it gets so much easier once you start to see results.

La-Z-Boy

Would you ride out a hurricane

With me, hand in hand,

In side-by-side recliner chairs,

Like that elderly couple

Who was on the evening news?

Of course you would.

You already have—

Figuratively, literally,

You've been right there with me,

Weathering the storm,

Footrests up, kicked back,

'Cause if this is death,

We ought to greet it in comfort.

An Inventory of Things That Might Mean Nothing

I don't want to be the type of person who can only be inspired when I'm sad, hurt, or angry. I'd like to feel that same fire when things are good, calm, or when I'm just riding the waves. You know, where I am right now.

It's not always easy to ride the wave and not care what shore it washes up on. Matter of fact, I'm failing. Maybe not failing. Struggling. Fighting. Trying to just ride and not care where it ends up.

It's stupid little things.

Like, I made a big step. A big step for me, at least.

I texted someone from the neighborhood.

Met up with her for ice cream.

Talked too much. Mostly about me.

I needed it, though. No regrets. YOLO, right?

I needed to talk, and talk I did, I guess. We talked about her too. She even gave me a book—an extra copy she had of one she thought I'd like.

And I was bolder. She texted me afterward, and I sent her my Instagram. You know, in case she wanted to follow me. I don't add people. Not often. I'm not exactly a private-private person. That would, in my opinion, be someone without social media. But I am selective. Guarded. About who gets access, and even about what I share.

She requested to follow me. I approved.

So, of course, I requested to follow her back.

She didn't approve my follow request.

It felt like a breach of the social contract. 

I approve you, you approve me. 

We're sharing together.

Maybe not.

Maybe she looked through my pictures.

Saw the stupid collages I make.

The flowers from the backyard.

A couple of shots of the cats.

Decided she'd seen enough.

Or maybe she just forgot.

Maybe she just didn't open the app after she requested. 
Doesn't even know I approved.

I keep flipping to the same greyed out "Requested" button. 

The 134 followers (I'm one of them) 

and the 274 following (of which I am not a member.)

And the 210 posts not for me.

I made myself visible, and I don't know what happened next.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. That was abnormal for me. Hours awake.

This morning I texted her: "Thank you for listening. I didn't realize how much I needed to talk. I'm excited for the book."

Still no answer.

No follow approval either.

God.

I'm becoming something I don't like.

Overthinking stupid little things.

Like—

I'd asked her what she did for pet care when she goes on vacation. She takes the dogs with her. Unhelpful. She gave lots of suggestions. None of them were really a good fit. To be frank, I already had a Plan B. I was just hoping she had a better option.

She didn't.

She said the woman one house over does house-sitting.

Ugh.

No.

Don't mix business with the neighborhood.

After all, if it goes badly, we have to live one house over.

But even if it doesn't go badly, we'd be inviting someone from the neighborhood into our home. To see our daily schedule. Entrusting them with our lives. The dirt. The smells. The leftovers in the back of the fridge.

What's to stop them from walking around the block, pointing at the house I've grown to hate, and saying, "You should hear these crazy people's pet-care instructions," while pulling out the five-page document I spent hours typing, reading, updating, rereading, editing, and printing?

I guess there's some world, some alternate universe, some Sliding Doors moment where I wouldn't care.

I'm moving anyway.

Fuck all these bitches.

I'm getting out of here.

But the wave.

I'm riding it.

Nothing in life is guaranteed. A move can seem imminent and still take another couple of years.

Forever might just be a couple of months.

We don't know a thing.

Not really.

Nothing's a done deal till it's done.

Thanks for the book.

I've been listening to positive affirmations. 

One of them says, "Everyone feels insecure sometimes. It's normal."

But I need a house-sitter so we can go look at houses in another state. And this girl, over Twix Chunk ice cream in a cone, looked me in the eye and said, "Selfishly, I have to ask... do you have to move?"

I thought for a moment...

Maybe not.

As I ate my raspberry and green apple sorbet.

And I thought maybe these people aren't that bad.

And maybe we've just been too guarded.

I should connect with her on Instagram.

And maybe she's just busy.

Maybe she isn't on the 'gram like I am.

I don't fucking know.

I don't know anything.

And that's not a poor me, poor me, I don't know shit kind of thing.

It's just the God's honest truth.

I have no clue which way my life is going, and I'm trying to go with the flow.

She probably felt insecure too. About this loud girl who talked so much about herself and poo-pooed all her ideas.

(But for real—boarding two dogs and four cats before just finding another sitter on Rover? Come on.)

And my horoscope says:

"The lessons embedded in your current circumstances might be most accessible when you approach them with genuine curiosity rather than a desire to move past them quickly."

Okay.

I've been curious. I've been patient. I've been like, Ooooh, what's the lesson? What's the little prize at the bottom of this Raisin Bran box?

I've been like that for months, it seems.

Yet all I keep finding is that I am all the things I tell other people not to be.

Oh, don't overthink it.

Don't make it a big deal.

My own voice, sour fucking cold sorbet in my mouth on a hot day.

And those walls I built up—the ones that felt like good boundaries, the ones that kept me from being vulnerable and getting hurt—were just ways to pretend, for years, that I'm not insecure as fuck.

How long do I wait to start this fucking book?

Sleep

Sleep,

belly exposed,

and I'll hold

your foot,

because I need

a pill to sleep,

a machine to wake up,

and anything, anything,

anything out there

to hold on to.

unsocial media

Have you ever thought someone was waving at you, only to realize, after you wave back, that their intended audience was someone behind you?

That's kind of what social media has been feeling like lately.

At the beginning of the month, I made the goal to "decenter social media." I wasn't exactly sure what I meant by that. I just knew I'd already started.

Now these digital spaces, where I used to waste so much time, seem so unwelcoming. So unsocial.

It's all advertisements. If not for a product, then for a person—an influencer. I opened Instagram, and it immediately recommended a reel of a 24-year-old homeless woman cooking on a single burner in a tent behind a Walmart. The video had the polished treatment of a chef influencer. She held up the packages, said how much everything cost, gave step-by-step instructions, as though this were all perfectly normal for us to watch.

Of course, there are the people I know... but do I?

A former student posts a story. I know she got married. I know she lives in California now. I know she has a baby. Yet she never told me any of these things. Not mano a mano. Not woman to woman. Not really. I learned them passively, as she posted for her parents, her in-laws, her friends—for everyone keeping up with her life.

A wave that I saw before its intended beloved.

My mistake. I'm embarrassed. Carry on with your day.

And even the people I do talk to regularly—I don't know that I need to see your six photos from June. And I'm especially tired of the daily reshares of posts you didn't even create. What is this? Surely it's something with broad enough appeal that it already got two thousand likes somewhere else. But it's not just the regurgitating Möbius strip of information.

It's not even, "Oh, I'm ignoring my life to peek into yours."

It used to be fun. Like being a fly on the wall, peering through windows. *My God, that's how they live!*

Now I'm not sure anyone is really living there.

The moment your child is born. The concert finally starts. The anniversary dinner arrives. Before the feeling has settled into your body, there's the instinct to capture it, crop it, caption it, and send it out into the feed.

Then it's wedged between a homeless woman performing resilience for the algorithm and an ad for a viral dress you'll supposedly wear every day—60% off, today only, if you buy seven.

And somewhere in that endless scroll, I mistake another broadcast for a conversation. Another performance for a person. Another wave that wasn't meant for me.

Maybe that's what I meant by decentering social media.

Not spending less time online.

Just finally realizing no one was waving at me.

Don't put off getting better.

 That's the girl I was and the girl I'll never be again.