Hi, friends.
.
.
.
I don’t know, man.
I’m struggling. Are you struggling?
.
.
.
Since July 14
I stopped doing the crossword and I didn’t read my library book.
I stopped setting an alarm and started staying up late mainlining television into the crackling skin of my drying eyeballs. Then I crawl into bed and prop my eyelids open with toothpicks to play free phone games that annoy me with ads.
I drew some comics and wrote some poems and started a zine but either didn’t finish, or finished and didn’t share it with you or anyone.
I finished a draft of my book proposal and worked with an editor* to get feedback. I got it, thanked her for it, and stopped thinking about it.
We lost Angie Heaton.**
I stay inside.
I’m struggling to:
validate myself
sit with hard emotions
voice my needs, let alone my desires
project any self-love onto whoever I am becoming rn
remember that the past, where we flailed to ABBA and ate trays of chicken salad on butter crackers and spat into the same karaoke mic packed into in party-light living rooms and stank back-rooms of bars, was even real sometimes
This isn’t a cry for help. Or if it is, I’m too embarrassed to even know so.
I’m in therapy and “This Year” just shuffled onto the Bluetooth speaker.
I know I’ll feel better than this someday. Probably soon.
.
.
.
Twin-high-main-te-nance-machiiiiiines.
Sharing all this in case you feel the same, and feel alone. You’re not alone.
I’m trying my old tricks, mustering the energy. I know what watching the sun rise does for my perspective. I know what meditation does. WHAT WRITING DOES. And I miss having this outlet. I changed the name back to Better Still and it makes me feel like I’m in 1999 again, updating the nom de plume on my secret Tripod poetry website***. I moved my day-job workspace upstairs, out of my pink room where I write and stare out the window and listen to music and burn candles.
Want to break the seal of not sending a newsletter for months. Dirty the fresh notebook with throwaway drafts. Fold them into smudgy paper airplanes. Here’s one for you.
Blehhhhhhhh and hiiiiiiieeee. I hope you’re doing okay.
XO
Lindsey
*Jess Zimmerman!!!
**You’re precious. Go on in. ♥♥♥
***design theme: Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet