I haven’t been writing very much this year. It’s hard to know how to express myself on the internet when I know that anything about me that ends up *out there* can end up in front of eyes I’d prefer didn’t see it. It’s hard to know how to talk about things I care about that don’t personally impact me, and most of the time it feels like it’s just better for me to not say anything at all. A lot of the last 18 months has been a frenzy of survival activities. I sewed upwards of 350 masks (it was more, but I stopped counting after that). I have been, as a friend recently put it, “living to work, not working to live”. I’ve been trying to figure out who I am as a therapist, as a non-student, as someone in her 30s (yikes) as a *wife* (!!). I’ve been thinking, as usual, constantly. I have survived, barely.
I’m not really sure what this is, aside from me trying to remember how to write– let’s call it brief essays about adolescence and adulthood and time and Olivia Rodrigo.
If you’re out there, I hope that you’re ok (hope ur ok)
I have been spending a lot of time with teenagers this year. In fact, I have probably spent more time with them than anyone else, as most of us spend more time at work than anywhere else, and that has to be doubled or tripled in a year when it mostly hasn’t been safe to go anywhere. Maybe turning 30 and getting married during a pandemic and all the related feelings that go along with that are part of it. I have joined Tik Tok. I can’t stop listening to Sour by Olivia Rodrigo. I non-ironically used the phrase “vibing'” with a client recently. I own multiple pairs of overalls. Low rise flare jeans are back and while I refuse to ever own or wear them again, I feel the pull towards the Gap anyway.
I recently read Rachel Bloom’s autobiography, which details some terrible things she went through in elementary and middle school. I talk and think about middle school pretty regularly and had thought I had made peace with my own experience, but something about this story she told unearthed a MEMORY. Bloom describes how some of the popular kids at her school paid one of their group to ask her out *as a bet* and how it was humiliating. And then I remembered that this happened to me!!!!
It wasn’t a bet, but in 6th grade someone more popular did dare a boy in my class to ask me out. And it wasn’t until I was a 30 year old child therapist that I fully comprehended the part that it was a dare *because of what I was* in 6th grade. A weird kid. A nerd. Somone no one would want to date or be seen with.
I can’t speak for those assholes (who are probably lovely as adults and, based on my middle school, also all doctors now); it’s also possible that this group of 12 year old nerds at my gifted and talented school was just being careless and/or thinking about like, *cooties* or whatever, not thinking of me as particularly disgusting. But WOW. It’s been almost 20 years and this realization has had me reeling for a week. You never get over feeling like you don’t fit in.
This revelation has led me to do some light Facebook stalking– truly for the first time in years, which is very good, I used to be *too* good at it– and much like Rachel Bloom, I find myself having empathy for everyone. Life is hard. The last year has been a pandemic. We’re all just doing our best.
I’m so sick of 17/ where’s my fucking teenage dream/ someone tells me one more time/ enjoy your youth, I’m going to cry (brutal)
Being a teenager is wonderful in some ways, but pretty terrible in others. What I remember about it is was having all the freedom of not paying bills or worrying about whether or not it was time to change the Brita filter, but also no freedom to do what I wanted to do, express how I felt, or explore who I might become. Adults commented on my body when I was 14 and going through a growth spurt, calling me “curvy”. They praised my body when I was 16 and hiding my eating disorder with sports. They praised my work ethic and grades, which I achieved by sleeping 6 hours a night. I lived in fear of the kind of mistakes I might make that might make me unworthy of attention and praise. The only way that it was acceptable to be was to be thin, busy, and smiling.
I think people are wistful about adolescence because they miss having younger bodies that can survive on mozzarella sticks and little sleep. I think they forget that it’s a shitstorm of feelings and no coping skills or understanding of how your body moves through space. They forget about how thoughtless and even cruel people are to each other when they’re trying to figure out how to regulate their minds and bodies. They also forget that it’s possible to be an adolescent who is sick, who has chronic pain or mental health issues, who is going through some stuff. I burnt out at 17 and 21. I had horrible cystic acne my entire adolescence that tanked my self-esteem and put me on antibiotics and Accutane for years and probably ruined my stomach. I had a medical trauma and subsequent illness at 19 from which I’ve never really recovered. I’ve talked to a number of people (friends, clients, strangers on the internet) who were diagnosed in their teens and 20s with endometriosis, rheumatoid arthritis, ehlers danlos, Crohn’s disease, and a host of other serious, chronic, and incurable illnesses that severely limit what folks are able to do. What I have dealt with is a fraction as disabling, and yet it limits me more than I feel others will believe. What we all share is the frustration, bordering on rage, at all those who naively ask “but how can you be sick? you’re so young!”
