#42 - May 14 @ 10:36am

Content Warning: This post discusses disordered eating.

Hey hi hello, I wrote a thing in my journal this morning that felt…complete in a way that my thoughts usually don’t in that raw form. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the deep unhappiness I keep sensing around me, from everywhere and everyone, and I think it makes sense, and it’s not a big mystery.

I think we have fundamentally disconnected from so much of our humanity in hopes to attain some imaginary life that’s literally being sold to us in place of true security and safety and joy in our lives. And I think it’s bullshit, and I can’t believe it’s happening on such a huge scale right now, and I just want everyone to feel like they can have a little or a lot more self-compassion for what they’re going through in the current state of our world. And democracy.

It’s hard to be a human! And I wrote a thing that made me feel recommitted to getting over a lot of the self-doubty things that hold me back and that feels…like I should share it. So here it is!

Well, I went grocery shopping this morning! There was a whole thing where I woke up to a bunch of random dudes drinking and being loud outside of my apartment at like 6 this morning and it got to the point where Loud Neighbor came out and told them to fuck off and I finally fell back asleep but had a whole nightmare about my ceiling leaking and then when I finally got up to head out, I kept forgetting my mask and almost left the keys behind on the third time I had to come back from my way to the store but we did it, we made it, I got stuff to make bulgolgi and I’m very excited about thaaat and I got muffin liners and yeah! Fucking prepared!

I’m tired and it’s WARM, but there’s a breeze right now and I’m feeling overly optimistic about today. My hair’s…being annoying but I think curling it might be my best bet today since it’s so humid anyway. Maybe Marel and I will meet up in the middle of our places and we could shop? or get a treat somewhere? and then come back here and smoke and watch The Challenge because update: I got Marel into The Challenge last night schwoops! It’s just so good and I ended up getting a month of paramount plus—so that was $10 well spent, right? Right. Oh well moving ON! I have a lot of food in my fridge that I feel like I need to make sure I get through before it goes bad and maybe I need to start batching out my trips more so that the fridge is emptier and then I can actually SEE everything but also if it’s getting hot, there’s no way I’m going to want to go more often. I also want to go back to Mr. Lemon this week and now I know the deal with the irish beans at top deli and honestly like if I split those cans in half liiiiike that’s totally worth it for me.

I’m stoned and drifty, but I ft smoked with Marel this morning and then gave an accidental pep talk to Meg about clothes and our harsh inner critic voices and I’m really taking this ‘love being yourself’ message to heart, and like I know I don’t practice it ALL the time but…I am pretty calm and able to recognize the areas of improvement on my whole self-awareness journey and I think I get critical of myself for being so navel-gazey but I think I have had to and have had to be selfish and HEAL and I really only think I could do that in New York and with myself and for myself. And life is about service and I believe that and all humans want is to be important and I think we’ve confused importance with power and a lot of people feel deeply unhappy and dissatisfied and I think that’s a big reason why and I know that I have had to do a lot of self-work to get here and I shouldn’t take that accomplishment lightly and I know I KNOW that I can and will be of service. To my friends, and to the world.

I think I can get through to people and help them genuinely discover if they’re happy and really I think so many of us are trapped in the ‘should’ and we’re constantly competing with a perfect and ideal self that does not exist!

I should be happier.

Says who??

Life is really hard and I think there is a major lack of self-compassion and it’s all a trick to keep us mad at ourselves and distracted from the fact that most of the major world powers have become poorly disguised arms dealers who happen to be in charge of a population. We never never should trust companies to regulate themselves, as historically, time and time again, they have proven that they will ALWAYS cut corners for profit,

And like. The fundamental misreading of Upton Sinclairs The Jungle did not alleviate and of the plights of immigrants he described but it DID get us food safety regulations and like, I’m here to, unfortunately, report that regulations are actually needed everywhere in order to keep the equivalent fingers out of sausages. And the distraction techniques are endless and exhausting and I have spent HOW much of my time worried about my stomach looking ‘obvious’ in my clothes?? So lame! So silly!! And it does nothing to blame myself for that thought pattern, as I really had very little choice in the matter. And I was told my entire childhood by grown ass adults that my life would be markedly worse if/since I was fat. And then those adults made good on that promise and tried to…shame a fat kid into losing weight instead of providing even just an ounce of safety or understanding of what I was already going through. Often at their hands. Because they were fatphobic—and if they made it hard enough to be fat I guess they thought it would break me into being skinny? And it kind of worked! Like I tried! I tried so hard for years and I just had no understanding of nutritional balance or genetics and no understanding of how badly I was wrecking my metabolism and tooth enamel and I lied and I lied and I was such a good liar and we should probably talk about how eating disorders forcibly disconnect us from other people and are also competitive by nature but like…to win is to die? And being told that I would be easier to love if there was less of me was a very dangerous message to put into my head and then have reinforced over and over and over again.

And IDK at least in the 90s we included the drug that made that thinness possible in the trends name and didn’t have the models falsely documenting what they eat in a day only to accidentally (on purpose? it often feels like a brag tbh) reveal that they’ve literally never healed a knife before and like it IS sad that Bella Hadid has a very clear ED (complete with pro-ana butterfly in her profile name and I feel like people try to make excuses about that as if she did not have a famous pro-ana tumblr for years and as if her mother is not Yolanda ‘chew a few almonds really well’ Hadid??) and I don’t know how to feel about the insta BellaHadidYouDidNotEatThat because I don’t believe shame works, but I also think it’s really fucking dark that she puts out that very traditional insert Gillian Flynn’s Cool Girl monologue here thing to her millions of followers. And there are no regulations or flags on this kind of harmful information on the internet and everyone wants to look like a famous person, and those people spend a lot of time professionally investing in their appearance. And it’s okay to skip meals if you’re ‘cutting’ and it’s okay to binge as long as it’s done on a pre-sanctioned ‘cheat day’ and I wonder how much airtime of Oprah’s show was dedicated to promoting diet culture and I wonder if we erased the pressure to optimize ourselves and instead optimized communities to benefit everyone how much happier we would be.

Because thinness is…for what? I’m forever haunted by that video of Cambrie detailing her starvation methods before revealing that even after all of that, she still didn’t feel great at the beach. I live my life in this body, why have I been so committed to punishing it for sins others cast against it? Even when the people who reach that pinnacle can’t stop telling us how miserable they are, we choose to not believe them.

I wrote on so many cover letters that I thrive in positions where I can ‘meaningfully contribute’ and that wasn’t a lie—but in capitalism it just usually translates to offering my knowledge and skills to sell a few more units of a (usually unnecessary) product. Meaningful contributions are not measured in EOD sales numbers. Everyone is miserable at their jobs because we’re in a constant state of surveillance while we complete (mostly) meaningless tasks. Thank god megs my boss, holy shit.

I think it breaks our hearts. And we feel like we’re wasting time. And we only have so much of it and I don’t want to live in regret, I want to live. And I want to eat olive oil and make food for my friends and if they’re taking away everything else then I have to be prepared to become the revolution, and everything else is just a distraction that I have to unlearn now in order to not carry them into the more beautiful world I know is possible.

Okay well. That’s 6 and I might need to go smoke a cig (and eat a piece of bread) and then maybe I’ll calm down.

Uh. Great talk!