I’m Normal Until I’m Insane, and Maybe You Are Too.

I feel the need to open with an acknowledgement that I am not writing about the current situation with the Supreme Court and America in general. Part of me feels badly that I’m talking about inconsequential shit when such big and horrible stuff is going on and the rest of me is like you know what fuck it because this is all I have left now. If you don’t want to read this right now, though, I understand. I have, at times, yelled at people for promoting their work on days when shit that I view as tragic has happened and possibly that was just me being a dick. But anyways, that’s not what we’re discussing.

This week we will be talking about how eventually in every relationship (romantic, sexual, friend to a lesser extent) everything will be going great and then I ruin it by getting needy and insecure. Anyone relate? (Please oh god please say yes).

I don’t know why it happened this way, but I kind of started out my romantic career the way others start out drinking: too much too early, in severe excess, and by not shutting the fuck up about it. The way other teenagers drank heavily at parties to cover up the fact that they had yet to formulate a personality, I threw myself into someone else’s world hoping to attach their likes and accomplishments to my own resume.

I somehow decided that all relationships had to be serious and that everything in them carried enormous weight. My first boyfriend was a nice enough guy (and is lovely now. If you’re reading this, I know we were young and stupid and I am sure you’ve grown into a lovely person and I enjoy our occasional exchanges) but did not want to be as serious as I did and he didn’t know how to handle that and I didn’t either. We were together for about 10 months, lost our virginity to each other, and I was certain we would get married. Thinking back on the relationship, all I really remember aside from pockets of happiness here and there was being miserable and anxious. I was always worried about something. I was always trying to fix something. And I wasn’t having any fun. When he tried to break up with me, I wrote him an 8 page letter about why he was wrong and then made him say it was a “break.”

If I had had any sense of self worth and knew who I was as a person, I’d have at some point known that that situation was not for me. But for some reason I didn’t, so I didn’t.

The kind of super shitty part about it is that right after that I dated one of my best friends for about a year and while I’m sure we did stupid and unhealthy things because we were 17, it really was a great match and someone I should have been serious with. So when he broke up with me out of the blue I was devastated and it also kind of reinforced this weird story I was forming in my head of “Relationships are deep, amazing, and serious, and you have to constantly be on guard or they’ll end and everything will be terrible and you’ll have nothing.”

Then rather than, I don’t know, figuring out who I was or joining clubs (I don’t know what people do) I just kept dating person after person chasing the high and trying to cover up the low of the last. Then they would all break my heart because no one can be trusted and if you aren’t constantly checking in to see how everyone is feeling then everything falls apart!

This cycle isn’t super unique. A lot of people fall into a cycle of being addicted to the rush of a new attraction and then insecurity and resentment and distance set in when they realize that maybe it wasn’t what they thought it was. Or whatever, again, I don’t know what other people are doing but that sounds right. Right?

Then one day, many years later, I decided I would make myself be single for awhile and break the cycle of filling the void with another person. So I got a vibrator, kept a journal, and started watching Arrested Development.

And then a few months later I started seeing someone long distance, New York to LA, with almost no prior romantic engagement with them. I can’t be prefect all the time. I mean this is the same year that I stocked up on lentil soup before Hurricane Sandy but forgot to get cash and cried in the middle of a pizza place the day after the storm because I couldn’t buy hot pizza.

Even with the knowledge that I have issues with being my own person in a relationship and even with the strong desire to change, it still gets me.

Nowadays when a relationship of mine ends, with the help of a lot of therapy and meditation and a bunch of other LA magic non bullshit bullshit stuff, I am able to let myself feel the pain of it and give myself the space to recover. I no longer jump right into something to mask the pain or to give me validation. I check in with my motives if I decide to have an “encounter” (listen, my parents might read this. I know it could be better but this is a real concern for me) and ensure that I’m doing it for enjoyment and not to fill a gap in self worth.

After my last relationship ended, while it was hugely painful, I quickly felt I was really able to breathe and be myself again. I started laughing as much as I feel like my true self does. I was excited to work on artistic projects again. I became charming as fuck again. And of course people were into it. Feeling stable and excited, I started….hooking up with a couple of my friends (I’ll get over it eventually!). I wrote a journal entry about one of the encounters and how I had been seeing a couple people (I won’t include the uncomfortable details. Maybe upon private request) and the entry ended with simply, “So honestly things are fucking great.”

And I remember feeling that way. So free and happy and excited and alive and appreciated and loved by my friends.

And then this week, here’s what happened in my head:

“Oh no he’s not texting me as much. Should I not have said that? Am I texting too much? What if he doesn’t actually want to see me? What if he’s not interested anymore? What if he doesn’t feel the way that I feel? How do even I feel? What are you even talking about? Where is this going? How will this end? Do I not want it to end? What would that mean? What have I done? Was that all make believe? I mean, the time together is so fucking wonderful I want it all the time. Why wouldn’t he? Does that mean he doesn’t enjoy it as much as I do? I knew last week when everything felt amazing and I wouldn’t let myself ruin it for me that eventually I would ruin it for me.”

Casual.

And might I remind myself (and tell you, reader, for the first time because you don’t live inside of my head yet) that just a week prior I had told him that he was overstepping boundaries and I didn’t want to hang out all the time and I needed to maintain my independence and keep my oxytocin attachment crap in check because I’m recently out of a thing, as you know. And now I’m the one wanting more time and attention.

Somehow I get in a space where I think the other person isn’t equally capable of having complex needs that have nothing to do with me and change constantly.

I recognized my familiar refrain immediately, yet that brought me little comfort. I was thinking about it a lot on the way home from work yesterday. I thought about how this is just something I’m going to have to be aware of and battle probably forever. And then a friend of mine called me asking for relationship advice. I immediately thought “I’m probably the worst person for the job right now, but go ahead.”

He talked about how he will sometimes be overcome with love for his girlfriend and then the next day he’ll think “I don’t feel that way right now. I’m looking at her and I’m feeling nothing. And then I think were those feelings a lie? If they were a lie, I’m a bad person. She is so perfect and great and if I don’t feel the same way and I really don’t love her as much as I thought I did yesterday then I’m being an awful person by letting her be with me. But then sometimes I’ll start being worried that she doesn’t really like me as much as I like her I mean she’s so perfect. Why would she like me? And then I can’t even enjoy my time with her because I’m so inside my own fucking head and I’m driving myself crazy and ruining the point of the whole thing. Am I insane?”

“Yes, dear friend. And you’re in good company.”

We then talked about how our respective pasts have given us certain false beliefs about relationships that then lead to irrational fears and anxiety. I told him that it would be something he would have to continuously be aware of and work on and that he wouldn’t just step into perfection one day, but slowly progress. And sometimes it won’t feel like you’ve progressed at all. Sometimes it’ll feel like you’re right back where you started. But that’s not true and you can’t listen to that. You just have to keep taking care of yourself and learning to listen to your true self.

Because those thoughts that he had and those thoughts that I had aren’t fucking real. But he and I are extremely stubborn and logical people so we’re really fucking good at convincing ourselves that our irrational fears are rational. Like “Sure this could be fake but also don’t they say that intuition is extremely important in relationships so if I feel like something’s not right I should definitely listen to myself. I mean I don’t want to be one of those people who ignores these feelings for years and ends up in a marriage where no one is happy and then we have to have a messy expensive divorce. You’ve read about how horrible and common divorce is. This is the kind of shit to look out for if we’re to change the way these things work and improve the way society deals with relationships. I mean we’re the future. Be the change you wish to see.”

Uhuh.

I told him about a therapy technique that a lot of people use and that has been super helpful to me. It really helps to name the crazy thoughts and not only name them but make them kind of funny so you help yourself snap out of the belief that what’s going on in your head is somehow the most serious issue on Earth. So I told him how I identify my anxious thoughts.

I’d like you all to meet Stergil. Stergil is a little green, cartoon snake and he wears a ratty tophat. Stergil is a failed vaudeville performer. When I’m doubting my career goals and dreams and wondering if I’m good enough or if anyone cares about what I’m saying, I realize it’s just Stergil being a fucking dick because he feels bad about his failed career and he wants me to feel bad too and he doesn’t want to see anybody succeed. Emily V Gordon talks about the same technique in her amazing book Super You.

Now the truth is, Stergil is a dick but he’s actually coming from a place of wanting to protect me. Stergil knows that I’ve had my heart broken multiple times by people who pulled away from me. But Stergil is still a fucking idiot.

I had only really used Stergil for career issues before, but when I told my friend about him I realized that Stergil also had a lot of failed marriages and he doesn’t believe in letting your guard down in any kind of relationship because everyone will just break your heart anyways.

So now when I am trying to ruin the best fucking shit life has to offer and I think “But why isn’t he texting me back?” I”ll say, “Stergil, listen, I’m sorry your second wife left you too even though she knew how much the first one hurt you but get it the fuck together, man. You can’t keep shittin on everyone else because you feel bad.”

