notes from december: it's all fog

It doesn’t make sense that this is the season that birthed me. I thought this the other night on a particularly uncomfortable walk over to meet my friend Sameera for dinner after I finished up some work at the theater Uptown. “Summer always has its hands on me,” I think when looking down at my wrists, all gloveless, noticing that the tan I caught earlier this year, like a lot of other things, still isn’t through with me.

2025 was rougher than it needed to be. It came to me disguised as something hopeful, but ended up teaching me lessons in whiplash instead. Unfortunately (maybe fortunately), I’m different now, and I will have to walk through my life with a little more caution. It’s strange, I always thought I was the most careful girl, but I don’t know if someone careful would allow themselves to get hurt the way I allow myself to get hurt.

In terms of processing these 12 months, I took out the details, laid them on the floor, and couldn’t feel much but devastation. My problems aren’t unique, but the story that they made is one I never want to read again (which is ironic because i’m doing a 4-hour one-woman show about it lol).

My wish for the coming year is for something a little softer. Something less distracted—and not a single day spent at the mercy of someone else.

Here are my notes from December:

• I find that people are extremely bold in Substack direct messages. If I see that I have one waiting for me, I just know I have to prepare for whatever or whoever wanted to contact me so badly that they bypass the socially acceptable Instagram DM and shoot straight for my kneecap. I’ve been blogging here for almost two years, and all of my direct messages have been mostly insane. I’ve been asked out, I’ve been a part of what seems to be an elaborate prank, I’ve received complaints about my writing, etc. I haven’t shared them on the blog because it feels like a true assault on my community, but today I’m breaking my rule for something that truly made me laugh:

  

• I’ve been watching my neighbors walk around naked lately, kinda against my own will. I figure they probably grew used to this unit being vacant the weeks before I moved in and haven’t had the time to adjust their behavior— I’m sure I’ve been guilty of that in some way or another. One of my neighbors seems to shower with his hat on. Every time I’m on the fire escape and happen to see him come running out of the shower, he’s always soaking wet with nothing but a baseball cap on. I’m not one to blame others for their creature comforts, but I’d be blind if I couldn’t help but notice that.

• A chunk of my tooth fell out of my mouth at the beginning of this month. A big, proper chunk. I was playing dress-up in my room around 3 am when it decided to leave me. I don’t really have many words to explain it; it was so scary that I didn’t feel fear. I just skipped straight to acceptance and called my dentist the next day.

• I don’t think I’ll ever stop trying to understand the men I’ve known romantically. Actually, I wish I could sit them all down opposite me in the chair and psychoanalyze them all for free—it would probably do some good— but I’m not in the space to do a complex good deed right now. If anything, I’m starting to understand it all on a symbolic level- all they are is just a fog. Something that I could remark as incredible and strange in the moment, but really all they are is a thin layer between me and what I want, distorting my destiny for a few kisses and a few laughs. In this period of romantic skepticism, I’ve held the men I don’t want to have sex with close to me, asking them questions about being a boy, sometimes, I don’t like the answer I hear, but I tell people I value honesty, and that’s something I really want to believe about myself. My friend Max has been the most cooperative in this experiment. I holed up on his couch earlier this month, and we got high together off some weed that an ex of mine held in high regard. We talked until the point of laughing tears about the differences between boys and girls, joking that we had just created sixth-wave feminism right there in Ridgewood. From what I’m beginning to understand, no boy in New York would ever choose to truly remove himself from the position of the spectator. The roundabout of women is just too much to truly give yourself to one girl; there will always be another one around the corner with an interests they can learn from and a joke they can steal.

• I receive constant reminders that I’m far from the top of the world; if anything, I’m being told I’m somewhere near the filthy bottom. I’ve been dropping things in the grocery store and struggling with my keys. Most days it feels like I wake up only to slip on a banana peel to absolutely no audience—kind of like the time I tripped on a hairbrush while cleaning my bedroom and cut my lower back when I fell. Now I have a weird scar I keep forgetting to treat.

• You know shit is bad when you got a jar of ghee by your bed.

• The smell of Vick’s VapoRub is borderline addictive to me, it reminds me of when my mom used to come into my room and check on me when I was running a fever as a child. She would put Vicks under my nose, usually after some words of worry and a cup of tea. I loved the way she treated me when I was little and ill. When I got older, this stopped, but it never deterred me from trying to fake something in lieu of chasing this treatment. I treasure every moment I wasn’t begging for her to love me properly, though they are few and far between, they stay polished somewhere on a shelf in my mind.

