notes from may: i laughed, I cried, i finally figured out what esoteric means

i cry cry cry than i complain, come back for more, do it again.

May. Sorry, I was melancholy for the first half, I hate feeling like I let a few beautiful days pass me by because I was busy feeling something other than the weather. I think I saved myself in the second half, maybe everything changed when my vintage Miu Miu bag from eBay arrived in the mail? I don’t know. You be the judge.

Here are my notes from May:

• I’ve been wearing a lot of red lipstick lately which I loved until I left the house and took a photo of myself and realized the line between Courtney Love and Miranda Sings is so fine. 

• I spent the beginning of this month trying to get on my feet after my concussion at the end of April. I’m pretty much healed, I’m just having weird typing-related delays, maybe that’s because I ignored my doctor’s rules and started using Substack immediately after I got back from the hospital. Autocorrect has been an absolute nightmare, but I can’t say I don’t love all the new ways that I’m surprising myself.

• Yes, I saw Challengers- Zendaya is a bad actress, and a lot of us are afraid to say that out loud, and the movie was not at all as gay as twitter promised. Do better.

• My dad has a hair that grows straight out of the tip of his nose. It looks like one singular venta-black (x) eyelash in the middle of his nose. It sticks straight up like an antenna to the heavens and has a 2-D quality about it, wildly contrasting his terrifyingly white skin. Strangely enough, I’m the only person who ever notices it besides him. I used to pluck it out for him, but since my family dissolved those opportunities are few and far between so now he just texts me a picture of his progress and I let him know when it’s time.

  

• I don’t cover the camera on my computer because I want them to see everything.

• I saw a bird poop massively on the sidewalk and fly away without looking back to acknowledge what it had done. I would love to be normal about this and say that it didn’t inspire me, but it was such an inspiring occurrence to me that I’ve been thinking about it a ton; I really need to care less about what people think.

• I cried on the subway the other evening on the way to a party as I thought about how heartbreaking it is that I can’t remember everything that’s ever happened to me. I’m not a first-time offender of this type of cry, I find it so tragic that I have gaps in my memory. I could cry right now about how I can’t remember what I had for lunch on Thursday. I wish I could save everything. I wish I could remember it all. It’s funny because I document my life more than most and it’s still not enough for me.

  

• The other day someone told me that they find it odd that I still follow everyone I went to high school and college with. I’m surprised that someone noticed this because is something I have done 100% consciously. I fear any situation where someone could confront me about unfollowing them. If I unfollow you, you know what you did. 

• I ended up crying once more, this time before seeing my mom for lunch. We hadn’t seen each other in about a year. Our relationship is in a moment of repair. The last time I saw her it was after a three-year period where we didn’t really talk. I have issues with both my mother and my father but I’m closer with my dad these days which makes me feel not-awesome and kinda guilty, but my mom makes pretty selfish decisions often which makes it tough for me to be close to her. I don’t trust her a ton. An hour before she arrived in Brooklyn I cried in my room. I tried calling my best friend Clare to chat about it before she arrived, but she didn’t answer. I was going to call my boyfriend to talk about it but my friend Lily just posted *that* meme about how girls are incapable of having good days which made me feel self-conscious about sharing, so I swallowed the feeling and lunch was fine.

• Bought new jeans finally, and brought my friend Sophia with me because she is the ultimate boss—also jeans shopping alone is like walking up to a guillotine and volunteering to do the deed yourself. Sent a video to Clare after some tailoring (I didn’t know about tailoring jeans before we were friends), and she said they looked “french” which is all I ever need to hear.

• The reasons I’m thinking about firing my therapist:

  • She goes online shopping while I’m speaking to her.

  • She doesn’t know what a media party is.

  • She calls me brave when I am vulnerable, even after I told her many times that being vulnerable for me is easier than walking.

  • Her haircut is too similar to Ava Max’s 2020 hairstyle “the Max cut” (x).

• Okay. I have a sneaking suspicion that my boyfriend and I might be eating our dinner out of dog bowls. The guy he’s long-term subletting this apartment from very graciously left a few things for us to use. These bowls were left in the cupboard next to the glassware so we just assumed that they were for humans to eat out of because why wouldn’t we? Immediately I noticed that the bowls have a dog-bowlian shape to them, but I let the thought pass because the man that my boyfriend is subletting from is quite fancy. But lately, it’s been kinda impossible to ignore. They’re deep. Too deep. And a dog used to live here. I understand in the grand scheme of things this may not matter, but after exiting college (the only time when most of the decor in your home is there because you think it is “funny”) I don’t like when novelty touches my routine.

• I don’t believe anyone is a morning person. I think that morning people are trying to prove something to themselves. I think morning people are like Joe Rogan listeners, I don’t directly have an issue with them but I am curious as to why they are always on a quest for self-betterment.

• Rediscovered the joys of watching people walk on dry mud. Nothing like it!! (x) (x)

• I competed in Brooklyn’s first Evil Laugh competition (x). Yes. It was the brainchild of my friend, comedian Mera Caufield (x) who thought of the idea after seeing twitter-viral videos of evil laugh contests at anime Conventions (x)— why not bring it to Brooklyn? I really wanted to win. I desperately wanted to win. Even stopping by Abracadabrah in Flat Iron to buy flash paper and a witch hat to higher my chances. I met up with my friend Ian a few hours before to paint his body green, he was planning on an evil laugh with a Wicked illusion at the end with confetti and a riff. I made it to the final round but my friend Ena Da (x) ended up taking it (well deserved, no props just talent), I did end up on the cover of a local paper though which is a dream I didn’t even know I had.

