is this a cry for help?
i have anxiety because of my grandma and jesus
It has occurred to me that what I’m doing here is very similar to the plot of the MTV show Awkward, which aired during almost the exact span of my high school career (one year off) because I am old. I remember watching the show as an adolescent, wondering why this Jenna girl was putting every single embarrassingly personal thought she had onto the internet in nightly blog posts, and now here I am, well past the age where doing stupid and humiliating things is acceptable, putting every single one of my thoughts onto the internet by way of a weekly newsletter (the hip new version of a blog that is somehow both more and less mortifying than having an actual blog). I started working out again this week for the first time since I was injured in a cartwheeling accident. Nothing makes you contemplate and subsequently mourn your age quite like breaking your toe while cartwheeling into a volleyball net at a fundraiser.
I do not think I have what it takes to manage a blog the way Jenna did. She was an extremely awkward human (as the name of the show would imply) but somehow mustered the confidence to put her inner life and thoughts on a website that most of her classmates and peers would then see every day. I guess this is facebook, I am describing the social media website facebook, which I famously did not have in high school and do not have to this day. I barely can operate the single social media platform I do use, which is obviously instagram because I am too old to care about tik tok. I think that if I had gone to an arts high school like I wanted to when I was 14, I would be more interesting but would probably not have any more achievements under my belt and would definitely have a lot more paintings to lug around with me from apartment to apartment and state to state, only to be stored in a new closet and ignored until it became time to pack up and move again. My siblings are all in high school now (the oldest is actually graduating today - shock and awe all around), which makes me simultaneously glad to not be in high school and so so deliriously devastated that I am no longer young enough to be in high school or even college. Jk you can literally go to college whenever you want and I need to stop feeding myself the narrative that you can’t. I always loved, but never understood, the Blink 182 song What’s My Age Again until I actually did, in a sick twist of fate, turn 23, at which time I promptly lost the ability to remember my actual age, and continued to think of myself as 21 for the remainder of time and existence.
In middle and high school, I was actually briefly interested in writing fiction, and then poetry. My prose (generous term) and poems were all very dark (usually about an orphan or someone in an abusive relationship), in an effort to somehow express the abysmal dysfunction that I felt my life simultaneously was and, to my dissatisfaction, would never be. Somewhere along the lines, I lost interest in writing (and unfortunately, reading) fiction. I guess I realized that this world has a titillating and subtle way of being actually worse than any of the horrors my young mind could create, morbid beyond my years though I was. I used to be obsessed with thinking of myself as damaged goods until I realized that it’s virtually impossible to make the trek into adulthood without breaking or losing something along the way. I couldn’t even explain to you what I had broken or lost, but I felt like it happened quite early on. All this is a long-winded way of saying that I have finally increased my attention span to the point that I can once again read novels in their entirety, and I decided it was time to get some help for my perpetually broken brain.
I think I’ve come as far as I can with exercise, journal entries, and vitamin D supplements alone, and have decided I probably need to enlist the help of a professional. My brain is broken in that I appear to be functioning to the outside world, but I can no longer sleep unless I’m being absolutely crushed under at least 45 pounds of weighted blanket (which is much higher than the recommended amount of weight for one body!!) and if somebody compliments my hair, I compulsively have to tell them how long it’s been since I last washed it (today is day five). After literal years of needing to, I finally reached out to a therapist on Monday evening. I picked this particular therapist because of her headshot on the Psychology Today website looking like the youngest and least threatening face on the screen. I suppose most people would look for a therapist based on criteria like experience and specialties, but I can only talk to girls and gays with kind eyes and nice hair who are within 13 years of my age. Even while typing my email to her, I felt like I shouldn’t bother her with my banal concerns, because these professionals have bigger problems to deal with than a girl, her quarter-life crisis, pandemic-induced social anxiety, and crippling need for perfection. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I cured my depression in that I changed actually nothing about my brain chemistry and, in fact, the sun is out for longer. But I ended up deciding that maybe having (seasonally) cured one-fifth of my mental health concerns, and the mere fact that I am experiencing imposter syndrome about my mental health (or lack thereof) are both good indicators that it could use a boost. I did not hear back from my Chosen One until yesterday (Thursday) morning when she denied me admittance on account of her “practice” being “full” at the “moment,” which has really been fine for me emotionally and I am not having any difficulties coping at all. I have already moved on, and actually found another therapy woman who practices out of the same building as the first non-threatening looking woman, named Serena. Is it narcissistic to pick a therapist based solely on the fact that you share a name? I can’t decide if it would make therapy more or less palatable. I imagine it might be something like having sex with a person who shares the same name as your dad, which is something I’ve never had to endure, but assume is not enjoyable or productive. I did also find a therapist with the same name as my dad, who is currently accepting new clients, but I convinced myself that it was too expensive because I can’t take advice from anyone who reminds me in the slightest of my dad.
I signed up for internet therapy and was matched with a woman named Teresa. I don’t know if I’ll continue to see her because I don’t like the spelling of her name and I recently received a compliment on the shape of my eyes and the pattern of my curls and now my brain is healed and I no longer require therapy.
Since my therapist hunt is looking mediocre at best and most of my anxiety has to do with interacting with other people now that it is socially acceptable and actually encouraged to do so again, I wanted to create a Jenna from Awkward blogger style list for you of all the things I will be taking with me from quarantine into my new life around other people.
going as long as physically possible without washing my hair
actually exercising? i hope this makes my potential future therapist proud because i am doing it predominantly for the mental health benefits
caffeine-free, dairy-free turmeric lattes with Golde mixes and homemade nut milk (is it cool to spell it mylk?)
dying my eyebrows with men’s beard dye
I will leave you with a photo dump from my week. If you enjoyed this and have not already signed up to get these newsletters delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis (for free - I know my worth), there’s a button down below for just that purpose. And as mortifying as it is for me to have a newsletter, it’s even more mortifying to have a newsletter with an audience of none, so feel free to share with a friend or lover or enemy who maybe has nothing else going on in their life.
Thanks for enduring this issue of Essays No One Asked For. Here’s that button I was telling you about, plus a couple more.