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out now on Asheville Grit by yours truly

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This week in Sexistentialism, my column for Asheville Grit

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It’s All Happening

(this piece originally appeared in Sexistentialism, my column for Asheville Grit) To be honest, I’ve never really been into my birthday. Not since I was like, ten. There is nothing particularly special to me about demarcating the day that my mother pushed me out from between her legs while my father fed her ice chips in a hospital in Raleigh. It’s not like I did anything to make it happen. I didn’t ask to be born. I had literally no say in the matter, which seems eternally unfair. I tell my mother this sometimes, when she asks me if I’ve thought any more about committing to a specific career path. Commit to a career? Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to do that when I can’t even fully commit to the idea of being alive?

When I say this, she laughs, and says, You’re so funny! Have you ever thought about becoming a comedian?

(The answer is yes. But I can’t commit to that either.)

My birthdays have been pretty much downhill since I turned ten. That year, I had my friends over to build teepees in the woods behind my house, then eat ice cream cake from Food Lion. We wore Hello Kitty party hats that matched the streamers on the deck. It was beautiful. It was pure. And most of all, I wasn’t worried about my mortality, the aging process, how to set healthy boundaries, and whether or not I should go grocery shopping later. I was only thinking about ice cream cake.

I always try to repeat the purity of this experience on subsequent birthdays. But it’s never quite the same. Which is not say that that they aren’t good (many of them have been quite fun). They just tend to be more...existentially charged than I’m comfortable with. With each birthday, I must confront the fact that I am not ten years old anymore. When I turned twenty-two, I woke up in my then-boyfriend’s bed. He asked me where I wanted to go for breakfast on my special day, and I burst into tears.

“I’m sorry, what did I say?” he asked, taking me into his arms.

“Nothing,” I whimpered into his sleeve.

“Well, what’s wrong?” He was clearly weirded out, but trying not to show it.

“I don’t know!” I wailed. “It’s like… one minute you’re ten, and then the next minute you’re old enough to sleep with someone without telling your parents, and they care about you enough to take you out to breakfast, which is so nice, and I love you for that, but also I’m not twenty-one anymore, and I’ll never be twenty-one again, and all it’s just too much!” I burst into a fresh round of rib-wracking sobs.

“Ohhhhhh-kay,” he groaned, rolling his eyes and detaching himself from my snotty, whimpering little frame. “Can we please go eat? I’m so hungry.”

I stared at him hatefully. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

I got in my car and drove home. I don’t remember what I did for the rest of the day.

The year I turned twenty-three, I had a different boyfriend, who spent $80 on liquor at the bar that night and told me that the most annoying thing about me was how I always act like I have all the answers. I had one beer and drove both of us home, then watched him fall down in my driveway and thought, maybe I do.

I was lying in bed last week thinking about all this. It was a chilly night for the middle of April, and I opened my windows to catch the breeze. I’ve moved into a new apartment since my last birthday, one with a clawfoot tub and a view of the trees in the morning light. This year, it’s the same thing as last year, and the year before. I’m not ten anymore. Another year has passed, and my life is nothing like what I thought it would be like when I was younger. If you had asked me at that birthday party what I thought I would be at the age of twenty-four, I would have been like, “MARRIED OR DEAD” while shoveling ice cream cake into my mouth. Back then, twenty-four sounded like marriage, mortgage, a long-term savings account. It sounded like finding a gray hair, dinner parties with wine, and knowing what I wanted from myself and everyone else. It sounded like being a grown-up.

And now I’m here. I’m arguably a grown-up. But I don’t feel like one. I don’t have the mortgage, the marriage, or anything of the other signifiers that I assumed I would passively accumulate. All the younger versions of me still alive somewhere inside my brain, clamoring for clarity and confused as to how we got here, and whether or not we can leave. Most of the time, I feel like a fifteen-year-old trapped in a twenty-four-year old’s body, and I still haven’t figured out how to maturely negotiate that fact. A few weeks ago, I slept with someone new, and I was like, I can’t believe this is happening! I didn’t even know you two weeks ago!

