just as well

I never think about my mother. This is remarkable, because arguably, she was the primary source of my trauma. She must have been. She was a chain-smoking alcoholic with severe, untreated mental illness who shut herself away physically (behind the closed and locked doors of her bedroom) and emotionally (never talking about anything other than superficial, day-to-day things).

It stands to reason I would feel resentment, or some kind of delayed devastation. It stands to reason I’d be here hurting, even now, from the lack of attention and affection. And maybe in some parallel universe I am. Maybe in that universe I’ve spent the years since her death trying to puzzle out her silence and her sadness—trying to understand who she was, so I can be okay with what she wasn’t.

But not this one. In this one, she’s never amounted to more than a collection of shadowy, flat memories. A mother figure going through the motions, carefully containing all her pain while she made breakfast or drove me to school, waiting until she could be alone again with whatever wounds she never cared to heal.

I can’t even bring myself to cry over her. I truly believe that any therapist who’d try to trigger me into feeling anything for her would get nowhere. I’d just answer the probing questions matter-of-factly, because that is how I feel about her, to the depths of my soul. As a matter of fact, I did not know my mother at all. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t hurt to say that. Why would I be sad over the loss of something I never had?

I keep a photo of her on my bookcase. It’s undated, but she couldn’t have been even thirty, because the man standing beside her isn’t my dad. The man standing beside her is looking at her, not the camera. He’s grinning deviously, clearly captivated. But she’s not looking back at him. She’s looking at the camera, her chin high and her gaze inscrutable. And yet, that photo feels like the closest I will ever get to understanding her. There’s a darkness in her eyes but she looks defiant. Uncaptured. She looks like everything she was supposed to be.

Maybe somewhere inside of me there are promises I could make to her. I promise to stay uncaptured, because you did not. I promise not to hide away, not to nurse my pain in secret until it swallows me whole, like yours did you.

But I don’t even know if this would make her happy. So I guess it’s just as well I make them only to myself.

running list of things I want to talk about

the joy and utter fucking relief of being perma-single
LA people > Chicago people
the amor fati I feel about all aspects of my life, in spite of everything
on quitting plants
what my days & weekends look like
modern life is awful awful awful and I (mostly) refuse to participate in it
on being a self-diagnosed autistic
life lessons at 50
creativity > productivity
my retirement plan
recent scandalous (not really) hookup stories
why I don’t take selfies anymore
on being an urban hermit
the sexiest thing a man can do is stay single forever
my cousin Doug
lol “body count”
my criticisms of modern therapy
a defense of materialism
why every woman should dump her partner immediately
I’m convinced my dad was autistic, too
What Madison Schemitz, Germaine Greer, & Sherry Turkle have in common
vulnerability is now an act of rebellion
the attention economy
desiring longevity is weird
le mariage est le cercueil, les enfants sont les clous
I hate AI and if you use it, I probably hate you, too
my Reddit addiction
thoughts on 4B (and thoughts on the 4B subbreddit)
how Democrats lost themselves the election, or “Are we done with identity politics now, you idiots?”
content creators you should know about
self-brandizement is cringe AF
social media ruined concerts and festivals
thoughts on corporate culture and LinkedIn lunatics
some thoughts reflections on some ex-boyfriends past relationships
hilarious, crazy, scandalous shit I can only confess now that it’s over
it’s not depression, it’s gestures vaguely at entire world

three positives

I guess we can start with some positives.

my health

So I am fifty now, which is absolutely bananas. It is bananas not just because of how quickly the last couple of decades have flown by, but because I don’t feel anywhere near it. I have felt thirty-two since I was thirty-two. The needle hasn’t budged. I feel mentally thirty-two and I feel physically thirty-two. I can’t relate to the jokes that people my age make about aches and pains. I can’t relate to the memes. I don’t get stiff, I don’t have trouble getting up from the floor, I don’t have trouble breaking into a run to catch a green light, and I don’t have trouble staying awake until 3am when I want to. I still go dancing, and when I go, I dance nonstop for hours. I suppose I’m in peri menopause, because my periods have just started to become irregular—but whatever other symptoms come with that, I’m not experiencing. My sex drive is still very much there, though I am perfectly content tending to that myself (with great creativity & gusto I might add). On the one hand I don’t want to jinx myself, but on the other I suspect that this will be another one of my weird health quirks. I’ll probably not have any of the usual menopause complaints; I’ll just randomly get hit with another huge chronic condition at some point.

