Should I capitalize your name? Do you have a name? “brain” lowercase felt inappropriate. You know what? I’m getting off topic already. But, you know that. You already know what I’m here for.
I am so sorry – you must feel like fucking shit right now. I bet you’re rolling your eyes watching me write this. Like “Oh, she’s fucking sorry? Great. Thanks. Yeah, that’ll totally reverse all the damage you’ve done to me. Hey guys, guys! She’s sorry!.” Does it feel unfair to not have your own set of eyes to roll? I mean, you can really only use mine. Tell you what – I’ll roll mine at me for you.
As you know, we haven’t slept properly in weeks. Two weeks, to be exact. A fortnight. Well, there was that one day where we sort of kind of slept okay. But for the most part, it’s been dire straits in the sleep department. And unfortunately, in addition to my half masters in psychology from NYU (did you know I was a psych major?), I recently showed my husband multiple videos about how lack of sleep makes you gain weight and increases your risk of developing Alzheimer’s, in an attempt to scare him into creating a sleep routine. So I’m keenly aware of how much I’m fucking you up. And his sleep is still shitty and now I’m panicking about gaining weight and forgetting who my daughter is, like what happened to my mom’s mom. Wait, no. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have to worry about that one! Man, the benefits of not having kids just keep rolling in, don’t they?
You know we’re predisposed to Alzheimer’s, right? I’ve only mentioned it like 40 times…this week. I just figure constant panic is a form of keeping your brain active. And so is trying to remember how to fucking spell Alzheimer’s.
Anyways, I can practically feel your folds moving farther and farther away from one another like that Alzheimered brain they showed us in class. You’re just creating canyons of inactivity and lost words up there, I bet. A real national park dedicated to one of the most depressing human experiences.
You know what would help us sleep? Benadryl. Yeah, turns out Benadryl increases risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Learned that one from Twitter even though at least 5 medical professionals, including 2 psychiatrists, knew I was taking it nightly for years.
All this panic. I know we could really use some klonopin. Hey, speaking of klonopin, did you know it increases risk of Alzheimer’s? It took them 10 years to tell me that one.
Hey, quick question – how does the whole song stuck in my head thing work? I mean, do you control it? Because, if so, I gotta ask – 18 hours of the Mariokart end of race song? Really? I mean you’re still going.
And that’s another thing! Maybe if you wouldn’t play it so loudly at 4 in the morning we could sleep better! Are you playing the game up there while I’m sleeping? Or are you just reliving the memories of me playing? I’d say get a life but your life is kind of dependent on mine, isn’t it? Alright point taken!
This is supposed to be a love letter. That’s what I told my therapist I would write.
I will try to do right by you. I’ll eat some fatty fish for dinner (even though there’s a huge scarcity problem, you know that, right?), I’ll exercise (even though I do literally 6 times a week. Are you paying attention to any of that?), and I’ll fucking start meditating again, okay? Will you please forgive me if I do all of that?
Shit. Fuck. Does that mean I have to forgive myself?
I just started genuinely having a panic attack about the fact that the past year basically just didn’t happen. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a LOT happened. So much on a daily basis, in fact, that you could probably convincingly spread one week of news out though an entire year of a political drama and it wouldn’t be any worse than House of Cards. And I’m already hearing the LA Yogis saying “Oh, but so much happened. So much growth and reflection not as just a country but as individuals.” Shut the fuck up that’s not what I’m talking about. We can address that when the next time I eat an edible I fall off the happy side of this existential fence.
Temporally speaking (that’s in terms of time. Get on my fucking level), we measure our lives by events. Definitely by the big ones like college or breakups or deaths. But also ones that signify yearly routines. When I think about Christmas in terms of passage of time, for example, I think “The company holiday party and seeing my family.” And the last time either of those happened was fucking 2019 and now it’s 2021.
HOLY SHIT.
Now, it has to be pointed out that when people go on “wow wanna feel old?” tangents, I have been known to go into a fiery rage about how everyone is stupid and can’t grasp the simple concept of the passage of time and of course you’re older now. Wouldn’t it be fucking weird if you weren’t?
So now, here I am, being amazed by the strange nature of the passage of time.
But you know what honestly still fuck those people because you have a birthday every year but you have a pandemic like every 100 years so no it still doesn’t make me feel old that Macaulay Culkin is 40. It would be FUCKING INSANE if he were still 10. Who wants to live in a world where they wake up at 30 and the kid you saw in the movie when you were 8 is STILL A CHILD.
Basically what I’m saying is, holy fucking shit this is insane. And let it be insane. You do not have to make sense of something for it to be okay.
In fact, similar to how it would be fucking weird if Will Smith were still a teenager, it would be bizarre if you didn’t feel strange about the passage of time after a world altering event occurred.
I remember that after I left grad school, I stopped being able to remember precisely what year something happened because I lost the externally imposed year markers. I mean, sure, years have numbers but that has nothing to do with us personally. 2009 isn’t called “Arielle tries weed for the first time and freaks out and who knew 11 years later she’d be writing an impassioned post about how it feels like it’s only 10 years later” year. I mean, “Junior Year” isn’t that intricate either, but it has to do with you personally.
