A Love Letter To My Sleep Deprived Brain

Dear Brain,

Should I capitalize your name? Do you have a name? “brain” lowercase felt inappropriate. You know what? I’m getting off topic already. But, you know that. You already know what I’m here for.

I am so sorry – you must feel like fucking shit right now. I bet you’re rolling your eyes watching me write this. Like “Oh, she’s fucking sorry? Great. Thanks. Yeah, that’ll totally reverse all the damage you’ve done to me. Hey guys, guys! She’s sorry!.” Does it feel unfair to not have your own set of eyes to roll? I mean, you can really only use mine. Tell you what – I’ll roll mine at me for you.

As you know, we haven’t slept properly in weeks. Two weeks, to be exact. A fortnight. Well, there was that one day where we sort of kind of slept okay. But for the most part, it’s been dire straits in the sleep department. And unfortunately, in addition to my half masters in psychology from NYU (did you know I was a psych major?), I recently showed my husband multiple videos about how lack of sleep makes you gain weight and increases your risk of developing Alzheimer’s, in an attempt to scare him into creating a sleep routine. So I’m keenly aware of how much I’m fucking you up. And his sleep is still shitty and now I’m panicking about gaining weight and forgetting who my daughter is, like what happened to my mom’s mom. Wait, no. I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have to worry about that one! Man, the benefits of not having kids just keep rolling in, don’t they?

You know we’re predisposed to Alzheimer’s, right? I’ve only mentioned it like 40 times…this week. I just figure constant panic is a form of keeping your brain active. And so is trying to remember how to fucking spell Alzheimer’s.

Anyways, I can practically feel your folds moving farther and farther away from one another like that Alzheimered brain they showed us in class. You’re just creating canyons of inactivity and lost words up there, I bet. A real national park dedicated to one of the most depressing human experiences.

You know what would help us sleep? Benadryl. Yeah, turns out Benadryl increases risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Learned that one from Twitter even though at least 5 medical professionals, including 2 psychiatrists, knew I was taking it nightly for years.

All this panic. I know we could really use some klonopin. Hey, speaking of klonopin, did you know it increases risk of Alzheimer’s? It took them 10 years to tell me that one.

Hey, quick question – how does the whole song stuck in my head thing work? I mean, do you control it? Because, if so, I gotta ask – 18 hours of the Mariokart end of race song? Really? I mean you’re still going.

And that’s another thing! Maybe if you wouldn’t play it so loudly at 4 in the morning we could sleep better! Are you playing the game up there while I’m sleeping? Or are you just reliving the memories of me playing? I’d say get a life but your life is kind of dependent on mine, isn’t it? Alright point taken!

This is supposed to be a love letter. That’s what I told my therapist I would write.

I will try to do right by you. I’ll eat some fatty fish for dinner (even though there’s a huge scarcity problem, you know that, right?), I’ll exercise (even though I do literally 6 times a week. Are you paying attention to any of that?), and I’ll fucking start meditating again, okay? Will you please forgive me if I do all of that?

Shit. Fuck. Does that mean I have to forgive myself?

Sigh.

Love,

Arielle

You Should Not Have to Be Doing a Hobby Before a Zoom Meeting

I want to understand the people who are always doing something while waiting for someone. You know who I mean – the person who is somehow interrupted while doing a project of some sort at 5:05 when you were supposed to meet them at 5 and they throw you a casual “Oh, hey” like they forgot why they were there.

I have always been baffled by this, but now that we are in a world of sitting in our houses and waiting for Zoom appointments to begin, I’m even more aware of it. The other day, I was waiting for a virtual hangout with my high school friends to begin and I frantically started trying to think of something to look occupied with before realizing that that’s fucking psychotic. I’m in my house alone waiting to talk to people. What could I be doing?

Here’s why it gets me: I never want to be doing anything when I’m waiting for someone. I mean, I do, but only so that I look cool and casual. I’ve never actually had the desire to learn how to crochet while waiting for a 4:00 video meeting. So pretty much if I’m doing something when they arrive (or log on) it’s because I didn’t want to seem like I was just sitting there waiting for them EVEN THOUGH THAT’S ALL I SHOULD NEED TO BE DOING. Thus, I’m working on the assumption that most people who are mid-novel when you catch them are FAKERS.*

*I have precisely one friend who I believe is authentic in her constant project doing, and she has always been involved in some whimsical pursuit most moments of most days in all the 15+ years I’ve known her (hi, Miden).

Maybe I’m just different though. Maybe some people are just that casual about everything they do. I personally really don’t like to be caught unawares so I have no desire for escapism 15 minutes leading up to a social interaction. Can people really just not bear to be ripped away from their hobbies for a few minutes? I don’t even like to be doing something when I’m on hold with utilities companies. I literally just sit there listening to their shitty attempts to get me to use the website instead (do you really think I didn’t already try to solve this problem online before subjecting myself to this?) for hours. Once, I was on hold with the electric company so long I absolutely had to run errands and I was a shell of a human walking around the grocery store clutching the phone to my ear as if I was listening to my grandmother’s last words.

So, okay, that’s probably a bit excessive now that I’ve seen it all written out.

But can you all please accept that it really is okay to just stare at your computer for a few minutes drinking water anxiously? PLEASE.

Letters from Quarantine: taxed severance pay and pooping with tampons

When you’re stuck at home for over a week, no matter how much you try to keep some semblance of a schedule, you find yourself asking questions like “Did I brush my teeth this morning?” and “Did I ever end up taking that shit yesterday or was that the day before?”

If you are like me, you’re in quarantine by yourself so this is a one person Q&A session in which you learn that apparently your ability to manage basic bodily functions depended upon going out in public at specified times every day.

Another thing I learned today is that the government taxes severance pay. I assume they just want to make it hurt extra to make sure you can still feel anything.