But progress not perfection is the name of the game, as I’ve learned from a friend of mine who’s an avid member of the Al-Anon world. For those who may not know, Al-Anon is kind of like a spinoff of AA and is for people who have alcoholics/addicts in their lives and it helps them with things such as codependence and blah blah blah (this is good journalism). I sound really optimistic and on top of my shit right now but I didn’t this morning or yesterday. I was a bit of a wreck. But I realized that I have a fucking cold and am PMSing so in a very real way I’m less well equipped to reign in Stergil. And one of the reasons I know that Stergil is real and that he’s full of bullshit is that I just took a klonopin and smoked some weed and I FEEL FUCKING FINE. I am myself. I’m sneezing all over the place and I haven’t eaten in 10 years, but I am myself.

The goal of course is to be able to get there without self medicating, even if I do have a prescription and weed is legal and safe (I’m saving the shame I feel about taking medication for my mental health for a whole other blog post). But it helps me know that when I really am being myself, I do not have those thoughts.

Am I Carrie Bradshaw?

This is shaping up to be a bit of a sloppy dismount because, as I mentioned, I am sick right now so I’m not working at full capacity.

So, uh, go find your Stergil and tell them to fuck off. Be yourself. Laugh at things. Don’t take yourself seriously. Listen to your truths and enjoy amazing shit. You deserve it.

Oh and vote in November. Please.

The Day I Broke My Own Heart Because I Didn’t Understand A Story About OJ

This is going to be uncomfortable – but not as uncomfortable as it probably is to be OJ. Or to be murdered by OJ. Or to be orange juice and suddenly hate your own nickname. 

Yesterday I broke up with my boyfriend of a year and change. Is it very early to write about this? Probably. Am I insane? Almost definitely. I have never written about anything like this for public eyes before (unless you count extremely cringeworthy Facebook statuses circa 2007). I think that may be because I’ve felt like my emotions were so out of control I didn’t have anything useful or interesting to say (even in the throes of desperate, soul vomiting heartbreak I’m able to recognize that “BUT WE WERE GOING TO DO SO MUCH TOGETHER” is not a new take on breakup sadness, and while I may be wrapped in a sad bed burrito as I write this, I would sooner sell my soul to multilevel marketing than let the world know that I’m a fucking cliche). But when you’re an artist and you tell people you’re sad, a scene often unfolds  in which they scream at you “USE IT IN YOUR ART!” as if suddenly possessed by the ghost of Bukowski.

So really this is just to shut you all up. I’m using it. Are you happy? I hope not. I’m not!

I won’t bore you with the details of the genesis of our relationship – the only interesting meet cutes I’ve had with people resulted in relationships that were so psychotic they’re worthy of an entire TSwift album. Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction gives the only meetup explanation the world will ever need, so we met “however people meet people.”

Something of note, though, is that I was so tired of relationships not working out that we decided we’d try this thing where when we had issues, we made the decision to *drum roll please* WORK THROUGH IT! That this was even an option blew my fucking mind. And I’m certain it’s the reason we made it past a year. I know a year is nothing to some people, but I am not good at sustainability. Maybe it’s the Gemini in me (or the having parents with unresolved mental health issues and inheriting a hefty endowment of anxiety and insecurities myself), but I have a lot of trouble moving through uncomfortable periods. I convince myself this (whatever “this” is) is how it will always be and boy if that’s the case you’d better leave now because you don’t want to be one of those suckers who’s stuck in some 5 year miserable thing they can’t get out of.

That’s seriously where my mind goes immediately for most issues. And I really mean most issues. We saw The Phantom Thread in theaters together and he absolutely adored every aspect of it, whereas I was sitting there wondering how the fuck I was supposed to find an abusive relationship amusing (eventually I realized that I guess it doesn’t seem that abusive to anyone who has never had someone verbally abusive in their lives, but I could write an entire 20 page post on this issue alone so I’ll cut myself off here). Upon realizing our differing opinions on the film, I fell into a deep pit of despair. I lay in bed crying trying to explain to him that since he enjoyed something that made me so sad we couldn’t possibly ever be happy together. And then I wrote the most intense journal entry of all time (I mean literally intense; I wrote so hard the pen tore holes in the page), which included the sublime line “I feel so much rage inside me I want to throw something,” and then I went on a tangent about how my emotional attachment to my unpopular opinions causes more issues than it should, in which I produced the gem “I feel so utterly alone. Why can’t I be right that St. Vincent is less lyrically complex than she comes off? It has to be that she’s not trying to be lyrically complex? I can’t offer interesting insight or thoughts? I’m just a negative bitch?” Poignant.

So we don’t talk about Daniel Day Lewis anymore, which is convenient timing being that he just retired (thanks, Dan.). AND we talked it through. And continued to talk it through every single time an issue like this came up (and it came up a lot). We talked about how I’m an insecure aggressive bitch about my opinions and he can be a bit of a pretentious dick about his. And we worked on it.

This dedication to each other showed me a side of love I had truly never seen before. But the thing about working through issues together is that some issues are too personal to be a team effort. My issues with anxiety and insecurity have, in the past, been too unresolved personally to possibly be resolved in a relationship. There are things that can only be worked through with a lot of personal dedication and a lot of time. And I think my lovely dude is there with his shit. My shit is nowhere near resolved. I’m like a supersenior at the college of My Shit. But he’s a freshman at the college of His Shit; he’s dedicated, he’s going to class, he’s doing most of his homework, and he wants to make the honor roll.

The fact that he was actively working on his shit is one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. So many people (like, most people) don’t even know what their shit is. I knew I was making a healthy choice for once by choosing to be with someone who actively works on self improvement.

Unfortunately, an extreme desire to graduate doesn’t mean you can take accelerated courses (Jesus I regret picking this analogy. I mean it was good for the introduction of the issue but it’s become really campy and I don’t like it. I’m going to abruptly drop it now). He just wasn’t where I needed him to be with his shit. And we were aware of this. We spoke about it openly and discussed that it would be a deal breaker eventually if it didn’t improve at a particular rate. But again, you can’t just dump 4 years of coursework on someone’s desk and expect them to graduate next week (fuck, sorry).

Yesterday, I woke up happier than I have in a really long time. Maybe you’re used to waking up and not hating the thought of life, but this is a big deal to me. I think I felt okay because for the first time in awhile I wasn’t worried about Us. Though we had questioned the state of our relationship a week prior, the past week had been really great. We were clicking, we got each other, we didn’t get petty or mad about stupid shit like St. Vincent’s lyrical prowess, we chilled and played video games. I was going to go to the gym in the morning but I decided it would be kind of nice to just chill and walk to brunch together which we never do because we’re poor. In fact we hadn’t really just walked anywhere together in months. We had a really nice walk, we enjoyed ourselves at brunch, I put half of my delicious croissanwich in a box to go, and we left to walk back to his place.

On the way he started telling me about the last episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s (I had to google that, I have never once successfully said or typed this man’s name) show where I guess Sacha disguises himself and gets OJ talking about the murders. On a surface level, I got it. Of course that’s what you’d want OJ to talk about on your show where you trick people into showing their true colors. But I wasn’t quite getting the contextual details of how he got him to talk about it or if OJ knew that’s what he’d be talking about. For some reason, I have always struggled with this; I want to understand all of the nuances of what someone is telling me because I don’t know how to feel about it if I don’t understand all the angles or the full message and yet I don’t know how to convey this need to anyone in a way that gets me the answers I’m looking for.

So I had a complete meltdown on Melrose Avenue in which I cried and screamed “BUT WHY WOULD OJ TALK TO A STRANGER ABOUT MURDERING SOMEONE.”

It’s definitely a “trigger” for me. It frustrates me that I can’t seem to just accept the information that people give me and have a normal conversation. It frustrates me that no one else seems to care about or need context as much as I do. And it really frustrates me that I fail to express myself in these moments because I immediately start feeling like a freak about it, like I did when I was 10 and then I proceed to act like a fucking 10 year old. There are a handful of issues that will do this to me. While I’m pretty logical and self aware, I am also a very reactive and emotional person. I have extremely strong reactions to things as they’re happening and then I calm down super quickly and am able to talk about it. In one of Marc Maron’s specials he reflects on how he hasn’t gotten any better about yelling at people, he’s just shortened the time between the outburst and his apology to the point where it’s basically like “FUCK YOU! I’m sorry.” That’s where I’m at, and we’d gotten to a point where he would just let me have my tantrum and then be there to talk when I was done. I have never felt so loved than in those moments.

When we finally got to his place (it took awhile. I stopped to cry on a lot of corners), we began to pick through what happened. I told him about feeling like a freak and hating myself for having this issue, and then something happened that kind of changed everything. He told me that all those times I had those emotional reactions and screamed and cried, he was just pretending to be okay with it and it actually really hurt him.

I almost threw up. I had just told one of my good friends about how beautiful it was that I was with someone who could just let me do my thing and know it wasn’t about them.

But how could it not hurt someone? When it happens, I often think there’s no way I’d be with someone who talked to me that way. I don’t even remember the things I say in those moments because they’re said in such fits of rage and emotion. That’s a scary thought.

I’m going to have a real moment of honesty here. I started this post thinking I’d talk about how we realized he just wasn’t where he needed to be for a healthy relationship. And I think that’s true. But through writing this I’m realizing I’m not a supersenior at the College of My Shit. I’m a fucking Junior who already has Senioritis and is now phoning it in because they’ve made the honor roll all 5 semesters so far. I’ve been resting on the laurels of all of the work I’ve done on myself and I’ve stopped short of the juiciest bits. I’m not saying the goal is to be perfect and never explode at someone. I think people should be able to be the shittiest versions of themselves sometimes and have people in their lives who love them not just despite it but because of it. But if I’m being honest I’ve barely been trying since I got comfortable with our dynamic.

