I have always been confused by the smell of trains–how, like hospitals and school gymnasiums, they have an identifiable scent. They smell staticy–stale but steril–it’s the kind of smell that reminds you, relentlessly, where you are. Not bad, exactly, just too strong. 

I was on my way to visit my sister who was living in New York for the summer. It was 2016.

She was taking a class at Columbia and working for a park conservancy, I had just been dumped. I was staying with her for six nights–five days. 

I had always loved the city, and not in a “small town girl with big dreams” kind of way–New York made me feel satisfyingly insignificant. I liked being surrounded by strangers and enclosed by buildings. 

My boyfriend calls this my “claustro-positive” behavior–my fondness for small spaces–containment. It’s changed as I’ve gotten older, but I still seek out the smallest possible places for myself. It still feels like plugging up holes–sealing myself off from potential exposure.

When we were younger, my parents, sister and I would visit my Uncle in Brooklyn. He lived over a bodega, on the top floor. It was six flights of stairs with a suitcase—my legs burned when we got to his door.

I loved the stairwell, and the way the sirens didn’t mind when we were sleeping. I loved the buzz of the bathroom light and the day old bagels wrapped in cellophane. I loved how much light got in through the blinds and how it never got too dark to see. I felt contained, a feeling that–until then–I hadn’t known. I loved his shitty apartment, and can still sketch it from memory. 

At 19, pimply and pretentious and freshly heartbroken, I was ready to feel that again.

My sister worked during the day, so I would ride the train with her, walk her to her office, and keep walking until she was done at five or six in the evening. I felt very mature–going to the Met alone, sitting on a garden bench, eating a sandwich whose contents I couldn’t pronounce, spotting hustlers selling candy and not falling for it–I felt very adult, very delusional.

It was this summer that I learned to love walking to pass time, and it was this summer I got sick.

After returning home, I became fixated with containing myself–making myself smaller. By winter I’d have dropped out of school, gone to treatment—

If I met 19 year old me today, I would dislike her immediately. I’m positive I was insufferable–a true little shithead with zero emotional intelligence. Still, I’d like to walk with her—to tell her where to step. What to watch out for.

That there’s plenty of places she’ll fit.

Now, my uncle lives in an old, Victorian house and my sister lives on the beach. When I visit them, everything feels wide open.

Now, I’ve walked hundreds of miles in a beat up pair of Danskos. I’m still very much an insufferable shithead.

That’s all I think. I’m tired and it’s very late.

love you. Be good to each other.

x

Here’s a bit of prose I’ve been working on.

I miss you. I love you.

Be excellent to each other.

—

I’ve always hated airplanes. It is entirely illogical to surrender my life and safety to two, probably underpaid, probably sleep deprived, completely regular people. 

I don’t trust doctors or surgeons–too self assured–and I don’t trust teachers, preachers, priests, parents–anyone who tells you what they believe as if it is fact. 

I don’t trust people who sit and think all day, then spew from that muck a kind of manifesto on living. So then, I do not trust philosophers, or anyone who has ever written or read in earnest, a self-help book or Walden-esq memoir. 

I don’t trust compliments, or most insults. I don’t trust bartenders, cooks, baristas, hotel or restaurant staff–but not for any fault of theirs. They are underpaid and sleep deprived too. Trusting them would be unfair to all of us. 

I trust hard, scientific research–the people who do it correctly–and I trust mathematicians. I like that they can show me their conclusions with no uncertainty. I can follow their thoughts from beginning to end, and nothing is hidden. 

I trust the game of chess, and the people who play it. There it all is on the board, nothing concealed. 

I trust people who gain nothing from my choosing to believe them. People make mistakes, and choosing to trust someone whose margin for error is wide by nature is not particularly easy for me. 

People are imperfect, and to sardine myself into a pressurized, metal tube with a hundred other imperfect people, while two more imperfect people launch us into the air, is not something I’m willing to do. I get the science behind it, how air pressure and the design of the plane’s body are such that they are made to coast instead of plummet should anything go wrong. But it isn’t air pressure that I don’t trust.

So, I drive across the country. Mostly at night–less imperfect drivers–and mostly in the company of late night radio show host, Delilah. Delilah’s voice begs absolute trust from her listeners–trust that the song she’ll choose to dedicate to you, and whoever you’ve written to her about, will heal whatever it is that’s hurting. 

I listen to her dedicate an early 2000s rock ballad to a woman dating for the first time after a divorce, and it feels sincere, and I’d like to trust her. 

For a long time, I could not get past my suspicions surrounding her location on January 6, 2021. I don’t know why, really–I’ve been conditioned to be wary of radio hosts who mention god even semi-regularly. 

I decided enough was enough–I was being unfair to Delilah. I begrudgingly deep dove into her political affiliations, and as of April 2021, Delilah lives on a farm outside Seattle with her ex-husband’s parents. 

Delilah is safe, for now–but I’ve been burned before.  

For this reason, among others, I keep Delilah at arm’s length. 

