You Should Do It Now While It's On Your Mind
tfw u listening to emo music and the song is also a reminder to write a thing
Hello friends!
I was prompted to write this post because Substack YELLED AT ME (aka sent me a gentle email) about how it has been 4 months since I last posted (oops) (this email actually came to me several weeks ago so prob more like 5 months now but it took me all that time to sort through my muddled brain, oops pt2):
So hi hello, here I am. I have been kind of in a reading slump, but will do my best to provide some brief book updates below. Ahem…by "reading slump" I do mean "life slump," and by "life slump" I mean the last few months have pretty much exclusively entailed me dealing with my life blowing up and not having a lot of time to focus on books, or really anything else.
Real talk: I have written and deleted approximately 100 drafts of this post–-mainly because some part of my brain (probably the part that is still traumatized from the Tumblr Incident of 2013) (if you know, you know….and if you don’t, get a drink with me sometime and I’ll tell you about it, it is among my fave things to scream about) feels kind of weird talking about personal stuff on the interweb. Still, I’ve finally decided that in reality, the only people who read this thing are people I consider my friends, and in some ways it is comforting to imagine having people sit with me and my feelings for a minute (even if it’s virtually, even if y’all are rolling your eyes at my bullshit).
In the last few months, a few things kind of happened concurrently. They are in some ways entwined, but also separate issues from each other. Briefly:
My relationship ended, haha!
This obviously necessitated a lot of uh…practical life adjustments, the largest of which being moving out of our shared apartment.
I’m now living alone (!!!) for the first time, which is in many ways exciting and cool (I love my new apartment, I am having a lot of fun decorating, I got such a good hecking deal on this place that it feels like I am living in a dream) but also comes with its own set of challenges (not the least of which is me low-key morphing into an absolute cat lady recluse who simply does not leave her house or speak out loud to humans for days at a time).
My mental health is in the gutter!! To be absolutely clear, depression/anxiety are for me chronic problems that I’ve dealt with for ???ever???, so this is not a result of the breakup or really at all related to my ex— though in the immediate aftermath, it certainly did not help to compound clinical depression with heartbreak. Presently, the issues are neatly compartmentalized in my mentally ill but extremely type-A brain.
I’ve been spending a lot of time, therefore, in ~therapy~ and doing a lot of things outside of my comfort zone that are meant to be good for me or whatever. Having…mixed results, but yeah.
So as we can see, it has been...a trying time :)
Re: the breakup - This was a (not particularly unexpected) conclusion to a too-long period of time where things were kind of circling the drain and feeling Not Great, if I'm being totally honest. Nothing big really went down, we don’t hate each other, blah blah blah. Sometimes relationships just stop working and it sucks, but it is also fine.
Genuinely I feel like I have an unusual-for-me amount of emotional peace about the situation (I realize I say this as someone who historically deals with break-ups with surface-of-the-sun levels of chill, but still). I am a whole grown up adult woman who has gone through many, many breakups (of all kinds: romantic, platonic, familial…) and given my wealth of experience, a thing that I know in my heart to be absolutely true is that it is possible to care about people who are not right for you, that love is not always enough, that most people are not going to be in your life forever, and that something being painful is not necessarily indicative of it being the wrong decision.
Re: the apartment - As much of a bummer as the circumstance leading to it was, I do love my new lil apartment. Honestly, I really lucked out with this space. Yes, it is a 5 floor walkup (who needs a gym membership when I nearly pass out from exertion every time I bring home groceries?) but it is also rent stabilized, doable within the confines of my wee publishing-industry salary, has loads of natural light and 3 (T H R E E) huge closets, and is in the neighborhood I wanted to be in. I have heard so many people freaking out about how hard of a time they're having finding apartments these days, and I frankly don't know how to explain the ease with which I found/got approved for my new place. I guess I’m going to chalk it up to the universe being like "girlie is having a rough go of it, let's give her this one thing" and to the universe I say, thank u.
I honestly never imaged I’d have the experience of living by myself, especially not in NYC, so I do feel really lucky and excited to be doing the thing. It has not been smooth sailing the whole time (my stove was leaking gas! I saw the biggest bug I’ve ever fucking seen in my life on my second night here! I ordered a ot of heavy packages without considering the 5 flights of stairs I’d need to carry them up! I had to build SO. MUCH. FURNITURE. by myself!) but it’s all still kind of a special experience, trying to lean into my main character energy, also realizing that I am capable of doing a lot more on my own than I ever give myself credit for, which is cool.
Re: mental health - I am struggling the most with this one, probably unsurprisngly. Good news: I am (still) in therapy. Bad news: My therapist is Concerned about the ol’ depression doing the whole ‘kicking my ass’ thing that it does from time to time (hello darkness my old friend) and now I have to figure out how to work on that, again. It’s Me, the Sisyphus of mental health. Honestly it is genuinely exhausting to struggle with something chronically, to never really be “cured” from your own brain, to feel like you’ve come so far only to be back in the same place, etc etc. At this moment I don’t really feel like being Funny Online about it, it all honestly just feels really heavy and bad. That being said, I know I am lucky to have access to mental health resources and I’m working on it, whatever that means.
I will say that I have been thinking a lot about strategies to get myself out of the aforementioned Life Slump, because obviously sitting around being bummed out is not ideal. I guess a lot of it has to do with putting myself out of my comfort zone, trying new things, and figuring out what feels good. I have been trying to do those things, though it is hard when you are capital D Depressed to find motivation to do difficult shit when basic things like “making dinner” or “taking out the trash” is like, an ordeal. Still, I know it’s important and probably the thing to do is take baby steps?
