Retired from Sad (Girl), New Career in Being a Full Human
on trying to avoid the projection, etc.
3 November
So sad today. Don’t even know why. Just feel empty. I need something. Some love some excitement. Something. I don’t know. Am I imagining it? I guess that’s my constant question- am I imagining it?
Feeling a bit defeated. Feeling a bit of a disappointee. Or a lot.
Wish I didn’t.
Why is nothing ever enough for me? Do other people feel genuinely content for long swaths of time? Do you eventually reach a point where you just feel happy to be? Are some people there already? How?
At brunch in Salt Lake City a boy gave me his number on a napkin slip. He wrote “You have a nice face” and then the number. He walked out before I could see anything more than a black beanie on top of bleach blonde hair. He could’ve been anyone.
That evening I mulled over what to do with the number, with the note. “You have a nice face” really threw me. He had known my face for no more than a half hour, the entirety of which I had been sitting, unaware of his eyes, my hair greasy in the way only drinking makes it, my under-eyes still smeared with a bit of last night’s makeup.
On top of that, I hadn’t noticed him while we were sitting. I had no idea what he looked like. I hate having no idea about anything.
Maybe because I hadn’t caught his face, maybe because I thought someone who found me attractive at my objective ugliest could possibly (maybe) really love me, maybe because I was living in Mormon hell, maybe because I was just lonely and bored-
I still don’t know exactly what it was. It doesn’t matter now- I texted him.
! Sadly ! this is not a grand love story. The relationship mimicked its impetus. He, watching; I, unaware. It lasted a little over a month.
I bring it up only because of what he declared to me once so proudly standing in front of the Hemingway section of the only good bookstore in the city.
“I get it now,” he said, he smiled, “You’re a Sad Girl.”
Immediately I bristled. “That’s incredibly reductive,” I said without really understanding what the fuck that even meant.
I only said it because earlier that week I had seen a video of Mitski decrying the sad girl thing as having been “reductive and tired, like, five, ten years ago.” Honestly, I hadn’t taken the time after watching to even halfway consider what that meant. All I knew was that I found her music to relay depth that could not be summarized as simply “sad”, I related to said music, and, even without fully understanding why, I balked at being labeled in a way that left no room for additional interpretation.
But I think I understand why now. Sad Girl is reductive. Of course I’m sad. Of course many other Women are sad. How could I not be? How could we not be?
My main issue with the Sad Girl trope is its necessary stasis. When I think of a Sad Girl, I see a static image, a woman of singular emotion presented as a mirror upon whom I can project- and it’s perfect, really, my reflection comes bouncing back to me, exactly as I imagined it, exactly as I requested it.
But that’s such an incredibly small lens through which to view a full person. There is so much more to us than our embodied pain. How could there not be?
When I started posting my writing here, I hoped people would read it. I didn’t, however, really consider what people reading it would mean for me, namely when it comes to my own relationship with my narrator, with myself.
I’ve said this before, but I’ll reiterate: before January of this year, I had told three people in the entire world about my being assaulted. Three became four, and then, in a cyclone of panic and somatization and wondering how the hell I was ever going to survive this, I decided I needed to tell as many people as I could. So I turned to the internet.
It feels incredibly odd to share so candidly after remaining silent for so long. I’ve been pretty constantly worried about being reduced to Sad Girl more universally; I’ve been racking my brain for something else to write about that has less potential to lead to my condemnation in the same way it did three Novembers ago in the only good bookstore in the city.
But the thing is- I have to write about it. I knew in February, and I know now, I have to do something with it. Both literally and figuratively, both mentally and physically, I cannot run anymore. So I’m swallowing my shame, trying to meet myself where I am.
Where I am is objectively sad, but it is also quietly hopeful, resilient, joyful in ways unexpected.
I am not a Sad Girl; I am a full person. So is every other Woman expressing her sadness, her anger, her disappointment through her art. Someday I hope to understand my more positive emotions in the same way I understand my sadness. When I do, I’ll write about them. For now, I am using what I have.
20 April
Feeling corny. It’s been hard to write because I haven’t been writing. Haven’t been practicing. When I started writing about what happened to me at 17 I was taking a step that turned into a plunge that went and went and went and went
I don’t want to be writing about my rape. Probably even less so about its aftereffects. But I want to be writing.
I can only write what I know. And I know its face. For eight years of solitude we sat. I know its face. Intimately.
Before I start writing I smoke a bowl and as I am smoking it I ask myself what is my goal here why am I doing this?
Earlier I said to be uninhibited to be free etc-
Now I am slightly stoned I shake my head no no my goal here is simple it’s obvious it is what it has always been and that is to become someone who knows what to do with it.
Sharing a head with my narrator is not always easy. I guess nothing worth doing ever is.