So I’ve decided we should retroactively assign personal meaning labels to every single month since the pandemic started. Actually, since a few months before the pandemic started for the sake of continuity. Let’s call them thing like “Sprongles” instead of months. That’s just one, example, of course. If you made it to a 100th therapy session, for example, you’d have had a “Flungle.” I would say years instead of months, but it hasn’t been enough years yet to implement that kind of schedule and god willing we won’t need to switch to years but I’ll take it up with the panel in a couple Mlambles.
So, loves, cling to your Sprongles and Flungles and Mlambles and be kind to yourselves.
I want to understand the people who are always doing something while waiting for someone. You know who I mean – the person who is somehow interrupted while doing a project of some sort at 5:05 when you were supposed to meet them at 5 and they throw you a casual “Oh, hey” like they forgot why they were there.
I have always been baffled by this, but now that we are in a world of sitting in our houses and waiting for Zoom appointments to begin, I’m even more aware of it. The other day, I was waiting for a virtual hangout with my high school friends to begin and I frantically started trying to think of something to look occupied with before realizing that that’s fucking psychotic. I’m in my house alone waiting to talk to people. What could I be doing?
Here’s why it gets me: I never want to be doing anything when I’m waiting for someone. I mean, I do, but only so that I look cool and casual. I’ve never actually had the desire to learn how to crochet while waiting for a 4:00 video meeting. So pretty much if I’m doing something when they arrive (or log on) it’s because I didn’t want to seem like I was just sitting there waiting for them EVEN THOUGH THAT’S ALL I SHOULD NEED TO BE DOING. Thus, I’m working on the assumption that most people who are mid-novel when you catch them are FAKERS.*
*I have precisely one friend who I believe is authentic in her constant project doing, and she has always been involved in some whimsical pursuit most moments of most days in all the 15+ years I’ve known her (hi, Miden).
Maybe I’m just different though. Maybe some people are just that casual about everything they do. I personally really don’t like to be caught unawares so I have no desire for escapism 15 minutes leading up to a social interaction. Can people really just not bear to be ripped away from their hobbies for a few minutes? I don’t even like to be doing something when I’m on hold with utilities companies. I literally just sit there listening to their shitty attempts to get me to use the website instead (do you really think I didn’t already try to solve this problem online before subjecting myself to this?) for hours. Once, I was on hold with the electric company so long I absolutely had to run errands and I was a shell of a human walking around the grocery store clutching the phone to my ear as if I was listening to my grandmother’s last words.
So, okay, that’s probably a bit excessive now that I’ve seen it all written out.
But can you all please accept that it really is okay to just stare at your computer for a few minutes drinking water anxiously? PLEASE.
When you’re stuck at home for over a week, no matter how much you try to keep some semblance of a schedule, you find yourself asking questions like “Did I brush my teeth this morning?” and “Did I ever end up taking that shit yesterday or was that the day before?”
If you are like me, you’re in quarantine by yourself so this is a one person Q&A session in which you learn that apparently your ability to manage basic bodily functions depended upon going out in public at specified times every day.
Another thing I learned today is that the government taxes severance pay. I assume they just want to make it hurt extra to make sure you can still feel anything.
I keep seeing that the government will send us all $1,200 – the senate is voting on it today – which is great but also I have a feeling they don’t use Venmo and that this might take some time and effort on our parts. Not that I have a recommendation for how best to go about this. I have never claimed to be good at large scale logistics and sure I was an accounting assistant but for like a 20 person company…why do I feel like I’m in a job interview with myself? Oh, right, because America never just takes care of its people without having them “earn” it.
Why isn’t our actual official motto “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”? Does the country have a motto? I know states do. Virginia’s is “Sic semper tyrannis” which means “thus always to tyrants.” It’s admittedly a little lame and useless without the accompanying graphic of a man standing on top of another man. Do other states’ mottos require visual aids?
Of course now that I’ve actually sat down to do some work I really do need to take that shit that I’m pretty sure never happened yesterday. Also, I just put a tampon in, so there goes that rare resource.
No one really talks about how complicated tampons and pooping is. For those who aren’t aware, you can keep a tampon in while you pee (although it should be changed at least every 8 hours lest you DIE INSTANTLY of toxic shock syndrome according to everyone’s 6th grade health class), but you kind of have to tuck the string up momentarily so you don’t get pee all over the string. It’s much tougher to try to keep one in while pooping, though. For one thing, you just don’t want to risk getting the string tangled up in that mess but primarily, it’s just difficult to keep it in. The reason most women shit while giving birth (if you didn’t already know this, congrats you’re learning two things) is the same reason it’s hard to keep a tampon in while pooping – you’re pushing with the same muscles.
You might be wondering what the big deal is about taking a tampon out every time you go to the bathroom. “Surely, you must have to swap them out frequently anyways and you have enough control over your bowels to space these visits out accordingly,” you might be thinking.
You have so much faith in me.