Something that has come up in a few conversations recently is Writing–which was a thing I did for fun for a long time, and then I…didn’t anymore. Lately, a few old pals and a couple of new ones too have asked variations of “Are you writing anything right now?” and the answer is NO, not even my stupid newsletter, but I guess maybe I should.
SO, yeah. I wrote out this whole Livejournal-esque thing that went into further detail about the last couple of months, and then I deleted it and ended up with whatever THIS is. I think it would be an interesting project to write more reflectively again, I do love a personal essay. I have no idea if anyone is interested in reading that kind of thing from me or about my dumb experiences (??? thoughts ??? I am not really asking but also I am kind of asing idk) but maybe could be an interesting creative project, or at least cathartic in some way. We’ll see.
Book Stuff!
OKAY, so now that I am done spilling my guts, I DO have some book updates for y’all. My reading pace is significantly slower than normal because my brain is a whole mess (see above), but briefly, here are some standout books I’ve read lately (some of you have already heard me blab about these, apologies):
A Head Full of Ghost, by Paul Tremblay
I loved this book, and I feel like the more I sit around thinking about it, the more I love it? It might be a new all time fave for me, honestly, and I do not say that lightly! It is essentially about a teenager who is possessed (or IS she?), her religious father pursuing exorcism as the only way to cure her, and the absolutely wild decision to make a reality TV show about the whole ordeal. It is told through the perspective of the younger sister of the possessed individual, which adds a certain amount of spookiness and unreliable narration (I frickin LOVE a spooky kid character, idk what it is but it really does it for me).
I will admit that I was hesitant to read this book (despite it having been recommended to me many times!) because I am in general nervous about books which have the "is it a mental illness or paranormal" plot. I think if done poorly it can be disrespectful and even harmful. Happy to report I feel like this book did a good job of portraying how various mental illnesses have been conflated with possessions for far too long--especially in women, and especially by religious groups. It was almost a commentary on how much harm can be done when you DO link psychological disorders with possession, rather than leaning on it to perpetuate a trope.
I also liked that the author included references to sooo many classic horror books and movies: the yellow sunroom being an homage to The Yellow Wallpaper, Merry's name being from We Have Always Lived in the Castle, for example. ALSO, Merry's name being a hat tip to Merricat is especially interesting when you get to the end of the book (I won't spoil it here, though). The book also had obvious vibes of The Exorcist—duh—but I think the twists and turns that the author added to this story make it unique. There were also plenty of genuinely creepy moments throughout the book, and as someone who reads a lot of horror, I don’t often get spooked!
Anyway, I have talked about this book a LOT to the fellow readers in my life already, but yeah, this was a 5/5 for me.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler, by Casey McQuiston
Big gay love story set in the bible belt. We got all kinds of LGBTQ rep, we got enemies to lovers, we got high school drama, we have secret cryptic notes!
It’s fun! It’s cute! It’s romancey!
I read this one in June for Pride month, obviously. And listen, I would read and enjoy the back of a cereal box if Casey wrote it, so obviously I liked this book. She wrote this one with a younger audience in mind than that of her other two books (this one is truly YA), but even without the comparable steaminess of the other books, this is still extremely good and cute! While not being my favorite out of the batch, I know if I read this book a teen I would have been obsessed. I really appreciated how genuinely it felt like being in the mind of a teenager, for better or worse.
As with Casey’s other books, I think the real strength of of this story is in the characters. I wasn’t totally in love with the plot of this one, but the characters really carried it for me. Casey has a real way of making every character she introduces feel so well developed, even the minor ones—they all have these unique and totally endearing personalities.
Not much more to say here, I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.
Rust Belt Femme, by Raechel Anne Jolie
I don’t really know how to articulate my feelings about this book other than to say that it made me feel so deeply seen? It is relatable even if my experiences are not totally identical to those of the author. This is a coming of age story about trauma, growing up poor, queerness, identity, and love (love of family, friends, and place).
The writing is so tender and vulnerable. I love a memoir that can make me FEEL something. Rachael’s interest and desire to be part of the punk/ anarchist community and stumbling awkwardness of that were especially resonant with me. This book felt like a comforting hug from the cool older sister I never had. (Also I love reading Rachael’s newsletter!)
The Book of the Most Precious Substance, by Sara Gran
Lmao ok unlike the others, this book stood out because I hated it!
It is about sex magic, which one would think should be cool, but imo was not. I think I hated it all the more because of the unmet potential of it all.
I just did not like it! The whole time I was reading it, I felt kind of like the author really just wanted to write erotica (which like…then just DO that?) but then tried to add this, like, unnecessary literariness to it to make it more “serious” or something, and it just did NOT hold up for me. It was genuinely kind of infuriating?
Listen, in my humble opinion, trying to give depth and meaning to what is essentially a book about cum takes a certain amount of finesse and skill that I simply do not think was executed well here. Shrug!
Longer reviews forthcoming soon (I promise- but spoiler alert, I liked ‘em) for:
Little Eve, by Catriona Ward
The Hacienda, by Isabel Cañas
Ok that is all I got! I am sorry for being a sad sack in your inboxes, but I also feel like my whole personality is just a compilation of anxiety and emotional vulnerability so i am sure no one here is surprised ;) please be nice to me lol
-Amy
PS: Title of this post brought to you by Mike Kinsella, who I love despite myself (I trust zero sad-boi musicians and yet simp incredibly hard for them, which does not indicate anything good for the future of my love life) but whose music I have been listening to on repeat every time I’m sad (most of the time) since 2002~~~