I keep seeing that the government will send us all $1,200 – the senate is voting on it today – which is great but also I have a feeling they don’t use Venmo and that this might take some time and effort on our parts. Not that I have a recommendation for how best to go about this. I have never claimed to be good at large scale logistics and sure I was an accounting assistant but for like a 20 person company…why do I feel like I’m in a job interview with myself? Oh, right, because America never just takes care of its people without having them “earn” it.

Why isn’t our actual official motto “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”? Does the country have a motto? I know states do. Virginia’s is “Sic semper tyrannis” which means “thus always to tyrants.” It’s admittedly a little lame and useless without the accompanying graphic of a man standing on top of another man. Do other states’ mottos require visual aids?

Of course now that I’ve actually sat down to do some work I really do need to take that shit that I’m pretty sure never happened yesterday. Also, I just put a tampon in, so there goes that rare resource.

No one really talks about how complicated tampons and pooping is. For those who aren’t aware, you can keep a tampon in while you pee (although it should be changed at least every 8 hours lest you DIE INSTANTLY of toxic shock syndrome according to everyone’s 6th grade health class), but you kind of have to tuck the string up momentarily so you don’t get pee all over the string. It’s much tougher to try to keep one in while pooping, though. For one thing, you just don’t want to risk getting the string tangled up in that mess but primarily, it’s just difficult to keep it in. The reason most women shit while giving birth (if you didn’t already know this, congrats you’re learning two things) is the same reason it’s hard to keep a tampon in while pooping – you’re pushing with the same muscles.

You might be wondering what the big deal is about taking a tampon out every time you go to the bathroom. “Surely, you must have to swap them out frequently anyways and you have enough control over your bowels to space these visits out accordingly,” you might be thinking.

You have so much faith in me.

First of all, I don’t have very much control to begin with. Secondly, it’s not always so simple. Some days of your period are quite light. On those days, you might put one in and have to poop an hour later and since your period is so light it’s quite painful to take the tampon out because it’s basically a dry wad of cotton. Furthermore, having your period can make your poops quite unpredictable. We call these Period Poops. They’re similar to Booze Poops in consistency, urgency, and surprise. So I might have just put one in while going pee and then suddenly needed to shit 10 minutes later and there goes a hardly used tampon during a pandemic with a shortage of resources.

PSA: Get a massage if you’re depressed, but only if the spa has plumbing issues

Typically, I live in a world of anxiety. We don’t love each other, but we have grown quite familiar, like longtime roommates.

If my brain were a restaurant, anxiety would be the waiter I always get and very, very occasionally, I’ll be there at an off time of day or stay later than usual and I’ll catch a shift change. A waiter I haven’t seen in years will come by and I’ll be halfway through wondering what the fuck happened to anxiety when this intruder says “Hi, I’m depression. Anxiety is closing out for the day so I’ll be taking care of you.”

This happened to me the other day.

I’m not good at depression. I don’t handle it well. My boyfriend had never seen it before so he was even more lost than I was. It was a dumpster fire if there were a dumpster fire version of sobbing while saying “Why don’t you want to fuck me right now?” Well, for one, you are on fire.

There were a lot of things going on. Which even my roommate (my real one, not anxiety) could tell from the way I walked from my room to the front door the next morning:

• Roommate: Hun, what’s wrong?
• Me: Well, primarily, I’m in a fight with my therapist.

It is true. I had had a disagreement with my therapist. But not while I was in the room with her. I decided to wait until a day later to get pissed off and e-mail her a diatribe about my feelings on quality of scientific research and my hatred of instagram health coaches. The e-mail was (not at all aggressively) titled “Birth control findings and other pseudo science,” and the thread eventually included the sentence, “I don’t know how to say this in a way that isn’t blunt but I don’t really want to pay you for me to tell you why you’re wrong.” (God bless you, Nikki).

In addition to that I had recently learned that I would probably be seeing one of my favorite friends less due to a job change, I was bummed my boyfriend and I hadn’t been spending as much “quality time” together because we’d both been sick, and I was about to get my period. As I’m reading this, I’m thinking that this is really not a lot. But my brain was sure convinced it was.

The day that I left my apartment looking like such a sad muppet my lovely roommate noticed, I went to a couple’s massage that I had gotten my boyfriend for Christmas.

I was a bitch to him the whole way there. And we didn’t even ride together.

I just kept sending him angry voice memos. (God bless you, too). Merry Christmas!

One of the things that was making me even crankier than my puffy, post-nighttime sob eyelids was the fact that I really had to pee and we were already cutting it close to the start time of our massage. The first thing I did after signing in was ask about the bathroom and then I blacked out because I saw a plumber performing major surgery on the toilet that I felt couldn’t possibly be completed between 11:58 and 12:00 pm. I briefly hoped there might be a secondary toilet but, no. There would be no peeing for me.

Let’s take a moment to discuss Pee Anxiety.

Pee anxiety is when your anxiety about having a place to pee is so great that even if you didn’t have to pee, somehow, upon learning that you would not have anywhere to pee, you would suddenly manifest a full bladder.

Except I really did have to pee quite badly. You know what does not help having to pee quite badly? Having a stranger touch your naked body for an hour.

The room we were in was, of course, right across from the toilet where the plumber was using one of those motorized toilet jabbers (I did light googling and nothing was helpful. You either know what I’m talking about or you don’t. No judgement either way). The Relaxing Massage Music playlist was not near enough to me to even remotely drown out the sounds of the machine, which basically sounds like someone failing to start a chainsaw 150 times in a row (I would later learn from my boyfriend, who was much closer to the speaker, that the music was on such a short loop that he would often opt out of hearing it to switch back over to listening to the plumber).

On top of the mechanical sounds was the plumber yelling at the owner of the spa while she laughed at him.

There is something truly magical about a world that is even more of a literal shit show than your own brain. I could not stop laughing. Why would my massage possibly be any less absurd than my last 24 hours?

These are the moments I feel most connected to the universe, or Spirit, or my guides, or God, or whatever you want to call it.