I do not cry while driving, and I do not think about much of anything except distance and displacement, the difference between them. How I wanted both to be large enough to scare me. How far out of place I feel. How much ground I’ve covered. 

Whenever I feel the ache in my chest, I imagine I am wounded instead of chemically imbalanced. I’d been rescuing a puppy from the mouth of an alligator. I was brave, actually. 

People, imperfect and needy and hurting, are incredibly easy to understand. Their lies are easy to spot, and worse, I don’t hate them for it. I get it. I understand why we lie and cheat and act imperfectly. We’re following the curriculum, we’re trying to pay rent, we want to be held. They want to feel better. 

I want to feel better too.

Delilah–anybody–If you have a song for that, I’m all ears.

I don’t think it’s very common for someone to sit you down and tell you, as a child, what love looks like. I think that’s okay–usually and hopefully, someone will show you. 

I remember watching some show with my mom when I was in my early teens. A man and woman on screen were driving home–he was holding her hand with his right, while he steered with his left. When they pulled into their driveway, he reached over awkwardly, and shifted the car into park with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to keep holding hers.  

My mom turned to me and asked, “Did you see that?” 

I’d missed it completely. After explaining what happened, she said, “That was really something special.”

This tiny, insignificant, choreographed moment was what love looked like. I held onto that.

Have you seen the movie Aquamarine? It fucking slaps, and I’m deadly serious. When I say that movie was foundational to my understanding of love as a kid, I’m saying it with my chest. 

The premise is this: A mermaid (Aquamarine) is granted her land-legs for three days. If someone does not confess their love to her within those three days, she’ll have to return to the ocean, FOREVER. Two lifelong best friends (human) find Aqua, and decide they have to help her.

We watch the two best friends help Aqua get glammed up and flirt with boys, hoping one might fall for her in time. What’s more interesting, though, is the connection between these two best friends. They are unconditional supporters of each other–they love each other, and it’s clear, and it’s simple. 

I don’t feel good about using Toni Morrison to analyze a 2008 teeny bopper flic, but oh boy here I go. What comes to mind now, looking back at Aquamarine, is a famous phrase from Sula, “We was girls together.” 

Earlier this week, I saw on social media that my best friend through the bulk of my teenage years got her doctoral degree. We haven’t thought about each other in years, assuredly, but still. I was choked up when I saw her post.

We used to sit on the carpet in her room, talking about what we wanted and what we didn’t want and what we maybe wanted, for hours. She wanted to be a doctor, and now she is. 

I don’t believe in the word “admiration”. I think it’s a cop out–a word used to distance ourselves from anything appearing childish or emotionally naive. It’s also a word used out of fear that our feelings will be perceived as romantic when they’re something else entirely. It’s that something else that I feel exists between two people when they were girls together. 

When we ask, what is friendship between women when unmediated by men–the answer isn’t admiration. It’s love. We were girls together, and expressing love was uncomplicated. There was no agenda, there was nothing we needed to do or say. It was simple.

At the end of Aquamarine, Aqua is rejected by the boy she wanted to love, and she runs out of time. Her legs turn into a tail, and the ocean is whisking her away. Our two human heroines swim out through typhoon-grade stormy seas to pull her back in, risking their lives in the process. When they get to Aqua, she asks them, “Why on Earth would you do that for me?” They answer, “Because we love you, Aqua.”

Suddenly, the ocean is still. 

Crying is like shitting. You feel it coming on all day, and strategically plan so that you can really let it out the second you get home. You get in your car, you’re halfway home and you hit a red light. A little squeaks out, and hey. That’s okay. 

You had too much coffee. You’re anxious–stressed. You’re going through life changes. You’re in an unfamiliar place. You’re missing home. You’re off schedule. You’re irregular. So a little came out in the car–so what. That’s fine. 

Who hasn’t wept in their car on the way home. Who hasn’t pulled up to their place, slammed it into park, and cried so hard they forgot how it felt to not be crying. Who hasn’t been overwhelmed with every wrong decision and inadequacy and shortcoming and failure all at once, looked at their steering wheel, and cried about it. 

It’s funniest when you have your “cheer up” playlist on, and  most worrisome when you have “Go Home” by Julien Baker set to repeat indefinitely. Cause man, when your body is just dirty clothes and you’re tired of washing your hands–it’s gonna be a long night in the car. 

If you’re reading this, I feel confident in saying you’re not the kind of person who should listen to this song. I ugly cry when I hear it, even when I am in a very good place. Maybe that’s because the song describes my life aged 18-22–but, I guess, whose life wasn’t Go Home, really–at some point? Who hasn’t wanted to go home in a way that wasn’t possible? Fuck it. Listen to it. You’ll be okay.  Listen to it and tell me what you think. 

Sad music scratches the knot in my chest where I feel most everything. Being around people I love, writing, making art, dancing, singing, walking on nice days, holding hands–those things loosen it. What tightens the knot–makes me hurt, makes it hard to breathe–is comparing myself at my worst moments to an idea of perfection embodied by a woman who is something I believe I’m not. What a waste of the person I am. 

