me in my final winter form.

coming back with another unserious roundup post! i am hard at work with some boots on the ground pieces that are more likely to churn the stomach than raise an appetite for any type of consumption - but in the meantime, frankly, my brain is fried, and i love yapping about things i enjoy, no matter how superficial.

i started crafting this post before the holidays (i.e. early December)...so instead of framing it as a gift guide, it’ll be a winter essentials/gifts to buy yourself compilation, entailing everything i think you ought to have this time of year. and i’m right!

for mornings so cold you don’t want to bother unraveling yourself from your nexus of blankets:

• i think these keep cups are absolutely chic and absolutely necessary. i promise the glass won’t shatter, no matter if you like your beverages extra hot (which is burning the steamed milk past the point of even bothering to do that step, FYI! stepping up on my ex-barista soapbox here). simple, elegant, easy to clean.

• speaking of a blanket nexus, this one from cb2 has become my favorite of the bunch. that being said, it’s not my approval that matters - it’s mina’s. she loves it so much that she smashes her face into it and begins to snore immediately given half a chance.

• for those who don’t sleep naked (aka me when i finally resign to clothes, as it becomes too chilly to justify exhibitionism), these pajama pants from aritzia feel like a hug. i have worn them an obscene amount lately, and i will not be wearing anything else anytime soon either.

for when you’re actually out of bed:

• labeling matcha as ceremonial grade may be american marketing bullshit, but investing more than $10 in your matcha powder is not. this one is my budget friendly, high quality favorite. i do feel a little lame drinking this, or perhaps in recommending it as if no one has heard of matcha in 2025…but i enjoy not having a panic attack from my morning caffeine, so here we are. still haven’t bought a labubu or whatever else, so i can remain slightly holier than thou.

• on tea - i also think an elegant tea kettle is very important. anything you use everyday should be chosen thoughtfully. this one is beautiful and not $8,000.

• my skin is dry normally, but the winter only serves to aid it in its quest to leave my body. this hand cream is my holy grail, and i’m still on the hunt for a moisturizer that WORKS. this one from avene is next on my list to try - i love french skincare, notably due to its lack of fragrance and sensitive skin friendly ingredients.

• outside of opening the curtains or rolling up the blinds to get real daylight in, you should have actually nice lighting. this is one of my few ‘see if i give a fuck’ moments when it comes to the environment. i am in fact willing to buy incandescent lights off of ebay. death to cold, industrial lighting that illuminates every pore, enlarging them as though they were craters on the moon. i don’t want to feel like i am in a hospital/mausoleum, nor a bug under a microscope in some evil laboratory within the side of a mountain. no thanks!

• i am…perhaps someone with adhd…and thus it is POSSIBLE i will not remember to take medications, vitamins, what have you. keeping them organized and in a polished little case like this one makes staying on top of it feel less like a chore.

• a sheepskin rug is absolutely an essential for the moment your poor, poor feet have to be removed from bed onto the harsh, hardwood floors. give them a little cloud-like barrier to their entry into the sharp, cold world.

for when you finally get your ass outside, and are already plotting your couch-bound activities:

• i don’t really have a sweet tooth, nor a large appetite for breakfast, but i do appreciate bread very much. a scone or fresh slice of toast from a bakery is something you will appreciate trudging through ice, wind, and slush for later. i recently had a blueberry one from orwashers, and would recommend it.

• ingredients for a cozy winter recipe. you should maybe try cooking something (this is moreso something i am saying to ME then to YOU, seeing as when i am busy with anything at all, my desire to use an oven flings itself from my body and off of a bridge). i am making this one again soon, and it’s a real staple for us.

• this is no time for fashion - it is human marshmallow season. i have never regretted my super puff, and i know both i and Every Other Girl Alive are enjoying being swallowed up in our jacket cocoons this winter, no matter if it feels like you’ve morphed into the michelin man.

• heat tech tights. heat tech tights.

• while neither my father nor i cared for his father that much, he occasionally had good advice. the one i’m sharing today? “whenever i’m feeling depressed, i go get a haircut.” ridicule it if you must (i also enjoy being a hater), but something about getting all cleaned up really does make you feel like less of a snot-nosed, tired little garbage creature (which i am prone to be in the colder seasons). you don’t have to spend hundreds either at some ritzy salon, i promise! i’ve gotten mine done for around $30 - in west village, no less. the head massage alone from when they shampoo your hair is worth the price tag.

• but if you have a little extra cash (perhaps received in a holiday- themed envelope recently), you really should go to some sort of spa. there are baths and massages and facials and god knows what else that you can get done. the efficacy of the treatments is not really the point. it’s just nice to feel special.