I like to imagine them talking like this:

• Godthing1: Oh man she’s a mess right now.
• Godthing2: Did you hear she thinks she’s going to find her zen at a massage parlor? Like she thinks there’s going to be soft music playing and gorgeous, plush white towels and billowing incense and cucumber water and somehow a soft breeze.
• Godthing1: Oh that’s fucking great. Okay let’s have her have to pee really bad and not be able to use the toilet and the plumber is really loud and there’s an ever so faint scent of pipes and shit and of course a Thai woman on top of her beating the shit out of her while laughing with the other woman.
• Godthing2: To like teach her not to take shit so seriously and find the humor in things.
• Godthing1: Yeah sure whatever.

They just fucking get me, you know?

Truly I was cured by this experience. I’m sure the actual massage helped, too, but mostly I need to be snapped out of taking things way too seriously. Which is hard! Because even if you know you’re being a drama queen it might not hit you on a deep level until you’re trying to meditate and your cat shits on the floor.

Alls I’m sayins is, sometimes the world actually helps you remember who you are; you just have to listen long enough to hear the motorized toilet jabber. And if you’re super lucky you’ll have very forgiving people who are willing to deal with you in the meantime.

Hiking in LA – not a guide, simply a list of grievances

I went on a hike this morning because it’s the first nice weekend day we’ve had in a bit (nice is relative. It’s Los Angeles. You could presumably hike any day of the year, unless of course the mountain is on fire. I’m told people hike in the snow? So nice is relative). Apparently everyone else had the same idea because it was even more packed than usual.

Things that annoy me while hiking:

1. I get winded walking up the hill to where the hike begins and no one else seems to. I was at the base of the park today and I came upon a toned man with booty shorts yelling to another toned man with booty shorts who was on his balcony in the complex by the park. I could not yell to a friend after walking up the pre hike hike. As a side note, I really wanted to say “This is beautiful, it’s like Romeo and Romeo” but that felt really inappropriate (so I’m writing it in a public blog post instead).
2. Some people don’t take hiking seriously enough. And I don’t mean to suggest that I’m one of those people that takes it WAY seriously and runs up the hard parts and runs backwards down the easy parts to I guess make them more perilous? I just mean it really annoys me when I’m in hiking shoes panting like I’ve just run here from an active shooter situation and there are people next to me wearing sandals and dresses and having a casual chat. I don’t understand this. I’ve decided it must have something to do with mindset. Like, “I’m working out now” vs “I’m having a leisurely stroll right now” because the answer can’t possibly be that the people walking Runyon in dresses and sandals are so much more in shape than I am that they aren’t breaking a sweat.
3. Many people seem to not break a sweat. I’m typically of the mind that if someone isn’t sweating during a workout class then they aren’t giving it their all. But you can’t really fake hike a mountain (actually, you can. Hollywood probably does it a lot. Although you can’t fake bring the crew up there and I like to imagine large crews full of people who spend all their free time in a basement eating Cheetos having to climb a mountain carrying heavy equipment, but they’re not the people I’m here to lob unfounded anger at). There somehow really are people who can hike the equivalent of 50 flights of stairs (my phone said 47, but if you parked farther down it could be 50) and land on the peak looking better than they did at the start. They’re always up there taking cute selfies while I arrive hunched over, trying not to vomit, and looking like Meryl Streep in that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where she isn’t wearing makeup and she’s in the middle of a divorce. But worse because I’m not Meryl Streep.

I was going to add “the people who take stupid pictures at the top” to the list but checked myself because I made my friend take a picture of me doing a headstand on a helipad on top of a mountain in Hawaii a few weeks ago (which is actually pretty badass if I do say so myself and I try to work this into as many conversations as possible, obviously).

Really my frustrations are just about me wondering why it is so hard for me when it seems so effortless for everyone else. This is pretty much how I feel about life generally. Also I did not realize this was the point of this post when I began so this is as much of annoying surprise to me as it is to you. I spend a lot of my time on the way up trying to get away from people. I feel superior when I surpass people but then I have to stop for a break and eventually they catch up with me and I think “god, how can they be going this fast?!” But if we keep meeting up at the same places, technically we are going at the same pace just in different ways. And anyways why the fuck do I care about how people I’ve never met before perform on a hike?

I once told someone that for about 5 minutes after strenuous cardio, such as a hike, I feel the tightness of anxiety leave my chest fully and I get to see what life is like for someone without my condition, and it is truly beautiful. And I think maybe I should focus on that rather than where whatshisfuck is walking in relation to me. Although I will say, on the way down I kept crossing paths with this woman who kept calling out to her dog in the most goddamn annoying way and I don’t mind saying I never want to hike with her again, even if it meant a whole hour of no anxiety.

Ugh, that’s such a lie.

A trip to the dentist where I walked in a Bitch and walked out a Vampire.

I had to get a cavity filled today which, I’ve learned, is just a once yearly procedure once you reach the age of 100 no matter how diligently you brush (I swear! Every morning and night! That’s better than most of you!).

I planned to leave work early around 4:30 and was rushing to get a few last minute things done before heading out when I got a text from my dentist (very forward) asking if we couldn’t possibly move my appointment back half an hour to 5:30 because she was running behind.

The options the dentist’s office text gave me were to reply with either “NO” or “YES” to pushing the appointment half an hour, but really “OKAY SURE BUT I HAD PLANNED AROUND THIS TIME SPECIFICALLY ALL DAY AND I KNOW SHIT HAPPENS AND I DO SUPER APPRECIATE THE HEADS UP BUT I’M AN ANXIOUS PERSON AND ANY SUDDEN CHANGE OF PLANS KIND OF REALLY FUCKS WITH ME AND NOW I DON’T KNOW IF I SHOULD DICK AROUND AT WORK FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR OR JUST HEAD OUT NOW AS PLANNED BUT THEN I MIGHT HAVE TO PAY EXTRA FOR PARKING LONGER BUT I’M NOT GOING TO RESCHEDULE SO YES” felt more appropriate.

