The telltale sign that I am mentally unwell is when I begin rewatching “GIRLS.”
The only person who knows this is my ex-roommate, Serria. We lived together for five-and-a-half years during our mid-to-late twenties, so it’s safe to say she is the person who has most often seen me at my highest highs and my lowest lows. I don’t watch a lot of television or movies, so when I did (and did it repetitively), it’d allow her to pick up on viewing habits that reflected my mental state. If “It’s Always Sunny” was on, I was sleepy. If I was talking about “Blindspot,” the awful FBI show I once watched for 14 consecutive hours on the floor of ZG’s apartment after drinking three bottles of wine while he was passed out next to me, I was on top of the world. If I was watching “Someone Great,” I was, romantically, down bad. (The scene of LaKeith Stanfield and Gina Rodriguiez fucking to Mitski’s “Your Best American Girl” permanently altered my brain chemistry in a Not Good way). If I was watching “Fleabag,” I was, romantically, doing well. (I’m unable to watch this show if I am feeling heartbroken for any reason due to my illogical belief that the Hot Priest looks like the man I hooked up with in 2019. And in 2022. And in 2023). If any of my favorite movies, the “Before Sunrise” films, were on the television, I was maybe sad, but not too sad — I refuse to turn them on unless my happiness baseline is at least breaking neutral. Conversely, if I ever told Serria I had started “How I Met Your Mother,” our household’s code show for “things-are-going-really-really-REALLY-bad-right-now,” she would probably call 911.
In the middle of my recent rewatch of “GIRLS” (August 2023; it was a weird month), I was, embarrassingly, feeling inspired. Watching Hannah stick a Q-tip down her ear canal had somehow given me a story idea rather than making me want to die and, considering the last time I felt like I had something worthwhile to write about, I’d had pneumonia and truly thought I was going to die, this felt like a step in the right direction. I opened my notes app to jot down what I was thinking and, instead, found a note I hadn’t looked at in months — my New Year’s Resolutions.
I had a laundry-list of New Year’s Resolutions. Some of them were easy, as I’d padded it out with things I already do (“wash your face! drink more water! stretch!”). Some of them have not fully been achieved (“be less online!,” I wrote after dressing up for the “Don’t Worry, Darling” themed NYE party in a dress made entirely out of rain-jacket material, an outfit Chris Pine probably WISHES he wore when Harry Styles MAY OR MAY NOT have spit on him before the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival! The fact I am currently reading a book about how One Direction fangirls helped shape the conversations we culturally have in the online space and have understood every reference of every meme does not bode well for this being accomplished in 2023). But, some, I have happily completed (“get a therapist!,” I wrote after being, for lack of a better phrase, “broken up” with by two different men in the span of two weeks — once, for the prioritization and well-being of the Amazon rainforest and the next — the Hot Priest lookalike, no less! — so he could get back together with a girl who had previously thrown spaghetti at his face.
In all seriousness, I did not just get a therapist because two men decided they didn’t want to date me. This was, obviously, a huge bummer, but I’d been thinking about reaching out for some extra mental support long before I’d realized climate change and my inability to throw handfuls of hot pasta were ruining my love life. In the past year, I’d gone through a lot. After almost a decade at TIME, I’d gotten a new job, a job where I was now in charge and while I loved that, it was also terrifying. The pandemic had led to a lot of my close friends relocating — the most significant being Serria — and so, I was living alone again for the first time since I’d been 23. I was over two years sober, something to be fiercely proud of, but was having more trouble navigating socially in my second year than I’d been anticipating, maybe in part because I’d fully blocked out the four months I spent completely by myself in the early days of the pandemic watching, you guessed it, “GIRLS.”
My first session with my therapist was mid-January. I’d picked her off the backend of my insurance’s website solely because the practice shared the same address as one of mine and Serria’s old apartments and, because it was the good one, the one with the floor-to-ceiling windows and our favorite coffee shop below, not Chang’s Depression Palace, that felt like a promising sign. In our first meeting, I’d given her a brief overview of what I was dealing with, letting her know I’d mostly been handling my stress by going to back-to-back dance cardio classes and felt it’d be beneficial to talk through the issues rather than destroy my joints before I was 40. (“Speaking of dance cardio,” she’d said when I was done, “have you ever heard of 305?!”)
After I’d explained that I was actually the mayor of 305, therapy proved to be helpful. We worked together weekly and I found new tools to combat the stresses of everything going on in my life, from work to friends to the guy-who-definitely-doesn’t-look-like-the-Hot-Priest-but-does-in-my-mind-because-it-is-broken reaching out to tell me, surprise! it had not worked out with his pasta-flinging ex. My therapist was clearly younger than me — she looked innocent, like a Disney princess — but I didn’t realize how much younger until April, when she told me she was going to have to be passing me off to a new counselor…
…because she had to graduate.