We sat in silence for awhile after he said this. Then I asked him what he was thinking and he talked about his own struggles. We were quiet for about another ten minutes, but my brain was screaming “breaking up is the right choice!” And eventually, I said it out loud. He said he agreed. I got up to pee because I’d been holding it since OJ. Then I packed up my stuff. We both ugly cried for about 20 seconds and I realized if I didn’t leave then I’d change my mind. So I walked out the door and LEFT MY FUCKING HALF CROISSANWICH. I MEAN COME THE FUCK ON. YOU TOOK THE TIME TO USE THE BATHROOM AND PICK YOUR UNDERWEAR OFF THE FLOOR. HOW MUCH TACKIER WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TO TAKE YOUR FOOD?

I cried the whole way to my car and kept stopping to look back, hoping he’d come after me. I don’t know what I was expecting. What was he going to do, walk out of his place in his boxers and say “No! Don’t go! We aren’t actually troubled individuals! Or even if we are, let’s just risk hurting each other in terrible and dramatic ways anyway!”

Actually that does sound nice right now, if I’m being honest.

I’ve never broken up with someone that I love. I have either had my heart broken or I let myself get sick of the person. I feel like I just broke my own heart. I listened to myself and I feel fucking terrible. I’m the worst friend ever.

If you happen to be reading this (I mean him specifically. Anyone who’s reading this is reading this and this message isn’t for just anyone) please accept my beat up, bleeding heart. It’s not a great gift, I know. I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to do with it, but I want you to have it. I guess you can have the half croissanwich, too. It probably tastes better.

Exceptional, or How I’m Constantly Being Sent Home with Someone Else’s Appendix Surgery Video

When I was about 5, my sister went to an amazing sounding summer camp. Every day when we would pick her up, I couldn’t wait to hear her tell me all about all the art projects and swimming and horse riding she had done and all the friends she had. When I was finally old enough to go to the same camp, I had overwhelming first day of school type nerves and excitement. Even though she had told me all about it for years, I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I got there. Not knowing what to expect is one of the main tent poles of the anxiety I’ve had my whole life, so when the head of camp gathered every single camper together and told us “I’m going to list off all of your names and when you hear your name, your group will cheer for you and you’ll run over to them! That’s your group for the rest of the summer!” I was immediately relieved.  I knew the plan and I was pumped.

He began listing off names using a megaphone. Each kid would run excitedly to the group they were assigned to as group cheered and welcome them. As more and more names were listed and more and more groups cheered, I could barely contain my eagerness to be welcomed into my own group and be able to feel special, too. It had occurred to me that it was odd that I hadn’t been called yet considering I usually come first alphabetically, whether by first name or last name, “But look how happy everyone is! I’ll be that happy soon, too.” The group began to thin. “I mean I’m definitely supposed to be here, right? It’s Monday and mommy said Monday we were starting camp. And my sister is here too. And daddy dropped us off. So, yeah, I’m definitely supposed to be here. Unless they meant to drop me somewhere else and got confused? Or maybe I didn’t understand them! Maybe I was supposed to stay in the car! My sister is looking at me. Does that mean I did something stupid and she knows it? Oh boy I don’t know if I’m supposed to be here….”

And then it was just the two of us.

“What are your names?” someone said. I’m sure my sister answered them because we started walking somewhere else with them but I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of every single organ in my body trying to exit out of my mouth in a disorderly fashion.

Eventually they somehow got my mother on the phone and though I could only hear the camp staff’s side of the conversation and I was like 7 and don’t remember much, I will use my educated imagination and say it went something to the effect of:

Camp: Hello this is camp why are you children here?

Mom: Hello camp, this is Mom. What the fuck are you talking about?

Camp: Hello Mom. Your children are not on our list.

Mom: Hello, Camp. That’s news to me since I signed them up weeks ago and gave you money, you fucking shit heads.

Camp: I am sorry, Mom. You are right.

Mom: I know, Camp.

Camp: We will put them in groups now.

Mom: Good. Probably now they’ll be the weirdos because the other kids have had like an extra half hour to bond and have a fully formed in-group mentality and my children will now be seen as outsiders who must be thwarted. Call me please if my children are murdered.

Camp: Roger. Have a nice day.

I went on to have a perfectly fine summer, but this was the beginning of an entire life of being the exception to every system I come into contact with.

Years later, I became a counselor at that same camp. Originally we had a clock-in system where we would just write down our names and arrival times. Eventually, they wanted something more high-tech that would hold us more accountable so they introduced a fingerprint scanning system. One day after work we were all to come into the office and scan our prints so they could set up our clock-in account. The line moved pretty quickly since the process was pretty easy. Then I got to the front.

Camp: Just put your finger down and when it flashes it means it’s got your print and you’re good to go.

Me: It’s not flashing.

Camp: Hm…lift it up and try again?

Me: No.

Camp: Is your finger really cold? Maybe warm it up?

Me: It’s still not working.

Camp: Okay well let’s figure it out tomorrow so everyone else can go home.

They tried to get my fingerprint on file for the next few weeks but eventually gave up. Every morning, they put a clip board next to the fingerprint scanner so that I could sign in on paper. Every day, I dreaded having to explain to whoever was in front of or behind me why I couldn’t do the finger scanner. To this day, I remain the only one in the history of camp who had to continue paper sign-ins.

My freshman year of high school, I was on the dance team. I had danced all of my life up to that point so it was a natural choice for me. But I found that I didn’t love it as much as I used to and decided after the first semester that I would drop dance and try theatre instead. Though I was leaving, I was extremely proud of the work I had done in the first semester. All the dancers worked well together as a group and it is such a rare feeling to feel part of anything in high school. For the winter festival, we did a performance on pointe that everyone kept telling me I was amazing in. It was taped and our pictures would be featured in the yearbook. It was one of the first times I remember feeling accomplished and recognized. When the yearbook finally came, due to the angle of the picture, the only part of me you could see was my foot. I went to look for my name next to the picture and it wasn’t there. The yearbook staff had labeled the picture based off of who they could see and not from an official list of who was on the team. The school completely lost the tape from the winter performance that year. There is no record of me ever having danced at my high school.

The summer of that year, while working at the aforementioned camp, I had to take a week off to get my appendix removed (for the full story, see my page). It was such an ordeal but since I’m usually able to have a good sense of humor about shitty things, I was kind of entertained by the whole thing. When they told us that they send every patient home with the internal video footage from their surgery, I was so excited. There was no way I wasn’t having everyone over for a viewing party of my internal organs. Once I was all stitched up and well enough to go home, they handed me my forms, my aftercare instructions, and a DVD, but:

Hospital: For some reason we weren’t able to save the footage from your surgery, but everyone basically look the same on the inside and we didn’t want to send you home empty handed so here’s a copy of someone else’s surgery.

There’s a clinic I go to when I don’t feel like bothering my regular doctor with my hypochondria, and they’re often doing blood work for me. At first they would just call or email with results when they came in, but then they set up an online system where each client could log on to see their results and keep track of all of their records. I won’t insult your intelligence. We all know where this is going. No matter how many times I try their login procedure, it always says I have an existing account and no one in their office can figure out how to access the account the system is referring to. They kept giving me the instruction slips every time in hopes that the registration code would work. It never did. Now I have an actual email relationship with the lab and they know they have to email me every time they get my results in. To my knowledge, I am the only client they have to do this for.

I won’t bore you with every single example, because they’re all pretty much the same. My account doesn’t work or I have the “in extremely rare cases” reactions to a lot of medications or the DMV somehow created two titles to my car so I had to go through a year long process of linking the two titles so I could become the owner of the vehicle, which they’d never seen before.

I’ve come to expect it at this point. There have been times where I’ve genuinely wondered whether I’m actually a person or if I’m some weird solid ghost who manages to live a mostly human life but for whom no human systems work properly. Other times, I felt maybe I was just invisible and only imagining the conversations I was having. Sometimes I’ll stop a friend mid conversation to say “I’m real, right?” Because obviously my extremely urgent and realistic fear of not being a human person is more important than whatever my friend was in the middle of enthusiastically telling me.

I was thinking about this the other while in bed. “I just don’t understand why I can’t be normal. I want to know what to expect when I go to the doctor. I want to have the same easy system as everyone else. I don’t want to be in limbo with every institution because they couldn’t make me fit into their protocol. Why do I have to always be the fucking exception? Why are my circumstances always deemed ‘exceptional.'”

I sat bold upright.

There are two definitions for exceptional:

1. unusual; not typical.
2. unusually good; outstanding.

I’m not invisible. I’m fucking exceptional.

I’ve wanted to be special my entire life. I’ve been spending all this time lamenting the irritation and anxiety that comes with having to do things my own way, when really this is just the most annoyingly big sign that I am obnoxiously special. I don’t want to have everyone else’s life. When people ask me where I see myself in five years I say “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.” I want a life of surprises and adventures. I should stop bitching about the surprises I’m already getting.

