venice queen extended.

my sophomore year of university: how i found what i loved (in the worst year of my life) and let it kill me.

an outtake for a story in the new york times about the odd ways oscar campaigning was unfolding when no-in person events were allowed. © tag christof.

i. water-ruled.

my computer died and i had to leave her at the store to be gutted and opened up. it felt like losing a limb.

My journal has never been so heavy. I keep dumping out my feelings yet there’s always more in the well, my hands stained a deep bruised purple and thick, dark pink. I feel so overwhelmed, like I’m going to vibrate straight out of my skin and into a beam of divine light.

Is this a breakdown? I think. 

There’s an odd pressure behind my eyes like I need to cry and my jaw hurts, like all of my exhaustion and anxiety are swelling up behind my lips until they bruise and grow. Free filler. 

The last time I felt like this was in October. I ended up in therapy.

My parents are both earth signs. My sisters are fire signs. I’m the only water sign and sometimes I feel severely misaligned.

I’m just so sensitive. It feels as though someone could press a finger to my skin and sink right through the organ, the tips of their fingers smeared with blood.

I almost wish someone would do that. It would let the pressure out. 

part i of a mixed media expression of how i’m perceived created by a friend; titled ‘allybear’.

I’m gonna be like this forever. I’m going to have my whole heart for my whole life and feel emotionally larger than everyone around me. The summer depression is setting in and for once I’m not afraid of catching a flight.

I’ve been playing Jorja Smith every night, her voice slipping down my spine and babying me in a way I need. My hands curl over clothes as I begin to move out.

ii. birth dream.

Second year began with a week long panic attack while I was still in America, my body too skinny and my mind too worked up for me to even sleep. 

I had accidentally given myself an eating disorder and was feeling it right before I had to get on a plane and move myself in.

In a beautifully written article about her transition, Andy Marra reflects on her mother’s response to her coming out as transgender. 

“Then my mother began to speak. “Mommy knew,” she said calmly through my friend, who looked just as dumbfounded as I was by her response. “I was waiting for you to tell me.” “What? How?” “Birth dream,” my mother replied. In Korea some pregnant women still believe that dreams offer a hint about the gender of their unborn child. “I had dreams for each of your siblings, but I had no dream for you. Your gender was always a mystery to me.”

Before this, I was on the phone with my sister and explaining how second year began terribly and ended even worse and she told me that maybe my body knew that it was going to be an unyielding process and that’s why I got so sick right before landing in London.

And I think she may have been on to something because I felt sick and alone, isolated by my fear and anxiety and unable to explain it in a way that connected with other people. I spent hours on my porch, going through calls with my sister and best friend like revolving doors. 

I felt the furthest away from my mother who somehow managed to make it about her and asked me if I needed to be medicated or see a professional. I blinked at her for a moment before going back outside to where it was quiet on the porch, my throat aching and my thighs tired from where they pressed into the metal of the bench. 

I suddenly understood the vicious cycle of wellness or at least searching for it. I wanted to stop feeling like this but I couldn’t even find the root.

Everyone thought I was insane and I had the distinct urge that they all found me quite lovely but much too intense. I was met with that same disconnect when I tried to explain that anxiety was a part of me, the same way sadness is. It was—and always will be—in me the same way my eyes are large and brown, the same way my cheeks are over pronounced when I smile, and the way my collar bones have always jumped and strained against my skin since I was younger. 

I didn’t have a choice. I just lived with it. I’ll always live with it and that fact rocks through me every day, though some days are harder and heavier.

I thought of an image I’d seen: I apologize for choking up, but I was just being myself. It was exactly like that. 

By the power of sheer will and brown noise cocooning me, I managed to stabilize enough to get on the plane. I sat in the large womb of the machine, brown noise pulsing softly through takeoff.

There were moments where my stomach rolled and I had to go to the bathroom, where I sat and listened to the prerecorded assurances I’d had my parents leave in the Voice Memos app. 

Around eight hours in, I realized I’m stronger than people give me credit for. Braver too.

When I stepped off and passed through customs, I saw the figure of a friend. 

screenshot of comment section.

In my mentally distraught haze, I’d forgotten that I’d slipped and revealed my vulnerability to my friends overseas. Here I was with my white underbelly showing, crying about how stressed and lonely I felt as I came back for our second year of university. I was met with reassurance but not full understanding but I knew there was a limit. No one could fly with me, I had to go through it alone. 