• a new york public library card. if, like me, your parents also found out that if they did not get one, they would soon be bankrupted by their 6 year old daughter’s rapid reading pace and constant need for new material, then this is probably not something i need to tell you to get. but i’m saying it anyhow as it is a very nice and shiny addition to my wallet. i have been reading guilt-free lately, knowing i have resisted the temptation of Shiny Paperback at Barnes & Noble (a very difficult thing to do!).

for the aforementioned couch sit:

• a delightful candle paired with a fun little lighter always creates a cozy ambiance. if you couldn’t tell yet, i really do think ambiance is everything.

• really nice socks. i’m not just saying this as someone with poorly made feet (thank you, dad, for the high arches, and sorry i didn’t use them to become a professional ballerina - which is all one can really do with this disfigurement, i suppose). bambas make fantastic socks - it might be too late to put them on a christmas list, but maybe valentine’s day?

• masks for your face and your feet may not be my favorite sensory experience (especially for feet - wet sock syndrome never felt so harrowing), but my god do they work. these face masks are worth the price to ME, and for feet? girl, whatever. just get something.

• have an intellectual sit with the sunday paper (i’m still working on the fuckass huge crossword from a november times issue - i’m taking it slow and savoring it, ok?) or an essay-rich magazine (cliche, but i love the new yorker or new york magazine. but i’ll never say no to a new addition). even scrolling through an email newsletter would be better than slouching your way into an ipad baby doom scroll (i really love hell gate and whatever substacks strike my interest that day).

• i am declaring 2026 the year of the dvd player. bring her back. sure, you could pay for ads on one of 800 useless little streaming services, whose parent companies dared to ask the question “what if we reinvented cable, but made it worse somehow?” (so brave!). but then you wouldn’t be able to experience the joy of the dvd box set with all its accoutrements - have you seen the one for desperate housewives?

as a final note - for me, and i imagine many others, any holiday, new year, or general Sign That Time Is Passing can be rather anxiety-inducing. i’m already perfectionistic enough, and i don’t really need a reminder of how ‘oh fuck, i should really get my life together.’ i left my parents house early and skipped some holiday festivities. i’m sitting in bed today, and while i aspire to go to the gym, i might just fucking not go. it’s not a crime to be tired. you don’t have to constantly self-optimize. you can sit and listen to your french bulldog snore louder than anyone you’ve ever heard snore in your life and regain feeling in your limbs next to a space heater and gaze out the window for no explicit reason. i think i just need to sit. i will be a person later.

sending my best vibes into the universe

- jen

p.s. what’s next, you ask? well…i have some Thoughts on themes i touched on in that last paragraph, but i’m also quite interested in further developing my piece on a certain retailer who’s made a quiet, though seemingly successful comeback these past couple of years. i also would like to do some more fashion related content in general and put my degree to WORK!! (ok, fine, i majored in advertising, mostly. i can’t sew as of yet, either).

A wildly different kind of post! But what’s a girl in PR to do, not sell people on something(s)?

I promise I have interests outside of self analysis - in some ways, focusing on the superficial is healthier for me than continuing to dig a hole in the ground. Plus, ooh, shiny.

While I have no official certifications outside of a bachelor’s in marketing (at an art and design focused school, so that counts, right?) I stand BEHIND these favorites. Let’s not repeat sentences that say the same thing 80x. Let’s go.

Beauty

Avène Cicalfate+ Restorative Protective Cream $26

I’ve experimented with a range of skincare items over the years, sometimes making dumber choices than others (who in Gen Z did not overdo it with the St. Ives Apricot Scrub and peel off a layer of poreless, 12 year old skin, raise your hand). These days I keep it as simple as possible - no fragrance, no exfoliants that aren’t prescribed by a dermatologist, no nonsense. I was first introduced to Avène inside of a Boots during a trip to London, but was not fully sold until this recent discovery. To those of you who don’t have sensitive, reactive, dry-ass skin that tries to leave your face given half a chance - I envy you! For the unfortunate like me, this is a godsend. I go to bed AND wake up with hydrated, happy skin. I bought a massive tube recently and have no plans to switch it up anytime soon.

Home

Parachute Linen Pillowcase Set in White, Side Open($79)

Full disclosure - I had the pleasure of attending a work event where I was provided this item from Parachute for free. That being said, I’ve admired the brand from afar for years, and this foray into higher quality linen has only sold me on it further. It is delightfully soft, and looks lived in without being too disheveled. I also share a bed with a…hmm…HOT sleeper, so breathable fabrics are a must. I’ve been holding off on investing in more home products til I move (eek!), but I know once I do, all bets are off in terms of how many more linen items I acquire for my cozy new bedroom. RIP my bank account, for real.

Fashion

ALOHAS Rosalind Red Leather Ballet Flats ($180)

These were an investment, absolutely. I’ve been chomping at the bit to get in on the ballet flat trend, but with my high arches and limited budget, I knew I had to bide my time until just the right pair appeared before me. The cherry red is fun without being ostentatious, the leather is buttery soft, and the comfort is beyond words. I’m excited to style these for any occasion, whether it’s the office, trying a local coffee shop, or strolling around a new neighborhood (well, so long as it doesn’t rain).