Okay I lied. According to the google dictionary, there’s actually a third definition to exceptional:

3. (of a child) mentally or physically disabled so as to require special schooling.

But that doesn’t fit well with my story. I’m including it anyways because I don’t have to follow your stupid writing rules. I have a video of someone else’s appendix surgery. Do you?

 

 

 

 

Skin Tribulations, or “Why there’s a pillow in our trashcan right now.”

I’ve struggled with skin issues most of my life. I don’t call it acne because I know many people who suffer from acne and I know how truly terrible and heartbreaking it is for them to deal with it. My issues are not quite as severe but are 100% more mysterious (exciting!) because it would seem that the universe is very fond of giving me mild yet entirely unrelatable  issues that make the internet shrug at me.

I do occasionally get what one might call a pimple, but mostly it’s been decades of a thrilling combination of eczema, dermatitis, rashes, cysts, and bumpy breakouts not-otherwise-specified.  People (i.e. friends. I.e. the people who love me and want the best for me) keep telling me to go to a dermatologist and I (to repay their kindness and thoughtfulness) reply “FUCK YOU” because my past experiences with dermatologists are entirely their fault.

I’ve been to dermatologists before and generally they are very good at solving very specific, straightforward issues. For example, when I have a cystic pimple, they stab me with a needle, shoot some cortisone into the bitch, and it deflates within 10 minutes. I have found, however, that they struggle with the more delicate and nuanced issues of human skin. I’ve been given numerous products that “should help with that breakout” that ended up making my face have more of a psychotic meltdown than the pre-period Arielle of two days ago (topical: did you know that periods also fuck your skin up?).

I often get small, red bumps around my chin and mouth which the internet is, like, totally sure is dermatitis. When I have a flareup, I cannot wear sunscreen, exfoliate, or wear any heavy creams or oils. But please don’t tell anyone because if Los Angeles finds out that I haven’t been abiding by the “All You Need For Clear Skin Is Sunscreen, Exfoliating Twice A Week, and Coconut Oil, Ladies! Keep It Simple!” manifesto, they will make me watch 3 skin care videos, read 2 blog posts about the miracles of natural skincare, and say 5 Our Fathers.

In an exciting turn of events, I have recently started getting red bumps around my eyes and cheekbone. I haven’t changed products recently, I don’t use brushes when I put on makeup, I don’t incessantly touch my face, yadda yadda all the things that doctors are wont to ask. Which is why I was not surprised by the responses I received when I had my friend Katie (1/3 of the text group “Triple Bae”) consult her doctor friends on the matter:

No. None of the above. Also, the internet has told me to TOTALLY DEFINITELY NOT ever put cortisone cream on dermatitis (which I am at least 90% sure is the cause of the chin stuff, if you recall. I know it’s hard to keep up. You’re doing great). In fact, most of the sites about it list “cessation of use of steroid creams” as literally the only cure for dermatitis which is great since I don’t fucking put cortisone cream on my face.

I fed their thorough responses to the unrelenting tornado of conflicting information and thanked them for their time.

Also, Triple Bae could totally be a girl band.

Before my France trip, I had gone on a diet that the universe (internet) said would clear up many skin problems. I cut out added sugar, dairy, white bread, and soy. I did this for two weeks and arrived in France glowing like a goddamn goddess. So when the eyeballcheekbone shit wouldn’t go away, I decided it was time to try the diet again.

I have been soy/dairy/sugar/whitebread free for 3 days and this morning I woke up looking like I had spent the entire night crying tears of acid:

Which is pretty fucking metal but like I want to be pretty.

I greeted my boyfriend for the first time this morning with this picture and “WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO MY FACE. Good morning.” He was like “Maybe it’s your pillowcase” and I was like “I CHANGED IT YESTERDAY, NO!”

I promptly googled “does a pillow make your fucking face breakout” and the internet was like “Yo, it’s totally your pillow.” Which, admittedly, I’ve had since college and haven’t washed once, OKAY?! There I said it.

Within seconds, a magic pillowcase that allegedly clears up your acne while you sleep and the world’s most popular hypoallergenic pillow were in my Amazon cart getting checked out.

I then had 5 minutes left before I had to leave, which I used to destroy evidence of my evil, evil pillow, eat a plum, and warn my roommate about the state of our trash can:

Will keep you posted.

France Part 3: Paris, or “You can’t bleach history, except in America.”

It’s only been 3 months since my trip so now seems like a good time to finally post the last installment of my temporary travel blog.

Before I jump in, I would like to mention, for anyone following along, that my ankle is still fucked up which supports my doctor friend’s suspicion that it is actually a stress fracture and not just a sprain which I accept because it sounds cooler.

Megan and I stayed in an Airbnb in Paris and I won’t pretend to know anything about the different districts. They’re just like any city neighborhoods but they’re numbered and so they sound intense to me and anyone who knows what they mean is a boss.

The building was super interesting. I took a lot of pictures using a polaroid which doesn’t help you at all and I’ve never been good at describing settings (and I usually skip over those parts in books). But they did have very stereotypically European style windows whose shutters opened  outward onto a very stereotypically European street.

It was about 90 degrees most of the time we were there and the Airbnb had no air conditioning. My bed was in the living room and I wanted to sleep with the windows open because it was so hot but one of the shutters wouldn’t lock properly. Megan pointed out that we were fairly high up and said she was unsure how dedicated Parisian rapists are, but I decided to just keep the one working window open and risk dying of heat stroke instead.

1. The things you plan:

When taking a trip to Paris, especially if it is as short as mine was, you’ll want to plan ahead. I’m not one of those people who thrives with a strict schedule, but I wanted to pick a handful of must-sees.

The must-sees (according to me, a lazy planner and person in general):

You will find, if you ever make this trip or one similar, that when asking people for recommendations of what you “ABSOLUTELY MUST” see while you’re in Paris that you’ll get somewhere between 200 and 1 million food recommendations. Eventually you’re kind of just like “Okay, meats, breads, and cheeses. Got it.” I won’t tell you where to go. I won’t tell you what to eat. It is all pretty much the same, and it is all great.

I will mention, however, that my friend Megan and I did take one person up on an ice cream shop recommendation (she had recently married a Frenchman so we decided her input had more value). I’m not much of an ice cream person, but it was hot out and I figured it was a nice French experience and that an adventure like this could add to my portfolio of proof that I’m a human person.

The place is called Berthillon and it is delish. There was a bit of a line, but just as I was starting to feel like a dick for making my friend wait in line in the hot sun for half an hour because someone she had never met told me it was tasty she remarked that it was worth the wait. PHEW. We aren’t insta models and therefor didn’t think to take a picture of our treats at the outset of our eating. Please forgive me. I should also add that I’m very lactose intolerant and  despite all the lactase pills on earth, I had the most explosive poop (a proper poomergency) later that evening, which was unfortunate for my friend because her room connected to the bathroom by way of a flimsy sliding door. I praise the gods (the old and the new) for the fact that our airbnb host kept air freshener in his bathroom. While pooping, I reminisced about the ice cream and thought, “Still worth it.”

Museums

Museums are definitely a must-see, but there are so many that I would recommend just seeing what tickles your fancy. I’m sure the internet has a comprehensive list somewhere. Megan and I decided on The Louvre and Musée d’Orsay (I copy and pasted that from google so I could get the correct accent mark and spelling).

Musée d’Orsay is a truly enjoyable experience. The building was converted from an old train station so it has a really unique and beautiful aesthetic. Also, it is very manageable in terms of size and amount of exhibitions.

At The Louvre, I found not only beautiful art but a deepened hatred for humanity.

First of all, it’s massive. This can’t really be helped because art needs to go somewhere and there’s just so much of it. But it does add to the general frustration one might experience walking for miles in a sea of people while stressing out about how you will possibly consume all of the important art and history in your limited time there and coming to the conclusion that it is, in fact, impossible to fully appreciate it all in one sitting but it is also simply financially irresponsible at this time in your life to split the viewing into two days and isn’t it crazy how it’s actually easier to fully appreciate something if there is less to be seen anyways? Like if it were just the Mona Lisa, a bowl, and 2 sculptures your mind would be blown? But you walk past like 10 Raphaels that you can barely fucking see on the top row and you’re like “BEEN DONE” and even if you had the capacity to immerse yourself into more than a few pieces of art in one go, it’s simply temporally impossible? Like how even if you wanted to read every book ever written, you wouldn’t have time to in one lifetime and mightn’t we as well give up?

So if you aren’t plagued by existential dread, you should find it enjoyable. And I imagine most people who go there aren’t because they aren’t smart enough to experience such a phenomenon to begin with (this is the beginning of a very long and impassioned rant about the state of humanity. I feel I owe you a warning).

In the fucking Louvre, you will find that most people spend their entire time there snapping pictures of things. Now, I understand the need for documentation and the desire for physical memories, but this is not what is happening here. What is happening here is a fundamental lack of the ability to have an experience without trying to figure out how to hold onto it. This is the most understanding sentence I will write about this issue, because while I understand the phenomenon and I know that it is a real issue that plagues our society and adds to a lot of dissatisfaction and depression, I also understand that most people suffering from this issue aren’t aware of what is going on or have no intention of fixing it and they’re fucking ruining everything. People are so worried about memories and experiences slipping away and out of their grasp that they spend their time seeing their own experience secondhand instead of actually creating memories and engaging with their surroundings in a meaningful way.