I said this while he was inside of me.

He stared at me, and said, “Can you stop editorializing an experience while we’re still having it?”

Busted. Am I ever going to feel at home in my life? Is it ever going to feel like it’s really mine? Probably not. Maybe that’s okay. I never bother to plan for my future, because I always assume that it will just, I don’t know...happen? And it has. The future is here. I’m living it. It’s all happening. It’s just different than what I imagined. Since graduating college, I’ve done a whole lot of nothing. I’ve gone through jobs and relationships like water, and I’m no closer to knowing what I want. I’ve volunteered, taken classes, worked in restaurants. I’ve gone to bars on Tuesdays, cried in my car, and drunk gin and tonics in the bathtub alone. Sometimes, it feels like escaping. And sometimes, it feels like the most alive that I know how to be. Maybe the most I can ask is to sit with my own uncertainty, and trust that beauty, catharsis, and comfort will come. And they always will, just usually when you least expect it.

One of my favorite memories of the last few months was when I called my best friend after the most painful breakup I’ve ever had. I went over to her tiny attic apartment and immediately fell asleep in her bed while she folded laundry. I woke to the smell of coffee, and “California” by Joni Mitchell playing softly from her computer. I was completely exhausted, but in a way, I was the happiest I’d been in months.

This year for my birthday, I was mostly alone. I slept in, then made myself an enormous breakfast. I bought myself a facial, got a haircut, and went out for dinner. I was in bed by 11:30, reading a new book while plucking the hair from between my eyebrows. The next morning, I had a text on my phone asking if I was hungover. I laughed, and then put on the kettle to make coffee.

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Love in the Time of Social Media

It started out as a game, basically. I’m pretty sure that’s always how it starts.

Kristen and I were curled up on my bed one cold night last winter, drinking craft beer and complaining about our love lives. We were both between boyfriends and frustrated with the lack of hygienic boys on campus who cared about something besides how many grams of Purple Haze they had in their mason jars, we started talking about online dating. The conversation quickly drifted to Tinder, the smartphone dating app. How did it work, I wanted to know?

“Swipe right on the hot guys,” Kristen said, “and swipe left on everyone else. If they swipe right on you, then you match, and you can message each other. If you swipe left, they can’t talk to you and they never see you again.”

It sounded like a fun way to spice up the night. So we cracked open another beer and downloaded the app.

Spoiler alert: it was the worst idea ever.  

Now, finding someone who doesn’t make you want to vomit after 30 minutes of conversation is hard enough as it is. You would think that using a dating app might make it easier to weed out the bad apples, but no. It actually makes it much worse. Before long, we were floundering in a sea of bad pickup lines and jokes about butt sex.

Raenen was the first boy with whom I talked. Actually, we didn’t talk, because Raenen didn’t bother to say hi. He just sent me a picture of his disco stick, to borrow a euphemism from our hallowed goddess Lady Gaga.

Kenneth told me I looked like Old Dirty Bastard from Wutang Clan. (“But in like, a good way, you know?”)

After about 20 of these conversations, I started to get really depressed. So I decided to test the limits of exactly how insane I could act and still get propositioned for sex.

I told John I beat my dog with a frying pan. He replied: “Lol. So wanna come over?”

I told Kyle I put my cat through the dryer on purpose. Same response.

Shortly thereafter, I uninstalled the app and Kristen and I proceeded to get really, really drunk on whiskey because it was the only way of emotionally coping with whatever had just happened.

That was a year ago. Since then, I’ve gone through several phases of downloading and deleting the app, and still can’t make up my mind on how I feel about it. Part of me loathes the idea of using a dating app on my phone, since I would much prefer the people I know in real life to be attracted to me in the first place. On the other hand, Tinder provides a self-esteem boost. It is also an easy way to expand your pool of options and maximize dating efficiency: Do we have common interests? What kind of music do you listen to? Oh, you don’t have an ax in your closet? Cool, maybe we should get a drink later.