First of all, I don’t have very much control to begin with. Secondly, it’s not always so simple. Some days of your period are quite light. On those days, you might put one in and have to poop an hour later and since your period is so light it’s quite painful to take the tampon out because it’s basically a dry wad of cotton. Furthermore, having your period can make your poops quite unpredictable. We call these Period Poops. They’re similar to Booze Poops in consistency, urgency, and surprise. So I might have just put one in while going pee and then suddenly needed to shit 10 minutes later and there goes a hardly used tampon during a pandemic with a shortage of resources.
Typically, I live in a world of anxiety. We don’t love each other, but we have grown quite familiar, like longtime roommates.
If my brain were a restaurant, anxiety would be the waiter I always get and very, very occasionally, I’ll be there at an off time of day or stay later than usual and I’ll catch a shift change. A waiter I haven’t seen in years will come by and I’ll be halfway through wondering what the fuck happened to anxiety when this intruder says “Hi, I’m depression. Anxiety is closing out for the day so I’ll be taking care of you.”
This happened to me the other day.
I’m not good at depression. I don’t handle it well. My boyfriend had never seen it before so he was even more lost than I was. It was a dumpster fire if there were a dumpster fire version of sobbing while saying “Why don’t you want to fuck me right now?” Well, for one, you are on fire.
There were a lot of things going on. Which even my roommate (my real one, not anxiety) could tell from the way I walked from my room to the front door the next morning:
Roommate: Hun, what’s wrong?
Me: Well, primarily, I’m in a fight with my therapist.
It is true. I had had a disagreement with my therapist. But not while I was in the room with her. I decided to wait until a day later to get pissed off and e-mail her a diatribe about my feelings on quality of scientific research and my hatred of instagram health coaches. The e-mail was (not at all aggressively) titled “Birth control findings and other pseudo science,” and the thread eventually included the sentence, “I don’t know how to say this in a way that isn’t blunt but I don’t really want to pay you for me to tell you why you’re wrong.” (God bless you, Nikki).
In addition to that I had recently learned that I would probably be seeing one of my favorite friends less due to a job change, I was bummed my boyfriend and I hadn’t been spending as much “quality time” together because we’d both been sick, and I was about to get my period. As I’m reading this, I’m thinking that this is really not a lot. But my brain was sure convinced it was.
The day that I left my apartment looking like such a sad muppet my lovely roommate noticed, I went to a couple’s massage that I had gotten my boyfriend for Christmas.
I was a bitch to him the whole way there. And we didn’t even ride together.
I just kept sending him angry voice memos. (God bless you, too). Merry Christmas!
One of the things that was making me even crankier than my puffy, post-nighttime sob eyelids was the fact that I really had to pee and we were already cutting it close to the start time of our massage. The first thing I did after signing in was ask about the bathroom and then I blacked out because I saw a plumber performing major surgery on the toilet that I felt couldn’t possibly be completed between 11:58 and 12:00 pm. I briefly hoped there might be a secondary toilet but, no. There would be no peeing for me.
Let’s take a moment to discuss Pee Anxiety.
Pee anxiety is when your anxiety about having a place to pee is so great that even if you didn’t have to pee, somehow, upon learning that you would not have anywhere to pee, you would suddenly manifest a full bladder.
Except I really did have to pee quite badly. You know what does not help having to pee quite badly? Having a stranger touch your naked body for an hour.
The room we were in was, of course, right across from the toilet where the plumber was using one of those motorized toilet jabbers (I did light googling and nothing was helpful. You either know what I’m talking about or you don’t. No judgement either way). The Relaxing Massage Music playlist was not near enough to me to even remotely drown out the sounds of the machine, which basically sounds like someone failing to start a chainsaw 150 times in a row (I would later learn from my boyfriend, who was much closer to the speaker, that the music was on such a short loop that he would often opt out of hearing it to switch back over to listening to the plumber).
On top of the mechanical sounds was the plumber yelling at the owner of the spa while she laughed at him.
There is something truly magical about a world that is even more of a literal shit show than your own brain. I could not stop laughing. Why would my massage possibly be any less absurd than my last 24 hours?
These are the moments I feel most connected to the universe, or Spirit, or my guides, or God, or whatever you want to call it.
I like to imagine them talking like this:
Godthing1: Oh man she’s a mess right now.
Godthing2: Did you hear she thinks she’s going to find her zen at a massage parlor? Like she thinks there’s going to be soft music playing and gorgeous, plush white towels and billowing incense and cucumber water and somehow a soft breeze.
Godthing1: Oh that’s fucking great. Okay let’s have her have to pee really bad and not be able to use the toilet and the plumber is really loud and there’s an ever so faint scent of pipes and shit and of course a Thai woman on top of her beating the shit out of her while laughing with the other woman.
Godthing2: To like teach her not to take shit so seriously and find the humor in things.
Godthing1: Yeah sure whatever.
They just fucking get me, you know?
Truly I was cured by this experience. I’m sure the actual massage helped, too, but mostly I need to be snapped out of taking things way too seriously. Which is hard! Because even if you know you’re being a drama queen it might not hit you on a deep level until you’re trying to meditate and your cat shits on the floor.
Alls I’m sayins is, sometimes the world actually helps you remember who you are; you just have to listen long enough to hear the motorized toilet jabber. And if you’re super lucky you’ll have very forgiving people who are willing to deal with you in the meantime.
