Below the Boulevard

Cloying….

Relatability has become my misery. I no longer desire group association. I’d just like to differ from the average post-grad who can’t get the job they want and moves back home. I don’t want to share common symptoms of dejection or experience the cliché of “being twenty-two.” I’ve grown to resent myself. Sometimes I think it’s the only emotion I am capable of: resentment. I am not as smart as I was before graduation, when I was in a constant state of proving I had learned something. I no longer possess the joie de vivre of a liberal arts student. I’ve lost my muscle for writing. I started this draft in August, walked away, and started a new story, and did that fun dance about three more times. I’ve been uninspired and, most upsettingly, down, the perfect conditions for avoidance. I feel like a fraud, and the less I am drawn to spending time with my words, the more the crowd in turtlenecks and wire-framed glasses standing in the corner of my room tsks at me.

It’s been a dramatic year. Various forms of disbandment. New jobbing. Moving. Etc., etc. I’ve made many attempts to escape. I have applied to 157 jobs, interviewed for four, and have been rejected by all. I’ve become anti-self-fulfilling prophecy. Manifestation. The idea that if I speak it into existence, it will happen. No, it won’t—and actually, if I speak about it, it will cease to exist altogether. Every time I open my mouth about something I am excited about, it falls through—gone—poof. Last year I spoke about nothing, kept everything to myself, and that was among my finest years. I possessed all my markers for happiness: I was an intern for a movie distribution company, I was in love, I had money. Things were working out for me. Now, if I talk about a job I applied for, I won’t get an offer. If I talk about going to the doctor, they cancel on me. It is not because I’m unqualified or by coincidence. I do believe in the jinx. I believe once I get excited—bam—gone, bye! Even thinking about something too much seals my fate. I’ve started to thought-police myself. I am not allowed to fantasize about potential partners. I have manually entered a lover’s reunion dream to put a stop to it. Sometimes I can use this to my advantage, by taking ownership of my neuroses. If I am afraid someone will push me onto the train tracks, I think about it incessantly until I am reassured that it won’t happen because I gave it too much thought. Maybe this points to a greater psychological warfare happening inside of me. Maybe the solution is to never be excited about anything ever again. Maybe I should be on tranquilizers and move through life numb so as to never feel disappointment again. Maybe that’s when things will turn around.

Summer was exceptional, though, despite having droned on to anyone who would sit in front of me. I would do it again if granted the wish. Sometimes, on the nights I allow myself, I fall asleep with the endless loop of the warmest months playing in my head. The sweat, the tingles, the soreness. I was a floozy investing in cheap thrills, and it was a joy. I traveled a lot. Puerto Rico. California. Nashville. I’d never been west of Pennsylvania until this year. Family vacations consisted of driving straight up or down or leaving the country altogether. The thrill of a plane ride became more fervent with each trip this year. I can’t be reached; I can’t be tracked. No one around me knows me. I can sob and listen to folk music with my hoodie wrapped around my face, and no one will care. It is a respite from life to be in the air. The anonymity is a substitution for privacy. I hope to do much more traveling. What I dream of is to frolic in the fields of Nebraska. No buildings, no traffic, just fields and plains for miles. I imagine if I stood still enough I’d eventually become a blade of wheat. No one would ask me what I’m doing next. I have this notion that there is something better for me anywhere but where I am. A better version of myself in each country, state, or province.

Wherever you go, there you are.

Everyone around me has their jobs, homes that feel inhabited, or friends rooted. Staten Island will not heal me. I can’t for the life of me find a reason to stay in Brooklyn and generally New York State. I bring this up to anyone who will listen to me, torturing ears at house parties. I’ll be monologuing about finding myself somewhere or my failed attempts at love so that this acquaintance will suggest new ways of freeing myself that I’ve never thought of. I can tell it irritates my friends who have already heard the coming-of-age tale. “Here she goes again,” and they drift toward the livelier section of the room away from me and my year-old cigarettes and self-capitulation. But will moving away alleviate this dull ache inside my bones, or will I just be myself somewhere else? I don’t remember always being this way. Aren’t my 20s supposed to be fun? Shouldn’t I be getting shitfaced, staying out till 6 a.m., having sex with strangers, traveling, maxing out my credit card, being outgoing?

