boyfriend in the grade under you - he had a summer birthday - and you’re hoarse from begging her ‘please stop’, face stinging from being slapped. You tried your best, wrestling her to the floor for the aforementioned spiral college ruled notebook ripped from its hiding place under your pillow but she sat on you and welp — God, I can’t stop myself from sharing all my business! Is this trauma dumping? I hope not. My psychiatrist mom would say I “verbally vomit[ed]” on her for this. I promise all my writing won’t be like that.
I’ve concluded that I’ve spent the past two years in hiding, just like I did after the above episode. I've been embarrassed that I’m not where I want to be. A day after my last (& most successful) post, I found out my suddenly absentee leaseholder roommate was kicking me out on my 30th birthday. I was broke at the time from my mental breakdown and therefore had to crowdfund my move with my diagnosis as the attention grabber; it worked! The housing I secured after a traumatic frantic search tried its best to break my fragile sanity, coming to a climax when my roommate drunkenly opened my door and stood in the corner of my room one night. Miraculously, I funded yet another move using all the money I had made to date for the security deposit and first month’s rent.
I retreated to protect my raw emotional too-muchness, hiding from everyone to spare them from having to empathize with me. I curated alternative personas with blurred features to keep myself shielded from the discovery of my unacceptable complexities & occasionally popped out of my hole in short timed increments. I’ve been bored and purposeless but if I knew one thing it was that I didn’t want to be seen anymore.
Not to be all Lena Dunham1 ‘voice of my generation’ because the universe has relentlessly humbled me from any notion I may have held about my exceptionalism, but women's stories matter, they just do! I went to a screening of “Love is the Drug” by Liz Roberts2 at MOMA PS1 this past weekend. The film focuses on harm reduction via Junkphood zine creator/activist/ex-user Heather Edney as well as MyLeia, born with HIV3. Without getting into a full-on review or expositionary details, it reaffirmed to me - who has been doubting my desire to live out loud- that sometimes, it really is as simple as sharing your story and that is important life-changing work.
In a form of exposure therapy to prep me for this return, when I’m asked if I’m making art, I’ve been saying “I’m writing for Substack again”, “about what?”, my eyes divert towards the ground “media culture still maybe and not to be like, omg my trauma, but…emotions? survival?”. And it’s been cool because I’ve been getting very accepting ‘oh cool, that’s needed’ responses. So, yeah.
Omg, is that healthy validation? Or maybe they’re just being nice — either way, here I am, writing about something.
Lena may be having a cultural resurgence on twitter via Girls clips but she’s also leaving New York for London and I can’t figure out what that means for the rest of us who can’t afford to do so — I’ve never watched Girls, should I?: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/12/why-i-broke-up-with-new-york
Liz and I met at ACRE residency 7(?!) years ago. I had bleached blonde eyebrows & matching hair. She’s like the coolest mom.
The documentary was sponsored by Visual Aids and the event is in tandem with their MOMA PS1 show ‘Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz’ - https://visualaids.org/events/detail/love-rules