This essay is part six of my year-long project where, each month, I’ll look through old journal entries by using a random date generator to decide which day of my past to explore. This month’s was April 29th.
My old roommate, Serria, once pointed out a habit my entire family shares when it comes to storytelling. All of us will often start off a story by saying a sentence or two, but then we stop, interrupting ourselves mid-thought by asking the person we’re talking to, “Have I told you this before?” While I do find it kind that we preemptively try to save our conversational partner from repeated stories, one to two sentences is usually not enough context. (The last time I did this, pausing myself to ask if she already knew what I was about to say, Serria replied, “How would I know? You haven’t told me anything yet!”).
I’ve been writing a lot more this year and as I share my stories verbally with my monthly sex writing class, I’ve been considering context a lot more than I ever have. I’m recounting very vulnerable moments of my life for a room full of strangers. Am I including enough backstory for them to fully understand the piece? Here’s another example — were you, the reader of this blog post, even aware I was taking a monthly sex writing class? Am I making assumptions my audience already knows so many details about my life, the same way I make assumptions about how people will already know what story I am about to tell?
As I’ve been working my way through this year-long journal project (this one is month six!!!!!!), I’ve found myself trying to read these old entries as if they were written by a stranger. There is so much within them that is shorthand to me, but mysterious to the outside world and I’d wondered if people not intimately familiar with my life were even able to follow along. So, for this piece, I tried to bridge that gap. This is different than anything I’ve written previously — anything written in brackets is my editorialization of the past — and I hope it provides a little more context.
April 29, 2012—2023
2012: [My roommates and I] all woke up an hour before Senior Tea still drunk. Senior Tea [the last event sorority seniors participate in before graduation] was sad and I was emotional when we sang [the song that I am not quite sure if I am allowed to disclose here because after 12 years, I cannot remember what is ritual and what is fair game to share and I am not willing to take the risk of the sorority police coming after me. I am 32 years old and still terrified of being called to Standards (if you know, you KNOW)]. We spent the rest of the day/night at Bracken [the Ball State Library] having a study/singing/pizza party with [a group of boys we hung out with almost daily, right up until two years later, when I graduated. A few nights before graduation, my roommate and I were pretty drunk when we got home from the bars. We’d been out with those guys and, out of nowhere, she looked at me and said, “Isn’t it crazy that we see them every single day and we will probably never see them again in our lives after we graduate?” Immediately after, she fell asleep. At the time, I was stunned, but… she was right].
2013: I went to Puerta’s [the Mexican restaurant in town where it was highly debated if the name of the place ended in an A or an O and you had to decide early on in your visit if you were going to eat a monster meal or drink a monster margarita because doing both ran the risk of you becoming one of many college students who’d thrown up in their bathroom] with the DN [the student newspaper] designers and came home to a study party. [One of the boys from the blurb above] got pretty drunk and was definitely tryna [the verb “tryna” — to attempt to get with someone — was a BIG word in my vocabulary in the year 2013], but I wasn’t. Also, I discovered that [the guy I’d met and subsequently kissed on a van ride from Lickety Split, an absolutely unhinged event that, much like the Kappa Delta song choices, I am not quite sure I am allowed to legally talk about] sits in front of me [in Geography class. The only reason I even kissed this man on the ride home, bodies shoved on top of bodies, at least thirty people crammed into the car (like I said, an unhinged event) was because it was so nice to finally meet someone who I didn’t already know. The realization that he had actually sat directly in front of me for a full semester and I hadn’t noticed made me fear my lack of perceptiveness. Shortly after this day, I had one of the more questionable sexual experiences of my lifetime regarding consent with this man and shortly after that, he died. Over a decade later, I’m still not quite sure I’ve processed all of this and am certain I will end up writing about it in my sex class in attempts to understand].
2014: We had a Senior Swag night [I am deeply upset I have no idea what this means] at Scotty’s [the restaurant in town I actually remember no discernible features about except for that they served a burger smeared with peanut butter and I fundamentally believed this was wrong] for Pitcher’s [I am deeply upset I no longer remember the shorthand of what “Pitchers” was] and [a friend] tried setting me up with our waiter [a man I wholeheartedly thought was The One Who Got Away because the set up worked (!!!), but I moved to Massachusetts a week after our date. Like a real psycho, I hit this man up a full four years later in 2018, when I had just gone through a break up and was back in Indiana for two days for a wedding. We went on another date and then never spoke again]. We went to the Locker Room [a bar that is now out of business, presumably because their whole thing was a weekly promotion called “Penny Pitchers,” in which you would purchase a pitcher of beer — with unlimited refills — for a penny. I did not major in finance at Ball State, but even I could see this was an unsustainable business model], but [a sorority sister] caused a scene [I am deeply upset I do not remember what happened] and [my roommate] and I were in bed by 11:30 [this was the night she said we would never see our friends again after we graduated]. It was great.
2015: Today started out much better than yesterday [my journal entry from the previous day reads: “I accidentally scratched my cornea, stubbed my toe, burnt my breakfast and had three bloody noses all before 7 AM, so the day was pretty bad…”; pretty much any start to any day would be a step up] but I still just feel very off because I haven’t been sticking to the eating plan [the 2015 version of me fell victim to an Instagram Fitness community called Fit Girls Guide which actually had great, easy meal plans, but their design was so horrific, I had to stop] or drinking enough water, plus my body feels like it’s been doing weird/abnormal things [see: the day prior].