After my eating disorder, I was left with a lot of lost time. After accepting that–grieving that–putting together a life I wanted, and starting to live it, I was met with the incredibly difficult task of continuing. Figuring out how to navigate anxiety and depression without something to numb me has proven to be.. challenging. I’m doing it, don’t get me wrong. But holy hell am I doing it clumsily. 

But, who doesn’t squeak out a little on the way to the bathroom. I’m putting it out there in case you need it, and so that maybe I’ll believe it too–I forgive my clumsiness as I figure out how to live with the trauma of destroying myself. I forgive myself for that. I love the person I am, even if I sit in my car and cry because I think that, at her core, she isn’t good. Because she is–she’s good.

I forgive myself for making mistakes and I give myself permission to learn from them. Nobody else can let me accept that I don’t always say and do the right thing. Only I, alone in my car, eyes wet and nose running, can decide to turn the car off, and go inside.

After all, I know you’re worried I’m gonna get scared again, but I won’t. You won’t. Let’s go home.

I was laying in bed just now, thinking of all the ways I don’t measure up to some beautiful stranger. Healthy, right?  It’s not a particularly fruitful activity, truth be fucking told.  It has given me nothing but the belief that I will never be that thing that I want so badly to be–whatever that is.

I don’t compare myself to others in order to see how I am unique or adequate or beautiful or interesting, but to berate myself for all the things I cannot be–that would be impossible for me to be, truly–because I am not them. I am not blonde, tall, Australian, a performer, a dancer–I am not a stranger. I’m familiar. 

There is no space to hide what I might be, could be, maybe have, in the past, been. I know me too well. There is no fantasy for me to concoct surrounding what I spend my time doing–how I exist in the quiet moments of my life. I already know me. 

It sucks to not be a stranger to yourself because you know where you hurt and you can push that bruise so it never heals. You know where you fold, so you can take yourself right to the edge. You know what you cannot say, and what you always say. You know that you have a pimple on your forehead and that you sometimes feel very small and that you want more than anything to be seen and still wanted for all of that. 

I am not a stranger, I know too much to imagine perfection. 

I am very good at getting to know people. I don’t always do it on purpose, but it almost always happens very quickly. I say it’s because I have the kind of weird face that lets people know I’ll genuinely listen to them. It’s because I say the whole of a word when I mean it. It’s because I don’t want to be strangers. 

I dunno. I feel like it’s easy to believe we are stagnant and flawed because we can never have some kind of mysterious distance from ourselves, but that’s what, like, real tenderness is. Real love. Not being strangers, and choosing them anyway.

I feel like shit. I took a nap, woke up, and felt like everything was falling apart. Fairly normal for me, but still. It sucks to feel like shit. 

When you feel alone, truly alone, that feeling compounds. Feeling alone keeps you alone, which makes you feel like you are the only person on the planet who is hurting. 

I’ve decided to write to you, in the hopes that it will make me feel less alone. I know there’s like, one of you, but that doesn’t really matter. I’m talking to myself, too. 

I’ve been reading a lot of psych literature lately. It feels like I owe it to myself to get all the information I can in the hopes that I can use it, not only to feel better, but to write to you about it. Because whoever you are, singular stranger, we’re in this together. 

The thing about relational trauma is that your sense of self has eroded, your boundaries dissolve, you have no real solid ground to stand on–nothing to keep or defend. It feels like grief, because it is. The pain is less about the way you were treated, and more about the parts of yourself you lost while being treated that way. 

So, I’m talking to myself as well as to you, because it’s important. Because I matter. Because I’m worth talking to. I very often forget that. 

I may be wallowing in self pity right now, but I’ll allow it. I am hurting and I am tired and that’s okay. I’ll feel better eventually. As my city descends further into chaos and my internal state feels like I’m on fire, I’m writing to you instead of destroying myself. That’s cool. 

I figure I’ll include some poetry now. I’m really good at writing poetry, not that it matters very much. Have you seen the poetry section of book stores? It’s like one Bukowski anthology and some instagram poet. Anyway. Here: 

–

            Studio Space 

This is space in The City. 

A kitchen for brushing teeth 

A place to sit 

A drawer for socks 

How lucky I am 

Even without a window 

In the bedroom. 

I sleep with my eyes shut 

Anyway. 

–

–

I am not a lawyer, I’m an artist. 

Few things are as damaging  

As an insincere expression of faith. 

This we have in common.  

This and that distinct, Amtrak smell–that  

Same, sterile static. We  

hurry home–both of us–

wanting to be good for something. 

–

–

Hairbrush Rippings

myself the other, hates you.

winter — coal — the milk in my fridge 

hate you.

the hand reaching from the grave (plastic of course) used

for October decoration hates you.

the extension cord — my only constant — hates you.

the carpet speckled and curious. hate. 

my poor circulation hates me, but it hates you more, assuredly.

the rippings from my hairbrush are flushed down the toilet while hating you.

the last sip of beer–warm and flat–mostly flem

hates you as an equal.

the air outside even

Watch how it moves away while you walk–

clearly hate.