About a year ago, my therapist, based on the things I was saying, asked me if I was worried about getting fat. I immediately said “no!” and knew I was lying.
And I NEVER lie to my therapist. She’ll be saying extremely insightful things about what I’ve shared with her and then she’ll ask me what my thoughts are on that and I’ll say “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about any of that. I was thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner and I want to leave and this is annoying.”
Weight has always taken up a large chunk of my brain power. For the majority of my life, I was severely underweight. No matter what I did, I couldn’t gain weight and it was extremely difficult to even keep the little weight I had. People would tell me to eat food or they would say they hated me or they would say “I hate you eat some food.” Whenever I didn’t finish a meal, I was paranoid everyone thought I was anorexic and I was probably right a lot of the time.
I don’t know when the switch happened, but now I can’t seem to stop putting on weight. It’s nothing excessive; no one’s like “Holy shit what the fuck happened to you are you pregnant do you have a thyroid problem are you pregnant with a thyroid problem does your fetus have a thyroid problem.” But it’s been a gradual and steady increase over the past 3 years or so.
I know I’m getting older. I’m turning 30 this year. There was never any way I was going to keep looking like I did at 20 and thank fucking god for that because I was about 90 pounds. But Jesus Fucking Christ (his full name), I eat well and I’m active what the fuck. DO I have a thyroid problem?! I don’t know! Except probably not because I got tested for it a couple years ago when I was spiraling out about this.
It super pisses me off that this is mostly self inflicted shame. This is the era of self acceptance – I mean we have a long fucking way to go but it is sooooo much better than it was when I was a kid and before then. But in a weird way that also makes this extremely confusing. I think “Okay, my body is not exactly where I want it to be. I used to be extremely active. I will cut back some on the carbs and I will make a point of being more physically active than I am.” But then I’ll see a post from people I admire deeply that is all about how diets are bullshit and rolls on your stomach aren’t a bad thing and you’re gorgeous goddammit.
And they’re both right!
Being a woman in 2020 is deciding to go on a juice cleanse and then 10 minutes later being talked out of it by a song and then repeating the cycle until you die in your meaningless meatsuit.
I don’t know how much I should care. I don’t know who is the most right. I don’t know if there is an answer. All I know is this is driving me insane and I want to wear belly shirts again, goddammit.
Also it is so rude of my brain to give this so much thought to this considering the world is on fire. Perhaps it’s an escape, like a shitty rollercoaster that you get stuck on for so long you lose your lust for adventure and leave the park early (this is not an analogy for suicide, and I’m not lying to you like I did to my therapist).
AND what’s REALLY stupid is that I was unhappy with my body when I was super skinny and now I’m unhappy with my body now that I’ve put on some weight and for some fucking reason my brain can’t go “Upon review, we have discovered that your appearance means nothing so we will discontinue the self hatred protocol, thank you for your time.”
I do not have advice for this! But, like, please message me if you do.
I went on a hike this morning because it’s the first nice weekend day we’ve had in a bit (nice is relative. It’s Los Angeles. You could presumably hike any day of the year, unless of course the mountain is on fire. I’m told people hike in the snow? So nice is relative). Apparently everyone else had the same idea because it was even more packed than usual.
Things that annoy me while hiking:
I get winded walking up the hill to where the hike begins and no one else seems to. I was at the base of the park today and I came upon a toned man with booty shorts yelling to another toned man with booty shorts who was on his balcony in the complex by the park. I could not yell to a friend after walking up the pre hike hike. As a side note, I really wanted to say “This is beautiful, it’s like Romeo and Romeo” but that felt really inappropriate (so I’m writing it in a public blog post instead).
Some people don’t take hiking seriously enough. And I don’t mean to suggest that I’m one of those people that takes it WAY seriously and runs up the hard parts and runs backwards down the easy parts to I guess make them more perilous? I just mean it really annoys me when I’m in hiking shoes panting like I’ve just run here from an active shooter situation and there are people next to me wearing sandals and dresses and having a casual chat. I don’t understand this. I’ve decided it must have something to do with mindset. Like, “I’m working out now” vs “I’m having a leisurely stroll right now” because the answer can’t possibly be that the people walking Runyon in dresses and sandals are so much more in shape than I am that they aren’t breaking a sweat.
Many people seem to not break a sweat. I’m typically of the mind that if someone isn’t sweating during a workout class then they aren’t giving it their all. But you can’t really fake hike a mountain (actually, you can. Hollywood probably does it a lot. Although you can’t fake bring the crew up there and I like to imagine large crews full of people who spend all their free time in a basement eating Cheetos having to climb a mountain carrying heavy equipment, but they’re not the people I’m here to lob unfounded anger at). There somehow really are people who can hike the equivalent of 50 flights of stairs (my phone said 47, but if you parked farther down it could be 50) and land on the peak looking better than they did at the start. They’re always up there taking cute selfies while I arrive hunched over, trying not to vomit, and looking like Meryl Streep in that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where she isn’t wearing makeup and she’s in the middle of a divorce. But worse because I’m not Meryl Streep.
