#at my cousin’s bachelorette party her mom said oh are you sick? when she saw me

[pinkfey]

the alienation of showing up to an event as the only person masked is like. the absolute worst.

[n0resistance]

Winter

     I always hated winter. My mom hated winter. We get sick in the winter and are anemic so we’re always cold, and get the flu easily. And for when she was a live and what I do for a living, the amount of money you make drops in the winter. When I turned 9 my mother would go to the Philippines every winter. She was in real estate so her business was slow and she wanted to get out of the cold. She said her cough would go away as long as it was warm. 

   When I was little I used to always say that the only good thing about winter was skiing, and then when I turned 14 I would say the only good thing was snowboarding. There's ice skating, hot chocolate, Christmas, and snow tubing. We had a vacation home in the Poconos and utilized it for skiing trips.    

    Finally in 2017 I escaped winter moving to La in the thick of winter in January. Then after 3 winters in a row living in LA, I missed the seasons. I actually missed the cold, maybe a day with it. I was so tired of the day being beautiful everyday. Who would've thought, but the desert got to be too much. When I was living in LA I would hide out in "bourgeois pig", the darkest coffee shop in Hollywood. Just to escape all that light.  

    When I moved back to New York, I thought Oh brother winter is coming, and my first winter in New York was the Pandemic. So it was brutal. We atleast made money with the covid-relief while hospitality workers weren't able to work.

  I remember in February 2020, right before the shutdown, I went to LA with sorority sisters and my ex, and I got to see everyone I had left in 2019, so my trip was exhausting. However, the amount we were working, the small apartments in Brooklyn, and just being super stuck in the city in the freezing cold.

 I really wanted to leave and we organized a trip. Then when we got back, bam, the pandemic hit.   

    Everything in life really fell apart. It took a lot of energy to put it back together. The following winter February 2021 I went to Dominican Republic with friends. Then the following winter December 2021 I went to DR for a wedding, and it was a week long, but when I got back the winter deadness, depression, lack of money and lack of work really hit, stuck in my small apartment feeling the winter blues would happen and I just had to go to therapy. 

   I didn't have the money to leave the country or to flee to the west coast, but I had insurance that covered this so I talked through my winter blues. Which were actually decades and decades of blues. So I talked to her for a good 6 months and was like you know what, I never want to feel the winter blues like I did last time I'm going to leave for the whole winter. 

    Now, it wasn't the whole winter because that is really really difficult. I planned all summer to take this amazing trip. To LA North Hollywood --> Manila Philippines-->Siargao P.I-->Sydney Au -->layover in Hawaii--> LA ktown --> Palm Springs--> San Diego --> Home. December 24- February 15. 7 weeks. I really started buying tickets in June. It was enough time to plan a perfect trip and transition out of my old life into the new. 

   The best part is I stayed with people everywhere I went because I have family and close friends in these parts of the world. My acting friend who has a family, my brother, and entire mom's side of the family, plus doing adventures like surfing and swimming in Siargao, seeing a friend I knew since kindergarten in his new home in Sydney and getting to go to his amazing birthday party, and going to beaches like Manly Beach or Bondi Beach, (where when you go under water you feel like a marine biologist) and in ktown I stayed with my old roommate, where we felt like roommates again, and in Palm Springs I actually did a Bachelorette party for my friend, and saw cousins & An Aunt I haven't seen in forever which was really nice, and finally seeing my close friend who now lives in San Diego and my best friend who also lives there. So I was busy, not working!, and connecting, importantly enough I was connecting to myself and I got rid of those winter blues. 

    It wasn't easy, It was a reset, had to find a new job and that was a blessing, I was away from my boyfriend whom I missed terribly and he had a hard time in the winter, and I needed to travel to self-soothe because I didn't like where I was stuck in life. I wasn't happy with work, or my habits, or myself. Travel allowed me to just stop and just live, and the weeks go fast, but then you realize in 1 work day all the cool things you can accomplish. 

     Anyway this post isn't about my amazing winter in the Philippines. It's about the past winter that is just ending right now. 

    I changed my high stress, high paid, dead winter job and got a couple chill jobs. I finally moved out of Bushwick, a highly congested area with small apartments that are falling apart, even if they look modern, for our own apartment that's spacious in Queens. Dom and I think,  how did take us so long to move to Queens. This winter I quit drinking. Not the whole winter but I did it for 2 straight months and it did feel amazing. Your sugar intake does increase. I didn't like who I was and I also could not afford drinking in NYC anymore. I could not. 

    So I filled my time with yoga, kickboxing, aerial yoga, good dinners, shows, and learning languages. I would discover museums The Met, Picking up dog sits, like we did on Christmas. I love checking out galleries too. Another thing is this winter, this year, my boyfriend works a lot, and when he finally has days off and we finally get to spend time together; it’s quality time together. No stress, no running around, not a million people. just us and just us only. 

     When you're in your 30's and you have friends that are married who are starting their families. When you’re at a stage where you finally don’t have roommates, no kids, you don't even have a dog, so you get plants and a fish. Priorities shift. I like being home, I wana see my family or my boyfriend, you stop prioritizing your friends, and start prioritizing jobs you enjoy and focus on healthy hobbies like yoga. I wana read. I realized the beauty of New York in the winter is this. No lines, not many people, you can take a class on anything, try Groupon, you discover so many shows, eating out you can get in and out easy. This time I didn’t leave for 7 weeks just left for 1 week. San Diego, LA, and Phoenix. To be honest it was a great trip because I realized LA isn’t the vibe for me anymore. I really enjoyed Phoenix, Arizona. I want intimate nights at home, hiking, nature, good food, and good vibes. My 20’s are really over. My head and my heart tell me that. 

   I’m glad to know when you’re busy with the right stuff and in the right situation. Winter isn’t that bad. I also figured out my chronic sickness was because I hated my job. Life is way too short for that. The drinking was also from high stress. It really will come down to taking care of yourself and your needs. Then you can survive winter. You can probably survive anything.