Kentucky derby hats–though ugly and obscene–are redeemed by whimsy and so rightfully 

hate you.

the last library book in existence will surely hate you.

the trees–even dead ones–even the patch of dirt that implies 

eventual tree

hates you.

the act of fucking exists in spite of you

and so naturally,

its hate is worst of all.

–

–

Elmira, NY 

Mark Twain  

was buried here but nobody really asks  

why. The hills, maybe–they seem close enough to pyramids. 

–

–

Nose Job

from start to finish, my nose is ugly 

I will do nothing to change this but laugh  

I prefer my art like my pizza 

worth exactly $1–available at 3 am–

I once wrote and tossed screenplay–a labored, worrisome thing 

which is, I think, the only way to become a New York Poet.

I will admit the poetic genius of building a city for angels. 

to then make it one, idling highway. 

I think of earthquakes–how eventually Hollywood

will buckle. will fall at an angle. 

Somehow still getting its good side. 

–

–

Coordinates  

Silly and sturdy  

Needed for flight paths  

And some kind of sweetness 

To which we point and say here

Look here 

This is the place where I came from 

–

–

It’s Friday. 

I’m crossing 

Out to-do lists whole.

Being a mother, falling in love, learning 

jazz guitar see–

I do not talk about the future 

In the same way I used to–my mouth

 is full of water

And it’s awfully rude to spit. 

I do not imagine the future

In the same way I used to–but see, 

I’ll write it down anyway.

So that in the moments before 

these words sink

Our future will have existed, 

somewhere. 

–

–

Memories Aren’t Real

I learned a long time ago to climb inside the bodies of statues. To speak from their mouths a kind of warning. I shout into the square, Do not stop to watch my body crumble. There is no use in animating memory. It is a sickness to trick life into static bodies– aging none. Moving none. Changing 

only by falling apart. 

I ask the greats–Michelangelo’s rotting head, and yours–carve me out of water. Let it be, and it will move all on its own, forget itself completely. The likeness, uncanny. Carve me out of water. Then, I will be happily remembered. 

–

–

Bright’s Disease, of which she died in 1886

And so I sit here, with Emily

As I always seem to do

When I’m scared to die 

Or bored of static minds 

That all snap shut 

On the curves of a woman

I fight through dusty words

The kind that haven’t seen a line

Since she chose them

To carry her

Like wooden shoes—noisey

Uncomfortable on purpose

I think about her often

Not always writing but

Dead too

And how remarkable, truly 

That she should die

Just as she lived

—With a terrible Brightness.

–

–

–

Instant Oatmeal, Dry

I had acrylic nails when the world stopped.It felt good to neglect something without recourse. 

I lived in one room, peed on the hour walked in concentric circles fell In love on the internet ate

boxes of cereal dry ate Instant oatmeal dry ate and wished I had a terminal illness. 

so it wouldn’t be my fault ate glue to patch the hole ate mycelium to expedite

decay ate novels I hadn’t had time to read ate my childhood stuffed dalmatian ate a phone call 

home ate my grandfather’s funeral ate skin not worth touching ate gummy vitamins by the handful.

I ate all of the liquor I ate 10 lbs then I ate the scale I ate 

styrofoam cups plastic cups compostable plastic cups I ate microplastic (fruit flavored)

I ate Boulder Creek I ate the skatepark I ate The fear I felt walking by the skatepark I ate time

I ate so much time. I think I even ate you.

–

–

If the soul has windows they aren’t in the eyes. 

They say in the Midwest, the night sky is your ocean. I am moving to Nashville in one month, where my body won’t be mine and I am waving goodbye to knowing that when my hand moves it was my decision. 

I like to read postcards–I like to see the pictures. I like that they are self-contained–that you only need a stamp. 

the body–my body–may be your ocean. But it isn’t mine. Hi from Memphis! We’re eating lots of barbecue. Love, Donna. I think that the soul leaves traces. 

The ocean is my ocean–the rest I turn over and write on. 

–

–

Sketching

I sit at my desk, looking at a small, wooden, figure-drawing model I’ve had since I moved into this house. I’m almost positive it is a woman–if she were not, she would not have stayed this long with me. 

A year ago I hung ornaments on her. They were festive at the time and now they belong to her.

Drawing her is nice–simple. She is not complex–all lines and hinges. I start with a blind contour–black and white. Then I go back in with water.  

It is difficult to know what she is thinking. 

–

–

Even The Cemeteries 

Based upon photography and Captions by Mark Neville

Alla Melnichuk watched from her home in Hirske. 

There was whistling overhead. 

Instead of ducking and covering, as the instructions say, 

She asked, “Huh?” 

Fear didn’t come until later.

I woke up too late to shower.

I put my hair up, brushed my teeth–

Ran down 16th street watching my breath. 

I was late to sell coffee. 

They had been shelling. Even the cemeteries. 

Losing everything cannot happen quickly. 

“Huh?” she said, naturally. 

She did not duck and cover. Fear, she said, came later.

And then? What will come then?

I scrubbed the kitchen drains with bleach.

They found the body of a 17 year old girl today.