To note, I’m typically a wide 8.5, and the size 39 fit me perfectly!

Reads

Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon

I picked up this novel at a local bookstore to me, having skimmed the prose and thinking the writing seemed up my alley. I rarely buy from a new author with this little context, and I’m happy to say it turned out well. The prose is beautifully written, with a stream-of-consciousness element that immersed me even further within the plot. I’ve been a bit hesitant about modern retellings of myths - whether it’s from over reliance on the source material, or the themes being explored in a quite surface level way (looking at you, Circe) - but this book avoids the cringeworthy pitfalls that most pieces in this niche tend to fall into. I devoured this within a couple of days. While at times I agree with critics on issues with the plot - some of the premise feels shaky at best in terms of how realistic a scenario it is - I found it to be so well-written and intriguing in terms of style (and some substance) that any misgivings I had did not spoil my enjoyment. If you’re looking to get into more contemporary works that won’t worsen your MFA-writer-induced headache, I’d give it a go.

Interview with Ludmilla Petrushevskaya in The Paris Review

There is no amount of context that would do this interview justice. Just go read it.

Food

Kii Naturals Apricot, Cherry and Almond Crisps

Starting this out with a complaint - why aren’t these available in more stores? I’ve been lucky enough to find them in LIDL locations near me, though they are a bit out of the way. That being said, I will absolutely travel an hour or so just to pick up a box of these. I’ve tried quite a few fruit-and-nut type crackers - Olina’s and Raincoat Crisps are among my favorites - but these are another level. Spring and summer means warmer weather and, honestly, a smaller appetite, so making snack-style meals is a lifesaver. Plus, it’ll spare you from turning on the oven in your 600 sq ft apartment, which in the summer will feel like the space heater from hell that you never asked for. Cheers to being lazy and living deliciously.

Rapid-Fire Freebies (Hobbies and More)

• Going for a walk (would and will fix me)

• Guided runs with the Nike Run Club app (appreciate the borderline cheesy encouragement while I huff along at 10 minutes per mile)

• Conan O’Brien Must Go on HBO (give that man endless money to be a societal menace - better for my mental health than therapy)

• Making matcha at home (saves money, nice ritual, love the taste of grass)

• Lying down (physically necessary)

• Trying to spot new wildlife in the neighborhood (not often, but sometimes!)

• Puzzles as a group activity (I will start…and possibly finish my contributions by finding all the edge pieces)

I’d love to do more of these - probably more that are just on ‘nice things I admire from a distance, but do not own’ - but who knows! In any case, I want to make a real effort to keep writing in any capacity, if for no other reason than to prevent my brain from liquefying. Will I succeed? What a question!

I must have known because there I was, buying a pair of black Dickies with white, screenprinted art, with watching eyes and cryptic text inscribed across them. Something that I imagined would be worn by someone who pushes back. Someone who thinks.

I recently read an essay within The Crane Wife, “Hepburn Qua Hepburn,” where author CJ Hauser mentions finding others infectious. It rings all too true. I have often found myself feeling helpless and thus desperately clinging to the identity of another in seeking something stable, permanent. Tangible. Something I can know with certainty.

I found myself consumed long before I ever realized how I felt about him, long before he ever had the courage to tell me.

I dutifully listened to every song he ever sent me, every comedy sketch. Not all of my shift in aesthetics and identity was faked or inorganic - I had fallen prey in the past to the trend/curse of wearing too much black eyeliner, like many 14 year old girls have before me - but my new interest in metal (really, just Ghost albums) and anything that felt like rebellion was because of him. I picked up an interest in music again, despite its troubled ties to my father. I wanted to draw, paint, do things, be interesting. He told me stories about his own young adult escapades and I felt terribly boring and ashamed.

It took me a good 2 years to start getting me and my things back. Some of the things were always mine, but that boundary between his, mine, ours became borderline obsolete at a certain point. I was the most dependent I’d ever been and yet I fell so head first into it. The way I said I never would.

My father was the first man my mother ever seriously dated. She had had a fling here or there (I believe she kept the sweatshirt), but before him, nothing that really meant something. She was 20. His younger sister went to her college. They met at a football game. He took her picture. He had been convinced he’d never date again after a miserable breakup. They had a date. He went back to New York. They exchanged letters back and forth. She moved up north to be with him.

