TW: I will be going into a bit of a spiral that mentions triggering words like SA and beyond. Don’t worry. There is definitely light at the end of this tunnel. Proceed at will. This is a 10-minute ride.
Things feel a little heavy lately…
Is it my Pisces Moon during a Pisces Moon or...
...am I addicted to a device that reaches into my chest and hijacks my heart and soul on an emotional rollercoaster until my entire being is overwhelmed and numb?
My feed:
[children getting bombed calling out for their mothers]
[wrinkles are gross; buy this cream!]
[this dog has been at the shelter for 4 years!!]
[this rescue cat was punted out of a window]
[:: an act of kindness that makes me cry here::]
[This baby has been held hostage for 199 days]
[Cops kill teen with mental health issues, again.]
[Studies show we are now too late to stop a devastating climate crisis]
[Gender reveal burns down neighbor’s home]
[Whistleblower “commits suicide”]
[Drinking Starbucks means you love jen-o-side]
[Barber shows kindness to homeless veteran]
[Trump says, “If I get into office, I ain’t ever leaving!”]
[Inspirational quote on some clouds]
[Alabama says women are cows and zygotes are gods]
And on and on and on….
SO, IS ANYONE ELSE ON THE VERGE OF TEARS LIKE ALL THE TIME NOW? No? Maybe not, but I'll tell you this: I walked into my hairdresser's studio last night, and she was washing her suite mate's hair, and my girl B asked, "How are you, my girl?" you know, as one does in polite society? I had to choke back tears and say, “I’m fine,” but then, like a pinhole in a dam, I feel like an overinflated water balloon. My emotions that are holding on by a thin skin, Scott's tissue-thin, came pouring out. Before I could finish saying, "I'm feeling a little…emotional--" they were nodding and shouting, "Me too!" And it’s not just us; my story-writing teacher wrote a blog about feeling like absolute emotional dog shit on Monday. Perhaps it’s just four women, or perhaps it’s a collective sorrow.
For me, it's a feeling of sorrow, anxiety, guilt, apathy, empathy, and powerlessness brought on by a Molotov cocktail of self-inflicted emotional poisoning via social media, which leads to immediately counting my blessings, followed by a sense of guilt that I would even DARE to have a single second of sadness compared to the poor people of the world suffering unimaginable harm. And then a burning apathy/self-hatred follows because a 20-year-old non-binary individual I don’t even know (but who I’ve always advocated for) is yelling at me that I’m somehow complicit to all these horrors and am just a privileged fucking asshole for not self-immolating in Times Square.
And even if I were to throw my phone in the Gowanus River and never open a social media app again, you can’t unknow what you know, ya know?
Could it be PMS, or ...
...did this country elect a misogynistic sexual abuser with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) to be President in 2016? A man who we witnessed saying that he likes to “grab them by the pussy" ‘with them’ being ‘women’ and yet the electoral majority (abolish the Electoral College ffs—one individual, one vote.) saw him as a better choice, to lead the free world, than a woman. Women collectively gasped. Not because a woman lost but because a predator won. I've talked to a lot of my female friends about it, and they’ve said that on that night in 2016, they, too, felt “violated.” A wave of unsafety wafted into our bones that night, it wasn’t the cool November breeze, but it was a chill nonetheless.
And that wound has been poked time and time again since. The overturning of Roe vs Wade. The rise of incels and trash humans like Andrew Tate. The villainization of independent women who are choosing to be single or child-free, or both. The constant threat to our autonomy. Etc.
It's hard to express to men how that feels, but I want so badly for them to know. Although they would truly never understand. I can’t really blame them. They have never, in the history of their DNA, lived in a world where their kind, their sex, their cock and balls, were seen as inferior and, therefore, less than. I want them to understand us. I want to convey it with brilliance.
Something in the vein of that monologue in Fleabag, where the aspirational goddess that is Pheobe Waller-Bridge, wrote,
“Women are born with pain built in. It's our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives; men don’t. They have to seek it out; they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other, and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby. We have it all going on in here inside. We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years, and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world. And yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles, and you get fucking hot, and no one cares, but then you’re free, no longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You’re just a person.”
(Side note: This monologue is my Roman Empire. I think about it as I lay my ovaries beneath a heating pad every month. I want to return to my theater days and recite these delicious words at an audition. I want to feel what it’s like to articulate something so complex, so succinctly. I swear to fucking god, if I could come back into this life, I would want to come back as Phoebe Waller-Bridge. What a goddamn genius among us. *End of Ode to PWB*)
Anyway,
Is it my True Crime fascination, or...
…do approximately 1 in 3 women (about 736 million) experience physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence from a non-partner during their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)?
Is it my TikTok algorithm
or are women actually being stolen off the streets and supermarket parking lots and being sex trafficked? Is there no safe time or place to go for a run alone? How could there be so many true crime cases of the same thing over and over again—a woman is minding her own business, and a man *grapes and/or *unalives her?
Even the measures taken to decompress and get out of a funk like going for a walk take their toll.
In my pursuit of communicating the female experience to my male counterparts, I asked AI to create an analogy geared towards men that would paint a picture of the female reality regarding personal safety and how we navigate the world around us. This is what it came up with:
(I think it’s pretty good for a robot, but it went a little soft, so I added what’s in parenthesis and emphasized a few things.)
