i didn’t buy the glossier haloscope

i didn’t buy the glossier haloscope or the pro tip eyeliner. or even the laneige lip balm, which i will someday need to replace. i wasn’t sure I would use it by black friday, and that’s how i measure everything: by whether i’ll need to replenish it by november. i’ve gotten better at it: budgeting. spending on what’s necessary and not on who i could be. i used to do that so much, tried to gauge who i was by who i wasn’t, who i could be, but never who i was at the moment. i know what my personal style is, i don’t get swayed by trends. i have a good idea what looks good on me and what doesn’t, and what is a good deal and worth buying (i have occasions where i could wear something, i see it flattering my body shape and skin color), and what is a good deal and has no business being in my closet.

i’ve been obsessively following this guy on reddit whose life story seems to unfold on reddit. i know a lot about him over what he’s shared: i know what city he lives in, i know his name, that he used to work at starbucks and at a marketing agency and then for the city government. he has a girlfriend and it’s his first relationship. he’s extremely insecure, i clocked that immediately. because he was on reddit asking about what is a good salary, sharing feedback he had gotten from a job interview where they told him he didn’t seem confident, in getting relationship advice about trying to read his girlfriend’s mind and how much she might like him. i was intrigued by this person and i’ve started asking myself why. is it really the messiness of it all? the schadenfreude (this is a reach since I don’t know him and he’s never wronged me)? watching a story unfold? i suppose as i thought about it, it had to do with the misplaced entitlement that unnerved me: he thought he was too good for his job, should be making more money, etc. but didn’t seem to justify any of that other than saying that he deserved it. they feel like incomplete thoughts, like he’s come to a conclusion without really thinking through how he justified arriving there. he lacks self-reflection, self-awareness, he is scared to see himself for how others see him, let alone accept it. he thinks he is worthy, that he is great, but others don’t treat him that way, and he doesn’t interrogate why. and that’s hard. it’s a hard thing to do, but you have to do it. i guess he doesn’t know how to manage the feeling of shame, of confronting feeling of inadequacy. maybe why i’m drawn to this user is because i see parts of myself in him and i hate it. i am afraid of confronting my own inadequacy and accepting it. i acknowledge it: i don’t get an interview for a job, i don’t know how to do something, i didn’t get promoted, i didn’t get the job when i interviewed for it. i get frustrated, sad, defeated sometimes, but often, i keep the card in my pocket and pretend it doesn’t bother me when it does. it’s uncomfortable, but i think it’s helpful for me to think through what role i played in it and how i can do better.

i can see that this guy shifts blame, he doesn’t take accountability but also can’t see himself for who he is, and needs external validation to do that. that’s why he goes around reddit not asking for advice, but people to agree with him, to give him answers, to tell him how to do things that he needs to figure out himself. should he take this job? how do other people feel about a situation? to help him justify how he also feels about it. i think in ways maybe he has covert narcissistic personality disorder where he really has an inflated sense of self and is resistant to change, but is really insecure underneath all of it and unable to face it. i mean what would i know…. i dated a guy like that!

well anyway, i’ve only spent $30 on clothes this year and they were a pair of suede shorts that were 95% off, and they’re INCREDIBLE quality. a huge win! And I had dinner with one of my friends tonight, and we shared a wonderful meal even though I was allergic to the dish that I had really wanted to order. But they had a table available immediately, and it’s a quite popular restaurant, so I feel grateful for that! Anyway, I have also reflected on how I have mental episodes occasionally, how I “act out” when I feel like I am not getting my way and I don’t even notice it, really. It’s a series of things, it’s a pattern. I don’t really know why. It doesn’t happen a lot, but it happened when I was in my undergrad degree, when I was in my last job. I was trying to act out, to rile people up, to piss people off. and i did! and there were consequences to it. there always are. but i don’t really know why i do it. i can’t even control it because i can’t even tell i’m doing it. it’s like i’m lucid but i’m also being lured to that state, like a magnet pulling me into my hysteria.

this year, i should probably buy a new pair of shoes that are work appropriate and casual. my heels are too high, they don’t fit me (they slip off). perhaps i need to buy new pads but i’m not sure. i also only have my alexander gabi boots as black boots, and one of the issues is that they’re too tight for my wide feet. that’s always been my problem. before the pandemic, i used to wear flats, but hardly anyone wears flats anymore. now, people wear those platform leather dress shoes, or chunky boots, or ankle boots with the skinny ankle. who knows. i want to find something that i like. i like to think about how i was never someone who submitted to trends, although why i was that way, i can’t tell you. i mean, even abercrombie for example. like i still liked abercrombie even when it was going out of style… i just believed in it! well, my stocks are paying off now 🙂

toots!

