and it's like you said

help yourself

I've been in New York for a year and a half and I have been rejected by over 20 therapists.

It's always something - schedule, insurance, possibly being deeply uninteresting to the mental health profession as I want nothing to do with drugs, have no visible psychoses, and would really just like someone to tell me how to get over my evil ex-boyfriend and crippling self-doubt, yawn. But my last attempt - wherein I finally got someone on the phone and was soothed by her dulcet, caring tone, so deeply lulled that I almost didn't notice when she said that oops, she was actually out of network and that would be $160 a session, please - sort of put me over the edge.

I miss my DC therapist. She was warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft. She called me after the session in which I did nothing but gulp for air after an old professor of mine posited, her mouth full of salad, that the reason my ex walked out on me could probably just be summed up as, "Well, he obviously didn't love you anymore," and when I finally got up from the floor of my shower where I had been sobbing for the past hour and got my therapist's voice mail, I realized that a) I was extremely lucky to have found someone who gave a shit, and b) the fact that I had disturbed my therapist enough to make a house call meant I really had to pull it together.

I never imagined I'd be in therapy. It's not something my family did. Most of my friends are the healthy, rosy-cheeked outdoor types, who work out their issues by rock climbing. But I needed it, and I went, and it helped. And maybe that's enough for now, because being rejected by therapists is a uniquely destabilizing experience and to be honest, even if I could find another warm and critical and pointed and genuine and soft woman with a nice couch and a 5:30pm Tuesday opening within walking distance of my office who accepted my insurance, I couldn't truly afford the copay.

And so, in the continued aim of self-improvement, and of getting over it already (or learning how to live in it, or learning how to let it be part of me without defining me, or learning how not to equate my self-worth with the garbage that another person deemed me to be), my recent Amazon shopping cart:

The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Turn the End of a Relationship into the Beginning of a New Life

The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times 

Those self-helpers really love a good colon, don't they?

I also picked up Slouching Towards Bethlehem, thanks to a good friend who proclaimed Didion her own therapist, and the new George Saunders, just cause.

Just wait till next month, kittens. You won't even recognize the sunshine.

(Addendum: It's actually really difficult to read those titles without reflexively gagging. It's actually really difficult to talk about this stuff. I can go forth with glibness but it's raw and frightening. If anyone has other recommendations/tips for self-care/surefire ways to feel better, I welcome them.)

weekends below zero, 2

More margaritas this weekend. I'm on a margarita kick. I drank these gorgeous grapefruit margaritas with brown sugar at Barrio Chino a few weeks back, and since then the desire has been unrelenting. It could be the deep freeze of New York, and the longing for spring, which is manifesting in a need for guacamole and tequila. We booked tickets to Arizona earlier this week. We'll see the canyon. We'll drink by the pool. 

Speaking of, have you seen Google's Canyon mapping?

I've been diving into the What I Read series over at The Atlantic. Jenna Wortham's, in particular, exhausts me. 

I bought a dress. I'm still having some sort of existential crisis that is manifesting in my wardrobe. This dress is not the solution, but it's pretty. 

You don't want to know how many times I've listened to the Pitch Perfect soundtrack this week.  

One of my intern babies dyed his hair lilac. It is glorious. It is tempting. 

Other weekend activities: rehearsal (tunnels, trains, storm clouds); birthdays; snack stadiums. I'm also hoping to nest a little, in preparation for the impending arrival of an as-yet-unidentified kitten. Like lovingly wallpapering a nursery, only the cat gets a litter box and my utility closet. 

weekends below zero

I'm heading to Providence this weekend, where I plan to drink margaritas, cuddle a wiggly noodle of a dog, and walk along the beach to see if the ocean freezes where it meets the shore.

You should read this essay, although maybe wait until Sunday night, since it will rough you up a bit.

I've been complaining about the cold, but I don't really mind it. I like the way it attacks. It's energizing, always playing defense.