Despite having lived in LA for 6 years and having lived in cities for forever, I was still somehow not prepared for the insane traffic in a busy commercial part of town. It took me forever to find parking that wasn’t approximately half a million dollars which made me anxious I’d be late so I decided to call the office ahead since they’d been kind enough to text me ahead. It went as follows:

Me: Hi it’s Arielle my appointment was moved to 5:30 and now I think I will be late.

Nice woman just trying to do her job: Okay no problem! Do you know how many minutes?

Me: WHAT?

Nice woman: Do you know about how many minutes you’ll be late?

Me: I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG IT’LL TAKE ME TO FIND PARKING! (Cars and parking really stress me the fuck out)

Nice woman: Oh is the garage closed?

Me: No but you don’t validate and I’m not rich so.

Nice woman: Well the 99 cent store has free two hour parking!

Me: OKAY.

This is the part where I realized I should have taken time to come to terms with the fact that this would be stressful for me. Changes of plans are stressful for me. Finding parking at rush hour is stressful for me. Getting a cavity filled is stressful for me because regular Novocain gives me panic attacks and the kind without norepinephrine doesn’t last very long and I usually end up feeling some pain while they drill. On top of this, I’d gotten up early this morning to go on a run which I NEVER do but I couldn’t go because my sciatica was acting up and my leg was basically on fire. And also I’m searching for a new roommate which is just the slightly gray cloud that’ll be over my head until January 15th, but that’s another post. It would have been a good time to take a preemptive Klonopin and do a brief mindfulness meditation.

BUT THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED AND HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED.

I entered the office and my (extremely lovely and sweet and talented and too good for all of us we don’t deserver her honestly. Beverly Grove Dentistry. Check them out) dentist greeted me:

Dentist: How are you?!

Me: UGH.

Dentist: Oh no, that kind of day?

Me: Well, you’re about to drill a hole in my head and I’ve not head a great afternoon.

Dentist: Oh, okay. I’m sorry. Here is the consent form. Now there are things that could happen but it’s very rare and-

Me: Do you want me to read or to listen?

Dentist: Oh…I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet, then…

Yeah. I know.

I did apologize – twice. And I explained that I was just feeling really anxious about the situation since I tend to have trouble with the novocain. She was understanding but didn’t coddle me which honestly I super respect. The people pleaser in me wanted her to be like “Arielle it’s okay! Thank you so much for apologizing. I love you. You’re my favorite patient.” But she said “Hey, we all have bad days,” and then stabbed me in the jaw with a syringe. Respect.

They worked quickly and efficiently, as they always do. She finished up, asked me how it felt, and then gave me the run down of aftercare. Then she kindly sent me on my way. I thought about giving her one last “Sorry again for being a bitch!” but realized it would be more for me than for her.

As I walked out thinking about the transformation of my emotions while there and how she was able to transform my teeth, I started to tongue around to feel my newly healed and filled tooth and I realized she’d turned my tooth into a fucking vampire fang.

Now, before I elaborate I ask that you not take this as any sort of review of her work. She and her associates do incredible work. I have extremely sharp teeth to begin with and lots of shit happens when a cavity is being filled. She might have filled it a bit sharp while drilling or perhaps some of the filling latched into my chompy part and extended the already existing sword I have coming out of my face. And most importantly, she asked me how it felt.

The thing about anxiety is, you can’t often properly appraise situations in the moment. It basically went like:

Dentist: How does it feel?

Me: Normalish?

Dentist: Numbish?

Me: No, it feels normal….as far as I can tell?

But it’s really hard to tell how your tooth feels when you mouth is numb and you’ve just had like 5 implements of destruction and 10 different pastes and substances and tinctures marinating your tongue for the past 15 minutes. So I made the executive to end the overwhelming interaction quickly and determined that my tooth felt “toothish.”

So I have a fuckin vampire fang in the back of my mouth. I guess I’ll have to call back and request to not have a vampire fang in the back of my mouth. But I’m testing it on the other side of my mouth and I’m not sure my tongue really ever comes into much contact with my back most molar, so is it even a problem.

And if we’re being honest, with the amount I clench my teeth and night, I’ll probably grind the fang down in 6 month’s time, anyway.

Moral of the story:

• Know thyself
• Prepare thyself accordingly
• Be nice to your dentist
• Check for vampire fangs before leaving.

“I’m Wearing a Cat with a Butt’s Anus”

I had a pretty busy Saturday, which isn’t typical for me. By busy I mean I did 3 things, none of which were particularly taxing, but for me any day with a lot of moving pieces makes me anxious. I was to attend the women’s march downtown with my friends and then head from there to a hospital at which some of us would donate platelets and then later that night I’d be meeting up with different friends downtown for a comedy show. It was an interesting day, and I’m going to tell you about it now.

I went to the LA women’s march with my friend Sarah and her family and friends. As I was getting ready for the march that morning, I couldn’t really find any Women’s March themed attire, by which I mean I gave myself 20 minutes to get ready and if I’d really put in the effort I could at least have pulled a Rosie the Riveter updo and some lipstick out of my ass. I eventually mostly gave up and landed on a t-shirt I have with a print of a cat lifting its leg to lick its butthole. Add my running shoes, my Athleta leggings, and a fanny pack and I was march ready.

To get my anxious mind and broken body prepared for the march, I took a lot of CBD oil. I know CBD is not the part of weed that gets you high but I swear to god sometimes if I take a lot I get a mild case of the goofies. This resulted in a period of about 2 hours that morning where I continually mixed up the nouns in a lot of my sentences. I’d say shit like “Are we going to take a march to the lyft?” Most noteworthy, however, was when I entered the pre march brunch at Sarah’s excited to tell everyone about the cool shirt I had with a cat’s anus on it and I enthusiastically exclaimed “I’m wearing a cat with a butt’s anus!”