I was going to add “the people who take stupid pictures at the top” to the list but checked myself because I made my friend take a picture of me doing a headstand on a helipad on top of a mountain in Hawaii a few weeks ago (which is actually pretty badass if I do say so myself and I try to work this into as many conversations as possible, obviously).
Really my frustrations are just about me wondering why it is so hard for me when it seems so effortless for everyone else. This is pretty much how I feel about life generally. Also I did not realize this was the point of this post when I began so this is as much of annoying surprise to me as it is to you. I spend a lot of my time on the way up trying to get away from people. I feel superior when I surpass people but then I have to stop for a break and eventually they catch up with me and I think “god, how can they be going this fast?!” But if we keep meeting up at the same places, technically we are going at the same pace just in different ways. And anyways why the fuck do I care about how people I’ve never met before perform on a hike?
I once told someone that for about 5 minutes after strenuous cardio, such as a hike, I feel the tightness of anxiety leave my chest fully and I get to see what life is like for someone without my condition, and it is truly beautiful. And I think maybe I should focus on that rather than where whatshisfuck is walking in relation to me. Although I will say, on the way down I kept crossing paths with this woman who kept calling out to her dog in the most goddamn annoying way and I don’t mind saying I never want to hike with her again, even if it meant a whole hour of no anxiety.
I had to get a cavity filled today which, I’ve learned, is just a once yearly procedure once you reach the age of 100 no matter how diligently you brush (I swear! Every morning and night! That’s better than most of you!).
I planned to leave work early around 4:30 and was rushing to get a few last minute things done before heading out when I got a text from my dentist (very forward) asking if we couldn’t possibly move my appointment back half an hour to 5:30 because she was running behind.
The options the dentist’s office text gave me were to reply with either “NO” or “YES” to pushing the appointment half an hour, but really “OKAY SURE BUT I HAD PLANNED AROUND THIS TIME SPECIFICALLY ALL DAY AND I KNOW SHIT HAPPENS AND I DO SUPER APPRECIATE THE HEADS UP BUT I’M AN ANXIOUS PERSON AND ANY SUDDEN CHANGE OF PLANS KIND OF REALLY FUCKS WITH ME AND NOW I DON’T KNOW IF I SHOULD DICK AROUND AT WORK FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR OR JUST HEAD OUT NOW AS PLANNED BUT THEN I MIGHT HAVE TO PAY EXTRA FOR PARKING LONGER BUT I’M NOT GOING TO RESCHEDULE SO YES” felt more appropriate.
Despite having lived in LA for 6 years and having lived in cities for forever, I was still somehow not prepared for the insane traffic in a busy commercial part of town. It took me forever to find parking that wasn’t approximately half a million dollars which made me anxious I’d be late so I decided to call the office ahead since they’d been kind enough to text me ahead. It went as follows:
Me: Hi it’s Arielle my appointment was moved to 5:30 and now I think I will be late.
Nice woman just trying to do her job: Okay no problem! Do you know how many minutes?
Me: WHAT?
Nice woman: Do you know about how many minutes you’ll be late?
Me: I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG IT’LL TAKE ME TO FIND PARKING! (Cars and parking really stress me the fuck out)
Nice woman: Oh is the garage closed?
Me: No but you don’t validate and I’m not rich so.
Nice woman: Well the 99 cent store has free two hour parking!
Me: OKAY.
This is the part where I realized I should have taken time to come to terms with the fact that this would be stressful for me. Changes of plans are stressful for me. Finding parking at rush hour is stressful for me. Getting a cavity filled is stressful for me because regular Novocain gives me panic attacks and the kind without norepinephrine doesn’t last very long and I usually end up feeling some pain while they drill. On top of this, I’d gotten up early this morning to go on a run which I NEVER do but I couldn’t go because my sciatica was acting up and my leg was basically on fire. And also I’m searching for a new roommate which is just the slightly gray cloud that’ll be over my head until January 15th, but that’s another post. It would have been a good time to take a preemptive Klonopin and do a brief mindfulness meditation.
BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED AND HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED.
I entered the office and my (extremely lovely and sweet and talented and too good for all of us we don’t deserver her honestly. Beverly Grove Dentistry. Check them out) dentist greeted me:
Dentist: How are you?!
Me: UGH.
Dentist: Oh no, that kind of day?
Me: Well, you’re about to drill a hole in my head and I’ve not head a great afternoon.
Dentist: Oh, okay. I’m sorry. Here is the consent form. Now there are things that could happen but it’s very rare and-
Me: Do you want me to read or to listen?
Dentist: Oh…I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet, then…
Yeah. I know.
I did apologize – twice. And I explained that I was just feeling really anxious about the situation since I tend to have trouble with the novocain. She was understanding but didn’t coddle me which honestly I super respect. The people pleaser in me wanted her to be like “Arielle it’s okay! Thank you so much for apologizing. I love you. You’re my favorite patient.” But she said “Hey, we all have bad days,” and then stabbed me in the jaw with a syringe. Respect.