2016: I was in so much physical pain today because of my leg [unfamiliar to the concept of moderation in any aspect of my life, I stress-fractured my leg competing in a corporate fitness challenge. The Fit Bit had the TIME art department in a chokehold in 2016 and, in an attempt to beat my co-worker who took a trampoline class every morning, I walked two full hours to and from work every day for a week and then woke up one day and couldn’t walk at all without experiencing a searing pain. However, I did win]. I honestly could not even walk and almost burst into tears multiple times – so I decided to just stay home and freelance instead of going out.
2017: I woke up early to go to HIIT/yoga [the fact I was signed up for two back-to-back classes in a 105 degree room proves I had not learned anything about overexertion from the year prior], but then [my cousin and her now husband] got engaged! So, I went to their roof on the UES to celebrate, then came down to Chelsea to go to [my friend’s new apartment] for drinks and dinner. [I remember snippets from this day — I was excited for my cousin and delighted to go see my friend’s new spot — but I overwhelmingly remember feeling like I was falling behind. At the time, my roommate and I were living in what I firmly believe to be the shittiest apartment in all of Manhattan and as so many people around me this year started getting engaged (you will truly understand when you get to the 2019 entry), I started to feel stifled by the choices (or lack thereof) in my life. I didn’t think I needed a fiancé, but I knew I really needed something in my life to change].
2018: [My roommate] and I cleaned the place [after our housewarming — we’d moved! It was the change I needed! At a time when we emotionally/physically/mentally could no longer survive living at Chang’s Palace, the name we’d given our spot after the ceiling fell in multiple times and our landlord, Chang, chose to just… paint around the hole instead of filling it in, we were approved for a beautiful sublet on a corner unit with floor-to-ceiling windows four blocks away — the guests who’d attended both our housewarming at Chang’s and also this one were speechless at our glow up] and then did not leave all day, except for when we went to Chelsea Square [the 24 hour diner on our street] for non-breakfast food [chicken fingers with herbs inside that would either heal you or harm you pending on your hangover status] at 10 am, then slept literally all day [on this day, the verdict was harm].
2019: I landed at 7:40 am [despite my dislike of sleeping on planes, taking red eyes to save money was very normal for me. In 2019, I had 14 weddings (five in which I was a bridesmaid), six bachelorette parties and, subsequently, mounting credit card debt. I have only recently financially recovered] and I came immediately home. I didn’t really have a lot to do, so I spent the day downstairs at Citizens [the restaurant directly below my apartment — this was another huge perk of our “new” place and my regularity at the spot partially due to my crushes on the men who worked there was not not another factor in my credit card situation] drinking beer and hanging out while [one of the boys I’d befriended] worked.
2020: I feel so useless at work after working on such a big project [in 2020, right before the country shut down, I’d been designing that year’s TIME100. When everything changed, it felt inappropriate to publish a list of the 100 most influential people, so we pivoted, starting a project called “Finding Hope” where we interviewed past TIME100 honorees about how they were getting through the difficult days ahead. I was completely alone during this period of the pandemic — every day, I was incredibly thankful I lived in an apartment with so much sunlight, rather than Chang’s — and designing this project was really all I had, so it was difficult for me after it published to go back to my “normal” life]. I hate that I always get this way [historically, I get massive burn out after expending all my energy on a huge design project, though experiencing it during a lockdown alone was significantly worse than anything in the past], but I had a nice talk with [my brother and his girlfriend, isolated across the country in Seattle] at night.
2021: [My roommate] left while I was in the middle of a call with [my mentee. I arrived back in NYC in early April — a trip to Massachusetts in July 2020 that was only supposed to last a few weeks ended up extending nine months after a freak boat incident, the addition of Charlie (our new labradoodle puppy) and the realization that I was lucky I wanted (and was able to) spend a long amount of time with my parents as an adult. I moved back to Manhattan a different person than when I left… I’d gotten sober during my time at home and, also, the pandemic had made me take note of what was important to me in my life. I wanted to feel more ingrained within the community, so I joined a program where I was given a high school mentee. We worked together weekly-ish for two years before she left for school and getting a coffee with her in January 2024 to hear how her first semester of college went gave me the wholesome feeling I’d been searching for when we started our program three years prior] but then I had the place to myself after I had a call with [a coworker] to discuss what we would like to change on [our company’s website].
2022: I had a really good and honest talk with [my boss] today about how I am unhappy with my position at the company [I often described myself as my job’s most loyal soldier — I loved working there so much that I thought I’d be 80 and they’d be dragging my body out of the building — but I was also the only soldier in our department who lived alone and hadn’t gotten a raise since pre-pandemic times] and I’m glad I advocated for myself. I went to [a friend’s] 305 birthday [a private dance class] after and it was so much fun, I loved it. [For someone who had attended 14 weddings three years prior, I was feeling incredibly self-conscious about my friendships — almost like a year of isolation had some lingering effects! — so being included in a community like 305, especially after-hours, made me feel cared for and supported].
2023: Today was extremely chaotic – it was pouring rain and [my brother, his girlfriend and I] left the city to have dinner with [like, ten of our cousins] at a very overwhelming Brazilian steakhouse. It was such a nice day, but I was extremely overstimulated. [I’d expected chaos at an all-you-can-eat-meat restaurant, but my imagination had underdelivered. In the middle of the meal, I took a break to reorient myself, needing a few moments alone of calm and quiet — I found I had to do that more often, post-pandemic — and as I made my way back to our table, I was delighted to hear my cousin, the one who’d gotten engaged in 2017, start to tell a story. She uttered a few sentences, then stopped. “Wait,” she said, “Have I told this one before?” I couldn’t tell, but even without any context, the familiarity of those words comforted me all the same].