This issue is not only tragic but it is infuriatingly illogical. You have paid to see these paintings and sculptures (or concert, or comedy show, or firework show, or whatever the fuck) in person. You have, presumably, seen pictures of these paintings and sculptures (or members of your favorite band, or comedians, or a firework) online or in a book at some point and have decided to now take the next step and see it in person. WHY in the FUCK are you choosing then to continue seeing it through a lens other than your OWN FUCKING EYEBALL? I assume many of you intend to post these pictures online where I hope you are aware you could simply look up pictures taken by actual fucking art photographers if you’re ever feeling real nostalgic. FURTHERMORE many of the artists whose works you’re reducing to a poorly lit and over filtered 4 inch display didn’t imagine a world in which you had a lil device in your hand that could capture images and they were painting this shit so you could look at it with your own stupid fucking unadulterated face, you imbecile.

IN ADDITION, you standing there like a flock of goddamn lemmings makes it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE for actual human beings to squeeze through and look at something with their actual human eyes.

I at one point managed to get through a group of people blocking me with their stupid arms in the air holding cameras and phones in order to see a sculpture and one dude had the audacity to tap me on the shoulder and motion for me to move out of his shot. I yelled “NO. Fuck you. Your picture is not more important than my eyes!” He didn’t speak English, but HE KNEW I WAS ANGRY.

Also no one is looking at your iPhone picture of the Mona Lisa thinking you’re cool. You’re not an art photographer (and if you are and are just there on vacation and not work you’re being a dickweasel). You’re not going to capture it a way it hasn’t been captured. And we don’t value this as some verification that you’re in France. We saw your status about it. We weren’t doubting you. Fuck off.

I did take one Louvre pic because this is great:

“There, there.”

A couple times we were actually able to glimpse sculptures through cracks formed between the different teams of hardworking cinematographers and we marveled at how severely unfathomable to us the process of sculpting something is. How in god’s name does someone have the patience to delicately craft a ballsack out of stone without chipping anything? And how did they have time to do it 30 more times on 30 more bodies? Thankfully, one of our friends is an artist so we bombarded her with questions about how long various art things take:

Megan attributes the prolific nature of sculptors to their apparently extremely fortunate lack of Netflix.

So in addition to the many wings and levels with many different works of art from many different eras and locations, the Louvre has maintained some of the underground (I think?) original structures from when the building initially acted as a fortress. You can walk through and learn about the different phases of the building’s use and structure. It’s actually pretty cool, but for some reason smelled like bleach. We wondered whether that was how they kept everything clean, but figured you can’t bleach history, except in America.

2. The things you don’t plan:

Even though planning is important if you want to feel like you got the most out of your $700 plane tickets, the best part of my trip was the part we didn’t plan at all. We spent an entire day there just walking around to sites such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame (I won’t include pictures because I imagine you’re capable of googling). We also walked along the Seine (some water) and had a picnic of cheese and bread. At the end of the day, we started walking home and saw an ice cream stand that called to us. We then took our spontaneous ice cream and walked around the corner where there was a group of street performers. Two of them were playing violin and guitar together and we decided to stay and enjoy the music. At one point, the violinist went over to the guitar player and started playing his guitar with him over his shoulders! It was incredible! Then, as the sun was setting, we walked through central Paris, through locals and tourists alike, down to the delicately noisy subway to our perfectly Parisian apartment where I had explosive diarrhea #2 in our beautifully European bathroom.

As it turns out, the best days of our lives are the ones you couldn’t recreate even if you tried, yet we spend our lives frustratedly chasing the high of each one anyways only to be reminded of how foolish we are when we fall upon the perfect day unintentionally.

So, you know, if this is still a travel guide to anyone, leave time for just chasing fancies.

3. The things you really don’t plan:

Megan again helped me plan my trip back but I took it all alone. I had to take the subway to the airport so I left super duper early, having experienced a subway or two in my life.

I got there a couple hours early, I got some breakfast, picked out plenty of snacks for the flight, took my anxiety pills, and finished downloading my in flight entertainment while journaling about my wonderful travels.

PSYCH!

The subway for some reason stopped being express and started stopping at every single stop which added about half an hour to the trip. Then on two separate occasions we had to get off the train and get on the next one and I wish I could tell you why but I don’t speak French. I just followed all the angry people with suitcases. When I got to the airport, they had sectioned off my entire terminal due to a suspicious package. They held us there for about an hour and then hundreds of people tried to get through security at the same time. By the time I got to customs, my plane was boarding. I kept asking employees if I would be ok and they assured me it was fine which reduced my panic attack by 0%. Finally they started calling for Air Canada and suddenly I spoke French “Oui, Madame! Je suits Air Canada!!!” They put all of us through customs where they decided they had to go through my entire backpack and not put any of it back at which point I decided to just run (ON A SPRAINED ANKLE) with the contents of my bag in my hands. Once I got to the gate I realized I had at some point dropped my favorite sweater. I mentioned this to one of the other passengers in line to board (I honestly have no idea what came over me to cause me to talk with people at this juncture) and they mentioned they had seen it in the hallway and that I probably had time to get it. I sprinted about halfway back down the hallway and then decided I’d rather just be as near to the plane as humanly fucking possible so I KNOWINGLY ABANDONED MY SWEATER.

When I got back to the gate from my failed rescue attempt, I immediately boarded with an empty stomach, a full bladder, a swollen ankle, no food, and no water. I sat down, took a deep breath, and dry chewed my klonopin. 6 hours later, I was in Canada and able to have the thought “Yeah, that was really great.”

I Bisou’ed Olga – My Trip to France Part 2

If you’re following along in your blogpostprayerbooks, this is going to be the “Wow! Things are so different in another part of the world and it has really, truly opened my eyes in ways I never expected!” part.

After taking a train from Paris, I spent the first half of my trip in Grenoble where my friend Megan lives. Though I was really looking forward to seeing Paris for the first time, I am very glad for my time in Grenoble because I got to see what life might actually be like for a person my age living life in France.

These are the things I learned about life in France:

1. They really do eat pastries for breakfast and baguettes with every meal.

Every morning, Megan would go out while I was still sleeping and get pastries and a baguette for the day (have I mentioned she’s amazing?). For breakfast, we would eat soft boiled eggs, fruit, an interesting yogurt/cheese hybrid type substance, and some of the pastries that she had picked up. My favorite was one that had almonds in it. The part of me that is overly concerned about sugar intake freaked out internally, but I told myself to shut the fuck up because we are in France and we’re going to have ourselves a French old time and enjoy ourselves doing it, dammit. Also no one in France is fat or has diabetes (statistic is 100% made up but also seemingly 100% accurate) so I think people only die of things in America, probably because of some sort of international accord that I don’t understand because politics isn’t my strong suit.

For lunch, we would picnic with sandwiches or simply a baguette and cheese.

One night, we went to a very nice and traditional French restaurant. I ate steak (I broke vegetarianism for the trip). It was delish. We also made friends with some Israeli table neighbors who were cool until one of them started talking about how Trump isn’t that bad and then we went home.

2. France does not believe in air conditioning.

France puts Los Angeles to shame when it comes to lack of proper climate control. Everywhere is hot and everyone is sweaty and no one is talking about it, aside from Megan who obviously realizes they’re all insane even if they are saving the Earth for all of us.

3. People bike everywhere.

Not only is everywhere hot, but everyone arriving everywhere is already sweaty because they biked there in 90 degrees. This, too, is not addressed. This, too, will save the planet. Basically, France is just one giant eco friendly humble brag.

I did expect the biking due to my trip to Amsterdam a few years prior. When I went on that trip, I hadn’t ridden a bike in approximately ten years. I don’t know if you know much about Amsterdam, but picking up biking there after a 10 year break is comparable to deciding that because you played basketball in your backyard with your little brother a couple times when you were 10 that you could hop into a pickup game at age 20 with tall, fit people who play every day and are actually secretly on a professional team and are just there for funsies and it’s possible they’re on steroids or were, at the very least, born with super human strength that is yet to be understood by scientists. By some fucking miracle, I biked that whole trip and left mostly unscathed (one of my Toms got mildly ripped when I had to squeeze between a parked car and an oncoming car and hope for the best). I don’t know if it was the magic of weed or if God smiled upon me for my first European jaunt, but whatever happened there made me overly confident that I’d make it through France okay, too.

Megan planned a really beautiful, romantic French day for us. We would bike to the train station, take a train about an hour outside of Grenoble to a town with a beautiful lake. We would then bike from the station to the lake and spend the day laying in the sun, swimming in the water, and biking around the lake in the cool breeze with baguettes in our baskets and sandals on our feet.

We borrowed a bike from one of her wonderful and kind friends. I would use Megan’s helmet because, in Megan’s words, “I have fancy French health insurance and you don’t.”

The bike we borrowed was, I want to say, 50 lbs. It was almost definitely more like 25-30, but a large, unwieldy metal object has a way of becoming impossibly heavy when you have to carry it up and down multiple flights of stairs at train stations.