Last year I got serious about eating healthy. Every single meal I eat now is homemade, organic, and hot. I eat the same things almost every day, week after week. When I self-diagnosed as autistic (don’t worry, we’ll get into it), I leaned into it, hard. That included abandoning a forced interest in cooking a huge variety of foods for the sake of cooking a huge variety of foods. The good news is, the things I eat are pretty healthy.

Breakfast every day is spinach, one egg yolk, and buttered sourdough toast. Lunch is either steamed broccoli & carrots and mashed potatoes, or roasted Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes—or sweet potato by itself. Dinner is angel hair pasta with homemade sauce (tomato, heavy onion & garlic, fresh herbs). Lots of whole milk, kombucha, Pom juice. Snacks are yogurt or fruit or nuts, or, if I’m stressed, the processed garbage we stock at work. Most weekends, I treat myself to salmon sashimi. Most weekends I also make pancakes at some point. If you’re keeping track, that means every single day I eat bread, potatoes, and pasta. Twenty-five year old me would never believe it. Carbs central here. But I’m getting vegetables every single day, too.

I sleep between nine and ten hours a night. I work out in the mornings (stretching, weights, my yoga-lates nonsense, then a 30-minute treadmill run). I aim for every day, but I usually end up hitting 4 or 5 days a week. I weigh what I did in high school: 113 pounds. I absolutely love my body. Not everything about my life is great, but that is a thing I do have. I feel incredible in my own skin. I feel incredible in my clothes. I can’t stop aging, but it is a huge source of self-esteem and pride that I remain as fit as I do.

Of course, none of this (the healthy eating, consistent fitness, and adequate sleep) would be possible if I was in a relationship. That is one reason I will never, ever, ever, ever be in a relationship again (don’t worry, we’ll get into it).

I never get sick. I don’t get colds or the flu, ever. About six weeks ago I walked 40 minutes home from the club at 3am, in heavily ripped jeans, in 7 degrees. Couldn’t even feel my legs when I got home. Didn’t get sick. I don’t get headaches or allergies. I don’t even get cramps.

I do, however, have my roster of forever conditions: hypothyroidism, chronic idiopathic urticaria (last breakout was years ago), and tinnitus (I’ve no way of knowing how bad my case of it is, but if I had to guess I’d say 6.5/7 out of 10). The tinnitus deserves its own post, since I know so many people suffer from it but don’t really talk about it. I absolutely have to wear glasses to read or be at the computer. That’s a bummer, but standard I guess. Oh and I just had the first all-clear from the dentist in years, so yay on that.

All in all, I feel amazing, physically speaking.

---

social support system

I like to say that my social support system is small but mighty. In fact it is tiny but mighty.

A thing I went through after I moved to Chicago that I have been back and forth about disclosing, is that I told a lot of people to fuck all the way off to Jupiter, within about a year and a half of moving here. And by that I mean I either ghosted them or told them off and then ghosted them.

I have been back and forth about disclosing any of this, because it took me a long time to process and get perspective & clarity. For a long time I felt very sad and very ashamed, like I had done something wrong. Like I had deserved the treatment I got from people who I—well, I adored my friends. I just fucking adored them. You know. You read about it for years.

Long story short: people were just not available to me when I needed them. They were super duper available for their social media. They were super duper available to be on their phones instead of interacting with me. They had been super duper ready to sponge up my support and love when they were going through loss or change or heartache. But they had fuck-all for me, when it was my turn.

New city, halfway across the country. New job in a new industry. Then another new job in another new industry. Didn’t know a soul here. No family. All of this, they knew. And I was very vocal and very clear and very humble in asking for support. Really basic shit, too, like, “Do you think that instead of squeezing me in while you’re driving, you could set aside time to call when you can really focus on our conversation?” Or, in a couple of cases, it was realizing straight male friends had only had use for me when they thought there was a chance I’d fuck them.

So it was off to Jupiter with several people, and while it nearly killed me, it had to be done.

Cut to now, though. I am down to three people I can count on, but they are ride or die. Like, legitimately ride or die. They take me as I am. They check in. They carve out time. They are present when we talk. Just their existence in the world bolsters me. They are enough. I will share more at some point.

