Sixteen

I thought about quitting these posts. Fifteen is a sort-of solid number to end things on, and by now you all know that I got hit by a Chevy Suburban when I was 23, broke eight bones, and spent a bumpy five months recovering in my New Hampshire hometown. But this year feels like the closest I have been to this story since it all actually happened so oops, I can’t quit these posts, just like I can’t quit talking about this important time in my life. Also because there’s another big part to this story that I’ve barely talked about.

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Spooky

You may know that I’m a summer lover, but when October rolls around, even I am ready to lay down my sandals and tank tops and give in to fall. I can only do this because October is spooky season, and spooky season is like a kind (skeleton) hand that holds my hand and says “there there, I know you’d still rather be sitting by a pool in perfect 80-degree weather, but look at all the candy and costumes and different versions of Tim Curry we have over here?”

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Fifteen

Today is my fifteenth Alive Day, and I have to confess: I don’t feel very alive. I was going to say I feel “unalive,” but then I learned that’s Gen Z slang for suicide, so scratch that. (Although it’s also like a joking thing? I don’t know. I feel old.) And I don’t feel much like writing, but this fifteen-year anniversary of my very real brush with death feels too big to ignore.

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My Year of Rage and Restlessness

One of my favorite novels from 2018 was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. It tells the story of a New York City woman so bored and depressed that she decides to drug-sleep her way through an entire year. Her life becomes a pattern of sleeping, waking briefly to eat takeout, then watching TV until she falls back asleep. The plot gets more complicated than that (and darker and more absurd), but throughout this year I often came back to the fantasy of that premise: why not just sleep away an entire year?

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