I tried to feel confident about biking to the train station. I was definitely wobbly and looked like a freakin idiot, but I managed to get there okay even with the addition of a few leg bruises from clumsy bike carrying.

After the train ride, we got off and started our journey to the lake. There was less city traffic than around Grenoble and we were amped about our lake picnic and the beautiful view we would have, so we went a little faster than we had before. I started to really feel like I was doing it. My friend was killin it ahead of me and I was following her. She turned, I turned. And I was even getting less wobbly!

We were almost there! She took a right turn seamlessly and I…did not. I saw a car out of the corner of my eye and froze. In fact, I straight up just stopped in the middle of the street in front of the car and fell over. My ankle snapped as I fell and the 75 lb bike fell on top of me. If you were to ask me how I did this, I would liken it to a time you might have tripped over absolutely nothing and not known how to explain it anyone, even yourself.

I knew I would be okay, but the initial pain was too much for me to do much of anything. The man in the car started getting out and presumably asking if I was okay, but I don’t speak any goddamn French so I just started waving my arm at him in a swatting “I’M FINE JUST MOVE ALONG” type motion which did not seem to get the message across well enough because he continued to stand there. Eventually I yelled “MEGAAAAAAN!” and she returned to rescue me (as one does when they suddenly look back and see their friend on the ground under a bike waving their hand lazily at a Frenchman) and tell the cab driver, probably, that I was okay and he could go, or perhaps that I was just her simple minded cousin who has trouble with basic tasks such as riding bikes but not to worry because she’ll be okay soon and it’s good for her to try things on her own sometimes.

Somehow, miraculously, despite the horrible pain upon falling, I was able to walk and (lucky me) continue biking.

4. France can be stunningly scenic.

We made it to the lake and it was truly stunning.

The breathtaking beauty of this place took up about 20% of my brain while the other 80% was concerned with a combination of how bad my ankle would turn out to be and how I was possibly going to return back to the train station (and then from the train station back to Megan’s) without killing myself. Considering it was sudden lack of confidence that had fucked me over on the way to the lake, a post-injury trip was seeming less doable as time went on and panic rooted itself deeper within me. Not to mention the fact that the seat of the bike was so hard my taint was as bruised as the apple that’s been floating around in my bag for 5 days wondering if it has a purpose. I was stuck in the most stupid, bike themed self-fulfilling prophecy of all time.

Megan kindly distracted me from my worries by taking me through a 15 minute synopsis of Big Little Lies so that I would never have to watch it. Megan is a hero.

Eventually it was time to leave. Megan, with the patience of a saint or someone who has just stopped giving a fuck, let me walk the bike through “scary areas” (ones where there were cars or people) and we made it back okay.

The next day, we had planned to take a hike early in the morning but I decided based on the state of my ankle that I should pass.

We went to the Grenoble Bastille, which can be hiked but instead of further cankling my cankle we took a murder machine to and from the site.

I’m sure I learned a lot about France, but  I can’t say with honesty I remember much of it at all. The coolest part of bastille were the caves. They were chilly and utterly silent. The walls and floors were wet and despite thorough googling we couldn’t figure out how a man made cave would hold water like that. If you happen to know how that works, please hit me up: aandreano11@gmail.com.

Also here is France from the Bastille’s point of view (plus me not knowing what to do with my arms or face):

5. The Bisou.

America has the handshake, Miami (decidedly separate from America) has the one cheek kiss, and France has the bisou. Technically, I think “bisou” simply translates to “kiss” but I heard it used colloquially to refer to the double cheek kiss that French people do upon both meeting and greeting. It’s used as universally, casually, and with as little meaning as when Americans say “it was nice meeting you” – you know, when you’re with your friend walking and talking and all of a sudden they run into someone they sort of know and they talk for a couple minutes and they’re not exactly important enough to fully introduce to you so you just stand there awkwardly trying to look like you’re neither annoyed nor intruding so you manage like a glazed half smile and then at the end of it all, you remark upon how incredible the experience was in the biggest lie of your life?

That’s what the bisou is. Or at least that’s what it can be in certain situations, such as this one here:

I was at a bar with Megan and her friend when they saw someone from their PhD program walking down the other side of the street with his girlfriend Olga. They was too far to call to, so they just spent a lot of time gossiping about him and Olga. I can’t remember whether Olga was bitchy or just weird but whatever it was, we don’t like Olga. Unexpectedly, dude and Olga crossed the street and changed direction which put them on a course for us. When they came up to our table, I was positioned at their access point and Megan and Bea were busy talking to dude so I ended up in an obligatory Bisou with Olga, the non-French stranger about whom I had just been engaging in shit talk. And then they left. It was nice meeting them.

6. France is big into street art.

I don’t know why I found myself surprised by this, but at least in Grenoble street art is a big part of the landscape. Some of it was grand:

Some was tiny:

And some was just perfect:

I saw the tag “Kunt” in multiple locations around Grenoble but we never snagged a pic of it.

As we got on the train to leave Grenoble after my 4th day, we mused “Maybe we’ll see some Kunt in Paris.”

“The Exit Row is a Serious Job” – My Trip to France Part 1

About a month ago at this point (I’m really not timely with these things. My friend is currently doing his travel blog AS he’s traveling and I hate him), I went to France for the first time to visit my friend, Megan. Megan is lovely. If you ever get the chance to meet Megan, you should. But don’t startle her. She doesn’t like strangers just coming up to her. Try calling to her from afar.

I’m trying to figure out how to break this up so that it makes sense and so it’s most interesting to you. I’m really putting in a lot of work for you. How do you feel about starting with my travels there? We’ll get through it quickly, I promise. Not much happened.

“People in exit rows should take their job more seriously” – My Trip There

My lovely friend Andrew agreed to drive me to the airport in the morning while it was still dark out, so I got him some dark chocolate as a gift. Andrew revealed to me on this car ride, while I still had the smug smile of a gift giver on my face, that he, in fact, only likes milk chocolate. “This trip will go well,” I thought.

I learned upon checking in for my first flight that Canada is metal:

I spent one hour of the flight watching Pete Davidson’s SMD and the remaining 3 1/2 hours watching the man in the window seat of the exit row who, instead of taking his job seriously, was sleeping. I mean do you think you’re just there for extra leg room, buddy? I watched you give verbal confirmation to the flight attendant that you felt up to the task. Want to switch seats because I will gladly remain unnecessarily alert for 4+ hours. One time when I was like 7, I heard a weird noise while sleeping at my Grandma’s house and I stayed up for a good two hours with my arms stretched out over my stuffed animals and my eyes wide open because no one was going to hurt my beanie babies on my watch. Get your shit together.

Eventually we landed in Canada, no thanks to window man, and I guess I probably got on a plane to Paris.

My plan was to sleep as much as possible on this flight because I would be landing around 8 AM France time. I immediately drugged myself with a cocktail of klonopin and Benadryl and pulled out my neck pillow and earplugs. Despite my well thought out sleep accommodations, I did not rest undisturbed for very long because there were 3 middle aged women behind me chatting loudly the entire flight. At one point I gathered the courage (rage) to say “Can you please keep it down? I am really trying to sleep” (badass). When we landed, the women were changing the times on their watches, laughing, saying “Oh my goodness it’s morning here! I guess we’ll just sleep all day today! Ha Ha!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA.

So I was to take a train from the airport to my friend, Megan (you remember Megan) in Grenoble. About a week before my trip, she gave me extremely detailed instructions that I turned into an extremely easy to follow, numbered, to do list that I ran by her to make sure it was accurate and I still texted her from the station to clarify various steps. Additionally, everyone spoke English so it didn’t even fucking matter.

I will describe my train ride to Grenoble in a series of screenshots and pictures:

 

And then I was in Grenoble.

Up Next:

“I Bisou’ed Olga” and “Will we find more Kunt in Paris?”

Things I’ve Learned This Week, or: Thoughts For Those of Us Trying Not to Sit in Our Own Shit and Cry.

For many of us, this week has been almost too painful to talk or write about. I noticed I was even avoiding writing this blog post and for once it was not because I’m lazy. I know this is going to be hard and that all I really want to write is “FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT AND EVERYONE WHO MADE THIS HAPPEN WE ARE GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEXT FUCKING HOLOCAUST THE END IS NIGH WHY EVEN TRY.”

Because that is how I feel. And that is how many of you feel, too. Luckily, the emotional among you have pragmatic asshole friends such as myself to shepherd you unsympathetically into  this next stage of American life.

Before I continue, I want to share a few things about why this entire post is bullshit.

I care. I care so much I spend hours worrying about marginalized people living in the south or in the midwest and wondering how I could possibly help them and what I should do. I tell people that if we fight we can push through and bounce back, but I feel like a dick saying it because no matter how hard we fight we won’t bring back the people who have already died and will die due to hate crimes inspired by recent events and rhetoric. On election night, I cried not because my dreams were shattered but because I realized how much harder life was about to get for Muslims in America. And I know that saying it’ll be okay is a giant slap in the face to a lot of people. I also realize I am living with an insane amount of privilege and I know very little about what these people are actually dealing with and should probably shut the fuck up. But…

1. Sadly, being deliciously nihilistic and self deprecating won’t fucking help anyone.

I had a thought the night of the election (just the one. It’s all I had energy for.). And it was something to the effect of “Well there goes my cushy liberal lifestyle. I have to actually be an activist, now.”