ten minute thought deciphering the puzzle that is my life

i went for a run this morning and thought about what i wanted to talk about in therapy today. i feel like certain things are falling into place, largely because i feel much more at peace when I’m checking things off. I sold something on Poshmark and dropped it off. I went for a run this morning, got a cappuccino, didn’t put milk in it. small wins. i’ve thought about how i am less articulate, like my brain has been wrung dry, and i really notice it in my writing. i notice it in my reading pace, in what has preoccupied my mind, in my ability and energy to self-reflect, in my schedule, in the way that i fill my days.

i have very high financial anxiety for no reason. i don’t know why. i mean, i know why but it doesn’t totally make sense. i am always doomsday prepping. what if? what if everything is bad? what if everything unravels? because you see, my relationship with someone unraveled terribly. it took me 8 months to start a job (technically even longer since i had been look for a job for about 12 months). sure, i “survived” it, because i’m still in one piece now. but i didn’t really survive it unscathed. i have fallen into bouts of severe depression. i’ve remarked on how i haven’t seen certain friends in a long time, have had a hard time keeping in touch with people, not really wanting to engage. a lot of the anxieties i have now i did not have 12 months ago. I am anxious about money because I didn’t have a job for 8 months, not because I feel grateful to have survived that period. That was truly hell. I guess… I say this because I am supposed to feel grateful, that things are “not that bad”. I mean, I’m alive. I have a place to sleep. I have a roof over my head. I have a loving boyfriend. But… I don’t feel secure. I feel like I do things to prepare for the worst. I mean, I even bought a carbon monoxide detector last night. I also do a lot of things to save money. I walk everywhere, I bike if appropriate, I don’t really eat out, don’t really spend money on experiences, because then I will save less and that means I am less prepared for the future. I am not doing well at all.

My depressive episodes from just before my period have gotten more intense, much worse. I have gained weight, which has been even worse for me, because it’s sparked this new way to worry. I don’t know if living with L would solve these issues. Like I’m not sure if spending $2000 on rent would be a good idea, because I might actually have a breakdown if I have to pay more rent. I am already cutting it close. I feel guilty going on vacation. I am trying to keep myself accountable to spending only $1100 on all expenses apart from rent, and it feels like an impossible task. Therapy already is about $200 a month, and my student loan payments are $170. So I’m left with like $700 for food and entertainment and personal items. I feel that I need to make up for those 8 months where I didn’t earn much, couldn’t put money away for retirement, couldn’t pay off my student loans, and now I must catch up. I basically “loaned” myself savings to pay for my life while I was underemployed, and now I must make it all back. It’s hard. It is painful. It is so stressful. Not making enough money and not having a full-time job was one of the worst things that my mind has had to endure. It has made me so depressed.

scrap paper for an old lover

if i imagine really hard, i could probably scrounge up some scrap paper for an old lover, a tissue for my thoughts, a penny for my grief. i imagine that san diego is a place i would enjoy but it’s already tainted through my eyes and my eyes only. you used to live there, worked there, surfed there, lived a life there. and i am always following your footsteps somehow. or at least that would be the thought repeating in my head tart and bitter and sweet and salty air as i meander the sidewalks that you once called home. i had written to you, or at least written something for you without ever entertaining the thought of sending it to you. i thought you broke up with your girlfriend and i still don’t really know whether that is true, but i like to imagine that not everything worked out for you in your pristine and shiny life.

maybe you are the one the psychic wanted me to forgive, but what a much harder task that is. perhaps because the resentment has calcified much longer, because my feelings towards you are so much more complicated, much more complex, hard to articulate. maybe because so much of my feelings towards you are really feelings i have towards myself and i cannot extricate myself from that mess without also accounting for you. that to remove you from the equation would necessitate carving out a piece of myself, of my being, and i am not skilled enough of a surgeon of the mind to do that. why do i feel the way i do towards you? it would be such a clean break, such an easy answer if i could chalk it up to betrayal, to cruelty, to something of that sort. how i’d be an unsung hero, a victim who can break out into song, anything but a villain. but my story of us has to do with how i felt when i was around you, how i feel when i hear about you, how i feel like i never measure up to you but i try and try and try, like it’s a competition, like if i did all of this, maybe you would really see me. i never felt that i was good enough, and maybe there was some truth to that. maybe i am right to think that you didn’t think i was good enough for you. or maybe i’m wrong. either way, i was willing to dance for you, preen for you, like a little calf heading to the slaughter. and maybe what i need to do is forgive you, because you didn’t do anything wrong to me. and even if you did, it has been 8 years. nothing that couldn’t be swept under the rug. except perhaps that i can’t let it go, because proving myself is second-nature and i felt like you were one of my harshest critics.

