Why yes, I do know everything.

To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. —

The best gift you are ever going to give someone— the permission to feel safe in their own skin. To feel worthy. To feel like they are enough.

I have never been able to understand people with consistent lives – people who, for example, grow up in a liberal Catholic household and stay that way; or who in junior high school are already laying down a record on which to run for president one day. Imagine having no discarded personalities, no vestigial selves, no visible ruptures with yourself, no gulf of self-forgetfulness, nothing that requires explanation, no alien version of yourself that requires humor and accommodation. What kind of life is that?

Dear employers,I will have to take the day off today because: ☐ It’s December and the streets are papier-mached with wet bronze leaves and it’s so dark outside that the cars have their headlights on at 3pm ☐ I have recently been through a breakup, or I have been through a breakup at any time in my life really, and I woke up today with the absolute conviction that I will never be loved again ☐ A dog looked at me ☐ I got a text from someone for whom I feel a mix of concern and frustration and recognition and longing that is both more and less than romance ☐ Someone made a joke about dead pets meeting you in heaven ☐ Daylight savings time ☐ I passed a knot of flowers that were so bright they glowed through the dim grey water of the day and when was anything in my life last that luminous? ☐ Girls are too pretty ☐ For the first time I genuinely comprehend that there is not enough time to have all the lives I wanted ☐ I accidentally listened to Leonard Cohen I am submitting the following documentation: ☐ A scrap of an old lover’s favorite flannel shirt ☐ Trembling cupped hands full of rainwater ☐ Light angling over the face of a brownstone at 4 on a winter afternoon ☐ A blunt-edged ticket stub from a movie of which I remember nothing except how soft her hands were ☐ A crumbling copy of my favorite novel from childhood ☐ The universe ☐ The peachy glow of a sodium lamp far ahead down an icy pitch-dark path I think I just need to: ☐ Stare at a cup of tea held in nerveless fingers and slowly leaching heat ☐ Watch the sun glow ruby through the dogwood leaves until I regain some capacity to be comforted by beauty ☐ Read old emails from someone who loved me because he knew nothing ☐ Move to Omaha without telling anyone and find work as a sympathetic bartender named Roxy ☐ Learn to live alongside the fundamental meaningless of existence, not just mine but everyone’s ☐ Get a drastic haircut ☐ Listen to Tegan and Sara’s “Heartthrob” on repeat for 24 hours ☐ Scream into a pillow until my throat feels like it’s going to split I will be back to work once: ☐ I can get out of this empty bathtub ☐ It is spring ☐ Someone gorgeous has brought me warm milk ☐ The consequences of being terribly drunk start to seem more grim than the consequences of not being terribly drunk ☐ I have watched every episode of Key & Peele Sincerely, ——

Anxiety plays tricks. It tells you that everything you feel is serious. Depression paints everything in black and white. Together, they skew perceptions.

I was doodling smol birbs and ended up with a birb that looks like it’s having an existential crisis