Princess Mango's Single Cam Special

It’s an unfortunate thing, to feel you’ve made so many strides, and to still cry when you think about your body.

I will eat my chocolate after lunch, but I’ll get upset about having had lunch.

I will eat my unmeasured breakfast-- something new from this summer-- but I will immediately promise to not eat a proper lunch since I did. 

I am immobile and currently incredibly dependent on others for movement, and all I want to do is take a walk to clear my head. I want to cook my own dinners but I can’t stand for long periods of time.

I hate wondering what extra ingredients Erna put in to make the food taste “better” but feel so much worse in my head and therefore gut. 

My hip dysplasia distorts the way I see my body. I literally move through that, find out how find sanity. My kneecap dislocates, I can’t move period. I can’t move around, I can’t find confidence in immobility. All I want to do is not eat. And when I overcome that intrusive thought (yay, I guess), another one creeps in shaming my brave act of eating. 

I want to heal and I want food freedom and I just want freedom in general. I want the freedom to trust my body in so many ways, because for so long now she’s not had my back. I’ve never trusted going down a flight of stairs, I’ve never believed one day my dancing would improve. I am so stuck in this body and I really.

Betsy owns a Big Girl House:

1. She keeps extra alcohol in her cabinets/fridge

2. She keeps three extra cake/brownie mixes on hand in her pantry 

3. And extra vegetable oil, sticks of butter, and eggs 

4. Betsy has many different assortments and combinations of tupperware. cooking pans, dishes, and skillets

5. She also has wooden spoons and plastic spoons. While I was using one of her extra brownie mixes, she informed me that she used all the plastic spoons for the chicken parm, and I would have to stir my brownies with a wooden spoon. 

***

I think the first time I realized I wanted to live in a Big Girl Home (not quite ready for a House) was when Lilli and I kept a bottle of wine in the fridge ‘just because’. No more last minute scrambling to find White Claws, beers, wine, and the like. Why not just have an assortment to offer? Like wooden spoons vs plastic spoons. Use all of one, still have a whole set of the other. Or, take your pick.

I think the second time I realized I wanted to live Big Girl Style was when I actually wanted to go into West Elm or Williams Sonoma, and had pretty strong opinions about what my home would look like. It was the first time I was #decisive about #anything. 

And now I am 23 sitting in my parents’ Florida home. “It’s Season”, and that’s a capital S. All the old folks are flocking “down South”: restaurants are filling with pastel sweaters, leather belts, and white hair. 

And I am 23 sitting in my parents’ Florida home. I’m in a King bed, but I am 23 sitting here, feeling confused as to why no one else here seems to be 23. 

So while I’m sitting in a Big Girl House, I am feeling very small. Young and little. 

It’s funny because the city is so much vaster than Jupiter, Florida. And I feel big there. When I’m walking through a huge park at 8:15am, or taking a subway home at 8:15pm, I feel big and grown. 

While re-watching Ted Lasso with my parents, I thought about Brett Goldstein and his comedy show, “Brett Goldstein Grew Up in A Strip Club” about his time co-running a strip club with his fucking father. My life is just as interesting. Today? It is not. I was meant to fly back to NJ today, and lug all of my pretty-city belongings back to NYC on Tuesday. I live on the mother-fucking Upper West Side in PENTHOUSE A! PHA LADIES! Why am I so afraid of going back? 

So, why not me? Why not write again, and why not one day star in my own single-cam smash hit? I spend my nights watching Succession and Grey’s Anatomy, is that not enough? I submit auditions to the void, I work at my dad’s finance company. I do my daily workouts, and I eat the same foods every day. I’m so fucking interesting! I speak freaking Italian (conversationally)!!! I want to be friends with Tik Tok star Eli Rallo! 

I’ve got no advice, I’ve got nothing sound and fabulous to offer. But I do think my life is funny and I can tell it in a funny manner. My boyfriend lives far away, and sometimes it’s all relative because Brooklyn from the UWS feels just as far from Burlington to UWS: both weekend trips. 

I am definitely insane. My therapist listed indecision as a symptom of my anxiety, but the one thing I am sure of is that I am insane. I’m fucking funny though/too.