Wiped tables, chairs, door handles. 

Bodies are not things we should have to find.

I had a cigarette. Smiled for tips.

I walked home slow, 

I let my hair down and it touched my waist. 

They were shelling, 

“Huh?”

Even the cemeteries. 

–

–

I Left Nothing, As Per The Lease Agreement

The carpet was decades old, so it would be impossible to tell that I had cleaned it at all, really. But I did. I vacuumed up every speck of me. I pulled out every one of my hairs from the shower drain–a juicy clump of me, discarded. 

I scrubbed the spot on the wall where I’d propped my feet up to read. I gave away the bamboo plants that I’d been watching sprout for 2 years. I gave away the desk I wrote to you from. I gave away the bed I slept in. I gave away pounds and pounds of clothing, and then I vacuumed up the lint. I swept the stairs–even the spot I always missed because it was in the corner of the landing and very inconvenient to reach.

I gave away the bathing suit I wore to the creek–the one I wore when we stopped everything in the middle of an August Tuesday to kiss each other under the water.

god, 

I met a girl today and god

I lost my sense. I know

I can’t love her but please

let me watch her breathe.

God I thought of Death today and god

how sickly sweet

to love without a body just some

matter in the dark. 

–

–

Angry Woman

To talk about her is to talk about anger. The Cool Girl 

doesn’t get angry. The Cool Girl is unbothered–not jaded–but she’s easy 

in the same way. She is smooth 

enough to take whatever she’s given without it feeling 

unjustified. She cannot get angry, because The Cool Girl 

has no boundaries that can be crossed. She will not feel the need to act 

out of protection for herself, because no part of her is vulnerable 

to attack. I don’t mean “that bitch” 

or “mean girl.” I don’t mean she’s withholding 

or cold or stuck up. All of which, by the way, are exactly the same 

kind of garbage identifiers as “cool girl.” 

What I mean is, she is 

unbothered. She doesn’t feel the need to respond with force 

when she is affected by force. She isn’t angry–this is what I mean. 

Right now, I am curious 

about her opposite–She is the logical conclusion 

of a world forcing itself inside her. She 

  is responding to an unjust situation with action. This 

is what I mean when I talk about an angry woman— 

Uncool because she cares what happens to her.

Her body. The way

She moves and is moved through spaces

she didn’t design.

–

–

I think hard about my body

I think of my fondness for quantum mechanics and the book that told me kindly that we create the world through our own perception of it. Even though I know it’s much more complicated than that, I appreciated the optimism.

I’m 24 in Nashville. We’re smoking 

on his back porch, and he’s telling me 

how getting from Seattle to Los Angeles takes 18 

hours if you go straight down. But on this night, he tells me, he took bends. His 

time. Smoked in the car. There was nothing he needed to hold on to.

I like to hear stories the way he tells them. Completely and without 

assumption. He leaves nothing out, as if testifying 

in a court where every juror’s mouth is 

watering. He 

goes on, telling me how dark the roads were, how long 

it had been since he’d seen another car. I can hear it, the 

music in the car. I can see the time on the dash. 

He bites his nails without noticing, and I watch him pull 

apart his fingertips. He’s relaxed, as he often is on his own–enjoying 

the thoughts in his head, the melodies there. He hums them and I hear

a choir.

He tells me that the trees had thinned that night, but he hadn’t noticed. 

The road, though, seemed brighter. Confused, 

he looked behind him for other cars. Finding 

none, he pulled over and turned off his headlights. He looked up. 

He wasn’t sentimental about it–light and alone and completely 

settled, he stood straight up when he saw our universe 

spread out up there. I imagine him 

ashing a cigarette. 

I’ve never experienced something like that 

while completely alone. I imagine myself 

standing beside him, pointing and saying something like, “There

–look there. See it?” 

I imagine I’d want someone there with me. Someone to confirm 

it’s all real–that I really am 

seeing millions of lightyears into the past. That I really am 

here, looking up at it. 

Dreams are, on the whole, incredibly boring. If I could opt out, I absolutely would. 

I am not an astral projection girly–I do not believe that dreams hold some secret or sacred meaning. Thing is, they don’t tell us anything we don’t already know–they can’t. It is, as they say, our party. 

If we fixate on a scenario during our waking lives–avoiding it or attracting it–it’s gonna show up in a dream. And if, like me, you have a super fun mix of medical and relational trauma, you’re gonna have just an absolute blast while asleep. 

I don’t dream in the surreal, whacky, weirdly-beautiful-upon-waking way. I have a lot of nightmares, and they’re really fucking horrible. 

I’ve gotten really good at waking myself up, though. And in order to fall back asleep without being afraid, I’ve gotten really good at finding the bright side of nightmares.

The closest thing to “new” information we get from dreams, we get because we’re forced into experiencing something we’ve been running from without having an out. During and after the dream, we really feel the emotions that would come up were we to truly be there–in a scenario that we fear (or want) more than anything.