I never really knew my grandparents. My father stopped speaking to his father when I was 3. He kept in touch, albeit slightly, with his mother. Kim and I were told she had Hep C, and that was why we couldn’t see her. Years later my parents claimed to have never said anything about Hep C, and that we had met her once as toddlers and were so scared of her that they decided it would be best to keep us at a distance from her. My mom’s parents were there and not. Her father was as there as a lifelong alcoholic could be. If nothing else, he upheld Irish Catholic tradition. Her mother was there as much as someone married to an alcoholic can be while pretending everything is fine, and then she was there as much as someone with developing dementia could be. The lingering feeling I had with them was discomfort. Discomfort from how the screened in porch reeked of cigarettes. Discomfort from the feral orange cat my grandmother had lured into their house, who hissed and hid and lunged at everyone. Discomfort the times she came to visit and asked oddly blunt or invasive questions.

My mom would talk about how sad she felt for her own mom when she had passed, finally, February 2020. I remember the year and the month because I had just left university on medical leave. My family said not to worry about coming to the funeral. I was home alone that weekend, three days after having written a suicide note from my dorm room’s shit wooden desk and shittier wooden chair, that never sat stably on the ground - someone told me once this was to prevent student from taking their own lives, but I couldn’t tell you if that’s true.

She had said to me how sad she felt for her mother, because of how tied down she had been by my grandfather. His woes, his drinking, his passivity, consumed her. He never wanted to do anything, see anyone. He sat in an armchair and complained and slowly drank himself to death, until he started having falls and going to the ER, where they gave him painkillers that further crucified his liver and whatever else was left of his skeletal body (no teeth). She said she wished my grandma had had the freedom to do as she wished. To be happy.

The truth is she did. She had the choice, and though more limited than my choices in my present, she had it.

-

I was visiting my family for Christmas for longer than planned. We were supposed to spend the Eve and part of the day with them, before seeing my boyfriend’s family for the rest of the week. Then he got the flu and was stuck in bed for days on end, occasionally getting up to vomit or to down some Gatorade. I went with my mom to CVS to pick up prescriptions. We ended up talking about my father. Somehow we always do. The only change over the years is that the conversation feels less like yelling at a wall.

We were talking about the progress he's made or she says he’s made and how he ‘blows up’ less. I asked her how often, would she say, did he used to do that before the therapy? And she told me at least once a day. I asked her how long that has been going on. She cannot say. I wanted to say ‘that’s so sad’ or press further or anything. But she had to go into the bank next door to make a deposit, and we’d already been sitting in the lot for a good 20 minutes now and I was starting to wonder what constitutes loitering and if anyone is going to make a fuss about it and if anyone’s looking and what if they think we might rob the bank or shouldn’t be parked so close because someone else needs that spot or?

She was gone all of 10 minutes, but when she came back I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

I don’t want to talk about how consumed I was in the beginning of my relationship anymore. I don’t like who I was then, the part of me that still lives inside and clings on, weeping and flailing about. I don’t like the crying or the will he marry me/is he going to be in my life always/I have to know everything now even though it’s only been 3 months and I don’t like the bit of extra weight from the stress/no sleep/meds/too many granola bars that I thought I’d never put on and then did and I don’t like the isolation and I don’t like the feeling of being so helpless even though I was and am not.

I do want to talk about myself again and how I try to become her. Superficial things are not so shallow. Pushing back about how I want our apartment to look. Being able to say I don’t like that or I would prefer this or I need or god forbid I want. I WANT. There are compromises to be made, sure - I wouldn’t choose the squirrel figurines maybe (neither did he - that was my mother, indulging his interest in the ones who live on our fire escape) - but I have me and my things. My bachelor’s degree with my name on it. My books, the linen duvet I wanted, the pretty little side tables I bargained for, the coffee table I dragged from Brooklyn across multiple subway transfers. I’m not wearing just band t shirts and tie dye sweatpants. I get e file manicures and make myself blonder and wander around New York for hours doing the frivolous little things I want. I get up early or stay out late. I go and I see and I do.

I worried about dependency. I had a whole thing of it in October last year. During the week I ‘split’ from him (I don’t believe we broke up,I just had him leave the apartment) I was very linear and rigid in my thoughts. I had a to do list or three. Things I simply must do. Things I must prove. And so I did my laundry and went to classes and cried in the shower (this last one was not on the list, but essential all the same). And I knew I could do it before and I knew it while I was doing it and I realized I just wanted him there. I didn’t need him. But I wanted him. And I should know my own sufficiency by now but I still feel that sense of loss and being lost. Being incomplete. Being needy when really I am just afraid of the want. Because it is frivolous and emotional and illogical and stupid and all those things to want. Love was never about anything making any sense. To question it as if it followed some through line is - well, fucking stupid.

He is the first man I’ve ever been with. The first I’ve ever loved. I’ve gone all in - the letters, the flowers, the trips and the moving in too soon and the envisioning our pretty little future together - no one can say I have not. This first is terrifying and perhaps most of all because I not only wanted it but willed it to be. It is not something I am subjected to but something I actively choose. I am behind the wheel. That is the scary part.

Hi.

The troubling thing with my questions is that I know that they do not have answers. Whether they will have answers ‘yet’ is also something I don’t know. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. It’s all I can find myself saying. But I am not saying I’m sorry. That counts for something to me. 