However, Amina* had messaged me privately as she always did to tell me she’d pick me up at the airport. And sure enough, just through the gate I saw her with her brilliant, modelesque hair and stunning Palestinian nose waiting for me with a wide smile and a large bouquet of flowers. 

She hugged me and smelled thickly of her floral perfume, dressed in a long wool trench—always black—and relieved me of my suitcase in one warm, graceful motion.

As the year played out, Amina and I grew closer as a genocide raged in her homeland and as we distanced from the other girls. But here in this moment, as I pulled her hair back as she was sick in our Uber (the driving was abysmal), Amina was my sister and I was once again home. 

She helped me move in, pushing me firmly through the grocery store so that I could get food and the necessities I would need until the storage company delivered my items in the next week. I found a familiarity in us both being daughters of immigrants, whose homelands had been invaded and exploited for years having to live through difficult moments without help. We were both independent in a nonnegotiable manner which I think, in a way, made it easier to lean on each other and ask for help. 

Amina was an integral part of maintaining my relationship with food, often ensuring that I didn’t relapse by stuffing me full when she got the chance. I strived to be there for her in other ways, opening myself up so that she could purge herself emotionally to someone who would listen. 

The first week settling in I felt better but still unsure of where I was and how I truly felt. I FaceTimed my mom and tried to explain but it was like speaking into an echo chamber. I wasn’t given the right response back and so I disengaged, shutting myself off and slowly swelling with that pressure again. I wasn’t sleeping well but I was sleeping more, because everything was okay when I was sleeping. 

The rest of the month moved along, and I have the BeReals to prove it. My face is lit up with what I’ve now categorized as rare happiness. I’m pressed closely against girls I no longer want to speak to, but I was happy. That doesn’t change even though there’s a quiet pain when I look at the same photos now. 

And then my dog died. 

iii. only a vampire will love you forever.

part ii of a mixed media expression of how i’m perceived created by a friend; titled ‘allybear’.

He wasn’t really my dog. He was my sister’s but he felt like mine because I loved him like he was and I’ll love him forever. I loved taking care of him and I was ridiculous about it, putting on squirrel videos for him as I gave him a bath. I helped him up on the bed, his chunky legs scrabbling as he tried to push himself up.

He was too big to be babied but I did it anyway. My dad used to say people project onto their pets and maybe that’s true. I do want to be babied sometimes even though I’m too big to be held now. 

He was so happy with me and he loved me so much. That’s what my sister kept telling me when we talked about it. I wasn’t there when he died and I think that’s why the grief is so pervasive. Even now, as I write this, my eyes are prickling and my throat is tight. 

Time doesn’t heal shit. I just don’t think about it. It’s only been 7 months. 

He died in October and it set off a chain reaction that catapulted me into meeting Luci*. 

Luci was a breath of fresh air from the moment I began our first virtual session. The first thing she asked me was what I wanted to get out of therapy, and I was honest and said I wanted someone who would shut the fuck up and listen. Of course, I didn’t say it like that. But that was the gist.

She smiled and said I was very eloquent and knew myself in a way that was admirable. I told her that ninety five percent of the time that was the problem. I knew enough to compartmentalize and intellectualize which helped me avoid feeling it. Which then in turn resulted in things like the September Incident™️ where I’d lost my mind and suffered a mental breakdown.

Basically, I said in one session, I need to cry more. 

And now that it’s May I can say, I have definitely been crying more. It’s almost irritating. 

Everything makes me cry now. I’m so sensitive I feel like I’m going to burst in place, an overripe fruit swinging low for easy hits. Recently, I got the news that I would need to get a new computer and that just set me off again.

So much of my life was my computer, which upon reflection may not be a good thing. I have a hard time staying present and so this might be a gift. In the moment, it feels like a curse. My life and my writing is in there and even though everything is backed up, it still feels like something has been ripped away from me.

I knew deep down that I was crying about other things.

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This year, unexpectedly, became the year of friend breakups. I started with a large group of girls and I’m down to three. It’s odd writing about this now because I’m simultaneously beyond it, moving on, and still stuck if I think too hard about it. 

I watched Lost in Translation dir. Sofia Coppola just an hour ago before I sat to write this and a piece of dialogue was floating around my head. 

“The more you know who you are, the less things upset you.” 

That’s how the breakup feels. There was no real conflict. They went on a trip and I was unable to go and something changed, became irreparable. We just…fell apart. We had endless conversations because I can never leave things alone. I think it’s a by product of both being the youngest (and therefore ignored, mostly by accident) and having parents who don’t speak about things. 

I have to talk about it until I’ve killed it and even then I bow over the body and still try to speak to the dead.

