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from Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself (2020)

It's been about two weeks since the first year of my program ended and in that time I've watched Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself (2020) twice. Once shown to me by someone I love and the second time I showed it to someone else I love. Stoned the first time, not stoned the second time. Derek DelGaudio is a magician but please keep reading because I promise this doesn't even have a whiff of Criss Angel (of Cablp fame) energy. I personally love magic ever since my grandparents took me to see David Copperfield when I was 6 years old; I was mesmerized by the idea of how he did what he did and I grew to love and be fascinated by sleight of hand and the like. Even on Arrested Development, I was rooting for GOB's illusions (not tricks, Michael!) to work even when I knew they absolutely would do no such thing. I like magic, sue me!

risograph by Anna May Henry

We should say no a lot more. There's a lot of messaging around saying yes and being open and generally I believe this! Ted Lasso reminded us to be curious not judgmental, and there's ways in which learning about and absorbing abolitionist literature has made me a more open less defensive person. It has changed my life! I'm grateful for it! But there's also the other side of that coin where it's also and often just as valid to say no. As an early lover of Herman Melville's works especially "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street", I have grown more and more fond of saying "I would prefer not to".

detail of a painting by Nick Alm

cw: abortion, medical

This wasn't in your inbox at like 5am this week and you thought I forgot huh? Well, you're right. A lot has been going on which I will get into next week. Anyways, here we go!

I had a brief 24 hour stomach bug in the past week and I spent a lot of that sad sick time on my couch watching YouTube doucmentaries about Frank Lloyd Wright whose work I have long been fascinated with. I especially took a deep dive into learning about what might be my favorite FLW creation: the Hanna Honeycomb House located on the Stanford University campus, originally the home of professors Paul and Jean Hanna. The house's hexagonal design is stunning and the thoughtfulness of the functionality and aesthetic of the home is such a treat. I especially loved the Stanford online exhibit of the house and the clients' report that Paul and Jean wrote about working with Frank Lloyd Wright and developing the plan for the house and what it was like living and adapting and growing with the house and their family. Wonderful stuff! I've always loved Frank Lloyd Wright's work and especially the fact that when you had him design your house, he didn't just design the house but the furniture and art and even once the lady of the house's dress for the new home—extra and immersive as an experience in the way I love.

My parents got me a guitar for Christmas the year I turned thirteen. It was an acoustic and I remember thinking that it felt too big for my lap as I held it; I could barely get my arms around it. Lessons came with the guitar and I spent every Wednesday afternoon before ballet with a long haired dude who really liked Poison. He made me cut my nails really short and soon my fingers were callused from practicing chords—they matched my toes, callused by pointe shoes. Three weeks in, he asked me what kind of songs I wanted to learn how to play.

“I really like Neil Young and Bob Dylan.” I said.

“What are you, ten?” He scoffed.

I saw Pretty Woman entirely by accident when I was about six years old. I walked into the living room when my parents were watching it. My mom had always had this idea that if she tried to block me from seeing or knowing about something, it would just make me dangerously curious about those things. The problem was, I was naturally already curious. She tried to justify things on screen.

“Why does she have dark hair now?” I chirped to her, the first of many questions.

“She used to work at a wig store and now she has to put them to good use.”

I watched The X Files for the first time in 2015 at age 28. It's not entirely clear to me why I didn't watch it as a kid because it was exactly the kind of show my parents would have been into but I think there was a sense that it might be too scary for me. Did they also let me watch Poltergeist (1982) when I was 6? Yeah, my parents contain multitudes. My mom died in August 2015 and my sense of self was destroyed. I had spent a lifetime as a moon orbiting my mother the sun, sometimes closer or further, but always somewhere tethered to her no matter the distance between us. Sometimes her sun scorched me and sometimes it warmed and held me; what was a moon without its light source to reflect?