The guilt I wonder about isn’t here. It was here back in May, now over a year ago. I felt it more at the beginning of everything. I didn’t have much self respect. Or maybe I just didn’t have much mental stability. And I knew that. And I thought I might know you. No. I did know you. And because I knew you I knew that I had to protect you. I knew you would not protect yourself. So I took myself away. 

Whenever I talk about this I feel this fear, as if I am describing myself like I might describe my father. Things I wish he had done. Things I wish he had done because of what he did - who he is? Who he is doesn’t matter. Thoughts, intentions, hopes, desires mean nothing in the face of action. Of impact. Tangible. 

I am not him and I know that and he is also not so much him, now. It’s all so new and confusing. Best not to get the hopes up. So many say that people never change, in the end. I don’t think I fully believe them. Maybe that is naive. Maybe they are just pessimistic and jaded. It’s probably both of those two, as well as a secret third thing. Joy. 

But I don’t feel guilty for this, here and now. I feel guilty about my potential for being a bad person. Doing unspeakable things. But I don’t do them. So in that way it is an irrational fear. I didn’t do a horrible thing this past week. These past months. The over two years we have been together. I do think everything I have done has been from a place of care. Then again, best laid intentions, plans….

But I didn’t have a plan when we first got together. I guess I sort of had assumptions - we had been friends for a bit, and now we had more than that in a way that wasn’t a one time, cheapened thing - but I couldn’t have known how things would come to pass. And how quickly. How deeply, how much, what have you. Things I cannot really put into words.

I remember being really young and talking to my mother about how difficult it was to express how much I loved her. That I didn’t have the words. They couldn’t capture what I felt. Words are small, limited, finite. Sometimes putting a name to something takes away from what it is. It is not so much that it has many names. Just that names and labels and what have you feel cheap to me. I don’t know why, necessarily. Once you name something it makes it real. Some things just aren’t. 

I am not a spiritual person, but I do believe in some things being outside of our perceived plane of reality. Bees exist in four dimensions. What might they see, feel, think. Do those sorts of verbs even apply or matter. I like to suppose bees are not subjected to the horrid act of navel gazing that so pervades this current, human generation. I say this as a hypocrite and part time self analysis enjoyer. But there is not much to be found in looking within, picking apart. There is no peace, no just existing, just being, in that gelatinous and sticky ambiguity. Everything just needs to shut up more. 

I am trying to remember that time is the great healer. I am always seeking to make things more efficient, simpler, just get over it just get through it just do this or that or god even knows (I imagine no one does, truly). But I am impatient. The days are always long when you most wish they would soon end. The time sunset occurs makes no difference - outside of seasonal depression related things, which I am a little nervous about this year. Things have felt unreal since the summer, moreso now. Atypical. I feel like I just woke up and stumble through days bleary-eyed. What year is it? What’s going on, what am I. Cliche type of questions. Maybe all the pathologizing is useless, because my condition is just being 24 years old. Being alive. Having an overactive sympathetic nervous system. They haven’t found a cure for that - well, maybe Ativan, but I likely shouldn’t tell anyone that - but I hope for one. 

I want to want this. I remember all the good. I fear the bad and the potential bad. The only things I feel like I know are that I love and have loved you, and that I do not intend to cause pain. Vindictiveness, malice, things like that do exist in my nature but I have never really wanted them for you. These things are temporary. Choices made in anger cannot be undone.

It's been over a month since I've last written. Don't worry, I have had all sorts of time to come up with excuses. Maybe just the fact that the 'oh, that's a bit funny' soreness in my left shoulder blade, wrapping around my side turned out to be shingles: statistically very unlikely, which my father was quick to research and point out. The knowledge that I was in excruciating pain to the point of tears even trying to put on a tshirt may not placate everyone though. Well who cares about all that, really! You had a partner and family to care for you. Not to mention, a great excuse to keep rotting your brain on the internet. 

That last point is fair enough. Initially as I felt a bit of an inspiration to write again I thought I'd talk about the usual suspects: some linguistics, some thinly veiled hints at problems at home, some not at all veiled passive aggression, with the big focal point being mental illness. Always the same. You spend 10+ years in therapy without being a little fixated on psychology! That's hard! 

But in all honesty, the points I wanted to articulate about how through years of introspection and intellectualizing one's own problems, you end up sounding smart but remaining in truth rather dumb, have already been said in the way I would've said it. The shorter version is this: sure, I could impress people at home or my friends or even the dentist's office with my apparent self awareness - but that didn't really mean shit. I mean, it means a little. But it doesn't give you the life experience from which any sort of actual wisdom can be drawn from. And, naturally, I've made plenty of idiotic decisions that are perfectly fitting for my age. I remain what I am. I just have a better mask than many. 

