I had a reiki session, and she said my throat chakra was super blocked. Two weeks later, at another session, she said, "Your throat chakra isn't nearly as blocked as before, but it built up again in a short time. What aren't you voicing?"

It was evening when it happened. Ever so subtle and slight, the shift, when he said, "It's going to start getting darker," and took a long drink from the cup in his hand and peered inquisitively at the sky.

But the summer equinox was two weeks ago. It had already begun getting darker. Maybe he hadn't noticed. I didn't feel it, just knew it from the calendar. But notice or not, there is still a minute less of light each day. The shrinking of the sun. Little by little, chipping away, and the darkness taking over again.

For a moment, I thought about correcting him. Thought about saying, "It already has!" Started rambling about how it had started two weeks ago and he was late. But I didn't.

It's not that I censor myself, but I don't voice everything I think. But really, what is the point of reminding someone it's been getting darker even longer? That it's only going to get dimmer and dimmer, when we'll circle back and it will all be sunshine and fresh watermelon and summertime again next year?

The seasons will turn and change, and it will be dark and light and dark and light, and I will be different in some ways and the same in others. Whether I said anything or not, the days would shorten either way. Eventually, growing long again.

The Bloodletting

        Historically, marketing emphasized the material qualities of a product—its specifications, functions, and practical benefits. Over time, however, advertising evolved toward the production of symbolic value, positioning commodities not merely as useful objects but as vehicles through which consumers might perform identity, autonomy, status, and self-actualization. The emergence of targeted advertising represents a further epistemological shift in the relationship between commerce and subjectivity. Rather than simply responding to preexisting desires, algorithmic advertising increasingly identifies, cultivates, and monetizes latent insecurities, rendering the individual both consumer and product within an ever-expanding digital marketplace of self-optimization. This essay seeks to interrogate the implications of this paradigm while situating the contemporary body as a contested site of neoliberal commodification.

Just kidding. 

I have been getting a lot of ads targeting my breast shape lately, and I'm unsure how "they" even know this information about me.

"They."

Who are they?

Big shrug.

Big money.

The Man.

They know far more about me than I know about them.

I have big ol' floppy tits. As my mother had before me, and her mother before her. And probably all the way back to my ancestors in Germany, hauling kegs of beer around a tavern—or so I imagine them.

Yet the internet knows this about me.

I looked at my photos on Instagram. They couldn't possibly have figured this out from my pictures. I generally point the camera at my face. I have never Googled my breast shape.

Why there are loads of breasts in this world. There are flatty-flats and roundy-rounds and perky-perks and lopsy-sides. A million kinds of tits for a million kinds of women, and they are all pretty. 

Including mine. 

And apparently the internet knows exactly what they look like.

Well, thanks to targeted ads, I have been informed that I have "teardrop boobs."

Until last week, I had never heard of this. But now, thank you, marketing executives, I know that "teardrop boobs" are not only what these—imagine I'm motioning to my chest—are called, but that they are apparently a terrible condition which can and should be addressed.

What I find most troubling about this recent influx of "fix your shit tits" ads is that last month, I took a few minutes each day to rub lotion lovingly onto my chest and, in my head, tell my breasts that they are beautiful and wonderful and that I love them.

Do you think my phone was listening to all that?

Listening to my daily tit affirmations?

Did they think I was like a little kid whispering to myself, "It's okay," because she felt ashamed—and not because I actually like the big ol' floppy flops of my matriarchal lineage?

Because now it is shoveling five kinds of bras, a chest binder, breast reduction surgery, breast lift surgery, a supplement to "drain toxins from the lymph nodes in breast tissue" made from some sort of deep-sea algae, and a dress that lifts the tits.

Oh, free consultation!

Fifteen percent off when you sign up for the newsletter!

Decreased sagging in just two weeks!

Never feel ashamed of your sad, sad teardrop boobs again!

So sad they're even called teardrops.

Aren't you crying yet, girlie?

Not yet, bruh.

The other day, I was in the bath, my floppies just floating and flopping, as they do, in the water. Swaying sweetly with the motion of the warm water. And they weren't teardrops at all. They were round little buoys, bouncing and playing like dolphins in the ocean. It was delightful. Press them down and they'd bob back up to the surface.