• I’ve become obsessed with a woman on Instagram, @gracecreativeco (x), who makes videos suggesting different types of captions for different types of posts. If I were British, I would describe her as “cheeky,” but I’m American, so I guess I have to address her cringe nature but I’m me, so obviously quite charmed by her. I love to imagine her escaping from her husband and going into another room when she gets a couple of really good ideas. I like thinking about her account as her little secret, though in reality, she’s probably very loud about it.

• A gay guy read my chart the other night over drinks with friends at Fanelli’s and told me that my life will be constant war. I think that’s something I already know. I’ve heard similar stuff from astrology heads after I pass my Co-Star across the table. The rhythm of my life is quite disturbing to me, I feel like my external is mismatched with my internal. The turbulence of it all—the events and encounters—seem so unbalanced with how sensitive I am. It feels unfair to be this emotionally frail with the life that I carry, but I think if I were to achieve peace, I would be quite frustrated by it; war is all I know.

  

• Spent my birthday in bed with the flu. I could try to find ways to be mad about it, but it was a birthday that seemed fitting for the year I had. It was a violent and self-contained year; mostly, it felt like yarn unspooling. Spending the first day of 27 in bed surrounded by tissues didn’t really surprise me, if anything, God intended this. My friend Will did come by the apartment and drop some soup he had made for me, which made me feel loved, but other than that, very violent, very self-contained.

• I stand by Normal Girl (x) by SZA being a Christmas song.

• I feel like Mick Jagger in the way that my body is falling apart, but I have so many things that I need to do that I’d rather not investigate why my toe has been hurting for 3 weeks. Does that make sense?

  

• Spent Christmas with only Taryn (x). The Christmases I’ve spent with friends strike such a stark comparison to those I spent with my family before I left home. It used to be a time of year I dreaded, but now it’s so easy it’s stupid. We got Chinese at Hop Kee, made videos, and watched Rap World (x) on the couch in our pajamas after we returned home. I wish my family could know how easy it is to have a good Christmas; it was always something that was made complicated as a means to overcompensate and prove some passive-aggression point to our extended family. I also wish my parents could see what I look like happy on Christmas now, but due to our history, I guess that just must remain a secret.

• I know I’m reaching some point of true insanity because I’m beginning to believe that Mystical Magical (x) by Benson Boone is one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard. I wake up in the morning excited to listen to it. Things are dark over here.

• I’ve spent most of this month preparing for my one-woman show, I SAID WHAT I SAID. The idea for it came to me in the middle of last month, and it’s been a very frantic and crazy-making process putting it together. The piece is time-sensitive; it’s about my digital footprint & 2025, and I felt like I had to perform it for the first time as close to the first day of the year as possible. This year has been hell, and I didn’t really know how to process it without making something about it, I’ve also been curious about testing my honesty reflex outside of the internet for a bit now. I grew up performing, but after college, I lost interest in taking the stage due to other people’s opinions of me, which is always a massive mistake. Though I feel insane, the whole process has been quite romantic. I like going to the theater, rehearsing, and eating my Chick-fil-A in the morning, though I hate going home and sitting with the content, the emotions have caught me by surprise. I didn’t think the process of reviewing my entire year would shake me because I do that on a small scale here each month, but I was extremely mistaken. I’ve probably cried for 7 days in a row. Hope it’s all worth it.

• I spent my last moments of 2025 with a handful of people I didn’t know all that well. We sat around a fire in the backyard of someone’s apartment in Bed-Stuy. It wasn’t awkward, but I did make everyone go around and share their full government names because I felt like we should feel some type of closeness entering a calendar year together. The last photo I took of 2025 was of the leg tattoos of one of these strangers, who was eager to show them off when the topic of bad tattoos came up: “Justin” and “Bieber,” arched in Impact font across both of his legs. Obviously, I took a picture, and obviously, I thought it was the perfect visual to end this stupid year on. I ended up coming home around 3, but stayed up talking with Taryn until 6. My show goes up tomorrow, and I feel insane about it. Hm. Crazy life.

  

  Tickets for the second performance of my show are still available (x), not sure why the time is in military time on the link, but I guess I can never be perfect..

xoxo mackenzie.

happy new year we did it.