Cherry-Ass-Whoever
The last thing I “published” December 29th 2022. My inspiration DOA every day since. My mind like wires that aren’t quite connected, strings of metallic connection firing into the empty space but only micro-millimeters off.
It’s not that I didn’t live this year, I went to Italy! I drove to Goldendate and looked at Jupiter through one of the world’s greatest telescopes! I hiked. I camped. I tore down a closet and built a bench and mudroom. I rebuilt my front sleps. I read 91 books. I launched (other people’s) online courses and big ideas. I talked with strangers in lines at airport coffee bars and marveled at their photos of the Northern Lights taken mere hours ago as their grown-son drove them through the Alaskan morning to the airport so they could get back to Florida for Thanksgiving. I lived. But I felt like I was living on mute, or pause. Like either I was in Italy or I was at my kitchen table tapping away at work and getting nowhere.
I wondered last night for the millionth time, is it Instagram? Not the posting, that feels like creativity and freedom. I post as if me and maybe my sister are the only people who will see it. And I don’t care if that’s the only people who do.
No, it’s not the posting that’s sucking my will to live slowly out of my shell of a body… it’s the hours-long scrolls. Hate scrolls. Doom scrolls. Therapy scrolls. IKEA-mindset scrolls. When my house looks like @ ___ and @ _____ then I’ll be able to move on and live my actual life.
Take last night, I headed up to bed, but instead of bed I found myself tucked into the corner of my stairs scrolling through somebody’s account thinking first, “those cherries look like huge shiny asses”. Then, “why do *you* get to make Styrofoam penguins for a living? Fuck you.” For reference I was hate scrolling someone who makes window displays for anthropologie(?).
It’s like before Instagram I knew people had cooler jobs and better lives, perfect beige kids they never screamed at and could build bookshelves…or at least I suspected it.
But now I know.
Except I don’t know! And I know I don’t know. Because isn’t that the entire thing, that we’re all curating our own shiny cherry-ass window displays in little squares on a phone? So not only do I have to hate scroll someone who probably got paid astronomical amounts to cut yarn and put it around a light, but I also have to walk through the third wall, the third level of hell, which is knowing that not only do I not know if they’re happy with their perfect job and their perfect life and their perfect Instagram — I also have to admit I respect how beautiful they made it look.
Leading, of course, to the finale when I look up from my phone, find myself in the nook of my stairs and immediately judge and berate myself for falling for (what is probably) an illusion, wasting precious minutes of my life and ruining my sleep with bluelight.
I berate. Judge. Berate. Hate. Judge…digging my own pit of self loathing, shovelful after shovelful, until I am just deep enough to pull the wet soil over my head and fall asleep in my pit bed. As I rustle through my unmade bed for my cracked Kindle I vow that tomorrow I’ll write something. I’ll create something. Anything. And not just that! I’ll take the bin of Goodwill riding around in my filthy car to the Goodwill. I’ll make my tire appointment. I’ll brush my teeth twice. I won’t eat sugar. I’ll make the recipes in my IG folder called ‘Feed Me’. And I’ll leave Miss-Ass-Cherries-Whoever to her window displays and her perfectly mismatched plaid outfits.
Except, of course, the next day my diet is 87% sugar cookies, I write nothing. When I get the voicemail of the dealership I hang up. My Goodwill bin lives another day cradled in my trunk. And just around 8:43pm I tuck myself deeper into my pit bed.
I know the secret to breaking the loop is to break the loop. So here it is. I walked Ischia at 6:52am and instead of ignoring my little spigot of thoughts I took them down in a note on my phone. Pausing only to pick up her shiny little dump. And I sent the note to myself, telling myself I couldn’t make coffee until I turned the note into something. Even if it was a shiny little dump. And hit publish.
So there.
Now I’m going to make some coffee.