The interesting thing about being nightmare-prone is that I’ve faced my biggest fears like, a thousand times. I’ve felt afraid and alone and devastated and I’ve gotten through all of it–even in my dreams, big, painful emotions don’t kill me. If I’m to take anything from dreams, which I’m hard pressed to because fuck nightmares forever, it would be that I’m stronger than I give myself credit for. 

I used to find that things that happened in my waking life were much less believable than being inside of a nightmare. Stupid as this seems, it makes sense to me looking back. If we are inundated with fear like I was–if we project ourselves into the future through anxiety or worry or fixation, like I did–we are playing out nightmares in our minds nearly constantly. We are experiencing our worst-case-scenarios as background noise while we attempt to live our lives. 

Fucked up, right? It’s like the TV was on in the background of my mind, and all that played were my greatest fears on an unending loop. It was like the show Ridiculousness on MTV–it just never fucking stops, no matter how much you want it to. No matter how much you beg and plead. Rob Dyrdek remains.

The thoughts went something like this: My family loves me? Well that doesn’t make sense because I’ve told myself a thousand times that they hate me. I’m actually good at writing? Well that’s not true because the TV in the background of my mind is showing me that I’m a failure. It becomes hard to believe good things can happen to you when your brain is just  nightmares–just Ridiculousness–on repeat. 

What it took to change how I interacted with the waking-nightmare-voice was realizing that these good things are just as likely, and in fact, usually much more likely than the worst-case scenario. My biggest fear is just one possible outcome of a situation. There are a million more that hurt way less, or don’t hurt at all. I grew up with extreme anxiety, so realizing this was nothing short of a goddamn miracle. 

It still doesn’t feel real all the time, and that’s okay. I know from experience I’m much stronger than I believe. 

Last night, I read poetry (out loud) at a hardware store. I stood on a stage between the goat feed and the hammers, and read a poem I wrote about Amtrak. Then I read one about coordinates. Then I read one about my sister moving to New York. Then I sat down next to the cow feed and ate cold french fries while someone on stage played the accordian. This was real, waking life. THIS is the kind of surreal fucking shit dreams should be made up of. Not our trauma’s greatest hits hosted by Rob Fucking Dyrdek. It should be weirdo, talented strangers and a half empty ketchup bottle next to a chainsaw. 

I’m trying to believe this is my reality, more than the nightmares, because it is. It really is.

I love you. Sleep well. x.

On a walk today, I saw that someone had drawn a heart on the pavement with garbage juice from a ripped trash bag. This made me irrationally happy.

It’s finally warm enough to walk again, and so I am slowly regaining my sanity. See, we are currently in the sweet spot between the dreary, wet, winter and the blazing hot, unbearable summer. 

The thing about living in the South, the proper South, is that summer days are scorching and summer nights are not for you–they’re for the mosquitos. Spring and fall are all we’ve got

The funny thing about living in Nashville is that your body doesn’t belong to you, and you realize this twice. Once, under the rule of Christian extremists and gun lobbyists, and again because you will be eaten alive if you show skin on a summer evening. Your body is at the mercy of bloodsucking pests. 

It isn’t a bad place to live, Nashville. I have met the most truly liberal people I’ve ever known here–made determined by lawmakers who could not give less of a shit about them. They’re persistent and strong and unbending in the face of seeming impossibility. The people who live in Nashville are, if I am to generalize, tough. Tough because their existence is invalidated–ignored–and they get up every morning and make some of the best art in the world.

One thing Nashville is not, is posturally liberal. Postural liberalism is sickening. I lived in Boulder for three years, where every sprinkler-watered front lawn of every multi-million dollar home had a sign reminding us that “Love is Love” and “Science is Real.” We know this–we know this is virtue signaling. Thing is, unhoused people are not allowed to sleep in tents inside the city limits of Boulder–they are an apparent threat to the houses where Love is Love. Unhoused people are drug tested before being allowed into shelters. Love is Love though, right? 

Boulder isn’t a bad place either. In fact, it is probably my favorite place to remember. It’s where I met my best friends and it’s where I did the most important parts of growing up and where I ran down to the creek in the middle of a Monday afternoon to submerge my entire body into the frigid mountain snow-melt. I love Boulder maybe more than anywhere–it’s where I was the happiest I’ve ever been. 

Place is a funny thing to organize your life by. I was walking in East Nashville today–through some residential neighborhood (one of the very few with sidewalks) and I realized I could be anywhere. I could be in the small town in Northern New York where I was born or Boulder where the rich call themselves hippies or Elmira, New York or Providence, Rhode Island or Walden, Massachusetts–any of these places I’ve lived. On a spring evening, when it’s cold enough to need a sweater and the sun has just set, every neighborhood is the same. Houses sit together between trees and bushes and telephone poles, and someone’s locking their car and going inside. Someone is walking their dog and they smile at you. 

Familiarity is usually comforting. It can also be detrimental. I’ve lived in more than one city that sends thoughts and prayers to the victims of massive, public shootings. I’ve lived in more than one city that has grieved the loss of strangers that could have been prevented. It doesn’t matter where we live. We are all between telephone poles and bushes and sidewalks and street lights. We could be anywhere–and we are. 