The weeks and months that followed her death saw me operating my body and going through the motions of my life, watching myself from outside. Less than two months after her death, Ian and I were on our way out of town for Thanksgiving when we got into a car accident on the Gardner. I remember the feeling of being in my body quite suddenly just before impact and opening my eyes to smoke from the air bag and feeling in my body for the first time in months. The car was totaled and I walked away seemingly fine; a few days later, hard black and purple bruises appeared on my belly, delayed just like the rest of my experience—something would happen and it wouldn't fully sink in until later.

I can't remember whether it was my idea or Ian's, but somehow in fall 2015 we started watching our way through The X Files. Ian had seen it when it originally aired and I went in blind. I hadn't been able to focus on anything for over six months, since my mom went into hospice, but this held me somehow. Maybe it was the generous variety of pacing between dips into the overarching plot and monster of the week episodes that helped. This was a show from when shows were 22+ episodes per season, when there was so much time to explore things. I had gotten used to shorter seasons and limited series where everything was so packed into just a handful of episodes. I felt the show's age especially in early seasons but I was comforted by it; the filming ratio, the lighting, the fashions I remembered around me when I was a kid. I didn't watch the show as a kid but it felt familiar in the way things from childhood do. I was quickly hooked.

the video store, cincinnati (1988)

two traumas in one night

Fairfield Porter, Anemone and Daffodil, 1965

Do you ever have a song lyric loop in your head? I should tell you the song: "Gold Soundz" by Pavement. If you know it, you could probably guess the specific lyric but just in case, it is and you can never quarantine the past. Because of course that's the lyric that's haunting my brain right now. I wish I could though. "Gold Soundz" is on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and in the liner notes for that album's reissue, Stephen Malkmus calls it simply "a self-doubt song". The looping lyric comes right after one that feels bleak: so drunk in the August sun and you're the kind of girl I like/because i'm empty and you're empty. Someone I dated once put this song on what was supposed to be a romantic mix for me and I went back to the thought of being empty a lot; maybe it was true but only because we had both pushed down so much of what had happened, what we were feeling, so that we just looked like blank slates. But then the past comes out sideways, right? It seeps out no matter how hard you try to absorb it.

Do you ever have the feeling that the only belief system you've ever had, that was instilled in you so early that you thought it was just who you were on a cellular level, is actually just other people's stuff that they put on you? More than just feeling that, do you ever see yourself realizing in real time how isolated it keeps you, how scared it makes you all the time? I was raised to be suspicious of everyone, to never be anything but perfect in front of others, to be an island rather than ever admit I needed help or love or kindness; because no one is ever just kind without wanting something. I try to be kind but I've realized recently that so many parts of those earliest lessons are still my gut reaction when I'm tired or stressed or overwhelmed. I'm aware that it's not my stuff but it doesn't erase what's there and what's been... absorbed. I keep thinking about the Ram Dass quotation about suffering being sandpaper shaping you and I wish growth didn't have to hurt. I understand why it does but I wish so badly that wisdom and peace came without pain. Immediately my brain remembers the other Ram Dass quotation about suffering: resistance to the unpleasant situation is the root of suffering. And maybe that's it? You have to sit in muck and mire as much as you have to sit in comfort and ease; you're supposed to feel everything, not just what feels good.

I forgot to mention it last week but it's March Break this week! I'm taking the week off and I hope you are too if only in your mind. Go feel the sun on your face or stay in—whatever you want, I'm not your mom. Be good to yourselves, see you next week.

note: this may be the second time you're seeing this in your inbox (under a different title but otherwise the same) due to some technical stuff. apologies for the tech issue!

Recently I was talking with Ian about how strange it is to be pursuing something entirely new at 35, like learning how to be a psychotherapist. It's strange but it's also really wonderful. It's different than when I got my BA in literature because even in a creative academic subject like that, things were more structured; it's even more different than when I went to school to become a hair stylist about a decade ago. It's been years since I went to hair school and that hasn't really been a part of my life in so long that I kind of forget that I did it at all. It's weird how we can lose entire blocks of memory, purposely or not.