What I actually seek to discuss is in part related to my mental misfortunes - nothing to be found in the DSM 5, though some of the idiots I've seen for psychiatric purposes could certainly pull a couple diagnoses from their asses about it. 

It's insecurity. Naturally it's tied to my omnipresent neuroticism, but it's really just a human thing at the end of it. I am saying this more for my own benefit than yours. 

I never feel like I am doing or being enough. I don't feel like I have hobbies or expertise. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades - I have a lot of interests - but I'm a bit too casual to have anything much to show for it. I'm a mimic and I find myself when I'm most lost clawing for bits and pieces I can glue to my unfinished form, largely taken from others who I perceive to actually have it together. I am so concerned with appearances and anxiety management that I don't know if I have the space for genuine interest. Many days I just get so stressed over seemingly nothing, sort of freeze and take on a passive little position where I do absolutely fuck all. 

I have all these grand delusions of how if I'd grown up before the internet things might look different. I think in reality I might've been institutionalized or something - or lobotomized in some form. Medication, actual surgery, numbing myself to the realities of sexism - who can say! So much possibility. Here I find myself too easily mollified and distracted. I get why I reach for that distraction. I just wish I could find something just as satisfying that would make me an actually interesting individual, as opposed to a person who seems too few degrees of separation from the future of humanity imagined in Wall-E. 

It seems so silly but I find myself more insecure now than as a child, an adolescent, even. I was anxious, but stubborn, and thus a little bit of a shit stirrer. I wore what I wanted and spent hours on what fascinated me. Music, art, writing. I had not even a hint of shame with many of these things - not that I recall. In any case, it was not enough to stop me (and my best friend together, to be fair) from writing a particular story in which a wedding was officiated by the Pope…among other incidents (multiple individuals were put into witness protection despite having received one (1) oral threat at a restaurant, with most of them not being U.S. citizens in the first place - which must really complicate things legally, I imagine - and sent to live in the middle of Fuck Ass Nowhere, Alaska…have I shared enough?). 

Yet here I am at my supposedly adult and more mature and competent and what have you age of 24, anxious to the point of tears trying to pick up a guitar, or write a new story, or SOMETHING. I find myself begging to be able to do anything. Anything! Sometimes, after a long crying spell, I discover enough of a sense of calm to rub my 1.5 brain cells together and do a little bit of an activity others may find make me smart or interesting or what have you. 

How does a girl (woman who doesn't own a house) spend her time without hobbies? Fixations on appearance. It's not all been garbage: I have picked up a desire to learn how to crochet from this (there is a skirt online I want to make that would cost a lot to just go buy). I have also found out you can't just use cuticle oil once every four years or something (some people use theirs eight times a day - do you all have jobs? I don't myself by the way, but I'm asking out of genuine curiosity). 

What else. Obsessive anxious thoughts. What if he's cheating what if he dies what if I die oh I quite fear death - not because of a promised eternity but because I know there's nothing that comes next and I am living always in the next moment, but never this one. Something that permanent, stagnant, empty - that endless and final silence - THAT is what is so horrifying, really.  I am lucky enough to have found a partner who is understanding of my little insanities - in part because I myself recognize that they are, indeed, insanities. I just worry of tiring him like I have myself. 

At least I'm reading a bit more again. That's something. And I've typed this out. And I didn't get brain damage from when I fell and ate shit from running the Citi bike into the curb. And I'm learning things (one of which I will impart here: don't reach one hand over the handlebars to flip your phone over in the basket to look at the directions when in motion. Just pull the bike over to the side and stop. Your core stability is irrelevant, and you are not a god). 

I hope by the time I'm 30 or something I'm more well adjusted - at the very least, that I'm not desperate enough to try to find a new psychiatrist. It takes a lot. Oh the things I could say. But I am exhausted - of that topic, and in general. Anxiety doesn't lead to great sleep, which, as one might imagine, compounds the problem. 

My theory is that the less pressure I put on myself to be interesting or to do this and not that or vice versa, the more I'll actually feel like doing much of anything. Less pressure. Less stakes. I played about 4 chords on the guitar in the same order maybe two or three times this evening. That can be enough. I've written about 2 pages. I've read 40 or more pages of my book in the past couple days. A little bit a day is better than an hour one day and nothing for 3 weeks. Common sense. Not so common. Et cetera. Maybe one day it will all stick. Until then…anyone know of a psychiatrist taking new patients? Ideal candidate did not major in Quackery and minor in Not Talking to You Like You Are Also a Human Person With a Brain. I don't care about the pedigree - my first went to Yale, which I remember because of all the diplomas plastered on her walls from that school. It was borderline ironic given how terrible her advice was. Or maybe Ivies don't actually take the best and brightest so much as those with wealthy backgrounds. Got to give it to them, they have good branding. Anyhow. Suggestions welcome, despite my hostile appearance. Yay drugs! 