I know everyone is quoting up a Dumbledore storm right now, but I actually think Gandalf was more on point (sorry, self). When Frodo laments the fact that the ring came into his life, Gandalf says:

“So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

I cannot fathom shitting on the work that all the social activists who came before us did by hiding behind my computer after something like this. I don’t get to decide when injustice does and doesn’t befall this country. But I can decide not to be a useless dickweasel about it.

So I’ve decided to stop using my privilege as a shield and to start using it as a weapon.

You know those acting roles and tax breaks and scholarships and things you just get for literally just being a particular thing? That’s what being white right now  (or a man right now or well educated right now or not Muslim right now or straight right now or not trans right now, etc etc etc) is like. And I don’t mean that you are safe. I mean you can show up to a place with a problem and say, “Hi, I’m white (/male/straight/well educated/a pretty pretty princess). Use me as a tool, please.” Most of us are in an amazing position to use our voices to defend the concerns of people with less status than ourselves. I obviously don’t mean theoretical status. We are all equal in that sense. But ‘Murica sure do love them straight white dudes. The hierarchy of the different privilege combinations gets kind of dicy after that (e.g. what comes next? Straight black dudes or straight white ladies? Of course, if this election is any indication…but I digress (parenthesis inside a parenthesis, it totally depends on the situation at hand for sure. Like definitely in some situations it’s better to be a white woman than a black man but also vice versa in others. Okay done.)), but it’s pretty clear the things that are generally favored.

I was inspired by a voicemail a male friend left me. He’s white and Christian and lives in Texas and therefor, according to  popular stereotype, has no reason to give a shit about my plight as a woman. But the day after the election he left me a voicemail saying that he loves me and he’s sorry and that he knows this must be super hard for me. He went on to say he wants to know how to support me better by learning about the things that matter to me.

This voicemail brought me to tears. The fact that it brought me to tears made me realize how little we have been actually helping each other. For example, I may post positive things regarding the Black Lives Matter movement, but have I actually asked a black friend how I can help or what their life is like? Have I actually marched with people? Have I actually volunteered for civil rights organizations? The answer to all of these questions was, disgustingly, no.

I figure, if a 6’4 straight, white, Christian dude from Texas can ask me what it’s like to be a lady in 2016 and how he can make it suck less, I can do the same for people with even less of a voice than I. 

2. So, cool, there’s actually things we can do to make this suck less. 

There are approximately 1,000,005 better qualified people to talk about this, but I’m trying my best because I hate think pieces that don’t offer anything helpful in a concrete sense.

Here is a list* of places to donate if you are concerned about the civil/human rights about currently marginalized groups: 

*I 110% stole this from John Oliver, but I went through the work of finding and embedding the link for you so you’re welcome.

Planned Parenthood

Center for Reproductive Rights

Natural Resources Defense Council

The International Refugee Assistance Project

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

The Trevor Project

Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

CAIR – Council on American-Islamic Relations (this was not from John Oliver but I felt it is a needed addition, though I admittedly know nothing about the organization.)

It is great to also consider getting involved outside of donating. I know even less about this, but that’s okay because I know you have friends who know a lot. After the election, I asked friends who are involved in such organizations about volunteer work or what else I can do to be involved. The amazing thing about asking questions you’ve never asked before is you get tons of information you never had before. IT’S CRAZY. People pointed me towards civil rights organizations in my area, I was connected with friends of friends to attend protests together, I became part of an online group in Los Angeles that is now aiming to use our production talents to produce multicultural/educational content.

Make it a goal to ask at least one person who you know is active in the being a good person world what you can do to be involved. You’ll be surprised by the kinds of opportunities that present themselves. 

Another thing you can do is vote in the midterm elections. Just do it. DO IT.

3. We don’t understand each other.

And for once, I’m really including liberals in this category. There are articles going around that will address this much more beautifully and are written by way more informed people, but that’s not why you’re here anyways.

Of course we want to think about and rage against the people who seem to simply not give a shit about marginalized groups. I mean, how can they not see what is happening? How can they not see how much these people are hurting? How can they not see the injustice? How can they not see how this hate is not helping anyone?

Here’s the thing: a lot of them have no reason to care. A lot of America is living a very fend for themselves lifestyle and they’re struggling and no one on TV gives a shit. They also don’t really know very many people who are gay or black or trans or Muslim and they don’t have time to think about it. (Of course, many are actually racist assholes and many more simply don’t know better. But I have nothing to say about that that others haven’t already said 9,005 times.)

I had a breakthrough when I tried imagining the people in Winter’s Bone skinning a squirrel while wondering what kind of birth control women would have access to. Picture it. It’s actually funny. It’s also helpful. (I also realize there are super working-class people who don’t skin squirrels and I’m probably offending someone. I don’t know everything, okay?! Gah!)

It’s not just their job to learn about us. We can’t keep thinking we know everything. Didn’t your mama tell you nobody likes a know-it-all?

The only way we are going to fix anything, aside from FIGHTING LIKE HELL for our rights is to stop talking at people, start asking questions, and get comfortable with answering questions. The day after, I made it my one goal to simply be fiercely compassionate. I didn’t try to change anyone’s mind. I didn’t tell anyone they were handling this the wrong way (even though I think those black square profile pictures are fucking dumb. But it’s not my place! It really isn’t! You might think this post is dumb and that’s fine! It’ll help someone else and your sad square may help someone, too). I didn’t tell anyone how to live their life. And it was so so so freeing.

I know you feel great when everything is going well and you see the great people who have come into your life and you think “I’ve made it.” But in reality, it’s times like these that allow us to decide what kind of people we are.

What kind of person do you want to be?

P.S. Sorry for the lack of laughs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avoiding the Plague like the Plague: A How-To for Stomach Flu Avoidance

For those of you who are lying in bed at 3 in the morning wondering how the fuck to avoid getting the symptoms that your friend/lover/child/spouse has just exposed you to, skip ahead to the 3 stars (***). You’re welcome. 

For those who are here to enjoy the experience of a neurotic hypochondriac avoiding a highly contagious disease, enjoy. 

I hate throwing up. I mean, I assume most people don’t love it, but it has come to my attention that some people view it as an actual option on a menu of ways to feel better.

For some reason, I have always viewed throwing up as a thing to be avoided at all costs. I am proud to tell you (and anyone who brings up the subject) that I have not thrown up in 5 1/2 years and the last time it happened was due to food poisoning; no amount of willpower will stop you from puking when you have food poisoning.

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I came home to one of his roommates violently throwing up. The other roommate requested that we take over cleanup and help duties so she could tap out and go to sleep. We both said, “Of course.” We are both liars.

The next day, we discussed whether we thought he had food poisoning or if it was a virus. I adamantly stated that it must be food poisoning because “it is violent and constant like food poisoning and he eats like complete shit,” which really meant, “Oh my god if it isn’t food poisoning I cannot fucking handle this I mean I’ve been here since before he was even showing symptoms and it says online that you’re contagious for like days beforehand and what if we shared food and I don’t remember and sure I use a different bathroom but he has touched other things and oh my god his cat I bet he touched his cat and I kiss her all the time oh god I’m going to die.” So I convinced myself it was food poisoning.

Oh also I got this text from him:

I told him he should never trust a sickly fart.

A couple days passed and  I hadn’t gotten sick. I was beginning to feel fine about it, and then one night I woke up to sounds of puking. I then heard the person go into the kitchen and then leave the apartment. I assumed it was Patient Zero, so I got up to pee in the other bathroom, figuring it was safe. I took one step in before I was met with the smell of vomit. I quickly backed out, but not before my foot touched something wet. I went into the living room and weighed my options: If I tried washing my foot in any of the sinks, I would risk further contamination by touching things that have been touched by someone who is infected by what is now clearly a virus. If I don’t clean my foot, I risk getting germs on everything I touch. I decided the best course of action was to put hand sanitizer on the infected part of my foot and not touch my face until I was able to wash my hands in a non contaminated bathroom. I readied my things and said my goodbyes:

Me: She’s sick now.

Boyfriend: Maybe she just went out and got drunk or something.

Me: She went to bed early. We saw her.

Boyfriend: I’m just not ready to jump to the conclusion that my house is infected.

Me: I am.

So I grabbed my shit and drove home at 4 o’clock in the morning. 

When I got home, I furiously washed my foot and quarantined all of the clothing that I had worn on the way over. I stayed up until sunrise (this is not a poetic way of suggesting the passage of time. It was literally light out before I decided I had learned enough) researching how stomach viruses work and ways to avoid getting sick after contamination.

In the morning, with my new knowledge of hippie health tactics and old wive’s tales, I headed to whole foods with a list.

I got this stuff to avoid contracting the virus:

And I got this stuff just in case that didn’t work:

As I left Whole Foods to head to my car, I ran into a coworker. She said hello excitedly and I yelled “DON’T GET TOO CLOSE. I COULD BE INFECTED.” She stepped back with a frightened look on her face and I continued on. Feeling the need to explain myself and the severity of the situation, I texted her to explain that my friend had shit himself in Canter’s Deli.

When  I got home, I started a strict regimen of supplements and I quarantined myself for 2 days, fearing both infecting other people and the start of endless pooping while in public. 