Hello! 

Hello!

Ahoy, matey!

Then I dried myself off and saw droplets of blood all over the tile floor. Then streaks of blood on my feet and calves. I leaned down to clean it up, and there was blood smeared all over my left breast—the slightly smaller one. I tried to clean it up and find the source, but as I did, it only seemed to get worse.

Finally, I found the tiny, minuscule nick on my thigh, just above my knee, from shaving.

How so much poured out of my body through such a small hole, I don't know.

But I dabbed a little toilet paper on it.

Stopped it up.

And as I cleaned the mess, I thought about how much of my DNA—those same little nucleotides that made my tits, and my mother's, and her mother's before her—was now still on the floor. 

Just traces, of course. 

Like a crime scene after the cleanup.

Just enough left behind to tell someone exactly who had been there.

Enough to break the whole case wide open.

Funny, isn't it?

How a detective can reconstruct a life from a drop of blood, while an algorithm seems determined to reconstruct an insecurity from a body.

I'm sure this week I'll get a billion ads for safety razors and creams and lotions and products to prevent nicks and get a closer, smoother shave. Maybe wax. Maybe Nair. Maybe some other product to address the terrible condition of growing hair like the ape I am instead of the mannequin I could become with enough money and enough time.

And you know what?

It didn't need fixing.

It never needed fixing.

Would Delight to be a Pillock

Childish

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

1 Corinthians 13:11

Social media is a funny thing.

See, I remember before it was really anything. Before Instagram, Facebook, even Myspace. Dare I admit, I remember before AIM? Because I do.

And those early versions were different. Unpolished, direct human-to-human transmissions, more often than not between people you knew. Not people you had met once, but people you knew. You know, knew offline.

No branding. No like and subscribe. It was a little like passing notes in the hallway between classes, but with photos and music and a few other flourishes, and a slightly wider audience.

Something weird happened when we went from “friends” to “followers.”

But anyway, my relationship with it has been off for a while, though I still felt fine standing on the slippery slope. I could still talk to a couple people I know! It wasn’t all bad. I could curate a feed. A feed. A feed bag.

And I didn’t get into the weird new Gen Z nonsense like TikTok or Snapchat. I tried for a minute, then gave up.

On Threads, there are so many elderly people commenting on AI porn-bot scammer accounts. And it’s all public. Like, posting their real phone numbers and addresses public.

There’s a Meemaw in Texas who thinks she is chatting with Elon Musk, and they are in love, and anyone can see it.

It makes me sad. And makes me wonder if that could be me someday. Older and clinging to some technology I don’t understand, while everyone else watches.

It has just devolved. Become a place I don’t know if I want to be.

So recently, I have been more and more into my actual life. I haven’t really cared what most other people are doing, especially people I don’t even know. And the more in my life I am, the more I like it.

It’s actually really nice.

And I don’t even want to share it.

Like, this is mine. This is my little scrap of life, and I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it, as me-sized and ordinary and holy as it is.

Did I outgrow social media or did it outgrow me?

sum of deez dings

Some of these things—these dreams—I dreamt when I was practically a child. High school, college, you know?

These things I’ve been carrying around on my back, from town to town, job to job, each new face I meet. I haven’t really examined them since I first dreamt them.

I haven’t really dug under the surface and asked: Why? Why this? Why this for me?

It’s not a bad goal. Not a bad aspiration. But does it feel good on me still, decades later?

God, I’m almost forty and still doodling ideas I made when I pierced my own nose over the course of three hours—not even straight—in the middle of the night with a sewing needle and a post earring from Claire’s.

And maybe that is what I’ve been mistaking for destiny all these years: a girl alone at night, trying to make herself into someone.

So now I feel it’s time to take inventory, really tally it up, and ask: What do I want?

Not the “I” I swore I was forever and a day ago, but the “I” I am now. The one who lived all that life.

What does that woman—the almost-forty woman, in her second marriage, name on the mortgage, fucking paid-off car—want?

What does she want?

It’s peace. It’s freedom. It’s peace.

It’s not being tied forever to who I was for a minute.

gotta live yo life at sum point

Safe and Secure.

