Wednesday, September 11, 2019

This week has been an incredibly difficult one. I'm going through a strange, undefinable thing with a best friend, taking space for the better of things. It feels like a breakup but even that feels like a bad title.

I wept all weekend and finally came out of the tears early monday morning. I listened to sad music and walked around the streets either on the verge of tears or already crying, happy to have a non-verbal agreement with strangers on the street to not interrupt my exposé. I even told a girl I bumped into on the street that I was going to go find some place to let out a thorough cry and she said, "You know, you really do have a weird face. But like, in a cool way. Ugh sorry, gonna go get a coffee, text me!"

Monday night, I went to go see Joanna Newsom perform in East Harlem. It was just what I needed as accidental therapy. I listened to her mostly in high school and junior high but this past summer I had become re-obsessed with her entire discography. I didn't think I'd get to go but an old coworker had an extra ticket and knew that I loved her so she offered me the open seat. The show was so powerful and beautiful that all it's power and beauty was ineffective till after the show ended. It wasn't till I was on the train going back home that I felt how wild it was.

Yesterday evening, I laid in my bed listening to skateboarders shriek and go by, a few last jingles of the ice cream truck's summer residency outside my apartment, and researched Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). It's something I read with hesitance and secrecy. I clutch my phone as if I'm watching violent porn even though its rather the opposite. I get overwhelmed with all the information and at the end of every medical webpage is usually a short message that makes me get all wet-eyed. If you are struggling and need help, there are plenty of people who support you and are here to help (555) 555-5555. I don't know why it makes me so sorrowful to read little messages like this from a faceless place but it simply does. It seems to only highlight the isolation that comes with these sort of conversations, alone in the afternoon, lying on my bed.

Last night, another friend of mine was going to Joanna Newsom and had extra tickets for me and one other person. I brought my friend Allegra at the last minute. I was happy to see her play two nights in a row. The show was a completely different setlist than the night before and it was even better. The songs were more personal for me this time. She played songs that I had a real heavy attachment to when I had moved to Hungary and spent a lot of time alone on trains and walking the streets. It didn't necessarily make me cry but it made me melancholy and cozy. At the end of the show, my friend who brought Allegra and I asked us if we wanted to go to the greenroom and have wine with Joanna and the crew. Of course I said yes! I don't really like meeting celebrities, especially musicians I have an emotional attachment to. I convinced myself to say yes because free wine sounded good, too. In the greenroom, there were two British girls in their late 20's or early 30's. They seemed to be merely fans having somehow been invited in. They were very sweet and pretty. I liked hearing them talk to Joanna as I was sitting across from them talking to Joanna's friends. I know that they didn't know her from before then because they introduced themselves and pulled out little pictures for her to sign. They stuck around the whole time I was there, talking to Joanna about how she writes her lyrics. I kept my distance from Joanna because I felt strange being back there, with her. I spoke minimally to her. I have listened to her every day pretty consistently now so it's a little uncomfortable for me to try and pretend I haven't drunkenly cried on my living room floor listening to a handful of her songs. When I left, I felt I should say bye and thank you to her. When I went up to her, she took a small step back and said I was pretty or something. I don't remember what word she used but it warmed my heart. After 4 consecutive days of misery and sadness, it's nice to hear a simple thing like that from someone you admire on a certain kind of level.

I saw two movies in one day last week. I liked them both.

I am going to Michigan tomorrow morning for a funeral. I'm rather excited to get out of the city and be in the early autumnal nature. I will try to write a lot.
On a brighter side, I am applying for a new job tomorrow. I'm excited for something new to happen to me.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

upward spiral

I was sad for about 2 weeks. I feel out of it now but am worried that I may have just temporarily become disillusioned and the sadness will strike again any minute!

I was sad for multiple reasons and I won't write about any of them at all today. I'm not worried they will trigger me back into the state I was in but simply because I don't find any of the reasons all that interesting yet. It feels like coming back from a vacation and not wanting to share all the little details. It becomes exhausting to retell and explain over and over where you were and why you went there.

I went to my friend Dan's debut concert last night. Many of the people in the crowd I knew or recognized. I grew anxious to talk to any of them and kept coming up with excuses as to why I had to "go over there!" or  "Be right back, one second!" I saw an old old friend who I had to cut ties with which sent me flying across the room out of her eyesight. I had no energy to play kind with her but still felt guilty on the train ride home. I also felt guilty because there was one girl there who I really admired and she stopped me to talk chat but I still had no interest in small talk. I like her in intimate settings and knew that talking to her would only worsen my already frantic energy. I wanted to text her after to the show and apologize but I must've accidentally deleted her number at some point.

On Sunday, I went out all night with three of my friends. I played music on a radio station till around 6pm and then we all went to a hotel roof in Williamsburg. It was so funny to us, we never do that sort of thing, especially in Williamsburg. It was windy and the four of us drank vodka on the rocks. My crush was DJ-ing but I had no interest in speaking to him because it seemed to be too much effort. I was comfortable on the outdoor furniture thinking about how happy I finally was.