• I actually hung out with my friend Ian a bunch this month. I suppose after painting him green for the evil laugh competition we are bonded forever now. We’ve known each other for a very long time, we even lived in LA at the same time, but never hung out as much as we should of because he would always invite me out just as I was getting ready for bed (and I don’t play about going to sleep). I don’t know what it is about New York but for some reason, we’re synched now. We saw tons of movies together this month, mostly bad ones (Tarot, I Saw The Tv Glow and Strangers: Chapter 1 notably), and spent a whole day showing each other YouTube videos that are crucial to our lore (x). It’s felt good to have a new reason to leave the house especially since I’ve been so blue this month.

• I finally learned what esoteric means. I’ve heard this word a lot and I’ve tried to piece together its meaning with context clues but it got to the point where so many things were being described as esoteric that I caved and looked it up. I will say I was a little disappointed when I found out that esoteric is just an intellectual way to say different. Do better.

• A friend told me that she thought I didn’t eat vegetables.

• I was happy to see that people were enjoying Adrien Brody’s Instagram content as much as I do. I’ve been clued into his social media genius since 2020, which is something I can’t take credit for because my friend Nicole was on this way before me and alerted me. I think we’re on the edge of a Brody-sance. Yes, this reel of Adrien Brody doing a hair color reveal is incredible, but I urge you to also look into the backlogs of his reels so you can really get a feel for his character (x) because I do think after the success of his hair color reveal a lot more is coming.

• So many New Yorkers walk around this city with earwax-clogged ears. I guess it’s weird that I’m actively looking inside people’s ears, but this is just the way I’ve always been. You can find out everything you need to know about a person by looking straight into their ear holes. Earhole = keyhole to the psyche.

• When I worked in thrift stores in LA I was loosely trained in handbag authentication. Emphasis on LOOSELY, I am not an expert. Earlier this month I made my first serious handbag purchase. It’s Miu Miu. It’s vintage. It’s gorgeous. It came from Japan. It’s basically everything I’ve ever wanted and more. Childhood dream come true. Blah blah blah. And I’m not saying that I got swindled, but I’m also not saying that I didn’t get swindled. All the signs that it’s real are there, but also when you’ve spent hours in your past looking at fake handbags every day, a curse appears; everything kinda looks fake. Also- I have horrible buyer’s remorse because I am a former poor person™, so psychologically it is difficult for me to believe that I own something that is this pristine. I’ve shown the bag to friends, but always with my hands on the handle so I can pull it away when a bitch looks at the stitching too closely.

• Got a couples massage which was incredible but when the masseuse was touching me all I could think about was the time I was away at sleepaway camp and my bunk-mate Ava was so stressed out about asking a boy to camp prom that she developed a stress knot that was as big as a tennis ball and didn’t go away until years later.

• I developed a stye on the corner of my eye in the middle of this month. I’m guessing from allergy season and this old brown mascara I keep on using instead of throwing out. All of this would be fine, but I’ve developed this tick while blinking that has made it impossible for me not to think about the “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye” line from Superbass. It’s agonizing. I’ve probably broken an all-time world record for thoughts surrounding “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye”. I blink- “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye”. I blink again- “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye”. I wake up- “slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye”. I should be thinking about other things but I literally cannot help it.

• I was watching the music episode of that CNN doc about the 2000s on Max one night after my boyfriend went to bed, LCD Soundsystem was mentioned and that made me think about how my roommate during my 2019 stint at Mclane Psychiatric Hospital had a playlist with only two songs on it; Give me Everything by Pitbull (x) and the LCD Soundsystem song Daft Punk is Playing at My House (x). We weren’t allowed to have earbuds because the nurses and doctors were worried one of us would try to hang ourselves with the chords, so my roommate just played these two songs out loud for most of the hours we were awake. To this day this is the only LCD Soundsystem song I know.

Yes, I saw I Saw The TV Glow- I hope I’m not alienating any of my audience here when I say that this movie was so bad. Really not for me. I loved Jane Schoenbrun’s first movie We’re All Going To The World’s Fair but this one was such a stinker. I really wanted to like it because I love anything about media, fandom, and identity—I’m sure if I was 14 it would’ve changed my whole entire life.

• Washed my hair with Bronner’s Peppermint soap in an effort to make my hair less greasy, but after going on Reddit I’ve realized that is not a good thing to do, but like most things, I just have to keep telling myself I’m built differently and move on.

• Booked tickets for a trip to Japan in September. I’m excited because my last trip happened during a time when I was very depressed, actively on suicide watch, and experiencing some weird facial rash that started months prior and just wouldn’t go away. I don’t have a ton of pictures from my last trip and have been wanting a re-do for years.

• My boyfriend and I got caught in the rain after dinner, which was romantic but also annoying. We tried to call a car but the prices kept on rising, so we had to make a run for which again— again so romantic but so annoying. I planned a cute outfit for our dinner and was very upset that I had to forceful ruin my hair, roll up my new jeans, and even put on my “emergency sweater” (the sweater you bring with you in the warmer months that is not apart of the outfit, it’s only for disasters). We ran into a CVS to get umbrellas, I was excited to see that it was my favorite time of the year; when Lays puts out exclusive summer flavors (previously called Do Us A Flavor but they discontinued that in 2018). We took the subway home and I fell asleep using my phone. Perfect night.

vomit.

coming.

sorry auto correct.

-Mackenzie