There is nothing enjoyable about living a lesson. It’s uncomfortable. Every morning is a question, and most nights are quiet and miserable if spent alone. I’m not sure if the pain I’m experiencing is karmic or the residue of a growing pain; either way, I’m hurting.
For a moment, with the change in the weather, I thought that whatever kept me tense when it was colder would melt away, but maybe that’s my fault for believing that metaphors could hold truth in real life. If anything, my sadnesses seem clearer in this new season. I know them. I understand them. They’ve lived with me for so long that I’ve grown to know their shape and defects, but for some reason, I can’t grab them by the shoulder and point them in the direction of the door. It’s frustrating.
Obviously, I’m still parked, stuck, and thinking about love. I’m tired of it at this point, but it seems as if my brain has grown attached to this small game of taking my troubles and shaking them, bringing the things I’d love to forget about to the top of the pile for combing over and nausea. I’ve reached a point where I don’t like myself all that much when I’m alone, hours spent on my phone, liking the same Twitter garble about unlovability and “lustful losers,” always ending these stretches with the same conclusion: I’m something pathetic right now.
And I know the amount of time I have on my hands must be contributing to this, but to dismiss what I’m feeling completely because of how my days are spent feels wrong. I have loser thoughts. I act like a loser. My body behaves loserishly, like the times I cry after masturbation and feel so embarrassed, even though my audience is only myself, God, four walls, and a ceiling.
I feel so displeasured to be me. “I feel so untouched right now”, though I am certain this moment will conclude once forces bigger than me allow me to step outside of it. But for now, I have to swallow this misery as purpose. It’s my purpose to be miserable right now. It’s my purpose to hate myself for making the mistakes everyone else does. It’s my purpose to be so uncomfortable that I’ve mastered appearing normal.
It’s strange to feel so morbid in the month of May. To waste beautiful days, smiling and only kinda meaning it, while wanting to hit yourself on the side of your head with a hammer, praying that maybe tomorrow will be the day you wake up released from the pattern that’s killing you.
I did think that I was stronger than this way of thinking. I thought I had shoved this stuff away in some playlist from high school, but I guess I was wrong. I guess this is a part of me that just comes and goes, and all I can do right now is wish for it to leave me alone.
Here are my notes from May:
Thought it would be funny to listen to “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith as I walked home in the rain from my haircut, hoodie up, no umbrella. Sometimes I forget my own rules. A little while ago, while fully bitchily explaining my discomfort with a friend’s boyfriend’s hyper-aware but hyper-cringe Instagram humor, I coined the phrase, “We are all the irony we create.” As it left my mouth for the first time, it immediately joined my verbal rotation as a rule to notice and live by. I don’t know why I forgot about it on my walk home earlier this month. Even moments of private irony are susceptible to this. I ended up overriding whatever lol I was anticipating and giving myself over to Elliott completely, crying before I reached my block and ruining my day before noon.
I like nude fishnets a lot.
Sat by the window using this laser hair removal device I bought off Amazon two months ago. The verdict is still out on whether it works or not, but the money’s already spent, so I hope it’s doing something. I do like that it’s able to give me a little bit of pause, though. I have to keep it plugged in while using it, and I’m thankful it’s one of the only devices I own that wasn’t created with multitasking in mind. I usually set it up on my desk by the window and click the button while looking into a tiny mirror. Sometimes I’ll listen to music or Who? Weekly (x), but this time I was distracted, catching the couple in the building next to me in the middle of something silly. The girl slapping the boy through his shorts, both of them jerking back in what I assume was laughter immediately after, before disappearing from the frame of the window. Yes, it made me feel jealous, but I was unable to look away. I clicked my button along the lines of my mouth and kept my eyes fixed on the window, hoping they would return. Haven’t seen them in a few days.
I’m never trying to attend a “spooktacular”. Every waking moment of my life is a “spooktacular.” Why would I willingly show up to one?
I was without AC for the first bit of the heat wave, and my body decided to slip back into a mode it’s quite familiar with now. It seems like every 11 days, I get an awful sinus infection that keep me home and in bed for half a week. Sometimes they feel like they were given to me from God as a sign to slow down, and other times they feel very devilish, serving as a reminder of how gross I am and how badly I knock my body around. This time around, being sick didn’t feel so godly, the only choice I had was to try to sleep it off, checking the weather after naps, hoping for a dip in the heat, at some point writing in my notes app in the midst of sweaty sickness something in broken English about my room feeling like a spaceship full of heat.
I felt strangely sad after finding out Spirit Airlines had shut down. Something about living in a flight path and catching a yellow plane in the sky occasionally made me feel like I was living in a children’s drawing. Yes, I’ve had awful trips on Spirit like everybody else, and I’ll miss their financial convenience, but something about the lack of thought of no more yellow planes makes my heart pit.