Some of the girls simply wanted to be accepted within the group and so they went along with the leaving-out and edging-out. Some people really can’t be alone and it’s odd to observe. Their guilt gave birth to the oddest moments. 

Rushed conversation amid the lobby of university, coffees in hand as we waited for the elevator and they pretended I didn’t see them post about getting together the day before. Awkward smiles as one girl cooked lunch for all the others except for me, Amina, and Paloma*. The slip up when another mentioned the group chat they lied about not having. 

The unrelenting eye contact I gave when I caught it and the way they couldn’t even look back for a minute. 

So yes, I suppose when you know who you are it’s easier to shake things off. In the same way, it makes the hard things stick inside of you in a way that stings. 

I know myself. I know who I’m becoming (my mother, for one). I’m difficult, unforgiving, and unrelenting. I’m kind, loyal, and generous. I’m excruciatingly sensitive but it’s okay because that makes my life my life. I’m ridiculously romantic and too open when it comes to love. I struggle to be vulnerable. I often see things as black or white, all or nothing. I can see the gray but I’m still unforgiving. 

It hurts us because we’d never do this to them, Amina told me last week during a lab. And yes, it hurts me because I’d never do this to them. I agree. 

I think it must be me, she said and I felt the urge to hold her hand. She doesn’t like physical touch and I don’t either. 

It’s not, I told her. Because I know it’s the truth. They won’t last, I said, because they’ll just do it all over to each other.

That might be more of a bitter dream than the truth but I hope it doesn’t work out. 

It’s hard to be someone who is relentlessly genuine, as much as I try to be. It’s confusing when others are fake and hurt you but you keep going because you think it’ll work out. It doesn’t but that doesn’t mean I didn’t try. 

I ended up with Amina and Paloma. I won there.

It’s okay to still feel an ache when I think of the time before they went on that trip. It’s okay to want that back but know it’s okay to have left it behind. I read a post where someone put out a reminder that grief can be so much more than when someone dies, that you can feel grief over many things and it’s okay. It’s not disrespectful. 

The hurt will always be there, I think. I tend to heal around the pain. Unforgiving. 

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I’ve been tired in an all encompassing way, and I feel like I’m going through it in a way that I’m not meant for. I wish I could wander the streets while they’re painted pink by a dying sun, searching for a phone booth where I could make a call to tell someone I’m not strong enough for this all the time. 

It was like that one line from Pink Champagne by Lana Del Rey: 

i don’t really wanna fly / i just want this tour to be over / i know that i dreamed about it all my life / and then the dream got closer

I wonder if this is what newborns feel like, pink and raw from their mothers’ womb crying because so much is happening that they don’t understand. 

During this time I’ve been reading my horoscope which has felt more accurate than ever and 555 keeps flashing whenever it can find me. I know the universe is watching over me and I can feel her right behind me, but most of all I’m ready to be home. 

I love you, London. But I hate you too. 

So I go back to what I know. 

iii. palomino.

I packed up another third of my room today. Shoved my other life in several boxes and then took a break. I’m addicted to the feeling of moving out, because I give so much away. I languish in the way I sit on the floor and loop my handwriting over the cardboard, so I can remember what I have. 

I purged half of my closet and passed it on to the Red Cross last week. It was late at night and I was listening to the Dish podcast, the Dua Lipa episode. I laughed when she said she doesn’t have a therapist but she has an astrologer. She’s just like me. 

Well, I have a therapist too.

Today, I purged again. I started with my gua sha that I pulled out of the fridge, the stone smooth and blessedly cold as I depuffed my face. I wasn't wearing my usual satin pajamas. I fell asleep in my old, plaid, baby-blue men’s pants from a lot of Christmases ago and a white spaghetti strap tank. It was cold in the kitchen so my nipples poked through, hard and sharp. 

The night before I found a good computer to buy with the help of my best friend, because I didn’t know what anything meant but she did. My mother had told me on the phone that my sisters and I don’t like to ask for help. I told her she spent half my life drilling in the idea that asking for anything made us a burden, so why was this surprising. She had nothing to say and we changed the topic. 

One of my roommates saw me stick my gua sha back in the fridge and she lit up like I’d found God. You’re a fucking genius, she said and I felt a rush of fondness as I always do toward her. 

I’m currently writing this essay and completing uni work via her iPad. She all but begged for me to borrow it for the rest of the time we live together. I could’ve kissed her. I got her a gift instead. 

