Life has sucked lately. Somehow I’m not that sad. Like it’s so shitty that it can’t possibly get any shittier and so I am ready for good things to come. Or maybe it’s just my Lexapro doing its job. In the span of nine days, a romantic situation left me feeling totally degraded and demoralized, and before I could even process the pain about that my grandma died. She got cancer a month or so ago. They said she had a couple months. It was all really fast. It didn’t make any sense. This is a woman who went skydiving in her sixties. This is a woman who swills energy drinks and espresso. This is a woman who runs errands all day and babbles on the phone for hours. Part of me thought she would never die. The worst part was the wake and the funeral. At my uncle’s wake and funeral last year I found her presence to be a relief. A wake and a funeral without her was unbearable. The glaring absence of her charisma even in the darkest situations was all I could feel. I hate wakes. I don’t want to see a dead person with makeup on. It’s all so pointless and weird. Especially when the priest comes and we’re all reciting a prayer like we’re in a fucking cult. It makes me feel crazy. When I told her I got an agent for my novel, she said she’d be the first to pick it up at Barnes & Noble. She didn’t know about the books I have published; I keep those out of my family’s knowledge. I’m not a person who’s comfortable being close to their family. But my grandma was energetic and fun and loving and sweet in a way not a lot of people are. It’s hard for me to feel comfortable with people but I did with her. Last year she checked herself into the mental hospital because she was feeling depressed. She never talked about it after. I wanted to bring it up but I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. I felt so rattled by the whole thing. She’d apparently struggled with depression for a long time and no one thought to tell me after I spent years going to therapists and telling them depression doesn’t run in my family. It makes me sad to think about so I don’t think about it. That is my method with most things. I hate grief because for some reason I feel like I don’t deserve it. Like I’m always in my own world and I’m not able to appreciate other people enough and so I don’t have the right to grieve them. But I am crying writing this so that’s a good sign. It’s hard to cry on Lexapro. Before I started taking it in 2023 I was weeping several times a day every day. That’s not good. A cathartic act loses meaning and feeling when it’s done so excessively. Now, in the rare times I cry, it feels great. A little reward.
After the funeral I took a nap and went to the train station in a daze. I met up with Colette at Elena’s exhibit at a gallery in Tribeca and we fawned over her amazing paintings while sipping hard seltzers. Then we walked to Elisha’s show at Berlin. The opening band sounded like Joy Division and I felt spectacular drinking my $7 Modelo and bobbing my head and swinging my hair. Sivan came too and looked really pretty. Elisha had to do an acoustic set because his bassist got sick and a lot of moments reminded me of Elliott Smith. I held my vape up toward the stage and he took a hit. Someone was holding a rose and I took it because it reminded me of the roses from the funeral in the morning. I said that’s the one things funerals get right—flowers. Flowers are great. Roses in particular. I lost it but it’s ok.
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