The march was beautiful and inspiring as always. My friend and I both got goosebumps once we found the crowd. We walked with everyone to the end point, enjoying signs that were hilarious and heartbreaking, inspiring and dark. It is such a marvelously overwhelming experience to be surrounded by so many people who have your back, even if the leaders of your country don’t.

Then we got to the end and couldn’t hear a single fucking thing any of the speakers were saying.

Sarah’s boyf had an appointment shortly thereafter to donate platelets and we all said we’d come along and donate too, if we could. So we left the inaudible but probably inspiring speeches to get some tacos and head to the hospital.

I didn’t really know about platelets until my friend told me about them. They’re apparently often in higher demand than blood because they can’t be kept for as long. They’re used for many things, I’m sure, but often times they’re very helpful for cancer patients. Because of this, most hospitals are desperate for platelets.

Which is hilarious because half of us were turned away for not meeting their standards. I would say it’s easier to buy a gun than to donate platelets but as we’ve all recently become aware, it’s easier to buy a gun than do a lot of things.

It’s easier to get your license renewed the week your passport expires and you only have a couple hours because you have to leave for work at 1 and the DMV’s entire system shuts down when you’re at the front of the line than it is to donate platelets.

Sarah had done her research and already knew she’d be turned away due to a medication she takes daily. Our friend Marco was turned away because he used to live in Italy and we as a nation are apparently very worried about a resurgence of Mad Cow Disease. Sarah’s mother couldn’t donate platelets because, as it turns out, anyone who’s EVER BEEN PREGNANT EVEN A LITTLE BIT could possibly have a chemical in their system that renders their platelets nontransferable. For some reason, she was still able to donate blood.

I, on the other hand, have been avoiding the thought of donating blood or platelets for years because I have a history of passing out when giving blood for tests and I get myself all woozy just thinking about it. It’s not the needles that bother me. I’m fine with watching nurses put needles into my veins and if you really wanted to, I’d probably let you stab me in a fleshy area with a needle because I’m a good friend and I support your dreams. What bothers me is the idea of something leaving my body that should be staying in my body. And since I’ve passed out in the past, my brain immediately associates blood loss with fainting.

I really wanted to get the fuck over this though and do some good in the world. So all day I made sure no one talked to me about it and that I didn’t spend any time thinking about it. It would be best if I just powered through and did the thing and didn’t give myself a chance to freak out. I even put in airpods Sarah provided me with when the nurses were explaining the procedure to the other people in our group.

Finally it was my turn to go in and answer the tech’s questions and test my blood to make sure I was good to go. I was so fucking ready, by which I mean I made sure my brain had no idea what was going on and I just sang songs loudly to it to distract it. During the assessment, I felt it was important to mention that I sometimes pass out when I have blood drawn. When I said this, he stopped taking notes so abruptly it was as if I’d just informed him that I did heroin with a dirty needle on the way over while eating beef from 1980’s England. He said he had to talk to the nurse and left me in the room alone.

He came back in and said that I couldn’t donate because the doctor was not there that day and due to the risk of me passing out they didn’t feel it was safe for me.

He continued speaking but I felt like I had been punched in the gut and I didn’t hear anything else he said. I started to cry and said “I’ll just go.” I ran out to the lobby and started cry-explaining to Sarah what happened. She said it wasn’t my fault and most everyone else got rejected too, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my fault. I felt like I was just scared of passing out and that I should just learn to get over the association my brain has formed between blood being drawn and passing out. I felt like I shouldn’t have said anything about my past and just stuck it out.I still feel those things strongly, but I know that if my friend told me that that had happened to them, I would absolutely not judge them and I would have felt that it was in fact safer for them to wait to have a doctor present due to the potential risk. I guess that’s something I’m just going to have to fucking deal with eventually. I just want to feel useful for something! Can I donate other stuff? Eyebrow hairs? Nails, perhaps? A pervasive need to feel needed?

Eventually with time and help from my amazing friend, I got the fuck over myself and we had some fun doing crosswords, drinking coffee, and petting dogs in the waiting room while the two people who were special enough to be accepted sat through their procedures.

I grew increasingly anxious about the time because I had to make it to a comedy show by 6, we were pretty far from there, and I’d hitched a ride with the heroes and other rejects. I wanted to make it out in time to go home, change, and eat before heading out to the show downtown. Eventually, we realized the only way I’d make it in time would be if everyone, including dog, joined me on my detour downtown to drop me off.

I waited outside the for both of my friends. One of them, Kristin, is friend’s with one of the comedians in the show so we had VIP tickets waiting for us at will-call. This arrangement sounds cool but being an insane person, it made me very anxious. So I stood outside the venue in my cat anus shirt and fanny pack frantically texting them to hurry up because I felt like an idiot and all that waiting room coffee was hittin my own butt’s anus pretty hard.

When they got there, we went in and got our tickets and backstage access wristbands. I wanted to shit first since my body had been yelling at me about it for approx 45 minutes except it ended up being a FUCKING FALSE ALARM. So I headed in to meet the hosts of one of my all time favorite podcasts with a full colon, an empty stomach, and sweaty clothes I’d worn all day. Because of this, I was more worried than normal that I’d fangirl and be a nonverbal idiot.

Immediately when we got back stage, Dave, one of the comedians, gave us pizza and said “Did you wear that shirt because Gareth loves cats? Gareth you have to see this.” Then while filling my tummy, I told them the story about how I somehow managed to say “cat with a butt’s anus” and they loved it so much we took this picture:

Then we just chatted for a bit and had a fun time before heading back up to the show where we were seated with their friends and family. And as always, the show was fucking hilarious. Then my friend drove me home because we live super close to one another (and also because she loves me and is an angel) and we had a great fucking time in the car. I got home safely, ate some noms, and went to bed.

