the slow and unyielding march of time | episode 9
It has been too long since I last wrote you all, but life has been a true whirlwind. I got back from Argentina. Work has been brutal lately, as we've pushed to get as many of our customers through the green-card application process and raced to get our app updated in time for the new, punishing, and racist public charge rule. In the middle of that, I picked up my life and moved to NYC.
I took a red-eye out on Saturday night, crashed for a couple hours and then got up and went apartment hunting. I walked 10 miles that first day, up and down the neighborhoods that I wanted to live in. It was tiring but I felt accomplished, especially when I found a place that I really liked. Sahar had a party where I saw some of my favorite people, and that made me feel so glad to be back.
But the next week was brutal. I was overtired, working a lot, antisocial, lonely, and staying in Manhattan. Manhattan is a good place to visit, but not a good place for me to live full-time (for a variety of reasons) and it was putting me pretty far on edge. It was hard for me to sleep, which made it hard for me to exercise, which made it hard for me to put any kind of structure. I didn't really have the energy to see friends, which made me feel alone. It's the kind of spiral from which it can be tough to shake free.
Friday, I texted one of my friends who lives in Connecticut, just to say hi. It turned out he was in the city, and had a couple hours free. We met up at the Lego store and caught up for an hour. It was spontaneous and easy and felt tremendously good. It gave me the energy I needed to get out of my bad place, and start actually living my life, even though I'm still in this temporary living situation. I've been meeting up with folks; going on long walks, exercising, buying things for my new place, writing. I move into my new apartment on Sunday, and I'm so excited.
Debris:
I went to an actual mattress store! Sahar came along and tested them out with me; we lay on the one that I ended up buying, and noticed that the headboard the store had paired it with had a nightclub-vibe to it; it was curved and had a cool neon light. (I did not buy the headboard.)
Someone stole my credit-card number and charged $200 to lanebryant.com. I spent a good fifteen minutes staring at the transaction on my statement trying to remember if I had gone into a fugue state and actually did spend that money. Ultimately, I called my credit-card company and they told me someone had also attempted to make purchases at luckyjeans.com and menswarehouse.com. They, uh, cancelled the card.
Send me a message (You can just reply to this email!) if you want to exchange addresses. I would love to start sending more letters.
What I've Been Reading:
Look, it's been a busy month, and I got a library card, but it's not letting me put books on hold, so I have to go get that straightened out. I haven't read very much!
Broken Harbor by Tana French: Whew. Murder mysteries can be really intense; this one ended up being a lot about mental health and relationship facades and, like many of Tana French's books, about the inability of people to communicate within relationships. These books are really pulpy, but the way that she writes relationships feel very true to me; it's harder to reach out to the person from whom you've been estranged; far easier to watch them from afar. It's hard to gently point out an outsized reaction to something; easier to let it go and hope things improve on their own. French's novels are sort of the slipperiest slope of those scenarios.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I love you all. So. So! much. Be well.
-davida