–
I drafted an entry on Monday while I was in the middle of what felt like an anxiety attack, it turns out I was over caffeinated and dehydrated. By the time I downed 60 ounces of water, most of what was left of the panic attack had dissipated, aside from the emotionally erratic writing. I thought about touching it up and posting it, but it was too jagged. I recently revisited an entry from 2024, one that I posted when I felt really anxious, and I could sense it coming off the page. I’m not sure if that was my recollection of the energy I was in when I wrote it, or its undertone.
I was thinking about time and life events. It’s funny when life happens, it’s hard to make sense of situations as they’re unraveling. I was talking to a friend and I told her that sometimes life can feel like a car accident. When there is so much happening at any given moment, it’s difficult to even articulate the components of the situation. Once the event passes, it’s easier to look back and put the pieces together, to build a more cohesive narrative, one that spreads across the experience like a spine.
Alex and Moxy are coming back to New York. I’m not at all surprised by this development. I don’t think New York is a tourist attraction in as much as it is a terrible life experience, one that extracts growth at an exponential rate. Other cities will comfortably push you forward, but New York will rip your heart out at breathtaking speed and leave you on the floor of your bedroom, alone, anxious about money, and trying to sew it back together.
I’m surprised at how good I’ve gotten at managing the city though. It’s weird to observe that. When I first moved here I had extensive trauma and the life skills of a moron that survived Columbus, Ohio. My family was particularly concerned from the outset of my move, seeing all too clearly what I kept missing: that I was simply too ill equipped to manage the city. This November marks 12 years in it. I would argue that the beginning was the hardest, the middle was good, and the last 4 years oscillated between tolerable and intolerable. I’m trying to get to the point where I can thrive in the city, but that seems to be a few years away.
I recently came to some realizations about my 2.5 year depressive episode. I realized that it was forcing me to confront a pessimism that I had buried deep within me about the potential of my life. Before it hit, I thought I had my life figured out, and then it fell apart. I didn’t understand how someone could work so hard and still wind up shipwrecked. It didn’t even seem unfair, it felt like an incontestable fact, like someone had erected a giant wall and said that this was about as far as my life was going to go. This is a dangerous headspace to get stuck in, so I kept trying to work my way out. Now I see things differently. Growth is non linear, and 2 steps forward and 1 step back is very real. I saw my future, but I still had to contend with my internal roadblocks. I’m glad I got them out of the way.
a soft death 