The modern idea of a twenty-year-old is not one I identify with. I consider myself knightly. I ventured to Medieval Times for my sister and her husband’s birthday in May and I felt the arena aligning me. Other than a lip sync battle, I had never felt so at home. I don’t know where my place is. It isn’t my apartment. It’s certainly not Staten Island. But I know that anywhere that can bring together drunk adults and children is the place to be. I was granted childlike permission to be excessive. I didn’t have to be palatable or calm or self-aware. I screamed for the death of the enemy until my throat was sore. My honor being jousted for by men unethically playing dress up on horseback. Pulling apart a chicken’s baked thigh with my hands and fishing the bone away. Drinking soup from a bowl and iced tea from a gullet. Salted potato wedges and corn on the cob split open with my gritty fucking teeth. Slamming my fists to the metal plate to convey my utmost fury at my knight losing. It felt like I was in Game of Thrones. Ravenous. Immortal. All that rage had somewhere to go: out in the open. The only place I can put it now is under rugs. I vacuum over it. I fold it into drawers. I answer emails politely while it presses against my ribs.

After reaching Breaking Point #2, I started going to therapy again in hopes it would turn me around. Instead, it’s week after week of the same conversation. It feels so trivial. What I really wanted was confirmation that I am this horrible person who is as crazy as I feel. I wanted to be analyzed and picked apart. A Tony/Melfi-esque dynamic. But it just told me what I already know: I can’t sleep, and I have anxiety. I started taking pills for these prescribed problems, but I refused a high dosage because feeling nothing rather than feeling everything didn’t seem like a fair trade. Having to prove how sad I was so the psychiatrist would take me seriously wasn’t appealing either. Then the fact that they were low-dosage just made me feel pathetic, like a little moron who couldn’t handle the big kid drugs. The half-empty bottle sits next to my hair cream and albuterol inhaler now.

I thought I was doing it all “right” by bankrolling the wellness and self-care industrial complex. I tried going to yoga, and for a moment it worked. The journey of starting slow and building to poses that contorted my body in such a way that I shook, ending with my shoulders pushed into the floor and a spritz of lavender over my face. I felt like I was inside my body rather than floating around it. It was doing all the things it was supposed to do: pulse, writhe, sweat, burn. It was effective until the hour was up and I had to leave. The anxiety started infecting everything. I began to cry during class, unable to reach shivasana. All the other bodies lay still but mine refused rest. I’d go into a child’s pose mid-workout— giving up. Bowing all the way down with arms stretched in front of me, my chin craned inside my chest, my knees to my forehead, breathing like I was hiding from something. I had to change in a way that didn’t involve cutting my bangs a little higher.

My burdens have manifested psychosomatically. I have a recurring rash on my mouth— hives, itchiness, and breakouts that worsen anytime I try to eat. It’s one of the religions punishing me as a sign to shut the fuck up. I tried to dispel what did not serve me without repeating old mistakes. I moved out of my apartment I had been reluctant to leave for two years. I moved in with my family whom I love. They tolerate my volume, my flailing hands, my intonation and understand me. But the relief has dissipated. What do you do when you are just never satisfied with yourself, when nothing is ever enough? I knew moving home wouldn’t fix me, but I hoped it would be a decent bandage. Yet, I’m still stuck with this same ol’ head.

Surprise! Wherever I go, there I am.

I never wanted to leave Brooklyn. But living in Brooklyn for the sake of it being Brooklyn was losing its appeal. It was draining me financially and mentally until I started to hate the place I believed defined me. I still technically live in “the city,” but we all know that’s not fucking true. I am close enough to pretend, far enough to feel like an expat. I tell myself I will return. I belong with my family, but not forever. Some publishing company will fall in love with me and my résumé and give me a low-paying position that I”ll accept without hesitation, and I’ll move back to Brooklyn with a stranger from Reddit. I need this fantasy. It gives purpose to the waiting.

This isn’t a story of healing. Downward doggy and cardboard boxes could cause nary a change, as anticipated. It only revealed what doesn’t work. I write this because I don’t know what comes next, and this is what I have. Is that alright? Do you mind if I rant?