Happy weekend, all.

and one more (more of this)

Jenny Holzer 

on being hungry

I've hesitated over writing the customary round-up post, hashing out all that happened last year, ruminating over what the new will bring. I was absurdly excited for 2012. I felt almost prophetic about the whole thing. Like a full-body goosebump. And it's not that 2012 was bad, per se, but it was not...great. I mean, hush. It was wonderful, in so many ways. It was great! Great things. I don't want to list them. They were there. They existed. It's not that I believe in tempting fate, but - almost right out of the gate, 2012 threw a few curveballs, sort of alarmingly in proportion to how sure I was that it would be the best yet. So it was a year. It happened. Maybe that's what I can say about the year: it happened. It also happened FAST. Did anyone else feel that? That it was just the speediest year ever? It was January, I was making resolutions, I made some tea, and then I blinked and it was 2013.

So I don't know. I'm feeling more cautious about what is to come. Not pessimistic or bitter (I'm leaving bitterness behind), but just - less concerned. Or less...like, what is a new year, really? It's just switching the calendar on my wall, changing out the pages of my datebook. It is nothing more or less than yesterday or tomorrow. We make some tea, we blink, we pick up a book. We wake up, we turn the page.

I have made some resolutions for 2013, although I'm not sure I want to call them that. I didn't really accomplish the things I set out to last year - I didn't find a perfect strapless bra (newsflash: such a thing does not exist), I didn't finish War & Peace. So this year, it's less what I want to accomplish and more...what I want to enact. Just what I am already doing that I would like to do more of. I would like to move more. I would like to indulge more. I would like to collaborate more. I would like to love more.

And this is going to sound antithetical, but I think it actually makes sense: I would like to stop setting goals for myself. I make more lists than most anyone I know, and I LOVE them. I enjoy nothing more than a carefully plotted list of the day, week, season, year, tasks aching to be crossed off. It offers such an intense feeling of control over my life - which is, of course, a fallacy. I struggle with my need to control. You'll know this if you've ever lived with me, and found me adjusting a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, the placement of a chair that was two inches to the left when I woke up and has mysteriously moved two inches to the right and IF IT DOES NOT MOVE BACK I WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FUNCTION.

I believe in accomplishment bestowing contentment. I believe in forward motion. But the real problem with my incessant list making is my belief that if I accomplish all the items on my list, if I'm able to place a careful check beside each item, I'll achieve some previously unmet level of happiness. It is just the list standing between me and where I'm meant to be, the frequency at which I should be vibrating to live my best life. So I'm forever staring at these unfinished lists ("Write 50 pages of novel this week; visit 12 museums this month") and berating myself for how I'm sabotaging my own happiness; when, in reality, there is no magical pinnacle of achievement that will be the permanent solution to my feeling unfulfilled. Even if I were to finish my novel tomorrow, I'd be staring down the fact that I haven't seen the humpback migration, and by god I won't be complete until I do.

So. Let's focus on what the lists are really about, which is my desire to move towards happiness. Rather than a litany of uncompleted tasks, I'm going to just try to do more of what I know fills me up. I'll continue turning my apartment into more of a home. I'll continue writing, maybe a little more each day, if that's what feels right. I'll continue seeing my friends, making them more of a priority, allotting them the time they deserve. And I'll make more friends. I'll travel more. More New York. More Broadway Bodies. I'll take more classes and learn more and try more new things. And I'll do less of what makes me unhappy, like watching Law & Order: SVU on Netflix for 6 hours straight, except for when that would really make me happy, in which case it's just fine.

Can "more" be the theme for the year? A slow, steady more-ing. Fill it up. Start now.

question

Is there any more depressing feeling than waking up from a dream in which something you desperately want to happen is happening and then forcing yourself back to sleep to see if you can recapture the dream because you know this thing will never happen in real life?