This could just be a fun story but I always feel the need to make there be a moral of some sort. There were so many times in the day that my anxious thoughts crept up and nearly ruined my day. I worried that I’d panic at the march or that my back pain would keep me from walking. I worried that I didn’t eat enough after the march to feel okay enough to donate platelets. I worried that I wouldn’t have time to drive home and change and get properly ready for the show. I worried that I’d have to take an expensive lyft at some point since I didn’t have my car. I worried that I’d feel like crap during the show and not be able to enjoy it or enjoy meeting them.

But it ended up being a really magical day. And if I were any other writer, I’d say “So I learned that when I let go, everything turns out okay.” But that is not me and that is not the case. There are things about my body and my life that make it such that it is genuinely hard for me to go with the flow at times. I get hungry easily. I have back pain that makes it so that I can’t walk around a lot at times. I don’t have enough money to take lyfts whenever if I find myself with out my car or a ride. I have anxiety that wears me out quickly.

But I do want to say that it is hard for me to forget about all of that panic and enjoy the awesome day that did happen. Oftentimes, even when things turn out great, I feel the same as I would if they had not because the anxiety is still in my bloodstream and remains very real to me. I want to take a moment to enjoy how perfectly perfect the day ended up being, partly due to luck, but largely due to me deciding to let go just enough. Just enough to trust my friends to have my back and just enough to be myself.

And if you follow those easy steps you, too, can talk about cat anuses with some of your favorite entertainers.

How Anxiety is like Shitty Christmas, or, making your anxiety meet the world in the middle.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how there are times that I have to make my anxiety adjust to everyone else’s schedule. It’s also possibly some of the ADHD that I thought I was done with as a kid, but is apparently still there and this is a whole other blog post I’ll work on eventually (this is a procrastination ADHD joke). Basically, when I get anxious about something, I want answers and plans immediately. I want to know what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and what I need to do.

These are often valid things to want. When I think I might feel a lump in one of my boobs, it’s valid to want that checked by a medical professional. What this looks like in the world of my brain, however, is walking up to every single person at work saying “I think I feel a lump in my breast” while kneading my tit through my shirt with one hand and frantically pulling up the clinic’s appointment request form with the other.

The most frustrating form of this for me is when it comes to my anxieties about people. Okay, I tried painting myself in a less stupid light for a second by saying people, but I’m a dick for lying to you and what I really mean is my anxieties about anyone I’m sexually and/or romantically interested in and/or involved with. It’s a character flaw built by various traumas I won’t bore anyone but my therapist with because the world doesn’t need more white women crying about problems that make you want to scream “GET A FUCKING LIFE AND SOME HOBBIES, JESUS.”

Recently, I feared I was being ghosted by someone. Someone I had gotten used to talking to every day really slowed down with replies and, most importantly, it just felt super different. I wanted to immediately be like “WHAT’S HAPPENING? DID I DO SOMETHING? AM I NEVER SEEING YOU AGAIN? WILL I EVER HAVE SEX AGAIN? WILL TRUMP GET REELECTED? WHEN WILL THE SECOND CIVIL WAR BEGIN? DO I NEED TO BUY GUNS?” Most of those are real to me.

But then I thought about what my doctor friend says whenever I text him frantically about having cancer or herpes: “I’m sure it’s fine, but if it still feels off in a week, get it checked out.”

Why couldn’t I also apply that to my human interaction psychosis?

Instead of: “My boob feels fucking weird, but boobs do weird things all the time. This is the first time you’ve noticed the lump so if it is something, it’s probably nothing and waiting one week isn’t going to give you full blown cancer out of nowhere” it’s “Sure, communication feels way different right now but we literally just saw each other 4 days ago. In a world without phones, that might qualify as still having a person inside of you.”

Did I wait a week? Of course not. As much as I want to be on everyone else’s schedule, that’s just a fucking impossibility. I dream of the day that I wake up and go “Yeah I haven’t heard from him in a week, he’s probably skiing.” WHAT?! I’m self aware but I’m not a goddamn saint. I’ve canceled and rescheduled clinic appointments upwards of 5 fucking times while arguing with myself over how long I should wait. I’m just a mildly crazy girl standing in front of her anxiety begging it to at least meet the world in the middle.

The hardest part about this is that people are always telling you to trust your gut, but when you have a condition that fucks with your thoughts, it can sometimes be incredibly hard to distinguish between intuition and extremely well dressed toxicity. Furthermore, for someone who values authenticity above all else, waiting to share your thoughts can feel like playing games. And that is the last fucking thing I want for any of my relationships with people.

This is where friends come in! It’s the happy part of the post. My friends are awesome. You should meet them. A note: this section does not apply if you have the shitty kind of friends who don’t partake in self reflection or have evolved thoughts on anything and will just say shit like “Just never reply to him and only post pictures of you sitting on other people’s faces.” I don’t know if anyone has ever said that, but this is what I imagine those kinds of people say.

I cannot thank my friends enough for helping me through these times. They tell me when I’m being crazy, they tell me what they think is valid, and they remind me not to take myself so seriously and to try to remember who I am.

Sure, it had only been a couple days, but things HAD changed and it was valid for me to want to check in AND I realized it was possible to do so while being my open, funny, charming self oh my god what??????

This is turning out to be a sloppy dismount because I had an argument with myself about whether or not to include more specifics of the exchange and I decided not to since that isn’t really the point of the post and also is maybe sharing too much. So give me a minute and I’ll come up with some sort of moral for us to end on.

Okay so basically, having anxiety is kind of like when you’re a kid and you’re so fucking excited to go downstairs on Christmas (sorry, Jews) you might fucking explode but your parents said “if you come into our room before 6 I will literally murder you” so you just sit shaking with anticipation for like 3 hours and then burst into their room. You wanted to start Christmas at 3 in the morning and they’d have loved to sleep til 9, but you all only suffered a little (or at least a little less than a lot).

Anxiety can be just as taxing on the people around you as it is on you. But you’d be surprised how willing the world is to meet you in the middle and open your anxious gifts at 6 in the morning.