Is expending time and emotion on anger and fears shaped by lived experiences freeing or trapping you?

I want to start strong by saying that I couldn't possibly hate men! My boyfriend's a man!

And in a sense that's true - my opinions, feelings, thoughts have shifted - perhaps through a new biased lens - since dating him. But I think I could not possibly have lived the rest of my life in any type of happiness without having this evolution of my brain and nervous system.

It would be ridiculous to expect me to have no bias. I'll explain without using too many words or details, as I like to imagine myself fully moved on from the events (my father and I are on speaking terms now, which you would imagine we would be since he's covering my rent), but also because I have spoken about it for a nauseating amount of time. In short - I was abused by my father from at least the age of 3. I am fairly certain I have an innate neuroticism to me, like an animal being hunted for sport who has a keen awareness of their situation. I also would say that at times I did feel quite targeted, as throughout the years much of his vitriol was directed specifically at me. A bit of nature, a bit of nurture, and you get what you might expect in terms of psychological results. My nervous system is a bit hyperactive. In latter years I've tried to appreciate what it is trying to do for me - oh bless her heart, she's just trying to help - but the help I receive is much like one would get from a screaming toddler who has stolen a fork, and is methodically and masochistically trying to stick it into every electrical outlet while you try to cook it dinner. Give me a couple seconds, kid. Just let me finish the spaghetti. God damn. 

So. I find many with my sort of experiences do find themselves biased against men - and I'm not going to be the one to tell them not to feel that way. I think I needed to be allowed to be angry. I needed the space for that. I wasn't given any for so long, so it sat deep in me and radiated like poison from my heart to my fingertips. I was left with that vacuosness of the chest that one usually feels after a long and hard cry for years. I had thought that the various psychiatric medications I was experimented on with had created this sort of hollow, unfeeling brain and body in which I lived.

As it turns out, most of it was me. Whenever I wasn't numb I was so enraged I felt I could burst out of my skin, overripe with fury. But anger was messy. Anger hurts people. So I tucked it away where I thought no one could find it, not even me. 

For those well versed in emotional repression, you can imagine the ouroboros of torment I experienced as pain rose in thick welts to my superficially thick skin's surface, paired with my futile attempts to force them back in for good. I would never encourage doing such a thing. 

What I do think, though, is that room for nuance, shades of grey, complexity, is necessary for any sort of life. When hunkered down, surviving, existing though not living, it is much easier to live in black and white. Good or bad. Safe or dangerous. Perfect or intolerable. And for a while I was content with the exile of any and all men. I was aware, possibly from many years of navel gazing in therapy, that I felt this gnawing sensation in my stomach around any man. And only around men. Even the ones I thought I might like as people. All the same. A pull to turn and run. But I didn't realize the damage I was doing to myself. Pouring gasoline on the fire that - I was about to say was, but let's be honest, is - my nervous system. 

When I first met my now boyfriend - a fun, albeit juvenile feeling word for me to say - he tells me I came off as having a wall up. It wasn't a terribly good wall, in some ways - apparently it was clear that it was there, and behind its exterior I was actually quite friendly - but it was constructed all the same. I wasn't sure at the time if I could be truly open with another person. I was convinced I was something truly hideous. That I had to hide. Keep people at a distance. Every time someone thought of me as a good person I felt such a rush of guilt. I had lied too well. They genuinely believed I was decent - which, of course, I was anything but in my own mind. I must've been something truly despicable to inspire so much anger from another person, you see. I was convinced that my father had seen me as I truly am, in a way I could hide from so many others. But not him. He saw the very contents of my soul, and rejected them in disgust. I was convinced anyone who stuck around long enough would see it too, and do the same. And much as I tried to numb myself to anything and everything, rejection is still deeply painful. Lonely. 

I didn't want to be left lonely. So I chose to be alone. From at least the age of nine I consoled myself in this way. If it was my choice, I could not be sad about it. 

But I was endlessly sad about it. Things felt hollow and surface level because that's all I ever allowed them to be. 

And somehow he broke through that. It wasn't without my consent, admittedly - he possesses a certain magnetism that made me desperate to know him. My interest in him alone was something I didn't quite understand, but the follow through was entirely surprising. I usually wasn't very good at things like that. I'm sure many have thought of me poorly, imagining I'm either too stuck up to say hello and bother knowing them at all, or that I am a flake who disappears and can't commit. I can't invalidate that - I imagine them to be correct as well, given my behavior. 

But with him it was different. Granted, this may have in part been fueled by (and this feels like too much information, but necessary to include all the same) a nascent and unrealized sex drive, but to characterize our relationship as something based solely upon something so instinctual feels inaccurate. I like to imagine it's more intellectual than that, but perhaps that's because I love to delude myself into thinking I am anything more than an unimportant little animal, existing for not even a snap of the fingers in the span of space and time. Maybe I am a bit narcissistic in that respect. I'd like to think I matter, at least a little bit.  

