A Series of Awkward Events

Home

  • Vanilla Ice is just what the (therapist) ordered

    Like all good millennials, I decided that it was time for me to find a romantic partner and a therapist to share my life with. Coincidentally, the respective searches for these two special people have a lot in common. I feel particularly qualified to make this parallel because in the last year or so, I’ve had at least 10 first dates, a handful of 3-6 month long relationships as well as 6 15-minute consultations and 3 intake sessions with potential new therapists.

    Just like using dating apps, finding a therapist using all the fancy new therapy search engines requires assessing a small picture (must look nice but not too pretty), reading a short but revealing bio (must not mention “connecting to your inner self”), and filtering by various deal-breakers (must be a woman). Maybe you find one or two that look appealing to you and you make contact via a flirty email or phone message – Hi, I saw your profile on HelpMeNow and thought you might be a good fit for me. Any chance you’re taking new patients and would like to set up a consultation?

    Then, you have your initial meeting: a 15 minute phone call where you have to figure out how to condense 20-something years of troubles into a few sentences that make you look good so they think it will be fun to have you as their patient, somehow. If that goes well, you move to the natural next step and schedule an appointment. You think, great! I’m already working towards fixing myself. It’s just like any first date, where your hopes and expectations for finding true love are dashed by your panic that grows each time you impulsively fill an awkward silence with unsolicited details about yourself.

    In an intake session with a therapist, you cover all manner of issues in just enough depth that you feel raw and tearful, but not enough that you feel that you’ve actually understood your problems or are any closer to fixing them. If you’re lucky, you may have even uncovered childhood trauma you didn’t even know you had. In a first in-person date, you’ve also covered all manner of topics — from the semester you spent abroad (because it makes you look cool) to maybe a choice few of your exes (because you had the extra beer)— but have yet to really know if you like this person or find them attractive.

    Against all odds, I met someone (a therapist — still working on the romantic partner). We made it past the 15-minute phone consultation, the intake session, and our first actual therapy session. This may or may not be because she reminds me of my ex because she has ADHD, blonde hair, and curses a lot. My ex was in school to be a therapist, so this all checks out. 

    Similarities to my ex notwithstanding, my new therapist and I have explored how I tend to thought-spiral. She found out about this because I told her that I feel too overstimulated to listen to anything on my commute, so I’m spending at least an hour in the car, every day, in complete silence and near tears the entire time because my mind takes the opportunity to be completely unhinged. After my intake session, my homework had been to try a few different “bilateral stimulation” techniques, of which, my favorite was to write “stop” with my non-dominant hand on my opposite leg any time I was spiraling. I chose this mostly because it was the most discrete of the soothing technique options and felt pretty edgy. I told her at our next session that I liked this technique, but it’s helpfulness in distracting me from spiraling was short-lived. So, she took our relationship to the next level. 

    Her new technique was to say “stop” in my mind, and then sing an entire song in my head (or out loud if I could). She suggested happy songs like “Happy”, which I absolutely could not abide because it would ruin my street credibility, even if it was just being sung in my head. I said “stop” a few times, and the natural progression is to finish your sentence with “…collaborate and listen”. Once I said it out loud, my therapist was tickled by the idea of a rap battle at our next session (do I have to pay for that?) and decided that when I’m going down a rabbit hole of negative or anxious thoughts, “Ice Ice Baby” is what I have to sing to myself.

    , , , , , , ,

  • All that ass

    It’s 2025 and I spent the last month of 2024 stuck in a depression hole. New year, new medication, new me.

    I’m not much into the pressure of setting resolutions for the new year — resolutions that I inevitably fail or give up on, and then feel bad about myself for the rest of the year. But January of a new year felt like as good of a time as any to start digging myself out of the hole.

    First order of business: moving my body. I started with a $30 for 30 days deal at a bougie yoga studio (bougie as in, you are served tea when you walk in and there’s never more than 6 people in a class) and vowed to use the small gym in my apartment more frequently. My friend and I had also talked about trying a burlesque or pole dancing class.

    What a great time to do such a thing, I thought to myself. Get in touch with my femininity, or something like that. So, we signed up for a beginner heels dance class. I was excited, imagining myself feeling sexy and empowered.

    My friend and I showed up to the most packed exercise class I’ve ever been in. Everyone wore baggy sweatpants and I turned to my friend and said, “We didn’t get the sweatpants memo.”

    Later, when everyone took off their sweatpants to reveal an impressive variety of booty shorts and proper sexy dancing heels, I realize that I didn’t get that memo either. I was basically covered from head to toe in leggings and a long sleeve, with some very modestly heeled booties.

    The warm-up was for us to carry out my literal worst nightmare; we stood in a circle and everyone took turns dancing in the center of the circle. It became abundantly clear that though this was a beginner class, no one — except me — was a beginner to twerking. The level of ass shaking was incredible, really. In splits, on all fours, with one leg up, all sorts of variations. When it was my turn to go into the center and dance, all I could think to do was the disco like the awkward and repressed middle-schooler I am inside. Very sexy indeed.