Recently I was talking with Ian about how strange it is to be pursuing something entirely new at 35, like learning how to be a psychotherapist. It's strange but it's also really wonderful. It's different than when I got my BA in literature because even in a creative academic subject like that, things were more structured; it's even more different than when I went to school to become a hair stylist about a decade ago. It's been years since I went to hair school and that hasn't really been a part of my life in so long that I kind of forget that I did it at all. It's weird how we can lose entire blocks of memory, purposely or not.

I got the idea to be a hair stylist from a friend who at that time was attending and enjoying hair school. I've always had a love of the rituals around beauty thanks to my mom and hearing about it from my friend felt exhilarating. Visiting her at school for a haircut really cemented the excitement I felt about that environment—the seed that had been planted began to grow. Being less than two years out of university and unhappy in my entry level publishing job also made me eager to do something that felt so immediate and present. I wanted to be of service! I wanted to have fun. Knowing I could make more in the beauty industry than I did in publishing also made me really question my parents' constant mantra that getting a university degree would give me success, money, comfort because that certainly wasn't true. I didn't know yet that their experience of the world and jobs and everything was very specific to their generation's timing and not much else. And so I enrolled in hair school.

imagine being the first person to eat an onion

rice is one of the coolest foods

cw: pet loss, grief, death

We waited almost six months after Nuggy died to begin thinking about getting a new cat. I thought I was ready before Ian was but really I wasn't ready till he was. I tried to do the thing I do when it comes to grief and pain, where I focus forward instead of where I'm at in the present because it hurts so goddamn bad to lose someone you love and just sit in that feeling. The societal messaging seems to be that the loss of a pet isn't a big deal and it possibly isn't to people who think of themselves more as owners than as carers of animals who live with us. To those of us who understand that animals can be just as much a part of our families as human members, we feel the losses of our pets deeply. In some sense, it's inevitably heartbreaking to love and care for an animal because as humans we will most likely outlive them and we are aware of that when we adopt them into our homes and lives, no matter whether they're babies or seniors. By late January, we felt ready or at least that it wouldn't be constantly painful to bring a new cat into our family. It felt so good to go to bed the day our new girl came to live with us and say to Ian: "I'm so glad we waited, I'm so glad today doesn't hurt like it might have earlier."

We worked with a small and incredible rescue here in Toronto and found a mutually good match: a two-year-old tiny tuxedo girl we're calling Dolly. She looks like the platonic ideal of a cat, just adorable. Going in, we knew she was shyer than Nuggy ever was but that she's warm and cuddly and sweet once she feels safe. In about two weeks, we've had great progress: she's been eating well and using the litter box from the first day, she's getting more curious about her toys, she's hanging out with us instead of just hiding, and she's exploring all the things in her new environment. She's let us close enough to give her treats and to sniff our hands and even nuzzle once or twice. It's happening! We're giving her space, we're all learning to live together, and it's coming together day by day. I'm grateful to Ian and friends and my therapist and my program right now in general for helping me stress less than I may have in the past. Dolly hiding or not being ready to cuddle with me while I watch TV isn't a reflection of me or something I'm doing, it's just what she needs right now to feel safe. My good friend Nailah told me that cats are a perfect lesson in consent which blew my mind with its accuracy—we can't just rush things with a cat because it's what we want or need.

I've been thinking a lot about my and other people's windows of tolerance, thinking about it for the past five years to be honest. I learned about the concept in therapy and was astounded to finally have words for my constantly changing emotional state. When you have traumatic experiences or attachment issues in your past, your window isn't very big—the opening is so small and it takes a lot of factors to keep you in this very small area where you feel safe in your brain and especially your body. You can make your window bigger though. Therapy helps, bodywork helps, processing in safe relationships helps a lot. You open your window more and that state is easier to access because there's literally more room where you feel safe.