They worked quickly and efficiently, as they always do. She finished up, asked me how it felt, and then gave me the run down of aftercare. Then she kindly sent me on my way. I thought about giving her one last “Sorry again for being a bitch!” but realized it would be more for me than for her.
As I walked out thinking about the transformation of my emotions while there and how she was able to transform my teeth, I started to tongue around to feel my newly healed and filled tooth and I realized she’d turned my tooth into a fucking vampire fang.
Now, before I elaborate I ask that you not take this as any sort of review of her work. She and her associates do incredible work. I have extremely sharp teeth to begin with and lots of shit happens when a cavity is being filled. She might have filled it a bit sharp while drilling or perhaps some of the filling latched into my chompy part and extended the already existing sword I have coming out of my face. And most importantly, she asked me how it felt.
The thing about anxiety is, you can’t often properly appraise situations in the moment. It basically went like:
Dentist: How does it feel?
Me: Normalish?
Dentist: Numbish?
Me: No, it feels normal….as far as I can tell?
But it’s really hard to tell how your tooth feels when you mouth is numb and you’ve just had like 5 implements of destruction and 10 different pastes and substances and tinctures marinating your tongue for the past 15 minutes. So I made the executive to end the overwhelming interaction quickly and determined that my tooth felt “toothish.”
So I have a fuckin vampire fang in the back of my mouth. I guess I’ll have to call back and request to not have a vampire fang in the back of my mouth. But I’m testing it on the other side of my mouth and I’m not sure my tongue really ever comes into much contact with my back most molar, so is it even a problem.
And if we’re being honest, with the amount I clench my teeth and night, I’ll probably grind the fang down in 6 month’s time, anyway.
As an artist with no idea how my creative career will turn out, I often look to the stories of people I’m a fan of. I listen to podcasts they appear on, I read their books; I seek out anything I can get my hands on that’ll tell me “They did this, so you can, too.”
I’ve listened to directors go on about how they spent every day watching films for an entire summer. I hear comedians talk about how many times they listened to their favorite comic’s album in 6th grade. I’ve read so many stories about writers and filmmakers who would get together with friends every day after school and just make movies.
I don’t relate to any of this.
I don’t remember ever picking up any sort of recording device to make anything. I didn’t know a single joke of a single comedian until at least high school, and I definitely wasn’t going out and buying their albums. And I saw Jaws for the first time about a week ago.
I feel like I must not belong. I mean, how? How can I possibly be a director or a writer if I don’t have as much natural passion for it as all these people I look up to?
Simply put, and it took me awhile to realize this, I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS A FUCKING OPTION!
Here’s the deal, alright? I have spent so much of my life thinking I’m not meant for creative pursuits because I didn’t BLEED ART as a child. And now that I’ve had this realization I’m about to blow your fucking mind with, I’m not going to shut up about it:
Whenever I hear male artists wax poetic about all of their fun, creative pursuits as a child I wonder how much farther along in my career I’d be if I hadn’t spent my entire childhood wondering how to be hot enough for boys.
Oh, really? Your love for Paul Thomas Anderson’s depiction of the beauty of flaws within the human soul began your freshman year of high school when you spent an entire day watching every film he’d ever created? That must have been super fucking fun and transformative. I was busy doing crunches while reading a Cosmo article about how to give a blowjob.
I don’t even want to know how many hours total I spent as a youth reading about:*
How to have the perfect stomach
How to have the perfect hair
How to have the perfect skin
How to have the perfect eyebrows
How to do eye makeup
How to shave your pits
How to shave your legs
The best way to remove crotch hair
How to get ride of cellulite
How to curl your hair
How to straighten your hair
How to straighten and then curl your hair
How to curl your hair with a hair straightener
How much should you brush your hair?
What hair color works best with my eyes?
How to paint your toe nails
What foods to eat to make your hair and nails grow faster
What underwear is popular?
What kind of bra should I have?
What size should my boobs be?
When will my boobs get bigger?
Will I ever have boobs?
How to tan quickly
How to use fake tan lotion
How much tan is enough tan
How should I stand so I look cute? (I shit you not, I once adopted the standing position of a reality TV “star” because I thought it looked super cute on the poster).
How short should my shorts be?
What clothing should I wear to X event?
When will my period come?
How to use a tampon
How long to wear a tampon
How to remove a tampon
How to dispose of a tampon
How to dispose of a tampon without bothering anyone
How to kiss
What to do on a date
How to get a date
Am I too skinny
How skinny is too skinny
Will I ever be less skinny
*this is not an exhaustive list
After going to the hair salon with my mother and sister for 3 hours, going shopping for clothing, going to the store for beauty products, reading a magazine article about what way we should all be dressing this summer, doing crunches and squats, deep conditioning my hair, shaving my legs, and watching an hour of reality TV, I didn’t have a whole lot of fucking time left over for layin around listening to George Carlin talk about the word “fuck.”
I’m super fucking pissed that I spent so much of my life on bullshit that doesn’t matter and I want my time back.
This is why I think women should be granted extra time on their lives.
When I was in high school, I tested for various learning disabilities and I was given extra time to take tests due to my setbacks. Why the FUCK am I expected to be at the same place as a 29 year old dude who just sold his first feature when he probably started writing it while I was on my back Nairing off my pubes?