---

my jerb

I’m never going to talk about my job. Not the industry, not my role, not my responsibilities—nothing. That is because my job is the least interesting thing about me. Seriously. It’s so boring. My thoughts, my opinions, the shit I get up to on the weekends—those are all much, much more interesting than my job.

But I will say that I was incredibly, insanely lucky to get it. I didn’t even go after it. It was just offered to me, because some people liked me and thought I seemed competent and cool.

I work under almost exclusively women, all the way up. Compensation is great. The office is a twenty-minute walk from my place. Overtime is never demanded, but it is routinely offered. No dress code—I literally wear sweats or yoga pants at least one day a week. There are bonuses and benefits, perks and swag galore. I have the most adorably decorated cubicle you can imagine, in a high rise office overlooking the river. We only WFH one day a week—but to me, that is a plus. I hate working from home. (I mean, I like it for one day, since it’s a chance to grab a little extra time for errands and housework. But any more than that I would not want.)

---

Those are three indisputable positives. They felt good to write.

oh god, here she goes again

Hi.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh god, here she goes again. It’ll be up for a day, then she’ll yank it, or go private.” Totally fair. Totally possible. But I need to try something, because other things aren’t really working. I have been struggling with dark, difficult feelings, and I know that in the past, blogging has saved me. So let’s see what happens.

First I want to explain why I’m even prepared to try. There are three main reasons.

1. Of late I have discovered some content creators (YouTube) who are kind of saving my life. To be totally meta (and briefly self-aggrandizing) about it, I think they are doing for me what I have done for some of you in the past: made you feel okay about certain of your experiences. These creators are speaking to things that I have gone through—am going through—in such perfect parallel to my emotional life, that I felt seen and understood and deeply gratified. They are making me understand that I’m not alone and I’m not crazy. I guess it is a condition of my CPTSD or my autism (or both), that I ever would feel alone in any human experience—because it’s absurd to think that of ourselves. But there we are and here I am.

   Anyway, thanks to them I feel safer to step back into the light.
   

2. I received an absolutely stunning piece of encouragement from a reader, about a week ago. Now, over the years I have been sent dozens of incredible messages. I have them all saved, and I reread them often. The general imprint they have left on me is “What you have done with your writing matters, and it helped me.” And I’m indescribably grateful for that. It’s made me realize that yeah, I actually have had an identifiable career. And it is meaningful—more so than any paid job I could have or hope to have.

   But this letter came at a very black moment for me. I don’t know how much I’m going to get into it, but for now I’ll just say it was black. And the letter was like a pinhole of light I could see at the end of a very long tunnel. And I know that if I can just scrape along, just crawl forward however slowly, that eventually I can step out of the tunnel and enjoy more of that light. Maybe.

   I am hoping she will not mind if I share it:
   
   I'm so glad to see your site still up. It has been a while since I checked it, and I brace a little each time because the thought of it being gone entirely would cause a bit of internal collapse for me. I want to request that if you go to a subscription or login model, I be part of that! I have written you before, and you have graciously responded, and I admire your writing so deeply, and wish that I had printed everything you wrote out, and made a book, and I still hope that you do this, but either way, your words and life have become part of my life in such a strange way. I don't know much about the nature of this reality, but it's funny to me that a person living across the country and who lived such a different experience from mine, speaks to my inner truth in such a profound way. I think of you often and wish that all is going well for you. We smartniks are outliers and life is somehow harder and richer for it, and when I feel alone, I know I have a comrade in arms that I have never met.
   

   It’s impossible to read something like that and not want to be the person she sees in me.
   

3. I don’t care anymore. About anything (other than my health, my sanity, and the health & sanity of my friends). And that is both wonderful and terrible. It is wonderful because attachment (including to outcome) is the root of all suffering. It is terrible because apathy is a death sentence.

   I don’t care anymore about how I am perceived. And that is because while I have long suspected it’s not me, it’s the world around me—finally the proof of that is ubiquitous and indisputable. Nothing is okay anymore, anywhere, for anyone. There are no safe harbors. No one gets out alive, no matter how much money they have. If you don’t suffer in X way, you suffer in Y way.

   I want to talk without shame about all the ways in which I’m struggling, because I know that no matter how well they hide it or lie to themselves, everyone around me is struggling, too. I mean Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

So that’s what’s up. I want to talk again. I don’t even know about what. Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. But I’m here and alive, and I want to be, and that’s a pinhole of light I can see, however tiny.