Here are things I've been asking myself a lot, especially recently:

what makes me feel safe?

cw: addiction, violence

First, I really think Euphoria could be set in Broward County, Florida (where I grew up). The look of the convenience stores and the alleys and just the vibe makes it feel like home. Second, I think this adds to the fact that it feels the way I did as a teenager in that place, or a place just like that: teeming with life while completely in a downward spiral.

happy lunar new year

omg wake up sleepytime bear

Joan Mitchell, Row Row, 1982

Did you know that there's two types of shame? Appropriate shame is what you feel when you are scolded as a child before doing something dangerous in order to keep you safe and teach you a lesson; this shame is useful because it imparts a lesson. The key to this kind of shame is that there is supposed to be an immediate repair where the parent attunes to the child and reinforces that they are loved and safe and didn't do anything wrong. Core shame includes the first part of appropriate shame without the repair—more than that, it's the repetition of that first part even when it's not called for. There's no attunement, no repair, no gentleness, nothing but the shame instilling that the child is bad, that they are the problem. It becomes a brain's operating system, running the same program over and over in every situation: "This is your fault. You're not good enough. There's something wrong with you. The way you feel is wrong." There's no uninstall on this program but there are patches. There's awareness, there's repair, there's reexperiencing that can be done with a safe other. You can work to override what you were shipped out into the world with; you don't need to annihilate yourself just because someone fucked up your install.

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

*This contains spoilers for the first season of Yellowjackets, reader beware*

Are you one of the many people obsessed with Showtime's Yellowjackets? Were you a teenage girl at some point in your life? Are you now years removed from that time in your life and still processing the liminal existence of those years? Welcome.

cw: blood

No really, what year is it? It feels like we've been in an extra long 2020 but then before it felt like we were in a mega length 2017 and I honestly don't know. No clue! I had big plans to come back in 2022 with A Plan™ or a better sense of what to do with this space and that's still unclear. You can blame the holidays or the arrival of Omicron but I feel pushed back into a place with bare walls and no direction. I was going to write about mental health more exclusively because we all have mental health stuff to deal with whether we have a diagnosis or not. I was going to revive the YE instagram account! I was going to make memes and shit posts. I still might, who's to say, but the thing is that I started thinking of this as not just a project but a product. I don't blame myself for that because that's the way of the Western world under capitalism but that's not what I'm trying to do as a psychotherapist in training and honestly especially as a writer. I think YE in its many iterations has been best when it's been wavy and unconstrained and sort of organic, like drawing a shape with a soft charcoal and no pencil markings to guide you. YE is a separate entity but it's also me and my thoughts and my stories, nothing more, nothing less—here to connect with as opposed to consume. Basically I'm going to do this and I'm not going to overthink every single newsletter I send out; they will not all be essays, they will not all have some overarching theme, they will be stories and thoughts as they come. I'm less concerned about trying to get you to subscribe (although I have no job so I won't stop you, you know?) and more about thinking authentically and sending you notes that may resonate during these very very very unprecedented times. Anyways, here's Wonderwall.

I was talking to my friend Jamie yesterday and we were saying how tired we feel which honestly makes sense. It's winter, the planet's on fire, the pandemic rages on, companies and governments are trying to force people to work and school, telling us everything is fine even though we know, we know, that nothing is fine. I think our bodies are hibernating due to the state of the world as much as the season. Neither he nor I are working right now and yet we still feel this deep almost biological need to rest. We aren't the only people I've heard this from lately and it feels bad. I'm focusing on school and am ok right now but he's having to start thinking about looking for work. Things are hard and they feel like they've been hard for a while; at what point do we ask ourselves why we keep living like this? When do we break down the systems in place? It bums me out that there doesn’t seem to be much if any space to take the time to be gentle with ourselves. It feels incredibly messed up right now that we have to work in order to have food, shelter, healthcare. It feels bleak. As a kid, I understood the world wasn't great but it felt infinitely more hopeful than it does right now. There's a strange sense that the field I'm training in is multifaceted. It feels like even though the work is literally connecting with one person at a time face to face, it still involves these larger systems:

It is 2022. 2022! Things still feel weird and bad due to Omicron and it turns out deja vu can feel a lot like nausea in this kind of circumstance. I'm still getting a hold of myself so we will reconvene for something more substantial next week. Until then, do you want to know my favorites (not necessarily from 2021) from 2021? Of course you do.