Got dropped by my manager. He told me that I was lazy and frustrating, also known for disappearing at times. All of those things might be true, but I didn’t like hearing him say it. I’ve been represented by him for almost three years. It felt strange having a “we should end things” conversation with someone on a professional level. I haven’t really experienced much of that since I tend to do most of my work alone. He raised his voice at me, and that bothered me for about a week, but now I’ve come around to it; I’m bad at giving people what they want sometimes.
Been having an awful string of nightmares. I told a friend the other day that this worries me deeply. “I can’t become someone who is awful at sleeping; I have almost everything wrong with me except that, and I can’t afford for that to begin now.”
Went to the Frankie Cosmos Next Thing 10 Year Anniversary show at Bowery Ballroom alone, immediately ran into a longtime internet friend, Anja (x), and clung to her and her boyfriend for most of the night. Both of them teased me when I left our spot up front to grab a Red Bull and returned with a white sugar-free Monster that I forced them to share with me in a manner that can only be described as cautious and prepubescent. It felt good, though, being there. The last time I was at Bowery Ballroom was about 10 years ago for a Mac DeMarco show, roughly 24 hours after I got my wisdom teeth removed, which felt well matched and set the mood for the night. I cried when Greta played “Outside With The Cuties,” a song that’s always given me this sense of warm wholeness that I’ve strived to find in other places in my life. I’ve always admired the world that Greta carved out for herself within Frankie Cosmos. While watching, I wondered why I don’t let myself disappear into it more often, and whether I’m still able to. These days, I feel like all the pieces around me move too quickly for me to escape my own reality for even a moment. That’s just the way I feel, and I know it’s wrong—I lie in bed way too often. I should figure out how to find the time.
My friend Rachel (x) stopped me at a party and told me that she thought I was a great writer. These things always take me by surprise. Only lately have I felt confident enough in my writing to accept a compliment, though I always find it a little funny when someone says that to me. I really view writing as something to try at, and I’m thankful to have a platform like this where I can continue trying in public. As someone who grew up with every hallmark of a struggling student (vyvanse, special ed, a 504 plan) pinned to them, I’m always brought to the boiling point of a blush when someone feels the need to tell me my work is more than legible.
Had a sleepover with Nicole (x) and Taryn (x) at Nicole’s hilariously located apartment right off Times Square. It occurred to me that this was the first sleepover I’ve had in quite some time that had nothing to do with travel or boys. I’ve been pretty glum these days and really needed to sit around with the girls who know me best. We played Truth or Dare for about two hours before Taryn headed off to bed, and Nicole and I huddled around my phone playing “Stalkie” (x), an iPhone game made by what seems to be a child that simulates going through someone else’s phone. (Yes, I paid 6 dollars for it. idk)
Older women would tell me that all men are horrible, and I never believed them, but now I’ve become the older woman with younger friends who just can’t help but lay out a general warning. It’s funny watching their eyes disconnect because of disbelief, but this is a cycle, and unfortunately, it will repeat itself.
Though I have complained about it, my solitude has given me a lot of creative freedom. After about a year of saying I would, I finally installed security cameras in my bedroom. It’s been a dream of mine to surveil myself for quite some time, but I haven’t been living the type of life that supports that until recently. I find myself forgetting they’re here, and other times being painfully aware of their presence, as if they fill the room like another body. For now, since they are quite new, I’m unsure whether they are contributing to this feeling of loneliness I’ve been having or making it better, but that’s what experiments are for: creating new questions.
I’ve been having this fantasy about going on vacation. I do think I’m owed some time away from the city—a chance to lie in another bed somewhere, where there is nothing for me to tend to and nobody to hang out with. I’ve been telling people I’m aiming to go to Marathon, Florida, which may seem like a random choice, but ever since my teenage years, I’ve sung the Tennis song “Marathon” in my head whenever I’m idling, and it feels like that might be some kind of sign. I was supposed to be there now, but my health and schedule have me stuck here for the foreseeable future. I hope to get away before the summer ends, but with every passing day, that seems less and less possible.
Randomly, I’m in an ad in the new issue of Sex Mag (x). John Maus is on the cover, and I’m right there on the inside, modeling a pair of sandals. It’s so funny to see myself like this, not that I don’t recognize myself, it just seems a little mismatched with this moment in time. If anything, it feels like a glamorous prank— I spend all day sitting around thinking about how much of a loser I am, but I’m also on the inside of a magazine a lot of my friends read. I know the scales are off I just don’t know how to fix them.
This month ends in the dentist’s chair in Ridgewood. Root canal. Something about going to the dentist will always give me empathy for pets. The woman performing my procedure, confused by all my shaking, asked if I had ever even been to the dentist before. I told her yes. “I just have a larger amount of fear than most.” I kept my eyes closed for most of the process and thought about all the dogs I know, and how terrified they probably are when met with things like this. Though it wasn’t as bad as I imagined it would be, I still think the fear I feel in rooms like these will never truly go away. It didn’t hurt; it mostly felt random. Now—I’m at home now, feeling funny and ready to return to my loop—this time unsick, but still resting from something that needs time to heal. It never ends.
xoxoxoxo
-mackenzie
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