However, there’s far more to a successful relationship than ascertaining that the object of your desire fulfills an arbitrary list of traits. Not that common interests and values aren’t important, but it’s so easy to be attracted to the concept of a person, instead of who they really are. I call it the “Bullet Point Boyfriend.” I had one once. On paper, he was perfect: president of his university’s photography club, DJ at a local radio station, well-dressed, loved surfboarding, and was vaguely hip in all the right ways. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that we were actually not compatible whatsoever, and that I never really liked him. I just liked the idea of him.

And that’s what I think the problem is with Tinder. And it’s not just the app either. Apps come and go. It’s about social media. It’s about how we can so easily log on to Facebook and waste hours clicking through someone’s profile, and come away feeling as though we really know them. It’s about the meticulous curation of one’s image via Instagram, how easy it is to confuse someone with their online persona.

Exactly how social media has affected the way we relate to each other remains to be seen. When it comes to dating, I can’t help but wonder, isn’t there we’ve forgotten? Casual conversations with baristas, cashiers, that cute person that’s always in the library. While we are sitting around in coffee shops and bars, sending Snapchats and swiping left or right, what are we missing?

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Service Industry Blues

Working in the Asheville downtown service industry sucks. Hell, working in the service industry anywhere sucks. You work uncompromisingly long hours in ugly shoes to serve uppity white tourists little appetizers, fully knowing that they will still tip you less than fifteen percent. Behind the scenes, it’s a new emergency every day. Whether that emergency is major (the host forgot to write down the party of fifty, again) or minor (we’re out of silverware rolls, again) is almost irrelevant; these things are just going to happen. And, like managers around the world like to say, these things are going to happen again and again (and again), so you might as well just get used to it.

Saturday was one of those days for me. I was already exhausted from a long week at school when I clocked in. I forgot my uniform at home and wrote down the wrong drink specials. Everyone was up in arms because the Fresh Quarter inexplicably jacked up the price for fresh lemons for the bar. And To make matters worse, in the midst of all this insanity, our bartender, Aaron, didn’t show up for work.

Which was funny. Because Aaron loves bartending. He’s a seven foot tall goofball of a Jewish guy who has been in the military, gone to jail, and done everything in between, and he told me once that he likes bartending more seducing women. Because you know, as a bartender, you can seduce women and get paid at the same time, and what kind of scrub isn’t interested in that kind of efficiency?

These jokes are typical of Aaron. In our time working together, I can’t count the number of times he’s complimented my red lipstick and low-backed shirts, made sly insinuations about blow jobs, or invited me back to his bedroom for a glass of wine, “on the house.”

We made jokes about how he had probably picked up twenty college girls downtown and gone home with all of them, or woken up in a Buncombe County jail cell with no recollection of what happened past the Yacht Club.

Still, there was a definite feeling of unease that hung in the air. In his eight months of working there, Aaron had never once been late. In fact, he was usually at least thirty minutes early. In response to numerous calls, texts, and Facebook messages, there was radio silence. It was weird. But, you know, there’s a first time for everything, and after all, it’s the service industry. These things happen.

After my shift was over, I walked to Downtown Books and News to start this column. Curled up in a corner with my laptop sipping coffee, I got immediately distracted by an experimental jazz trio playing a few feet away in the bookstore’s venue space, and abandoned my work. Sure, sexism in the workplace is real, and deserves more journalistic investigation. But in that moment, it seemed infinitely more important to listen to this music and, to quote a yoga bumper sticker, “be here now,” than to write 800 words of funny bullshit about how my college job is oh-so-difficult. But columns, like the service industry, must go on.

So after the music was over, I opened up my laptop to write, and found out that Aaron was actually dead. It was all over Facebook. He didn’t show up for work in the morning because he was laying on his kitchen floor dead, from what everyone assumes to be a heart attack. He was thirty-seven.

What is there to write about death that has not been written before? I could say that he was so full of life and vitality, because he was. I could write about how death is an inevitable part of life, and tie this back into how we never know when we’re going to throw in the towel, so we better love each other well and listen to the metaphorical experimental jazz music every chance we get. I could write a million little jokes about Aaron that would make your heart swell, how we hung out and talked about love and sex and relationships all winter long when the restaurant was dead and it was eleven degrees outside. I could.