Favorite Books I Read

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Elizabeth Lennie, Dream State, 2013

You know when things are going the way you expected and then something blows it off course but you try to steady the ship and keep going as if everything’s the same? I most definitely do. I’ve had many feelings since my layoff from the high energy almost mania of disbelief to just a complete exhaustion I can feel in my bones. Added to this is the feeling of stretching and growing in sometimes huge ways due to my training program. Do you remember the feeling when you were 13 or 14 and you could feel the ache in your body as you literally grew? That’s how everything right down to my soul feels these days.

At first I tried to go with the flow and stay busy and just keep pushing through how I was feeling and ignore what everything in my body was saying; it led to some moments I’m not proud of. I dropped the care I had gotten better at providing myself and I felt myself become dysregulated in a way I haven’t been in a while. For a bit, I’ve wondered what would happen if I reverted back to the way I lived my life before learning how to take care of myself and this brief moment gave me the answer: it’s not great! Self care isn’t pedicures and bubble baths for me (and many of us I’d wager), it’s chopping vegetables ahead of time so dinner doesn’t feel overwhelming, it’s getting 8 hours of sleep, it’s stretching and taking a walk in the morning, it’s listening to the ridiculous app that checks whether I’m drinking water throughout the day, it’s setting boundaries so I don’t doom scroll myself into anxiety and dissociation. Honestly, it’s such basic stuff but it gives me a sense of being on steady ground; I’m more important than what I produce. I won’t set myself on fire to keep anyone or anything else warm.

I’m actively trying to track how I’m feeling these days because that’s something you need to be able to do as a therapist. To sit with someone else and create the container to hold them and everything they’re feeling. You can’t be checked out and you can’t not be in your body so I’m learning how to trust and stay in my body and the self care is a huge part of that. It’s the foundation of all that, really. All of that to say that I’m listening to my body and listening to the environment; it’s getting darker and we are turning inwards, we are trying to rest. We live in a culture that tries to keep going despite the natural world and for maybe the first time in my life, I’m trying to not resist the urge to rest and care for myself. The right instinct is there even if we’ve been told to fight against it.

In many ways, this layoff feels like a blessing. I am about to have time and space to not just rest but to really nurture myself and get much better at tracking how I feel. I’m going to be able to focus on myself and my program and my writing and how it’s changing and evolving. I’ll be honest, for the past few months I thought You’ve Escaped was coming to an end. I felt myself changing, I felt my life changing, and I just didn’t know where it was going which made me very uncomfortable. I was right in a way: it is coming to an end but I think it’s just the end of a season. You’ve Escaped will return but it’ll change because I’m changing—we’re all changing, I hope. I’m in the nesting and resting and creating stage and I’m excited again about the work I do here and to share it with you all in the new year. Until then, I’m going to listen to the light and the air and take a much needed break; hibernation, if you will. You’ve Escaped, in what will be another of its forms, will return on Wednesday January 5th, 2022. If you are a paid subscriber, your subscription will be extended by 6 weeks to honor this needed break in content. I appreciate the support from all of you who can contribute financially (now more than ever) and I want to make sure you’re getting your full year of content. Book club will still be meeting in December and I’ll be spending more time in the Slack with you all in the coming weeks to give you a sneak peak about changes that are coming.