This was shocking to me as I had had no idea I was speaking to a student. In retrospect, I should have maybe known after the time we were discussing my eating issues — I frequently am too burnt out to cook and will end up eating a bag of tortilla chips for dinner, which makes me feel guilty for being in my thirties and not being able to provide myself proper nutrition — and she said, “Oh, I get it, I had Insomnia Cookies for dinner last night,” which is, famously, college-student behavior. Also, my therapy bill was only $15 a week. Still, I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that my internship had been The Boston Globe and her internship had been… me. In our last session, she congratulated me for all the progress I’d made in our semester-long months together (conveniently, neither of us mentioned I had not been seeing the Hot Priest’s non-doppelgänger when I started therapy, but had engaged in a month of backsliding in March under her supervision) and I congratulated her on her future commencement.
I assumed we’d never see each other again.
A few months later, I woke up late feeling extremely unsettled. There was nothing particularly wrong — I was feeling comfortable at my job, I’d just started seeing someone I really, really liked, I wasn’t watching “GIRLS” — but I felt anxious well into the afternoon. By the evening, I realized it was likely because I hadn’t gone to a 305 class that morning. Despite the strong work I had been doing with my new therapist, it turns out I still rely on that particular physical release daily to feel fully myself. (I take my self-imposed title of mayor incredibly seriously). I’m usually a morning workout girlie, but to rectify my mood, I signed up for the very last class of the day, a class that didn’t begin until after 8 p.m. Because there is typically not much crossover between the 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. crowds, I didn’t recognize anyone when I walked into the room.
At 305, each place a person can claim as their area to dance is marked by a pink dot. I am partial to a particular one. In the past two years, I’ve experienced a lot in that specific spot. It’s where I’ve become not only at peace with my body, but thrilled at what stares back at me in the mirror (it is notable that 2023 was one of the first years in a long, long time my New Year’s Resolutions did not have anything to do with adjusting how I look). It’s where I’ve met friends who are supportive and kind and funny. It’s even the exact spot where I misread my STD test results at 6:45 in the morning and mistakenly began to believe (for a full 24 hours — a story for another day) that I had Hepatitis B. Rest assured, the poorly-designed test results portal was a shocking experience, but it paled in comparison to that evening class on that unsettled day, when I heard my name come from a girl I hadn’t recognized on the pink dot directly in front of me.
Looking up from my stretches, I met my old therapist in person for the first time.
I love 305. It’s too difficult to describe accurately how supported I feel from being a part of this community. It’s made me be secure in my body and how I can make it move. It’s given me a real, genuine kind of confidence I do not remember feeling previously in my adult life. I love watching myself in the mirror, dancing with people who also feel that same enthusiastic, positive rush. That being said — there is nothing more discomforting than seeing the person you have told all your deepest fears and darkest secrets to twerk. Anyone with whom I’ve been that emotionally vulnerable with should not later be able to witness me shimmying to the ground with my tongue out. Those are just the rules! (There is exactly one exception to this and that is my hairdresser, who does occasionally come to class with me, and who, theoretically, gets the same content as my therapist, but packaged much, much differently). Walking out of class together was an out-of-body experience as I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Tonally, my therapy sessions with her had usually sounded as if I was gossiping, but just about my own life (“anyway, yeah, I don’t think it’s going to work out, he cold-Facetimed me while skateboarding home from work on a Tuesday at midnight and I was already asleep with my Frownies on, I think we’re in different places in our lives probably” is a real, run-on sentence I had said to this woman as she gamely nodded along) and, while I really, really wanted to update her on some reoccurrences since we’d stopped our sessions (I was right! we were in different places in our lives probably!), it felt inappropriate to do so.
Trying to confirm that this would never, ever happen to me again, I recently recounted that story to my current therapist, who said, unequivocally, she’d never, ever twerk next to me. It was a long shot for that to happen twice, but I think she could tell I needed the reassurance. I’d had a rough couple of weeks — I’d been pretty in my feels for most of our session and had even uttered the most embarrassing start to a sentence to ever be spoken by a person in their thirties which is, “well, it kind of reminded me of that episode of “GIRLS” when Marnie…”
Still, despite me being deep into the era of the show that, historically, brings up the most emotional turmoil — mostly hinged on the fact the actor who plays Elijah gets much more screen time in the later seasons, which always reminds me of the moment I accidentally hit him in the face with my yoga mat getting off the subway in real life — it’s been exciting to see the progress I’ve made in 2023. The tools my (student) therapist and the feedback my (adult) therapist have given me have actually made a huge difference in how I react to situations. I’ve been in a weird mood, sure, but I’ve also been able to adjust my priorities accordingly and give myself both grace and space, actions that were not available to me the last time I binge-watched “GIRLS.” I feel grateful to know that in accomplishing a New Year’s Resolution, I succeeded in putting my mental health first — and will never, ever have to watch “How I Met Your Mother” again.