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 Time My Friend Thought I Asked Him To Remove My Contact Lenses, or The Contact Fallacy

When I was about 20, I was at my best friend Duckers’ house smoking weed. Smoking tends to dry my eyes out so if I’m wearing contacts I almost always have to switch to glasses at some point. I for some reason felt the need to say out loud “I’m going to have to take my contacts out at some point.” He mumbled some sort of acknowledgement and we went back to (probably) watching South Park. Somehow, and I truly and deeply wish I could remember how, we discovered that he had thought I’d said “You’re going to have to take my contacts out at some point.” This would become one of the most important moments of my entire life.

The fact that he thought I said that and gave no reaction to it made me so utterly upset. Immediately. Viscerally.

The amazing thing is that we both knew instinctively that even though we didn’t yet know why, we both felt deeply that it was a very valid thing to be upset about. So rather than arguing, we launched a two person investigation into the intricacies of this interaction. After discussing for awhile, we were able to break it down into three feelings:

1. Why the fuck, after 8 years of knowing me and knowing me well, would you think that I would say “YOU’RE going to have to take out MY contacts.”
2. Why the fuck upon registering in your brain that I had said something so utterly absurd did you not say something about how weird it was?
3. Oh my god, do you NOT think that that’s an insane thing to say?

In that moment, I suddenly felt like if he thought that that is something I would say so casually that he must not know me as well as I thought he did. Also, I would hope that we are close enough that if we think the other person has said something insane, that we wouldn’t just brush it off and move on. I would hope that we would say “I’m sorry, I hope I’m mistaken here but if you said what I think you said you’re fucking insane and as your close and personal friend I’d like to discuss it.” Lastly, I REALLY hope this doesn’t mean that you don’t find that as insane a statement as I do. Much of our connection is based off of finding the same shit crazy or weird and being able to dissect it and make fun of it. If you don’t think an out of nowhere request for you to remove a contact lens from my eyeball with your hands just ’cause is unsettlingly strange, you must not be the person I thought you were and our connection is a lie.

We didn’t know the depths of this at the time but we were essentially picking apart the main components of true intimacy: understanding, honesty, and respect.

Let’s pick apart honesty first because it feels like the least triggering for me. Honesty and realness is one of the most important things to me in any meaningful relationship. If I have to bullshit with you or I talk about you behind your back about something I haven’t said to you (or plan to say to you), you are not someone I consider a friend. It is still a struggle for me to understand that other people do not handle their friendships with the same philosophy, but it has gotten easier over time. It is weird to have to learn to not hold others to the same standards to which you hold yourself. If I thought that it meant people hated me every time I learned of them having discussed me behind my back, I would have like 2 friends. I know that their actions mean different things for them than they would for me. I don’t fucking know WHY no one else seems to give a shit about honesty as much as I do, but that’s for another time.

My relationship with honesty has evolved over time, though. It used to be a lot more of a burden. In relationships I used to feel that if I wasn’t telling them every single negative or worried thought I had about our relationship that I was being dishonest and our relationship wasn’t real. Thankfully I’ve moved past that, but I still have to fight the urges to puke up my emotions and offer premium access to the Arielle Stream of Consciousness channel. Additionally, I have finally gotten to the point where I don’t feel like I can’t have a real connection with someone if I don’t tell them they have a lot of blackheads that I’d like to fix (I’m serious. I honestly have the thought “well if I don’t tell them, are we really friends?”).

That said, I still maintain that if I say something that seems off or offensive or whatever, any true friend should say something about it. I only brush people off or let them say stupid shit if they’re someone who doesn’t mean that much to me (excluding of course grandparents and things like that. I love them dearly but they are old and insane). I’m trying to find the best way to describe this, because it has such a strong and specific feel to it but I haven’t found words that feel satisfying or adequate enough yet. I’m in a hotel room right now and the setup actually might work. Let’s try. So in the middle of this multi-level hotel is basically a covered atrium. It’s like a tall donut if donuts were square. Or like one of those stupid popsicle stick towers we were always making as kids for no one in particular. All the rooms are along each 4 sides of the carved out center, so on one side of my room is a window to the outdoors and on the other side is a window to the rest of the hotel. I can see what everyone else is doing but I’m not actually with them. The way I feel about friendship and realness is like this hotel: anyone I consider a friend is in my room with me. They’re going to hear everything I’m thinking out loud, they’re going to see me naked, and they will smell my poop. And we’re all stuck in here together being equally as naked and talky and poopy. We see the people outside and we might open the door to say shit to them, but they’re not inside with us. We are judging them through the window and talking about their stupid hair or their weird shoes or why they feel the need to use the word “actually” at the beginning of most sentences. Everyone inside already knows it’s weird to do those things, or they’re being lovingly made fun of for it because we can’t keep secrets in here and there aren’t enough corners to run to where we can gossip without being overheard. And it’s not that people on the outside of the room are always on the outside. Sometimes I talk about someone’s hair who’s on the outside of the room but then my friend on the inside talks to them through the open door enough times that I HAVE to bring them inside because with my room you can either be out or in; you can’t stand in the doorway. It’s also possible for me to kick someone out of the room for being a real dick. I do have some boundaries. But, obviously, not many since I just described friendship as pooping in front of a room full of people.

Respect is really rather similar to honesty for me in that I feel if you respect someone you should be honest with them and that honesty is a sign of respect and care. Aside from like the normal baseline level of human respect, I have no reason to respect the woman across the atrium who’s wearing socks and sandals so I don’t really care about whether I’m real with her so if when we’re in the elevator together and she asks me where I’m from and I say Washington and she thinks I mean Washington State I maybe won’t correct her. If a friend of mine made such a mistake, I would feel an obligation out of respect for them to make sure we’re on the same page. A possible character flaw of mine is also that I have trouble respecting people who feel wildly differently than I do about particular things. If you find enjoyment in pop music and don’t listen to anything else, I probably don’t respect you to the fullest extent I’d like to to feel comfortable calling you a friend (there are a few exceptions but these people have won my respect in other ways, not that my respect is something to strive for or anything but if we’re being real I obviously think it is). Lately I have been working on finding it INTERESTING rather than THREATENING when I have a different experience with something than someone else does. It’s still a work in progress. Like I’m at the stage where I still feel irritation bubbling up and I basically yell “HOW INTERESTING TELL ME MORE” at them. But the people who are in the closest circle of my friends (let’s say, on the toilet with me while I’m pooping) tend to feel the same way that I do about a lot of things. I’m not saying this is a good thing. But it is a thing.