    I enjoyed learning the steps to the dance, although it was really hard for my little pea-sized brain to keep up, especially when my hips and ass couldn’t do many of the things they were asked to do. At the end of the class, we were split into small groups to perform the dance for the rest of the larger group. Again, another nightmare scenario. I did it, but definitely blacked out. I definitely forgot many of the steps and cringed at the thought of someone watching my shake-less ass. In short, never have I ever been more embarrassed of my lack of ass shaking education and have vowed to find a beginner twerking class so I can return to the heels class and redeem myself.

    The dance class was only a minor setback in my journey for self discovery through the power of regular exercise. I was in the mood for something more low-key and relaxing after this experience, so I signed up for a “functional yoga” class at the bougie yoga studio a few days later. The class description advertised myofascial release, a focus on stability, and flowing movements, which sounded relaxing and more my speed.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong. Now, I am fairly experienced in yoga classes and can hang (more or less) with the more intense varieties. This was something new altogether. The teacher had us rapidly contorting our bodies in mobility-based shapes. I found myself in a position where yet again, my body did not and could not move in the way it was being asked to.

    The movements got more fast paced and my body was moving and twisting in ways I hope to never have to move again. With all the twisting of my abdomen, I began to feel all the air trapped in my post-holidays bloated stomach move around and I couldn’t help it. A few silent farts escaped of their own accord.

    The teacher was playing music but it was relatively quiet and there were only four other people in the class. We were doing some sort of complicated transition between a bridge pose and a plank where we pivoted on one of our hands. My body was absolutely clenched with the struggle of keeping myself from collapsing and as I pivoted, before I could even do anything to stop it, I farted again. This time very loudly. Of the car-honking kind.

    I looked around covertly, and no one seemed to noticed. But I know they did. How could they not? There were five of us, close together, and I just released the loud and unmistakable honk of an unrestrained fart.

    I panicked. Do I say something to ease the tension? Do I make a joke about how these movements are so hard that I’ve lost control of my bodily functions?

    In the end, I decided not to say or do anything about it, but that was most certainly my last class at that yoga studio. I felt I didn’t deserve to show my face there after I defiled that sacred space for all the rich white women who could afford memberships there.

    Here’s to next month, where I can hopeful gain more control over the movements of my ass and can shake it in ways I want to, and avoid it having a mind of its own.

    , , , ,

  • Main character syndrome

    Instructions: read this in the voice of the always-feeling-sorry-for-themselves, insufferable main character of your favorite coming-of-age or rom-com movie. (I am feeling sorry for myself in an insufferable way right now, so might as well have my main character moment.)

    It’s 11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I’m alone in bed in the dark, crying. Why? It all traces back to me being a chronic over-committer.

    I’m a yes-man. I get a rush when someone invites me to do something, or asks me to do something for them, and I say yes. It’s great in the moment. I get my dopamine fix and it all sounds just peachy. Then all of the sudden I’m stuck with a month from hell. I go straight from work to check on someone’s cat for free, then straight to a dog/house sitting gig where I use every muscle in my body to prevent the dog from attacking someone on a walk around the block. Then straight to grabbing drinks with a friend, or somewhere where I get asked about my life and have to come up with something where I won’t spontaneously combust into an epic meltdown. No, I’m saving the meltdown for myself alone in my car on the ride back to where I’m dog/house sitting.

    I have a side hustle working two shifts a month on the weekends, because I thought it would be a good idea to have another job on top of my full-time job. Then I have a side-side hustle because it sounded like a good idea too. I commit to all these things but truly salivate over the idea of going to work, coming home, and not have to do something. I romanticize the idea of a 7-step night time skincare routine that I spread out over the span of an hour as I daintily tidy my apartment and drink tea in a gauzy robe. Deep down, I desire routine and leisure. But boy am I bad at those things.

    (As I reminder I am being extra insufferable because of the main character insufferableness I am channeling.)

    Anyway, back to the clock ticking away on 2024. It’s actually a really short story: I was invited to spend NYE in the mountains with some friends, some of whom are currently visiting from out of state, and I couldn’t go because yup, I committed to dog/house sitting. I was and still am, like, really devastated. (Might I add that there is a hot tub where I would’ve been staying.)

    Determined not to be sad because that’s surely a bad omen on the night of a new year, I scrambled to make some plans. This friend was out of town, this friend got sick. At the end of the night it was just me, a bottle of wine, a movie, and some takeout. Which is really not a bad way to spend an evening, but I really didn’t want to be alone like I am now, thinking about how mentally exhausted and burnt out I am and how I can’t even see a way out. How I know I accomplished and did things this year I should be proud of and satisfied with, but I feel nothing.

    *cough cough* Okay, that was the cue for a really cute love interest to interrupt my depressing, self-deprecating monologue. No? Anyone?

    Damn. I’ll try again next year I guess.

    , , , ,