Now, I have always hated being treated differently. In gym class as a kid sometimes people would throw out the option of giving the girls a head start in races against the boys. I was always vehemently against it because I felt that if we won with a head start it wasn’t truly a win (and to be frank, I agree with myself with this particular instance). But when it comes to becoming a person, we just aren’t starting at the same place.
This is not a new concept. There’s a very poignant video (that I’m sure you’ve seen at least ten times since every quasi political slash inspirational Facebook friend you have will have shared it) that shows a group of people in a footrace and their starting point in the race is dependent on their various advantages, or lack thereof, in life. Obviously, regardless of their running abilities, the people with the most advantage win the race. It is a really simple but effective way of showing how privilege affects people’s success in life.
As a white woman, I have so much of an advantage over so many people, and I would never claim otherwise. But I can no longer deny how much of a setback being a woman in America is when it comes to becoming a creator.
I’m so absurdly happy to see the massive movement towards breaking all of this shit apart by people such as Lizzo, Jamella Jamil, Megan Jayne Crabbe and so so many more. Things are actually changing for us and I’m so excited for all the girls who are growing up in this new era of self acceptance and self actualization for women.
These women (and some companies) are making incredible changes, but that does not change the fact that so many of us were deeply damaged before we had a chance to meet them.
I can’t get that time back, but I want to stop feeling bad for being 15 years behind on my journey.
When I think really hard, I can remember spending a night discovering Whose Line and having my mind blown that something could be so funny. It’s in there somewhere, I just have to dig it the fuck out.
I had a pretty busy Saturday, which isn’t typical for me. By busy I mean I did 3 things, none of which were particularly taxing, but for me any day with a lot of moving pieces makes me anxious. I was to attend the women’s march downtown with my friends and then head from there to a hospital at which some of us would donate platelets and then later that night I’d be meeting up with different friends downtown for a comedy show. It was an interesting day, and I’m going to tell you about it now.
I went to the LA women’s march with my friend Sarah and her family and friends. As I was getting ready for the march that morning, I couldn’t really find any Women’s March themed attire, by which I mean I gave myself 20 minutes to get ready and if I’d really put in the effort I could at least have pulled a Rosie the Riveter updo and some lipstick out of my ass. I eventually mostly gave up and landed on a t-shirt I have with a print of a cat lifting its leg to lick its butthole. Add my running shoes, my Athleta leggings, and a fanny pack and I was march ready.
To get my anxious mind and broken body prepared for the march, I took a lot of CBD oil. I know CBD is not the part of weed that gets you high but I swear to god sometimes if I take a lot I get a mild case of the goofies. This resulted in a period of about 2 hours that morning where I continually mixed up the nouns in a lot of my sentences. I’d say shit like “Are we going to take a march to the lyft?” Most noteworthy, however, was when I entered the pre march brunch at Sarah’s excited to tell everyone about the cool shirt I had with a cat’s anus on it and I enthusiastically exclaimed “I’m wearing a cat with a butt’s anus!”
The march was beautiful and inspiring as always. My friend and I both got goosebumps once we found the crowd. We walked with everyone to the end point, enjoying signs that were hilarious and heartbreaking, inspiring and dark. It is such a marvelously overwhelming experience to be surrounded by so many people who have your back, even if the leaders of your country don’t.
Then we got to the end and couldn’t hear a single fucking thing any of the speakers were saying.
Sarah’s boyf had an appointment shortly thereafter to donate platelets and we all said we’d come along and donate too, if we could. So we left the inaudible but probably inspiring speeches to get some tacos and head to the hospital.
I didn’t really know about platelets until my friend told me about them. They’re apparently often in higher demand than blood because they can’t be kept for as long. They’re used for many things, I’m sure, but often times they’re very helpful for cancer patients. Because of this, most hospitals are desperate for platelets.
Which is hilarious because half of us were turned away for not meeting their standards. I would say it’s easier to buy a gun than to donate platelets but as we’ve all recently become aware, it’s easier to buy a gun than do a lot of things.
It’s easier to get your license renewed the week your passport expires and you only have a couple hours because you have to leave for work at 1 and the DMV’s entire system shuts down when you’re at the front of the line than it is to donate platelets.
Sarah had done her research and already knew she’d be turned away due to a medication she takes daily. Our friend Marco was turned away because he used to live in Italy and we as a nation are apparently very worried about a resurgence of Mad Cow Disease. Sarah’s mother couldn’t donate platelets because, as it turns out, anyone who’s EVER BEEN PREGNANT EVEN A LITTLE BIT could possibly have a chemical in their system that renders their platelets nontransferable. For some reason, she was still able to donate blood.
I, on the other hand, have been avoiding the thought of donating blood or platelets for years because I have a history of passing out when giving blood for tests and I get myself all woozy just thinking about it. It’s not the needles that bother me. I’m fine with watching nurses put needles into my veins and if you really wanted to, I’d probably let you stab me in a fleshy area with a needle because I’m a good friend and I support your dreams. What bothers me is the idea of something leaving my body that should be staying in my body. And since I’ve passed out in the past, my brain immediately associates blood loss with fainting.