Living with Easton* and Caroline* has made my life easier in more ways than one. Whenever they come home I know because they sing out a “Heyyyy” to see if anyone else is home. Last year was spent all in my room though I loved my roommate then too. But this year has me hanging out for morning chats with Easton and gushing over how good she looks blonde. 

Caroline would knock on my door and ask if I needed anything from the shop and I never paid her back, just got what she needed in turn when I was the one heading out. Easton dropped everything to come with me to get my computer diagnosed before I knew it was dead. 

Caroline gave me a hug when my dog died and another one when I was leaving for winter break, because she was heading to her boyfriend’s flat and wasn’t going to see me. I thought of the hug for weeks after because it was a signifier of how much I’d grown to love her. I hate physical contact without permission, but I didn’t mind then. I needed it. 

There are several times I need a hug and six days of sleep. 

Today Caro and I propped our bedroom doors open and packed up different things in silence, not speaking but still soothed by each of us doing the same thing. I gave her a stack of my British Vogue magazines for her new flat because I didn’t want them anymore. 

I threw out stained and ripped bedding because I have a different vision for my new place next year. She did the same and laughed when I called us twins. She’s a Gemini. 

We commiserate over our massive clothing collection and our love for Vinted finds and how we don’t buy new anymore. I’m gonna miss her more than anything. Easton too. 

I took down my photos and posters and made a note to get frames for next year. I’m tired of poking them with holes. 

I tossed my rug too. It was matted and threadbare. The room feels like a hotel now.

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A couple days ago I was perusing through my Watch Later list on YouTube for an ASMR video that always puts me to sleep. I should really just make a playlist. 

My eyes fell on a meditation I had saved, one for reconnecting to the earth led by Karissa Love. I began to daydream of being back home in the South, waking up early to lay my yoga mat on the grass and do this meditation to begin my day. I dreamt of returning to food. Good food with lots of seasoning, flooding my body with taste. 

pinterest.

I want to relearn my body, because she’s been hurting lately. I want to patch up my mind. I want to stop being afraid to eat and walk through the doors after a grocery run with the things I want and need. 

I’m ready to go home. 

I’ve always dreamt of the East Coast, but I think I’ll have a place down South for the summers too. New York in the winter and New Orleans in the spring. New, new, new. Texas too, with rodeo dirt in my mouth. 

Season 2 of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire came out and the timing couldn’t be better. This is the only version that’s valid in my mind. Hey, Jacob, I love you my beautiful baby. 

I fell in love when it first came out. The atmosphere was beautiful and I’m in tune with vampirism. Maybe somewhere, I am one. I’m always hungry even though my stomach is smaller. 

I watched Season 1 and thought God, I’m gonna miss New Orleans when it finally drowns. Maya* and I plan to visit. 

I see myself in this Louis de Pointe du Lac: black, queer (bisexual), Southern, confused about where God and I meet, but recovering. He has an eating disorder but it’s to punish himself. I’m not sure what mine was for but I’m slowly worrying less about getting fat. 

Skinny doesn’t mean happy. 

LDPDL, I love you. My beautiful baby. 

the end.

Next year, I’m gonna get the tattoos I’ve always wanted. Two on the sides of my hands like Lana Del Rey, because I wear bangles that shatter the sound barrier every time I move and I like that part of myself. 

One underneath my breasts and one on the ridge of my hips. My mom is gonna freak but this is me during my life. 

Second year was the worst year of my life. It almost killed me. But I found what I loved and I’m holding on. That almost killed me too. 

I used to have vivid dreams. I mean full technicolor fantasies that I had to write down as soon as I woke up. It was always premonitions too, things that came true either later down the line or had already happened. When I told my mom she shrugged and said all the women in our family had this ability, some were witches and some just saw the signs. 

I stopped having them in my second year. 

I would wake up with the distant memory of having seen something while in REM but I never remembered. It was a cycle and it’s the most I’ve felt like my dad. He doesn’t dream. I wonder what that’s like: closing your eyes and it’s just black. 

Maybe it was like Andy Marra’s mother’s birth dream. Maybe I was given nothing because there was no way of knowing what was coming. I just had to feel it and go through it alone.

I’m booking my flight back to the States soon and I hope when I land I’ll go straight to sleep. I hope I’ll dream so vividly that I wake with my heart in my mouth, staining my lips red, and with my hands out as if to reach out and touch it.

Out of the blue and into the black. Vice versa.

part iii of a mixed media expression of how i’m perceived created by a friend; titled ‘allybear’.

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*disclaimer: For the sake of privacy, I’ve changed all names used in this essay.