No. I'm answering my own question. No. There isn't.

random act of bravery

I spend a lot of time thinking about alternative careers I might have. Some of these are vaguely legitimate (management consulting seems like a thing I could do, as I very much enjoy figuring out what is wrong with other people), while others are even more legitimate, such as "spy" or "saving whales woman." The lost life I mourn most, however, is "Broadway Star," which was my plan until it became abundantly clear that I could neither sing nor dance. Sometimes I still think that maybe I could be an actress who is accidentally cast in a Broadway show, or one on a crime drama who plays a cop who has to go undercover in a Broadway show, and then I'd have to spend 6 weeks learning how to be a "Broadway Star" without actually having to be on Broadway.

No matter. Point being. Last night my coworker and I went to our first Broadway Bodies class, and as you can imagine, I. WAS. AWESOMELY. TERRIBLE. and also, it was the most fun ever.



There's some biological thing that allows you to move your arms and legs at the same time but in different directions. I didn't get that thing. When I was younger (ie. until two years ago), this meant that the general self-consciousness that fuels me would fly into overdrive when I was forced to move while other people were watching and my limbs would seize up as though I were having some sort of 16th century fit. Growing up, apparently, means not caring as much that the 8 other semi-awkward 20- and 30-something women and 2 delightful gay men in the class can see your desperate flailing that is meant to resemble a jaunty Charleston step. I laughed when I screwed up (all the time), threw my hips out in attempting a body roll, and sang along under my breath, and I loved it.

the titles

There is a corner in my apartment where my books snake perilously up the wall. They're waiting to be shelved, which really means they're waiting for me to purchase bookshelves, and it is likely they'll wait quite a while, since I recently decided that I had to have shelves worthy of their contents, and now everything seems paltry and less than. It's a sort of Jenga-like endeavour to sneak one out of a stack, which I actually appreciate - it forces me to pull books based on placement, rather than what title I want to read next. It's a surprise.

I read a lot in 2012. All hail the morning commute. Here's a list, not including poetry or web content or facetumbletweet.

If I liked you a lot, you get a star! 

*Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel)

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

*Threats (Amelia Gray) (I can't say I thought this was perfect by any means, but it has wormed its way in.) 

American Gods (Neil Gaiman) 

The Light Between Oceans (M.L. Steadman) (This one gets a negative star. It was inane, predictable, manipulative, and had some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever encountered. Never again will I trust a lighthouse.) 

*The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes) 

*The Hare with Amber Eyes (Edmund de Waal) (I wept.) 

*My Traitor's Heart (Rian Malan) (The stuff of scorched earth.)  

*A Song of Ice and Fire, Books I - V (George M. M. Martin) (aka Game of Thrones) (aka leave off, I loved these)

Aurorarama (Jean-Christophe Valtat) 

*Tiny Beautiful Things (Sugar) (Someone else put it best - I prefer Strayed as Sugar to Strayed as Strayed.)  

Dark Star Safari (Paul Theroux)

*Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (Wells Tower) (The vikings! The vikings.) 

State of Wonder (Ann Patchett) 

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (Aimee Bender) 

Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) 

*Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) (a reread, still a champion) 

*number9dream (David Mitchell) 

A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Rebecca Solnit) (I was really into these essays at the time, and now it's all a wash of canyon and Joni Mitchell and I couldn't even tell you what the thesis is here.) 

Open City (Teju Cole) 

Mr. Fox (Helen Oyeyemi) 

Wild (Cheryl Strayed) 

Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann) 

*Wolf Hall (Mantel) (Mantel is the most muscled writer I know. Her writing could kick the shit out of your writing. It has thighs the size of tree trunks.)  

The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman) 

The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides) 

*The Known World (Edward P. Jones) (Might take the cake. This book is a masterpiece. ) 

*Swamplandia (Karen Russell) (I found the gumption charming.)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) 

*The Light Princess (George MacDonald) 

When God Was a Rabbit (Sarah Winman) 

The Buddha in the Attic (Julie Otsuka) 

There's a little too much filler on this list. I might undertake something a bit weightier this year. 

I'd love to talk more about any of these, or hear what you loved most this year, what you clutched at your heart. 

recently

Wherein I explain how money can buy you love (kinda sorta), over here.