If you want to transform your life, alter your process
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been at war with goals. I grew up holding fast to the ones my parents provided for me (working a 9–5, getting married, having kids) to the point that I didn’t even realize there were other ways to do things. Each one of the goals I followed came with a subset of exhausting smaller goals and modest, yet painful, sacrifices. By my college graduation, I was exhausted. I was meeting the goals I’d adopted from my parents, but I wasn’t happy.
To make things harder, by senior year, I’d realized that I was a lesbian. In 2009, this meant that not only could I not get married, but I also had to keep my sexuality hidden or risk losing my apartment and my job. I struggled under the weight of my secret and wondered how I could possibly achieve a goal when the law rendered it nearly impossible. Eventually, I realized that I couldn’t. …
Even when we express our emotions, we’re forced to consider how the rest of society will see us
When I started therapy, there were a million things I thought would be difficult to acknowledge and discuss. I was prepared to wallow in grief, muster through tough confrontations, and experience awful flashbacks. Those things came, and while they weren’t fun, they weren’t as bad as I’d prepared for.
The parts that have actually been hard are the conversations I didn’t know to expect. You know that saying, “The more I know, I more I realize I don’t know?” Therapy is a lot like that. As my therapist and I work through the things I knew I needed help with, I’m learning about traumas and beliefs I didn’t even realize needed attention. …
Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with losing weight
The day before my 24th birthday, I broke up with my girlfriend. It was my first time being in love and that breakup ripped apart my whole being. I cried constantly, completely heartbroken and alone in a new city. I cried myself to sleep, I cried in the bathrooms at work, I cried on the phone to my friends back home. I soon became sick of my own crying but I didn’t know how to stop.
Then I saw a flyer for a pole dancing studio. It was the first thing to distract me from my heartbreak — event for a moment — so I called and scheduled a free intro class. When the class ended I was sweaty, my muscles ached, and I smelled disgusting… but I also hadn’t thought about my ex in two hours. …
Your influence on the future might be bigger than you think
I didn’t go on my first date until I was 24. I wanted to — I dreamt about cute dates and love letters, suffered through crushes, and lamented my loneliness — but there was this small voice in my head that would pop up daily and tell me, “No one will want to date you.” In the mirror, I’d look at my body and think, “No one wants that.” In class, I’d trip over a concept and thing, “You’re so stupid. No one wants to be with you.” Even while writing, that voice would break through, “You’re not that creative. You’re not even really interesting. Why would anyone want to be with you?” …
It’s not all bubble baths and face masks
What do you think when you hear the term “self-care?” Do you imagine spa days? Vacations spent lounging in posh hotels? Do you think of ordering food and lying on the couch while you stream the latest offering on Netflix? Curling up with a good book and a mug of steaming tea?
The term is everywhere these days, but I learned about it from a self-help “guru” on Instagram. This woman talked about the importance of “treating yourself” and preached the benefits of a semi-regular glass of champagne as a form of self-care. …
This Is Us
There comes a time when we can’t look the other way
I was falling in love the morning my grandma died. It was December 2017, and I was snuggled in bed with a woman I’d met just a few months before. We giggled and kissed under the comforter as we greeted the chilly Southern California morning together. When we finally broke apart to check our phones, I saw a Facebook message from a cousin simply announcing, “Grandma is gone.”
A week later, I sat in my aunt’s living room in Louisiana, surrounded by parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, and other kin. Fully hoping to escape the moment, I checked Facebook and saw post after post extolling the virtues of Black women. …
This odd idea from my therapist made all the difference
Six months into quarantine, I’m struggling with focus. Waking up, doing my hair, putting on clothes, and sitting down to work for eight hours seems kind of pointless as the world crumbles just outside the front door.
I’ve tried a million different tactics to will myself to regain the drive I had before COVID-19: waking up earlier, practicing yoga, meditating, going on long walks, saying affirmations… you name it, I’ve tried it. I found a few things that help a little but, after a few days, they start to feel as pointless as anything else.
My fantasy for every day is to wake up whenever I do and then to read books, binge Netflix shows, or play games on my phone as I try to zone out. In a perfect world, I could ignore the growing political unrest, America’s continued oppression of Black bodies, the worldwide pandemic, the wildfires I can smell from my apartment, and everyday highs and lows of living with clinical depression by tapping out. …
One bit of advice transformed my luck with online dating
As a millennial, I grew up alongside the internet. From Oregon Trail and instant messenger to chat rooms and Wikipedia, I often felt as if the internet created exactly what I needed as I needed it.
So the rise of dating apps in my 20s felt like a natural progression: we’d already used the internet to find new friends and stalk old ones, why should sexual and romantic relationships be any different?
But the world of dating apps revealed a new challenge. The landscape changed quicker than I could keep up: Plenty of Fish became skeezy overnight, Tinder went from the ultimate hook-up app to the home base for bored couples seeking unicorns (single individuals willing to engage sexually with both halves of a couple) in a matter of months, and people were suddenly marrying their top tier OkCupid matches. …
The hassle of navigating an ugly stereotype
My grandma Kathryn lived in the same house from the time she married my grandpa at 19 to the day she died at 80. Every summer, my parents packed me and my sisters into the family van and drove us to that little house in the center of Louisiana for a few weeks. Not only did we see my grandma, but a galaxy of aunts, uncles, cousins, and kin who also looked to her as our esteemed matriarch.
Summer in the Deep South is not simply hot, it’s also oppressively humid. Stepping outside to walk to the corner store felt like stepping into a sauna. By the time my sisters and I walked the block and half up the road and back, we’d be soaked in sweat. My grandma’s house, built so long ago, held the kitchen in the middle of the home, so once the stove was on, the whole house shot up ten degrees. …
My therapist says that sadness is the emotion that tells us the most about who we are as individuals. “Sadness,” she explains, “lets us know what we’ve lost. That’s how we know what matters to us.”
When I was 22, I lost my best friend. We’d graduated college together less than a year before. After graduation, we both went home to our parents and somehow boomeranged back to our college town. …
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