Until then, I’ll leave you with my favorite essays from 2021 which have all been made available publicly and not just for paid subscribers, including C.R.E.A.M., my series of essays on money and class and all it brings with it. In no particular order:

• In Cars

• Midsommartime Sadness: Grieving in the Time of COVID

• Travels With My Aunt

• anthems for a teenage girl

• A spectre is haunting my body; on pride & queerness

• Lost Futures

• Nightswimming

• C.R.E.A.M. (part one)

• C.R.E.A.M. (part two)

• C.R.E.A.M. (part three)

• C.R.E.A.M. (part four)

• C.R.E.A.M. (part five)

As always, thank you for reading and see you very soon.

I took Latin for four years in high school ("it's perfect for law school or medical school!!" —my mom) and I did well but very little has stuck in my brain for some reason. The three semesters of French I took in university have stuck around more in my brain and even that one ill-fated semester of Russian made more of an impression. Maybe it's because I never really had opportunity to use it conversationally, you know? Regardless, I spent a lot of time translating the poetry of Catullus for four years in my teens and all I have to show for it really is the knowledge that the Latin word for "sheath" is vagina. The more you know.

I always used to confuse novum and novem, the former "new" and the latter "nine". I insisted they must be connected having almost the exact same letters but my Latin teachers and later on in university my linguistics professor shut that down again. The most they would ever give me was that the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans counted on the four fingers (not including the thumb) of one hand, considering the four fingers one span. Oktō meant eight and technically meaning “two spans”. The word for “nine” introduces a “new” set of four. It's barely there and it always felt like more of an out loud exercise than factual but nine and new became forever linked for me.

We were married nine years ago today which seems impossible but I think we know by now that time isn't linear. It feels very recent and also very long ago; it mostly feels like nothing has been a straight line but moving in all directions at once, often at the same time. We are two separate people but we've created a life and a family where there wasn't one before. Our plans for what that looked like have changed over the years but there's still no future, no version of this life that I can picture without you in it. We've spent a lot of time over the pandemic together at home, making our home more ours than we ever did before but sitting here this morning while you're sleeping in the next room, looking at what a lovely place we live in, I realize that you're my home—literally anywhere that you are.

Hi everyone,

So you might have noticed that there was...no You've Escaped yesterday. I'm ok, truly, but also... imagine the upside down smiley face emoji right here.

I found out I was a part of company layoffs yesterday which I have many feelings about but that's also pretty much all I can say right now.

the author in NYC, c. 2010

Anna Marie Tendler, , 2021

Helen Frankenthaler, Flood, 1967

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1970

actual footage of me 'landing' in Canada

How are you doing? Are you having a good week? Here's stuff I think you'll like as much as I do:

cw: bodies, weight, fertility, family stuff, wls, medical, diet culture

Russell Leng, New Nature Systems 3, 2011

cw: death, illness, 9/11, mental illness

cw: pet illness, pet death, grief, death, loss, bereavement

cw: pet death, pet illness, grief

Since Sunday, Nuggy hadn’t been her usual cuddly sunny self. By the time we began calling emergency vets in the Greater Toronto Area on Monday, every single one was at capacity. We finally got her into the emergency clinic this morning and we learned that Nuggy was much sicker than anyone expected. This morning, Ian and I decided that the kindest thing for our girl was to let her go peacefully while holding her even though today (and probably ever) we can’t imagine life without her. We are so so heartbroken but we know how loved she was by us and so many others. Thank you for loving Nuggy too, sweet readers; I know she felt that love in her life and in her passing.