Last night, under a full moon in Capricorn, I kept waking up with fear.

Nothing was happening.

That was the stupid part.

I was in bed. I was under a roof. My husband was asleep beside me. The dogs were somewhere in the house, breathing their hot little dog breath into the dark. The moon was doing whatever moons do over women who are trying, God help us, to sleep.

And still, my brain was dragging furniture to the doors.

The kind of fear where I start thinking through all possible outcomes of my life. I start making contingency plans: if X happens, I will do Y. Worst case, best case. Mentally drafting Facebook Marketplace posts in the event I have to sell everything I own just to eat.

Not because that’s realistic. Because it is a fear I have, and my brain wants to solve it before it happens, like fear is a bill I could pay early.

Not that it probably even would happen.

But try telling that to the moon.

Recently, I listened to a podcast, and the researcher being interviewed said, “Safety and security are the two things women want most.”

It was an episode on the psychology of men’s and women’s drives and desires and needs. Fine. Okay. I’m listening.

But then the researcher continued, “Safety and security are relative, subjective, so the best advice for any woman is to choose to feel safe and secure.”

Excuse me, ma’am.

Mrs. Doctor Lady on a podcast.

What?

What do you mean just choose to feel safe and secure?

Like it’s a throw pillow? Like it’s an essential oil? Like I can just stand in my kitchen, snap my fingers twice, and announce to the cabinets, “Well, boys, we’ve done it. The nervous system is chill now.”

And I’m too lazy to quote quote quote quote some smart bitch, but it actually did make sense, which honestly pissed me off more.

Obviously, do your best to be safe, to be secure. Basic safety stuff like being alert in parking lots and sharing your location and not dating abusers. Basic security stuff like saving money and budgeting and whatnot.

But safety and security are relative.

Recently, my husband and I passed on a house because the neighbor had some aggressive dogs. We said no, no, no, this house is UNSAFE.

And I still think that was a fair thing to consider. I do. I am not trying to girlboss my way into a dog attack.

But I also think there are plenty of people who would be absolutely elated, relieved even, that just two dogs behind a fence were the biggest threat. At some point, someone should be shaking me and saying, “There are people dying, Caroline. There are bombs exploding in some neighborhoods.”

You’re right.

And still, my nervous system lives in its own country with its own war and it's own economy.

And security? My God. It’s not even that long ago that my current savings, bank account, assets, what have you, would have been unheard of in my own life. I remember a time when I received a $2,000 tax refund and felt fucking RICH.

And not in some flippant, hyperbolic way. I mean I really felt rich. So rich I went to the bars and bought drinks for everyone. Me. A benevolent queen in Forever 21 earrings, blessing the village with well vodka.

Me today, of course, thinks $2K would nice but doesn’t go THAT far—plus inflation will only get worse—all the more reason it should be saved. Saved, saved, saved, because I need to feel secure as a lil baby wrapped and swaddled in my dollar-bill blanky.

Which is funny until it isn’t.

Because that girl at the bar with her tax refund thought she had made it. And the woman in bed with more money than that still wakes up rehearsing disaster.

Yeah, I guess safety and security are subjective, and the best thing to do is just CHOOSE to be safe and secure. Like snap, snap, I’m now safe and secure, bitches. I don’t need to wake up worried or planning or thinking about what-ifs.

And what a cruel joke, that what women value most—safety, security—we honestly never REALLY get, because it’s subjective. Because there is no number in a bank account that can promise nothing bad will happen. No neighborhood so quiet. No husband sleeping so close. No moon so full it can fill the hole.

But don’t worry your pretty little head too much, because the guys have it rough too. They most crave productivity. Not just present productivity, but past and future productivity too. So theirs isn’t just subjective; it’s got a whole stupid time-contingency thing too.

God bless us, every one. The men are haunted by to-do lists. The women are haunted by the locked door.

So fine.

I choose it.

I choose safety. I choose security. I choose the roof over my head, the money in the bank, the dogs behind their fence, the husband asleep beside me, the moon hanging over the house like a silver coin nobody can spend.

I choose it.

And still, somewhere around 3 a.m., my brain opens Facebook Marketplace and starts pricing the furniture. 

I think I could get $409 for this bed if I got good photos.