Additionally, it, like, really pisses me off when someone mishears something and rather than figuring it out with contextual clues they decide to willingly be an idiot about it despite the fact that the rest of us are trying insanely hard to properly understand people all the time. And they always think it’s hilarious. You know the people I mean. The ones where when you say “How far is it to the restaurant?” and you have to repeat yourself they say “Oh my god I thought you said ‘Plow Mars innit? I’m feeling gaunt.’ And I was like, ‘HAHAHA WHAT?!'” Shut the fuck up, Susan. Respect the rest of us enough to use your goddamn brain for two extra seconds and figure out since we’re on the way to a restaurant that’s PROBABLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

Now for understanding. This one is going to be rough.

I have a deep, pervasive need to feel understood. I think we all do, although I’m not sure exactly how it manifests in anyone else so I’m just going to talk about what it’s like for me.

When I was a kid, words were constantly flying out of my mouth without permission and getting me in trouble before I even knew what had happened. I was either saying something rude and inappropriate that had somehow passed through the extremely weak, pre-9/11 TSA that is my mouth or the thing that I did mean to say somehow transformed into something completely different while it was being manufactured by my tongue and teeth. My cries of “But that’s not what I meant!” were always met with “You should think before you speak,” as if I had any control over the matter. The biggest emotion I feel when I look back is feeling deeply misunderstood.

I carry an immense fear of not being able to express myself because something in me wants to avoid ever feeling like I did back then ever again. To this day, my most frequent nightmare involves me being in some form of Locked In Syndrome where I can hear people and see them and I want to respond to them but I just can’t get the words out of my mouth.

When I’m talking, I try so hard to avoid expressing my thoughts incorrectly that I’ll often take such long pauses between words that people think I’m done talking and say “What?” Like I’ll be trying to express how I feel when I wake up and my immediate thought is that it feels like I’ve been hit by a truck but then I think like wait but I’ve never actually been hit by a truck so maybe that’s not how I feel and maybe the person I’m talking to’s sister just actually got hit by a truck and anyways maybe I shouldn’t complain about such a privileged thing at all it’s not like I’m sleeping on a sidewalk but I still want to explain why I’m grouchy right now. But all that’s come out of my mouth is “Sometimes when I wake up, I feel like…” followed by me staring off into the distance. So, no, of course it doesn’t make sense. I was in the middle of  a sentence. You have half of a thought. But that’s my fault, not yours.

I somehow got it into my head that if someone doesn’t understand me perfectly on the first try, they’ll never know who I am as a person. Like if they only hear me say “When I wake up it feels like I got hit by a truck” they won’t also know that I understand it’s not a horrible problem to have and that I understand other people have it worse and also that I don’t even know what it’s like to be hit by a car and that it’s important to me to be fair but also that I definitely am a bitch in the morning and am kind of okay with that. And if I can’t fit all of that into one, neat sentence, clearly I’m a failure.

Not only do I think I need to perfectly convey the entirety of my being in one thought in order to express myself honestly, I for some reason feel like if someone thinks I’ve said something that I think doesn’t align with who I am, that that must mean they know nothing about me. And that they’ve never known anything about me. And that no one really knows anything about me. And that no one will ever know anything about me. And that I’m 10 again and in the play Bye Bye Birdie and we’re doing the scene where his groupies sing and I’m one of the groupies and we’re singing “Oh Conrad we love you” except out of my mouth comes “Oh Conrad we hate you” in front of everyone’s parents and now everyone thinks I’m a troublemaker when really I probably just had the song that the non fan group sings in the next scene stuck in my head because I heard them do it, oh I don’t know, 100 fucking times during rehearsals.

So it’s crazy that this extremely simple to explain issue doesn’t already have a word for it, we feel.

We usually just call it “that issue” or “the contact issue.” If I were a better writer I’d have built up to that beautifully and talked about how it really is The Contact Issue because it has to do with HUMAN CONTACT!!! But I’m not cool enough to hide the fact that I was extremely excited by the convenient coincidence and it felt dishonest to pretend otherwise.

After going through all of this with you, though, I think it should actually be called something else. Because while it is a term that describes a certain (EXTREMELY SPECIFIC) misunderstanding, it’s really more about how the issue makes us feel than anything else.

It is my dream to find someone who knows exactly what I’m saying all the time on every single level and knows what I would or would not say. But I don’t even fucking know myself that well. I’m not going to stop being bothered by this and I’m going to still call it The Contact Problem because I love explaining it to people and seeing whose faces light up because they have felt it, too and we can all be in a nice cozy hotel room together. But I actually think it’s more of a Contact Fallacy. The fact that Duckers thought I had asked him to remove my contacts from my eyes probably had nothing to do with how well he knows me and everything to do with the fact that we were high and mostly paying attention to South Park. The idea that the misunderstanding means “I am not understood” is a fallacy. It’s not true. I am really hating every second of writing this paragraph because I want it so badly to be that I’m misunderstood and Duckers and I are special. But I’m trying to be a better person or something ugh.

I mean don’t get me wrong, we are special and I’m difficult to understand. But I want the point of The Contact Fallacy to be to remember to laugh at misunderstandings rather than to have an existential crisis over them. And I’m going to try to remember to prop the hotel door open on that safety latch thing. Except Susan can’t come in. Susan’s an idiot.