Expectations and pressure took so much of my youth and health and I’m done. I am in my 11th year of debilitating October sinus infections; I think they’re a permanent fixture now. I can’t run anymore because it makes my joints hurt and, if I’m honest, I never really liked it outside of being a cheap form of compensatory exercise anyway. I’m not especially thin and I probably won’t be again and I’m truly at peace with that. I say no to stuff all the time and I’m probably not living up to my full potential, but it’s ok because I mostly get enough sleep, which is definitely not something I could say about myself 10 years ago. I encourage everyone I know (including! smart! teens! i’m a monster 😈 ) to take breaks, sleep, say no, and refuse to turn their hobbies into a side-hustle. If I can save even one young person from destroying themselves before they have a fully developed frontal lobe I’ll have done what I set out to do.
don’t tell me that you’re sorry, boy/ feel sorry for yourself/ cause someday I’ll be everything to somebody else (enough for you)
In the case of Sad Teen Me vs. Dumbass Boys:
Current me presents the photo below as Exhibit A to provide evidence that *I win*
(Current me also presents the subsequent photo as Exhibit B for additional evidence of the same).
“com-comparison/is killing me, slowly/ I think I think too much/ about kids who don’t know me/I’m so sick of myself/rather be, rather be/ anyone, anyone else/ jealousy, jealousy/ started following me” (jealousy, jealousy)
Bo Burnham’s recent special, Inside (also recently all over TikTok) has an anthem that speaks to the pandemic 30th birthday: “I used to be the young one, got used to meeting people/ who weren’t used to meeting someone born in 1990… Now I’m turning 30, God God damn it!” tbh, Bo: same. That being said, there is also something about being in the “echo boom” part of the milennial generation has always made me feel some sense of scarcity. They had to build new classrooms and dorms to educate us. Now there’s not enough houses for all of us to buy (or housing in general). Another verse of the same song repeats, Now my stupid friends are having stupid children– we’re doing that, too. Everyone around me seems to have seamlessly gone from mandatory happy hour at their startup to fretting about whether an Uppababy stroller is worth the money. I have always wanted to have children but figured it was something I’d figure out/ be ready for in the future. Based on what’s happening around me, I’m learning that that future might be rapidly approaching and I’m finding myself scrambling to find a pause button.
I’m still not sure who I am– does anyone? it feels like it changes as soon as it becomes solid for two seconds. I was always under the impression that I would have everything together by now– and that after turning 30 I would slowly turn into a ghost of someone who people used to find valuable. I recognize that that is absolutely incorrect, that 30 is pretty young, that I still have most of my life ahead of me… but also, in a very real way, I would like everyone who thinks I’m being ridiculous to think about what it might have meant to grow up with Barney Stinson and a host of other TV characters loudly proclaiming that women were too high maintenance and not worth anyone’s time or attention once their 20s were over. 15 years ago I had my life planned out, and the last thing on my list was being a 27-year old married doctor who was expecting her first child. I truly never had thoughts about my 30s until they happened. A few months into 31 and I still don’t know what 30 was, or what it’s “supposed to” be when you didn’t spend the last part of your 20s staying inside and assuming everyone you loved was going to die.
After a bout of intense nihilism and climate doom, I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I think we’re all actually going to be “ok”- there’s not going to be a fiery end of days that kills us all, and we will in fact still need to continue to meal plan and save for retirement, or at least learn to stockpile seeds for next winter. I’m not saying everything will be great, but I also don’t think humans have ever been either completely happy or completely miserable. It’s time to imagine my future, post 30 and post COVID, exhausting as that might be.
weary traveler 