I don’t want to be alone in this feeling, and I don’t want you to be either. I don’t want to feel helpless and scared and frustrated, and worst of all, numb. I don’t want you to feel that either. I want you to know that people like you are everywhere–sharing your beliefs and fighting for the same things. I want you to feel safe, more than anything. 

We have to do our best to take care of each other–to think long and hard and truly about what that looks like. And we have to talk about it, fight for it, persistently. Not just posturally.

I want to walk through a city that isn’t grieving, and I want that for you too.

For the past two years I thought I was, at least in part, deranged. When I needed comfort in the form of distraction, I watched Promising Young Woman. If you’ve not seen the film, this would seem completely innocuous–girl watches movie to ease stress. But, dear reader, Promising Young Woman is a deeply disturbing dark comedy that follows a woman, Cassandra Thomas, who goes to bars, pretending to be drunk.

Without fail, she is taken home by a man who believes her to be too drunk to refuse him. When she reveals that hey, she’s sober, she gives these predators the opportunity to admit their predatory behavior. She wants them to recognize what they’ve done. They never do. 

She seeks out her best friend’s rapist, and everyone who allowed and enabled him, in an attempt to show  them her perspective. She puts them in situations where they are made to feel fear and anger equivalent to what she experienced after her best friend’s assault. She wants them to understand what they’ve done. To apologize. They don’t, apart from one—the lawyer who represented the assailant, who says he can no longer sleep from the guilt of all the women he’s silenced. 

This film had become a huge source of comfort for me, but I told no one.  I felt shame in the comfort I took in watching the exacting of this kind of revenge–in the seeking of apology at all costs. I was confused and ashamed until I read Know My Name, a memoir written by the insanely talented writer and artist, Chanel Miller. Chanel was a victim of sexual assault on Stanford University’s campus in 2015. The case gained media attention following the release of the rapists identity—Brock Turner. Emerald Fennell, writer and Director of Promising Young Woman, gained inspiration from Chanel’s story–the title taken from American media’s depiction of rapist Brock Turner as a promising young man with an illustrious swimming career. 

Know My Name is a deeply moving account of womanhood–how, even with the testimonies of those who witnessed Turner running away from Chanel that night, openly expressing his guilt, she had to go to war in court to be believed. Her DA fought brilliantly for her, rebutting the defense’s position that Chanel had been “okay“ prior to her assault with what amounted to the question how okay must one be to make rape a condonable action?

Remembering this point in the trial—how hard her DA fought for her, Chanel wrote the line, “It’s a wonderful thing, to watch myself be fought for.“ And I understood. 

The comfort I find in the rage of Promising Young Woman it not sadistic. It is instead, feeling the comfort of watching myself be fought for. It is an unparalleled feeling, seeing your value reflected back at you, persistently. Without hesitation. After making myself small, after abuse and assault and harassment walking down the street in broad daylight, watching myself being fought for feels goddamn good. 

I listened to Know My Name—an audiobook—read by Chanel, and I believe this is exactly how it should be heard. For 17 hours, spread out across about two weeks, I listened to Chanel‘s voice. As I listened, the fucking ceaseless self criticism and fear that my internal voice has, for 25 years spewed at me, dissolved. Her voice replaced the one telling me constantly that I am not enough. It left space in my mind for the possibility of something other than shame. It’s a wonderful thing, to hear yourself being fought for. 

I don’t know how to hold on to this feeling in the absence of these women who understand, and who make that understanding known so loudly. The comfort I feel dissolves after spending enough time alone inside my head.

I lose steam easily, I always have–my anger dissolves at the slightest resistance and I am left an apologetic puddle. I feel weak. More than this, I feel excruciatingly tired. I’m so tired.

“I want to fight, while you go.“ Chanel wrote this after explaining that the reason she underwent a years-long legal battle with her rapist was for us as much as for her. She wanted promising young men to know that it wasn’t okay, what they’ve done. She wanted to afford us the opportunity to remain soft and open and comforted. 

I don’t know where to put my grief or anger or fear. I don’t know how not to internalize it all, poisoning myself in the process. I don’t know where to put it, but I think maybe it is best kept in the shared experience of telling our stories–of fighting for you, while you go. When we do this, we’re able to rest for a while, comforted.

I am standing on so much anger that, were I to shout, I’d hear my voice call back a thousand times before it lost volume. Before it fell, shedding bulk. A gigantic ball of yarn, unraveling.

On February 27th, a man named Matthew Schneier published an article in New York Magazine titled, Life After Food. I pause here to take a breath so deep you’d think I’d been drowning. 

Huge content warning: eating disorders discussed in detail.

During the week of February 27th, we observe eating disorder awareness week. During the week of February 27th, I am faced with the 6th anniversary of the first of five admissions to the hospital for anorexia. During the week of February 27th, I remember my friends–friends, plural–who died because they were unable to allow themselves to eat, or keep food inside.