***For those interested, the regiment consisted of the following (skip ahead if you don’t care):

1. Taking about a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar 3 times a day. You have to mix it in something, like water or juice, or you will burn your fucking esophagus. No one told me this the first time I tried it, like you’re supposed to just know. 
2. Three glasses of 100% grape juice three times a day (you can put the apple cider vinegar in the grape juice). The grape juice works for the same theoretical reason that the apple cider vinegar does (it forces your body into an alkaline state, which stomach viruses allegedly hate), but a double dose with the two of them is best for the extra paranoid.
3. Ginger pills (the bottle tells you how many you’re allowed to take in a day. Just do that).
4. Activated charcoal (same as above). You’re supposed to get the powder version and not the pill version. In my haste, I started slacking in terms of thorough instructional research. You’re welcome for fucking up so you don’t have to.
5. Ginger and chamomile tea, three times a day.

The ginger works as an anti-inflammatory for your tumtum whereas the charcoal, apple cider vinegar, and grape juice “detoxify” in one way or another. Allegedly.*** 

I texted a handful of people to tell them what was happening in my life. My brother in law simply responded with the wikipedia page for The Bubonic Plague.

Most websites said that symptoms would appear 12-48 hours after contamination. I kept track by the hour and updated the handful of people who probably didn’t care.

After 72 hours had passed, I felt safe enough to begin writing this post (I didn’t want to jinx myself or write the wrong post). This was until my roommates brother, who had attended Star Wars with me, my boyfriend, and the second person to get sick, began throwing up and pooping profusely. Thankfully, I was not present for this, but I did manage to start a fight with my roommate over text by insisting the virus was the culprit and effectively demanding the bathroom be cleaned with bleach (which, according to the internet, is the only way to kill the virus. #themoreyouknow). I added that I hoped he felt better.

Due to my fear of further contamination, I didn’t return home for a few days and completely missed seeing my roommate’s parents while they were in town.

I left for a family trip to Disney World for Christmas and told myself that I would be completely out of the woods if I made it through the trip without symptoms.

The last night of the trip, my grandmother got sick. She gets sick often, so I didn’t think too much of it, but then my brother in law started throwing up and continued to do so through the night and into the morning. My sister informed me of this in the morning when we met up for what was supposed to be a day of the three of us at Epcot. She told me he wouldn’t be able to go and that they were leaving early. She also said she had a sock of mine in their room and that I could take the opportunity to say bye to him. I said I didn’t need the sock.

Turns out he has gallstones.

Three whole weeks later, I sit in my home reflecting on the whole ordeal and wondering if my neuroses was worth it.

In my paranoia driven avoidance of a stomach virus, I managed to:

1. Miss my friend’s birthday.
2. Start a fight with my roommate.
3. Fail to show sympathy for the ill.
4. Missing out on the opportunity to spend time with the family of a close friend.
5. Pass on the opportunity to say goodbye to my brother in law, whom I probably won’t see again for at least 6 months.
6. Frighten a coworker.
7. Abandon a sock.

Am I an unforgiving and unsympathetic asshole when I’m concerned for my own wellbeing? Certainly.

I definitely don’t think my response to sickness is the most respectable. Of course, if it were something life threatening like Ebola, any other response would be fucking stupid. As I said to my boyfriend (who didn’t take any precautions at all and somehow didn’t get sick. I doubt he’ll read this far so I feel safe saying that I told his roommate I hoped he would get sick. Like, he continued to use his toothbrush which lives next to the toothbrush of one of the infected people in the bathroom that was puked all over), “Of course it doesn’t help to freak out quite this much. I’d like to feel more ‘if it happens, it happens’ about it like you do, but there is also merit to taking actual. logical precautions. Like, I don’t know, cleaning the bathroom.”

If I were to leave you with any wisdom from this 3 week long experience, I suppose it would be to consider adding a little humility to your neuroses, if you have any. Oh, and apparently apple cider vinegar actually works (also giving a shoutout to Welch’s Grape Juice, Whole Foods brand gastrointestinal fix yourself like a hippie supplements, Nutrilite probiotics, and, specifically, Bragg’s apple cider vinegar).

Most importantly, however:

You can apologize for yelling at your friend, but you can’t take back shitting your pants in a famous Jewish deli.

 

 

 

For Anyone Who’s Ever Had a UTI and Hates Antibiotics

Or for anyone who loves anyone with a pee hole.

I’ve been getting UTIs somewhat frequently since I was about 19 (before you think you can change my life with well known information that it somehow hasn’t occurred to me to read up on after dealing with like 10 of these, I already know all the tricks of avoiding them). I now know how to spot them immediately, what the nearest clinic is, and exactly what to say to the doctor.

The problem is, my body is weak as fuck and I really should have been weeded out of the gene pool by now because most medications, including antibiotics, destroy my insides. When I’m on antibiotics, I don’t eat food but I poop for two (WHERE DOES IT ALL COME FROM?), my back kills me, and I can’t sleep. I was complaining about this to my friend once I felt the first tingle of an approaching UTI the other week, and she saved me with some beautiful information:

I was skeptical but willing to try it to avoid antibiotics wreaking havoc on my insides. Not to mention the fact that we should all cut back on antibiotics in general in hopes of avoiding death by superbugs. This sounds like it’s about to be a hippie dippie add for D-Mannose. It’s not. There are some stories ahead for you. Let’s take it in stages.

Stage 1: Starting D-Mannose

I followed the instructions on the bottle which were to put 1 tsp into a glass of water twice a day. It mixed in easily and was flavorless. The UTI wasn’t getting worse (it usually progresses extremely quickly for me) so I was quite excited.

Stage 2: Realizing I was using it wrong and pissing knives

The next day, I was at work with the kid I nanny when I went to the bathroom and realized the tingle was back. As the night progressed, it turned from an annoying tingle at the end of the stream to holding back tears while peeing. If ever anyone deserved an award for not murdering a child, it would be me on that night along with anyone who has ever had to deal with excruciating pain while reheating a bowl of pasta that a 10 year old has deemed isn’t quite hot enough. Did I consider scalding her? Maybe.

I spent the rest of my time with the child that evening both researching the proper way to actually get rid of a UTI with the medication and finding a 24 hour urgent care near me. Which, apparently, is fucking impossible, by the way:

I didn’t go to urgent care.

I did, however, find out that when you have a UTI you’re supposed to take the powder every 2-3 hours.

Stage 3: Bringing the powder with me everywhere

Once I started taking the powder every few hours and drinking insane amounts of water, my symptoms began disappearing incredibly quickly. It was great except that I had to find a way to discretely poor white powder into a drink in public a concerning amount of times per day and pee approximately twice per hour.

One day, I had to attempt to do this while working on set with people I had never met before. This was an issue for various reasons. 1) I didn’t want to answer questions about what the fuck I was putting in my drink 2) I was running sound which doesn’t allow for frequent bathroom visits and 3) we were shooting inside of a dorm room and the bathroom was literally right next to everyone and didn’t have any soap and no one else was using it and I wasn’t really sure on the etiquette of the whole situation. So I just didn’t take it that day.

Stage 4: Going to the clinic anyways because I didn’t want to deal with a UTI on a plane or while traveling

Whether it was the lack of diligence with which I took the powder or the fact that I started using it properly once the UTI was already at full force, the symptoms just wouldn’t go away completely. I had faith if I kept using the powder, they eventually would, but I had dealt with a fiery pee hole on a plane once before and wasn’t looking to potentially relive the experience. So I went to the clinic for backup meds.

I was still using the powder in case I decided not to do the antibiotics and I wanted to be able to give a urine sample when prompted so I drank a lot of water driving to the clinic.

It took me awhile to find parking for the clinic and ended up having to walk for about ten minutes so by the time I got to the clinic I already had to pee pretty badly. After filling out my paperwork, I spent about 20 considering the pros and cons of peeing now vs waiting. For example, if I pee now I might not be able to pee when they ask for a sample, but if I wait and it ends up being an hour wait I’ll eventually really have to pee and then what if I pee like right before they ask for a sample and then I have to wait and should I be drinking water now just in case I do pee soon so that I’ll have more ammunition for later?

I decided to pee.

The nurse called me in  and after taking my information asked me if I would be able to give a sample since she saw me use the restroom recently and was worried I wouldn’t be able to go again. I assured her I could.

I eventually saw the doctor and asked her for the shortest course of antibiotics possible. She agreed to give me a 3-day course, but was concerned about my medical history:

Doctor: It says here you had a UTI just one month ago and our charts say you were here two months ago for one as well.

Me: Oh, that must have been the one I was thinking of.

Doctor: Are you sure? Because if you’re having them once a month I’d like to send you to a urologist to test for urinary reflux.

Me: No, I’m pretty sure it was only two months ago but I am forever going to be convinced that I have that problem now, regardless.

Stage 5: Healing

In the interest of quick healing, I decided to take the antibiotic but kept taking the powder, as well, just in case.

While at the airport on my way home for Thanksgiving, I settled into a nice, cozy klonopin haze and confidently took out a pen cap to scoop white powder into my drink. I smiled, knowing that I would be all better soon and that passersby thought I had managed to sneak coke past security.