Elizabeth McIntosh, Cloud Minder, 2015

(if you got this email multiple times, technology blows)

Ian is pretty easygoing about my jokes and bits but the one he absolutely loses it at is when he makes a reference to Harry and the Hendersons (1987) and I purposely misunderstand one key fact about the movie.

painting by Jessica Bartram who once perfectly described Nuggy’s eyes as “Halloween-coloured” and it’s stuck

cw: death, COVID, ableism, grief, vomit, fire, medical, panic attack

It was a Sunday one year ago when my dad called me. We aren’t especially close so I thought it was just his occasional check in with me, which to be fair had become a bit more frequent with the pandemic. He was doing that thing where I could sense that he’s stressed but trying to sound calm. He told me my abuela (my mom’s mom, his former mother in law but more of a mom to him than his own) had just been taken to the hospital from the nursing home she lived at. The pandemic had affected people around me for months at that point, the connections getting closer to me all the time—it was finally here, it had gotten to my family.

for teenage girls—past present & future, some of whom i got to know, some of whom i didn’t, some of whom i’ll still get to know—but especially delaney, eloise, araluen, ines lake and me, anaïs marie, once upon a time. especially the .

img by Alexey Kondakov

romy schneider in les choses de la vie, 1970

cw: lgbtq, HIV/AIDS, death, grief, medical, tattoos

People don’t become what they were brought up to be, people become themselves. —Sarah Schulman,

Sometimes you have later than expected vaccine side effects and feel pretty crummy and just can’t seem to write. Here’s a story from a few years ago that’s been on my mind lately as I think about all the parts of the city I miss so much. See you next Wednesday. —AEM

Thursday was my first day back at work after a week off and I was drained by early afternoon. I made it through the day but by the time it was time to go home, I was feeling my joints hurt and my head hurt and I just wished I didn’t have to commute. I got to the subway station only to find the leftovers of an eastbound delay and waited in a sea of people or the next train. I noticed it came in the opposite side that everyone was expecting so I slipped quickly to the opposite side of the platform and waited where one of the doors was to open. I waited for everyone to get off the train and slipped into a seat. I watched the train fill and I hoped no one would sit next to me; I was tired and cranky and I just didn’t want any kind of human contact. With the delays, there’s no such luck and a shaky elderly black man comes and sits next to me. He’s lovely and does nothing irritating at all but anything would have bugged me right then.

It’s not the usual practice these days but this post is public as I think it may resonate in these times. —AEM

joan didion by julian wasser, 1968

Rafael Romero Barros, still life with oranges, 1863

We’ve lived in our apartment six years this year. It’s in downtown Toronto, our rent is extremely cheap by today’s and even six years ago’s standards, and our building is almost 100 years old; it’s actually the first apartment building in Toronto to have an electric buzzer! We love it here and over a year in quarantine has meant we’ve spent a lot of time in these walls and I’ve spent a lot of time doing home DIY for fun. All of those projects that got pushed back by weekend plans were suddenly the most exciting thing going on. Our entryway, bathroom, and living room (one to-be-reupholstered chair to go!) all got overhauled with paint, fabric, rugs, furniture, decluttering but the thing that remained was our kitchen—my albatross.

We sideeyed our apartment’s old kitchen floor and narrow layout when we moved in but we just kept trying to make it work by adding stuff. This just led to it feeling and actually becoming more cramped by the day. The built-in open shelves were overflowing without any sense of organization. We had doubles and triples of things because we would lose track of an item and replace it. We had too much and yet nothing we needed or wanted at all. Finally, we were home looking at it all the time and knew we had to start over.

My loneliness is killing me. — Britney Spears, “Baby One More Time”

Besides glimpses where I saw behind the curtain, I got pretty much everything I wanted when I was a kid. I was lucky but I also didn’t want a ton in the big picture; my favorite thing to ask for when I’d get good grades was more books which my family always said yes to. Our Christmas mornings were big with lots of gifts for everyone but so much of it wasn’t asked for as much as my mom thought this was the way to show love, to fit in and really be American. I was an only child with five American Girl dolls (with matching wardrobes and furniture, of course) because every year had to be outdone by the next one. I was just given stuff I didn’t need and sometimes didn’t even want. It created desires where there weren’t necessarily naturally any—created the idea that you needed stuff, specific stuff, to be valid.

You can’t learn from remembering. You can’t learn from guessing. You can learn only from moving forward at the rate you are moved, as brightness into brightness.

—Sarah Manguso,