Imagine you're a new player in a high-stakes poker game, where the stakes are not just chips but your personal safety and well-being. (Losing the game could mean getting physically hurt, sexually assaulted, or ending up dead.) You're aware that most of the players at the table play fairly. However, you've also been told that some players have a history of cheating in ways that can cause you serious harm (see previous parenthesis). The challenge is that you can't tell who these players are just by looking at them; they blend in with everyone else.
As the game progresses, you must constantly assess the risk of engaging with each player. Even though the majority are playing by the rules, the potential threat posed by the few who don't looms large. You find yourself having to develop strategies not just to play the game effectively but to protect yourself from possible harm. This means that sometimes you end up folding a hand you might have won or leave the game earlier than you wanted, all to ensure your safety.
This constant vigilance and the strategies you employ to mitigate these risks take a toll. They affect your ability to fully enjoy the game (the game being your everyday life) and to trust those around you, even those who have never given you reason to doubt them. The knowledge that any hand could potentially bring harm changes the way you experience the game, despite your love for it.
I think I’ve unlearned how to feel safe. Before social media and my true crime interests, I wasn’t as hyper-aware of the dangers out there. I walked around freely, enjoying the scenery, the people watching, the music in my ears. It was my favorite thing to do. And it still is, but now I go out, and the constant vigilance and strategizing about every little thing like which side of the street has suspicious-looking men on them, or which side has fewer vans parked alongside it? Is it too late to take the subway, and which subway car has fewer men on it, as if my safe return home was a mere numbers game? Glancing into reflections on the sides of buildings, not out of vanity but to clock the characters behind me. It makes my favorite game feel like a chore. Still, I’m determined to retain my safety and the joy of wandering even though I can’t UNknow what I know.
So I fake it and hope I make it. I pop on Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand, I summon my inner Thomas Shelby**, and I walk around like I just may have a razor blade in my cap.
** Thomas Shelby is a character in the BBC show Peaky Blinders. He is the leader of a gang in turn-of-the-century Birmingham, England. Red Right-Hand plays during the opening credits of the show, underscoring Tommy as he strides through the streets of Small Heath. He is one tough MF, and I love him.
I pick up the pace to the point where I think my hips will snap and race past the man having a very clear mental breakdown. I walk with purpose and keys in my knuckles past the two men lingering on the street in puffy coats only a few feet from the halfway house. This is in broad daylight on the streets of Chelsea in Manhattan. My favorite city on Earth. And because I love my walks, my music, and my city so much, I continue to sit at the table, assemble my cards and strategies, and do my best not to lose. But at this point, I don't know what's worse: being sex trafficked or aging out of being sex trafficked? (← a joke)
Because I ask you…
Is it that I cook things with more butter than the average person, or…
…has every female over 40 suddenly gained 20 lbs of IMMOVEABLE fat? I have never worked out harder or more consistently, and I have never eaten LESS. A snack? WTF is that? I have a protein shake after my WEIGHT TRAINING or cardio session between 12-2 pm. Then I drink an iced coffee until I make dinner using real foods and flavorings, where I serve myself a bowl (sure, it’s a full bowl) of the delicious, balanced meal I’ve made. Then sometimes I may have a handful of peanut M&Ms (I have cut down on desserts recently), BUT STILL absolutely no behavior that would result in a 20lb weight gain! And sure, some of it is muscle, but the clothes have gotten bigger, too. Is this peri-peri menopause? They never did this episode on Friends, so I'm not sure, but I am sure that it sucks. I am sure that I hate it.
A friend of mine thinks it's the vaccine, and she's not an anti-vaxxer. Was there misogyny in the vaccine? Who knows!? All I see is boiled chicken, calorie counting, and hormone therapy in my future. Sounds like a miserable way to live if you ask me.
Perhaps it’s my industry, or...
...the gnawing realization that technology is advancing at a rate we’re unprepared for. I'm watching AI slowly deteriorate my livelihood, and though I'm educating myself on AI and using it as a tool for my craft, I can feel it sucking away my career. And yeah, it's concerning. I’m lucky that I grew up counting couch cushion coins to eat, so I’ve learned to save because in the last year and the dawn of AI, my role—creative copywriting consultant for marketing— has been less in demand and I’ve been living off some stored nuts for longer than I’m comfortable with. (Even though I know in my bones I’m abundant and money is mine for the taking so that helps to keep me sane.)
Let’s just say it’s been a bit of a dry spell since ChatGPT and its 99 successors hopped on the scene. Not to mention that experts in the field believe AI will become sentient and end us all (lol, whaaat?!), so what's the point in even making future plans and saving for retirement? Because between the threats of sentient robots, the aliens, an unavoidable climate crisis, The Purge, and The Handmaid’s Tale—which are all suddenly real-life possibilities instead of onscreen entertainment—I figure we should just spend every dollar we have left and live every day like YOLO, no?
But, I'm trying to stay positive and hopeful because what's the alternative?
It’s just that…sometimes…it feels exhausting to sustain. It takes a lot of energy to carry the burden of knowing what you know and training your brain to reframe it/live in gratitude/tweak the mindset so that the weight of it doesn't crush you.
Things get heavy. And maybe you’re feeling it too? And maybe knowing that you nor I am alone with these burdensome thoughts helps to lighten the load a bit.
Despite it all, I’m rooting for us. All of us (human beings). And I’m sending us all a big hug right now.
Live, laugh, toaster bath,
XO Me
PS. I say this sincerely: Thanks be to science that we have therapists. Because mine has saved my life in many, many ways. Especially in these uncertain days. Shout out to MG. <3