I really wanted to get the fuck over this though and do some good in the world. So all day I made sure no one talked to me about it and that I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. It would be best if I just powered through and did the thing and didn’t give myself a chance to freak out. I even put in airpods Sarah provided me with when the nurses were explaining the procedure to the other people in our group.
Finally it was my turn to go in and answer the tech’s questions and test my blood to make sure I was good to go. I was so fucking ready, by which I mean I made sure my brain had no idea what was going on and I just sang songs loudly to it to distract it. During the assessment, I felt it was important to mention that I sometimes pass out when I have blood drawn. When I said this, he stopped taking notes so abruptly it was as if I’d just informed him that I did heroin with a dirty needle on the way over while eating beef from 1980’s England. He said he had to talk to the nurse and left me in the room alone.
He came back in and said that I couldn’t donate because the doctor was not there that day and due to the risk of me passing out they didn’t feel it was safe for me.
He continued speaking but I felt like I had been punched in the gut and I didn’t hear anything else he said. I started to cry and said “I’ll just go.” I ran out to the lobby and started cry-explaining to Sarah what happened. She said it wasn’t my fault and most everyone else got rejected too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my fault. I felt like I was just scared of passing out and that I should just learn to get over the association my brain has formed between blood being drawn and passing out. I felt like I shouldn’t have said anything about my past and just stuck it out.I still feel those things strongly, but I know that if my friend told me that that had happened to them, I would absolutely not judge them and I would have felt that it was in fact safer for them to wait to have a doctor present due to the potential risk. I guess that’s something I’m just going to have to fucking deal with eventually. I just want to feel useful for something! Can I donate other stuff? Eyebrow hairs? Nails, perhaps? A pervasive need to feel needed?
Eventually with time and help from my amazing friend, I got the fuck over myself and we had some fun doing crosswords, drinking coffee, and petting dogs in the waiting room while the two people who were special enough to be accepted sat through their procedures.
I grew increasingly anxious about the time because I had to make it to a comedy show by 6, we were pretty far from there, and I’d hitched a ride with the heroes and other rejects. I wanted to make it out in time to go home, change, and eat before heading out to the show downtown. Eventually, we realized the only way I’d make it in time would be if everyone, including dog, joined me on my detour downtown to drop me off.
I waited outside the for both of my friends. One of them, Kristin, is friend’s with one of the comedians in the show so we had VIP tickets waiting for us at will-call. This arrangement sounds cool but being an insane person, it made me very anxious. So I stood outside the venue in my cat anus shirt and fanny pack frantically texting them to hurry up because I felt like an idiot and all that waiting room coffee was hittin my own butt’s anus pretty hard.
When they got there, we went in and got our tickets and backstage access wristbands. I wanted to shit first since my body had been yelling at me about it for approx 45 minutes except it ended up being a FUCKING FALSE ALARM. So I headed in to meet the hosts of one of my all time favorite podcasts with a full colon, an empty stomach, and sweaty clothes I’d worn all day. Because of this, I was more worried than normal that I’d fangirl and be a nonverbal idiot.
Immediately when we got back stage, Dave, one of the comedians, gave us pizza and said “Did you wear that shirt because Gareth loves cats? Gareth you have to see this.” Then while filling my tummy, I told them the story about how I somehow managed to say “cat with a butt’s anus” and they loved it so much we took this picture:
Then we just chatted for a bit and had a fun time before heading back up to the show where we were seated with their friends and family. And as always, the show was fucking hilarious. Then my friend drove me home because we live super close to one another (and also because she loves me and is an angel) and we had a great fucking time in the car. I got home safely, ate some noms, and went to bed.
This could just be a fun story but I always feel the need to make there be a moral of some sort. There were so many times in the day that my anxious thoughts crept up and nearly ruined my day. I worried that I’d panic at the march or that my back pain would keep me from walking. I worried that I didn’t eat enough after the march to feel okay enough to donate platelets. I worried that I wouldn’t have time to drive home and change and get properly ready for the show. I worried that I’d have to take an expensive lyft at some point since I didn’t have my car. I worried that I’d feel like crap during the show and not be able to enjoy it or enjoy meeting them.
But it ended up being a really magical day. And if I were any other writer, I’d say “So I learned that when I let go, everything turns out okay.” But that is not me and that is not the case. There are things about my body and my life that make it such that it is genuinely hard for me to go with the flow at times. I get hungry easily. I have back pain that makes it so that I can’t walk around a lot at times. I don’t have enough money to take lyfts whenever if I find myself with out my car or a ride. I have anxiety that wears me out quickly.
But I do want to say that it is hard for me to forget about all of that panic and enjoy the awesome day that did happen. Oftentimes, even when things turn out great, I feel the same as I would if they had not because the anxiety is still in my bloodstream and remains very real to me. I want to take a moment to enjoy how perfectly perfect the day ended up being, partly due to luck, but largely due to me deciding to let go just enough. Just enough to trust my friends to have my back and just enough to be myself.
And if you follow those easy steps you, too, can talk about cat anuses with some of your favorite entertainers.
Midnight Oatmeal 