you probably don’t even think about me, especially if you’re thinking about a woman you are no longer with, if that’s even true. you probably don’t even think about me, and i don’t think about you often, but when i do, i am afraid to examine my own participation in this. i see that my path to forgiveness has to do with being compassionate with myself, to let go of the notion that what you think about me hurts when what really hurts is how i think you think of me and how rejection hurts and how i have long thought that your rejection had to do with my self-worth, and how (perhaps most importantly of all) if you did feel that way, it’s actually a reflection of how you view yourself and isn’t that sad? just two ships sailing in the night.

i want to be everything to everyone, and that’s one of my greatest faults. i want to be liked by everyone but execute my campaign as stealthily as possible. i have a boyfriend who loves me and whom i love, who harbors so many qualities that i don’t have: so patient with me, intelligent, persevering in his love, honest, committed to good in everything he does. yet i have this uncontrollable desire to please everyone i can, especially the people who don’t love me.

you don’t love me and you never will. you, i do believe, want the best for me. and i need to accept that. i need to hold that close to my heart, nod, and walk away. that’s all there is to this story, i am afraid. maybe i truly am afraid that outside of here, is just another here, and i will spend the rest of my life building myself in the vision of someone else. but i shouldn’t be afraid of that because i should have never seen building myself to your vision is an endeavor, as a way to live. we are ships in the night and we sailed to different destinations, on different paths, having crossed briefly many years ago. a blip on our life map. a great blip, a wonderful blip, bittersweet and sad, but the anger is unfounded.

Book List

1. Thin Description – I finally finished it! I read this after hearing about it at a conference and was curious about it. It was… a difficult read at times, because I am not super well versed with anthropology or sociology in an academic sense, or ethnography. I felt very sympathetic to the AHIJ and to the Black Israelites, and really wanted them to succeed throughout the book. I really enjoyed learning about the religion and how it started, and the concept that digitization has made people their own ethnographers. It was very fascinating of a read, and I also liked the lens of how the best approach to studying a group of people is so contentious, how so much is lost and falls into the trap of “over”interpretation and being over-colored by the researcher’s own perspectives and biases and frame of reference. I also liked the concept in the book that the AHIJ are marginalized in part because they are Black and believe themselves to be the original chosen people, and how their race makes this so “absurd” and contentious, but this in itself is so complex since what is race?
2. Manhattan Beach – I really liked this historical fiction! The characters felt real: Anna, her father Eddie, Dexter Styles. It’s a great mystery that slowly unravels, and I really enjoyed how much research went into the book especially in terms of what it was like to dive in the 1940’s and the war effort. I really felt like I was in the water with Anna, and when Eddie was lost at sea after the shipwreck, I felt dehydrated and drained, at the mercy of the sun, just like him and the Bosun. I thought the book was a fun and gripping read, and I didn’t find the change in narrator to be too distracting.
3. Baumgartner – Super sweet book! It was very short but felt long. I deeply admire and enjoy Paul Auster’s writing and prose so much. It’s a story about an old man named Sy Baumgartner whose wife has passed away and he reflects on his life and his wife in between awareness of the present and what’s happening around him. It’s a story about love, and the ways we crave it and seek it, and also about how people touch our lives even if it’s fleeting, even if it’s a short romance or a visit from the electrical company.
4. Happy Place – I really liked this but not for the reasons that I thought I would! I could see the Emily Henry whose young fiction I loved in the writing, just the rhythm of the sentences, the touching short sentences. I know she had a lot of fun writing this book. This book was surprisingly not a romance in terms of the number of explicit sex scenes (which I frankly enjoyed)! I found the plot intriguing (breaking up with your fiance and then finding yourself in a situation where you’re forced to pretend that you’re still together? novel!) and admittedly resonated with Harriet, because I see a lot of myself in her in terms of a family that isn’t close, this need to please everyone and coming up with imaginary goal posts that I have to hit to change circumstances, and being very high achieving. I sympathized with her a lot because of my own biases.
5. Mrs Dalloway – My first Virginia Woolf! It’s very interesting in the sense that I rarely read much Great War-era literature and I know this book was one of the first to use train of thought as a literary device. I didn’t really understand the cultural significance of this story, since it’s pretty mundane, and only partially see the foil that Septimus and Clarissa are supposed to be for each other. There were certain passages that flowed really nicely. If anything, Clarissa seems like a complicated individual who hasn’t done enough self-reflection to understand herself and her motivations, and perhaps that is something that Woolf is trying to articulate. You definitely see the differences in men and women and their expectations in high society, you also see how loveless Clarissa’s marriage is, and just how important social status means for her. Maybe that’s the brilliance of this book? That for Septimus and Clarissa both, they seemed to be brimming with potential, that they had so many rich opinions and musings to offer but they had a deep inability articulating any of it. Overall, I did love how seamlessly and effortlessly the point of view shifted between various characters throughout the book.

Currently Reading:

More Than a Glitch

The Hours

Doppelganger