But the thing is, when I was planning out my column this week, I was actually going to write about how much I hate men in the service industry. And I was going to write about Aaron. I wanted to use humor to reclaim uncomfortable exchanges that make me feel incredibly disrespected not only as a woman, but as a human being. And now he’s gone.

These things happen.

And it’s unsettling. It always will be. Part of me is tempted to pretend that it’s not: to gloss over that fact by finding the bright side in the situation, or strike out Aaron’s negative traits because it makes a good memorial in a newspaper. But ultimately, I think there are few ways I could disrespect him more than using this space to pretend that he is someone I know he’s not. That’s not a memorial, that’s just dumb. So instead, I’m using this weekend to go to a dive bar, order a bourbon with ginger ale, and get drunk on his favorite drink while I play pool with my friends. Even if I get hungover. That’s what Aaron would have wanted, and I’m cool with that.

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Good Girls Revolt is the best show on Amazon right now

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Snow More Parties in LA: On Mental Health, Snow Days, and Learning to Deal With My Own Insanely High Expectations for Everything

This is a photo of me pretending to have fun on a snow day. It’s a total lie. I hate snow. I used to think I wanted to move to New York until I realized it’s a terrible idea to move somewhere where you hate the weather over 50% of the time. I just don’t have a good track record with snow, and it’s been like this since college. When we had the first snow of freshman year, the entire dorm was freaking out and dancing in the courtyard, and I remember just being kind of........ annoyed. So I went back to sleep. Later in the afternoon, I sat by my window and watched sledders crash joyously into each other, feeling sad and empty because all my friends were hanging out without me.

“I bet they don’t even notice that I’m not there,” I thought moodily, staring out the window. Later, my newsfeed was flooded with cute photos of everyone, and I felt even sadder.

At the time, I thought I hated snow days because there’s so much pressure to be a jolly elf in the snow globe of the world. When I see snow, I expect to go sledding, make snow angels, participate in lighthearted snowball fights, build igloos, and just generally enjoy myself. And then usually, I end up sitting in front of my space heater with bruised knees and a runny nose, examining my body for signs of frostbite.

Honestly, I hate any holiday that comes with the pressure to have a good time, because it invariably falls short of my expectations. Take New Year’s Eve, for instance. Has anyone in the history of ever had a truly great New Year’s Eve? A casual poll of friends and coworkers suggests that no, it’s always weird. (If you have had a fun NYE, PLEASE email me so I can live vicariously.)

Here’s the expectation: me, in a sequined dress, sipping champagne on a balcony. I’m with a beautiful, dark-haired man who kisses me romantically as fireworks explode over the harbor. What harbor? I don’t know. Literally any body of water works for this fantasy. The next morning, there is sex, coffee, and breakfast in roughly that order, no hangover, and a ton of cool Polaroid pictures I can Instagram later to make everyone jealous. So that’s the expectation. 

The reality? Watching the ball drop with my parents in my pajamas. No sequins. No lover. Also no champagne, because my parents are evangelical conservatives who don’t keep alcohol in the house. Nothing says Happy New Year like being completely sober and kissing your cat at midnight.

The best New Year’s Eve I’ve ever had mostly revolved around me getting laid after a five-month dry spell, which I’m not going to bother describing in detail because I’m pretty sure no one wants to hear about my sex life. It was weird. It was cool for a minute, and then it was weird. (Never sleep with someone because you like their silk bathrobe. You think getting laid is worth it...... but it’s NOT. It’s NEVER WORTH IT.)

The second best New Year’s Eve I had was at a Great Gatsby party at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun, Mexico with a boyfriend two weeks after I had cheated on him. His parents paid for the resort. I felt bad. Not bad enough to call off the trip. But it definitely put a damper on things. We pretended to be hopeful about “turning a new leaf” when the fireworks went off, but it didn’t really work because I drank too much and got stuck in a thought loop about how deeply weird Gatsby-themed parties are in light of the fact that Gatsby got none of the things he wanted and is literally dead in a swimming pool of his own blood at the end of the novel, and somehow people are still like, “Great party idea! Should we have jello shots?”