I never would have allowed myself to get so close to someone before. I hadn't expected to feel so safe with another person. I remember the first time he hugged me - and he asked to, as well, which was appreciated - I didn't feel this tense aversion to it. I've never been one for a lot of physical contact, admittedly. Sensory issues are fun. This is to say I've had a lot of hugs I didn't want, out of fear of being considered rude. This was different. I felt so odd and in my head I was thinking of asking him to do it again. You know, for science reasons. Was it a fluke, or did that sort of feel…good? 

As my relationship with him progressed, from him being a fun co-worker, to a beloved friend, to my beloved (fullstop), there was an almost imperceptible series of shifts within me that at first I could not see. I knew some tangible things. My lifelong insomnia was seemingly cured. When I was beside him I could fall asleep within the hour - impossible alone - and there was a certain and solid feeling of safety that now accompanied the frenzy of largely unhelpful thoughts and feelings. I was grounded. And from that rooted place, things looked so very different. The man at the counter ordering the Americano did not invoke internal fear so much as external and benign interest. Who are you? Why do you come here every day? What motivates you? The questions I found myself pondering were less accusatory, more curious. What sorts of things are you always working on on that computer of yours? How did you get here in your life? Why would you order salmon on a cinnamon raisin bagel? 

Having a sense of home to return to gave me the courage to venture outwards in both my mind and my body. I went from, essentially, intensive agoraphobia to an intense desire for novelty. I wanted to take different side streets and listen to new songs and participate in a world I forced myself to sit back and observe. Finding the humanity in myself allowed me to better see it in other people.

Many would argue that men do not fall under the category of people, out of anger and fear and anything in between. I find it harder and harder to agree. This is not me coming out as a man supporter, defender, a white knight gunning for the rights of an oppressed class. I do think, however, the lack of nuance in discussions regarding men to be troubling. How can one exist in the world, when half of the population of that world means to cause them harm?

I would never argue with a separatist. I have no wish to impose my will unto others. But I think, on a realistic front, we must reconcile with the existence of the opposite sex (which, odd way to refer to it, isn't it? Opposite? That's another tangent though). But in respect to my wish to not impose my will unto others, I also ask they do not impose theirs unto me. These voices are fewer, yes, but the volume at which they speak with the contents of what they are saying worries me. It ranges from simple 'I hate men' to 'all men are horrible' to extremes that suggest straight and bisexual women should not date men, nor even associate with them. The follow up suggestion is that if they do, they choose their own oppression. 'All men are the same - Don't think otherwise - He's not different.' At a point it almost appears to blame the woman for experiencing attraction to another person. As if it were her fault. 

Whether or not you personally agree with it, many (I would argue most) women do not want to be alone. Relationships, love, community, safety can be found in other types of relations, it's true. But the kind of intimacy found within romantic contexts is not replicable within these. It is its own category. 

I initially found solace in touting the same things. Though I was raised fairly progressively, there was still the expectation that I would, of course, enter a relationship with a man someday - so rejecting that notion felt deeply empowering. I had a righteous anger in it. I've never been one for religion, but there was a sense of virtuousness that pervaded my efforts. 

The doom and gloom of it all weighed upon my shoulders atop everything else though, after a time. As much as I would love to be flippant, brazen about my proud detachment from men, there is a nauseating sadness to it. How horrible to be so aware of the great potential humans possess for evil. How terrifying that so many think and commit such atrocities. I have a suspicion that the anxious brain is one that is codependent with endless negativity. By fixating on the terrible and what we cannot control, we create a deeply pessimistic locus from which we exist as puppets in lives we cannot call our own. 

This is not to say we blissfully ignore truths of the world around us. I, like I imagine you have, have seen the FBI crime statistics. But I want my past self and those like her to know. I want her to know the capacity for good. Even neutral would do. I want her to know it's possible to be known so deeply and to be loved so much. I want her to know that she will experience love given freely and altruistically. There is a man who will give up all his pillows to create an inclined bed for you to sleep in when you're crying from pain from straining your ribs. There is a man who will go to CVS when you're sick without you ever asking who gets every flavor of Robitussin and looks at you meaningfully to take it, feel a little better, even when you're being stubborn about it. There is a man who does not shirk accountability or fear the size and depth of your feelings. You do not have to live in fear. You do not have to be alone. Terrible things can exist but so can wonderful things and you will be lucky enough in this lifetime to experience them. 

P.S. 

I will say that I am aware that my boyfriend is #notallmen. However, whether or not more of him exist, I could not say. I like to think so. But who knows. Find your own pink-haired, cherry Pepsi drinking short king. That is my advice. Why can I not take things seriously forever. Who knows.

Tune in next week to Navel Gazers Inc when I talk about the flaws of self awareness and wit used to escape your feelings. xoxo gossip girl

P.P.S.

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