During the week of February 27th, I remember my mother sobbing, telling me how afraid she was that she’d have to bury her 19 year old daughter. I remember how they slid a feeding tube into my nose and down my esophagus. I remember flying across the country as an attempt by my parents and doctors to save my life. I remember the 11 other patients in the eating disorder intensive care unit—how I wanted so badly for them to know something I didn’t. For them to get better, even if I didn’t know how. 

Matthew–can I call you Matthew–we already know what the fuck Life After Food feels like. Why did you decide to tell this story now, while we’re remembering everything we’ve lost? Why did you tell a story that isn’t the one we’re screaming at the top of our goddamn lungs? Why didn’t you let us speak?

Instead, you’ve decided to write about a drug–I will not name it here–that has gained household popularity for inducing rapid weight loss. Previously kept secret by elite members of society’s most desirable groups, this drug suppresses appetite to such an impressive extent that demand has driven the drug to scarcity.

If this drug were intended only for weight loss, this would be fairly standard procedure. Lack would create demand, it would become overwhelmingly expensive and less attainable, and would fall only into the hands of the few would could afford it. But, without being specific enough to discuss this drug directly, it is used by very sick people to help manage illness. A shortage of this drug isn’t trivial–isn’t simply an aesthetic inconvenience. Sick people are without adequate treatment as a result of this scramble for appetite suppression.

This drug–dangerous in possible side effects, by the way, and growing in scarcity–is the focus of the article published by New York Magazine.

Matthew, if you’d wanted to write about what life is like after food, I would have been happy to take an interview. But since you’ve gone a different direction, let me clear some things up for you. It goes like this: you lose everything. Everything, no exceptions. Family, friends, relationships, careers, prospective lives, all possibility of a future, short term memory, then those pesky childhood memories, feeling in your hands, the ability to stand up quickly, then the ability to stand up at all. 

You lose touch with everyone and everything until you sit in a pile of unwashed clothes and gum wrappers–alone and shaking from hypoglycemia and the knowledge that you are so close to death that you might not wake up in the morning. It makes you miserable, lifeless, and–seemingly most importantly to your readers–it changes your body. Your face sags with age you didn’t earn. Your bottom falls flat–a deflated balloon. Your breasts dissolve. Your belly extends from lack of hydration. You’ve lost everything in your life, and because it’s so important to you, you also look 20 years older.  

If you wanted a first-hand account of life after food, New York Magazine, all of the above is available to you. No? Mine not as flashy? Pity. 

The first woman that Matthew interviewed requested her name be omitted from the article. The name he chose to replace that empty space was mine. Allison. He called her Allison.

This woman, who described herself as having, and this is a direct quote, “a size zero personality” was discouraged by her inability to be as thin as she felt. She was thrilled to get her hands on this drug, thrilled by her weight loss–how her clothes hung off of her body. She’s happy. “Everyone’s getting skinnier!” she says in her interview. By this she means, everyone is injecting themselves with a drug meant for very sick people in order to suppress their appetites.

I need you to recognize how hard this is to read as someone who fought for 6 years to allow herself to eat. Who lost everything in her life to the belief that she was only worthy of love and safety if she did not eat. Who had to cry and scream and be intubated and institutionalized for months because she could not overcome this belief. I need you to hear me when I say that these people are intentionally seeking out the thing that took everything away from me. And they are thrilled.

Matthew quotes Anna, a happy user of this drug, “I’m now one of those people who’s just, like, not that hungry.” She goes on, “And I feel better than everyone.”

Better than everyone. Better than the girl sitting here, who, without guilt or remorse, eats whatever she wants? Who nourishes her body? Who is loved and beautiful and successful even though she is fed? Better than that? I’m genuinely curious, because happiness does not seem to me something that waxes and wanes with one’s ability to deprive themselves of food. That idea doesn’t fill me with envy, it makes me profoundly, indescribably sad. Because what I see is the loss that kind of conditional esteem yields. The kind of emptiness that comes with it. 

Laila Gohar, a New York based sculptor, quotes a friend in her interview with Matthew, “Everyone in LA is skinny now.” After asking her friend, “Wasn’t everyone already?” He responded, “Well the last few people who weren’t, now are.” 

I could blame the pharmaceutical industry–could blame the doctors who prescribe this drug against its intended purpose. I could blame hatred of women more broadly–the idea that being soft, having body fat, is synonymous with unlovability and moral corruption. I could blame the rich for selling us body shapes–could blame the poor for idealizing the rich. I could place blame at every single point from fucking cave drawings to use of this drug. But after hours of reading and rereading the article, I feel only sadness. I feel overwhelmingly sad that, for those who ask for this drug, they truly believe that what stands between them and happiness–fulfillment–satisfaction–success–love–is weight loss. 

I will mourn for the meals they’ll skip–the tastes they won’t try. The thoughts they won’t have–the space in their minds taken up by thoughts of how their bodies look. I’ll be sad for the joy they won’t feel while cooking themselves dinner. 

I’ll hope they unwind their worth from their weight. That they find that their lack of hunger does not make them strong–that softness does.

Matthew, life after food is boring.

New York Magazine, publish something worth reading.