RIP, green light over the dock. RIP, my own high expectations, drowning slowly in the swimming pool of life. Wasn’t it the Buddha that once said that desire is the root of all suffering? I’m so not zen, but maybe he was on to something. Maybe if I stopped wanting a bedazzled, champagne-soaked New Year’s Eve with the man of my dreams, then I would actually be satisfied for a change. Maybe it’s a personal problem.

I was thinking about all this the other day when I saw the forecast for snow. And then I realized that the ACTUAL reason that I hate snow days is because I have depression. Depression that kicks into particularly high gear when it’s snowing. Why? I couldn’t say. But I finally put the pieces together -  this has been an unyielding pattern since that day in the dorms. When the temperature takes dramatic plunges, so does my mental health.

Sometimes it’s worse than others. A couple years ago when I lived in Montford, it was relatively under control. I was a little sad, but I assumed it was because I watched Lost in Translation while I drank a bottle of wine. Now I wonder if the bottle of wine and sad movie was a coping mechanism for something more serious.

Because sometimes, it is serious. This particular snow day, I couldn’t get out of bed. I spent over eight hours in the fetal position, watching the light and shadows shift across my wall and crying without really knowing why. I felt like I was watching life from behind the window. I felt nothing. And that scares me.

I don’t know how to talk about depression to the people in my life. I feel like I cannot wholly claim it because it’s so intermittent; most of the time, I’m fine. And then other times, I wake up with this tremendous weight on my chest, pressing me down into my mattress. Sometimes my whole existence feels like a burden I never asked to bear. And self-isolation imposes itself in extreme: I thought about calling my boyfriend to talk, but to say what, exactly? “I feel empty, and I don’t know why?” It feels indulgent, or selfish. No one wants to hear about how sad I am.

I’ve written a number of pieces about my personal life that were published in a relatively public manner, but this is the first time that I’ve ever written about depression. And it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to write. Which surprises me. How can I write something that casually references cheating on someone I used to love (which was a genuinely awful thing to grapple with at the time) and feel okay with that level of sharing, but then struggle to write 300 honest words about my feelings?

Part of it is because of how much I use humor to mask the intensity of my feelings. The “look at how dumb I used to be, haha!” essays are my favorite because they possess inherent narrative distance, implying that while I was ONCE stupid, I’m not ANYMORE. So I can comfortably discuss subjects like cheating or how I used to snort melatonin to go to sleep at night because if anyone judges me, they’re judging a past version of me.

But to write about depression is to write from the perpetual center of an experience. It’s to write from a place of having no answers at all. What do you write about a dark place when you’re still in it? I can’t pretend that it’s something I’ve moved on from, because I haven’t, and I can’t mask it in humor, because it’s just…I don’t know, not that funny? In the end, it’s easier to just never address it and pretend it’s not a problem.

But that doesn’t do anyone any favors. I’m no jolly elf, and I’m no philosophy guru either, but I feel like the whole point of being alive is to connect over our experiences, both good and bad, and that’s impossible if all we ever talk about is the good things.

A couple weeks ago, a girl I only vaguely know posted a picture of her tattoo on Instagram. It wasn’t a great photo, but the caption was amazing. It was a short paragraph detailing her experience with medication and what it’s like to find your way back to joy after depression. It was so honest, and a great comfort to read. And for that, I am grateful. Because no matter how many times my therapist tells me I need to “accept my vulnerabilities” or whatever, it’s still fucking hard to look someone you love in the eye and say,  “I’ve been really depressed,” or “I couldn’t get out of bed today,” or even just, “I need you with me right now.”

I think we need all the uncomfortable, yet comforting honesty we can get in this world. Sometimes, when it comes to being alive, that’s all we can really expect. Well, that and maybe a little champagne.

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