We then all went to a party that my friend Tess suggested we go to. It was in a brownstone in Bed-Stuy and was filled with a lot of people I have known a long while. Most them working in art and galleries and art buying and art selling. I was probably the youngest person there, the oldest being somewhere in their mid-30's. They were all coked-out and dolly-eyed but remained kind. I sat on the stoop most of the night and talked to the people I liked. I grew bored and Ethan and Eddie and I all left and went to a club in Ridgewood. We danced for a bit but I kept finding myself outside walking around, looking through all the fences and watching people walk home. Ethan and Eddie came out and found me and we all agreed to just walk around. Ridgewood is going through a very quick and steady era of gentrification and I really saw it that night. The new apartments look so horrendous and out of place. Plastic siding and oddly shaped windows. Each building looking cheaper than the next but still asking high rents. Buildings of silver and and burnt orange, vanity addresses half-lit and distracting. These expensive shacks are oddly illuminated, likely for a sense of safety for it's residents. This sight depressed me and made the glossy high-rises of Manhattan look fine.

Ethan and I took a car back to the city at 6 in the morning and he offered me some poppers. We had stupidly been with them all weekend and we decided that it was time to get rid of them. I poured them out and threw the little jar on a pile of garbage bags. I woke feeling good again.

While I was reading outside this morning, I overheard a large older woman talking to a man she was walking with. They seemed to be on something or maybe just drunk. Her voice was scratchy and almost like a loud whisper. She said, "And when I reached East Broadway, the tears went away!" "And who said that?" her friend asked. "All of em'," she said, "they tease me 'bout you all the time like that." He then kicked his Coca-Cola can into the middle of the street and cheered. I still wonder what that all meant and can't go an hour without thinking about it.

Last night, for the first time in so long, I sat in my kitchen till the early morning and read at my table. It's one of my favorite ways of relaxing and I had abandoned that routine during the heat of the summer when my depression became me. I wasn't home at all during my midsummer depression. I was outside trying to find validation from people, spending money, going out too much, working too much, trying to find ways of busying myself that didn't involve any sort of practice. I was deeply uninterested in any sense of order. I recited mantras to myself as I walked all along the streets, trying to convince myself that the reason I was oh-so-depressed was utterly banal and didn't deserve the outpour of energy I was feeding it. I was what they call, spiraling. It happens to me every summer like clockwork, however, I'm used to it. It's like a friend coming to town at the end of every July and overstaying her welcome till the end of August. She makes me cry, eat garbage food, say things I shouldn't say, think things I shouldn't think, and she takes away the little desire I have left to create anything worthy of my time. She left town at some point recently and I've been spending more time at home and sleeping more. I've been eating better and reading again, writing again. Since she left, my apartment is cleaner and clothes are hanging in the closet and not in a shapeless bails on the floor. It's still rather hot out, which is likely the reason for my Annual Summer Spiral, but the sense of Autumn just around the bend is putting me back together again.

Without a doubt, there were some good things that happened during my spiral that I want to acknowledge I got a new job working at a cactus store that requires me to just sit outside and make sure no one steals anything. They don't really sell cacti in the part of the store that I work in, just incense and some t-shirts. People usually come just to see the building as it has been a mystery to the neighborhood for quite a while. I sit outside once the shade reaches the store front at around 2:30pm. I sit there with an extra chair waiting to be sat in by a friend or an acquaintance who happens by. Some people sit with me for hours, catching up, smoking, drinking coffee or wine in paper cups. My friend Mathilde who seems to be one of the only people in my life lately who really has a way with saying what I want to hear came to visit me a lot during my spiral. She would talk to me about her life and I'd talk to her about mine and we would find all the comparisons and analyze them. Of course Tess was here for my entire spiral and so was Rewa. Ethan too, in some ways. It is generally harder for me to open up to men the way I do to women. Another great thing that happened during my spiral was a rekindled relationship with Joanna Newsom's music. I had a thorough and obsessive phase that put me in sweet states of short pleasure and distraction.

I'm going home next week to attend my grandfather's funeral. It's apparently not a real funeral, more of a ceremony about his life and less about his death. He passed away a few months ago so I'm sure the energy will be more positive than the funerals of those who passed away 1 week prior. I'm excited to go but more-so overwhelmed. My ability to socialize with extended family is very tasking and exhausting. To explain to each and every one of them what my life situation is and only to get stern looks in return is getting rather old. The predictability of what will ensue at each extended family affair is making me grimace by just thinking about it. The gestures and conversations are so premeditated and robotic it forces me to mold into whatever it is I think they would like. I say things they want to hear and tell white lies to keep furrowed brows at bay and I begin to morph details of my life to eliminate low-drama This unfortunately makes for a very dry experience.

-kiss.
m.