Why now? I have been grappling with this question for days. Why, eight days after the public murder of a black man, am I finally beginning to dismantle my own biases and racism. Why now, after 42 years, am I realizing being a ‘good person’ isn’t good enough.
Why not 82 days ago, when Breonna Taylor was killed? Or 101 days ago, when Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down. How about 235 days ago? Could I have begun 235 days ago, when Atatiana Jefferson was murdered? Or 431 days ago, Ashanti Carmon. 1428 days ago, Philando Castile. 1785, Sandra Bland. 1887, Walter Scott. 2020 days ago, Tamir Rice. 2125, Michael Brown. 3020, Trayvon Martin. 4939, Sean Bell. Why didn’t I join the fight 7790 days ago when Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times? Or 10,685 days ago after watching Rodney King get brutalized on national television. Why was I not born INTO the fight? 16,255 – Bernard Whitehurst 19,608 – Matthew Johnson 23,656 days – Emmett Till
This is my personal shame and our national reckoning. We have failed. Over and over and over again. The next time you wonder why the black community is so angry – the better question to ask is why aren’t you? We have too many days to make up for. It will never be enough. But it will be something.
So, 82 or 7,790 or 23,656 days from now, our children won’t be asking ‘Why now?’
“Go Big or Go Home.” My grandpa used to say this every time we said goodbye. At the time I thought he had made it up, and also that it was weird because we were leaving…and going home.
Later I learned and immediately hated its meaning. It felt like pressure; a measure of worth I could never live up to.
Over the years, I chose ‘home’ over and over again. Why write if it’s not a bestseller? Why build if it’s not the tallest castle?
I wore my introversion as a shield, staying in because only big things were worth doing, and I wasn’t ready for big.
And then something happened.
Everyone went home. Literally.
And suddenly all the measurements shifted. The boardroom was replaced by the living room. The recording booth by the headphone mic. And my shield became my cape.
In the last nine weeks, I have felt a creative freedom that was lost on my road to adulthood. I put aside my own self-criticisms and judgments, my own measuring stick. I am no longer reaching for big, I am reaching for joy.
I am home and going small. If I can impact even one life – my own – that is success enough.
I’m trying to remember the last normal day. What was the weather like? What did I do? I’m trying to remember the last normal hour, if I was in the park or scrolling through Instagram, or asleep.
I am trying to remember the last person I touched – I know I gave my mom a hug on the 17th of February. Was that the last time? Did I shake hands with anyone at work? Brush against fingertips while taking a bag from a store teller? Maybe. Maybe not. But I remember my last hug was the 17th of February.
I’m trying to remember not feeling afraid. The last moment I was certain and clear and unencumbered.
Some trauma hits you like a fireball – scorching your lifeline with an indelible mark. The before and the after – so deep even your DNA knows. But others creep in slowly, like a suggestion of a whisper. Like the fog coming in on little cat feet. And then it’s just always been there, and you can’t remember the last moment when you were free. You can’t remember the last moment when you were the before.
I’m trying to remember my future. What will the weather be like? What will I do? What will we do?
Acacia tree, Mara North Conservancy, February 2020
How do we keep living when everything is on pause? What do we strive for? What do we look forward to? I am fearful of this moment – these days, weeks and months. But I am crippled by the idea of ‘after’ – if there is one – what will it be, how will it look and smell and taste. What this trauma of lost time and money and live and love and connection will do to us.
And what remnants will this bubble of distrust leave when allowed to pop. I am fully aware that keeping distance is our only option – but I am similarly aware of the weariness that accompanies. There is no connection from six feet away. No smiles or eye contact. Just fear and suspicion. My introversion is largely a symptom of my spongy exterior – a heart that absorbs so readily the pain and fear and anger and frustration around it. The neighborly nods and hellos that equalized and calmed me have been replaced by panicked shifts and sudden course corrects. Every day I walk my dog to the feeling of someone keeping pace but keeping distance. People have turned into stalkers – always staying six feet behind you. When you stop, they stop. When you go, they go. They step into empty streets and navigate around corners. We are no longer negotiating space together, we are fighting for our own sterile piece of it. And who’s to say that will end? Will this state of anxiety embed in us a general, long-lasting distrust? The safest place in home, the safest place is distance, the safest place is alone, averted, closed off.. I am not so much afraid of dying of this disease as I am living with it. The toll isn’t just on the dead.
This is a lonely catastrophe. From one in a city of millions to millions in a city of one. When the very thing that unites us is what separates us. Living in 600 SQ feet of isolation. Six feet of solitude. Millions of cities of one standing, root-bound by fear. This is a catastrophic loneliness, though nobody is alone.
There are the stories we tell about the important moments of our lives. Stories we’ve refined in the retelling until they feel more like parables.
That’s like the story of us. How I met you exactly four years ago; my third meeting of the day that unlikely ended up as my first. The instant connection, a fated union.
But the truth is a little messier, and far more exciting.
That I had limited time to decide if I wanted to adopt you and could only think of one question to ask: will he fit in a bag?
That, as I walked you from the adoption event to Petco I kept saying to myself, “what have I gotten myself into?” That I was entirely unsure of you, and you me, looking at me with judgmental eyes and what I perceived to be a frown.
That I spent days searching online to see if you had been listed as missing from a home on Long Island, where you were found. Not because I wanted to lose you but because you seemed sad and I wondered if you missed your “real” family.
That I was afraid I might lose my job when your six week barking embargo ended with an epic freakout in my bosses office.
Or when you decided to diarrhea in the middle of a meeting and I decided to catch it with my hands.
That I found it easier to sleep with your warm tail brushing against my face.
And that I realized slowly and then all at once that I was your real family. And you were mine.
Calling us fated seems too easy, too unencumbered. We were a choice. And every day I will choose you again. And again.
To my funny, willful, mysterious, rambunctious Valentine mutt. Thank you for choosing me that day.
When I was young, I knew I was going to be a veterinarian when I grew up. I loved animals so, no brainer, right? I was so excited when I actually got a job at a local vet’s office – cleaning kennels, feeding the animals and helping with odd jobs.
One of those odd jobs ended up being cutting the heads off of cats that had died of suspected rabies. Since rabies lives in the brain, the head was shipped off for testing. I quit that job and my dream of being a vet.
Now, almost 30 years later, I am channeling my love for animals in a different way – as volunteer, foster and president of the board for a local dog rescue. It’s amazingly rewarding work and I will dedicate another blog post to share more about it.
But for now, I just want to share this. When we’re having trouble getting attention for a specific dog, we like to create social stories to help drum up excitement. I’ve taken on the role of creating some of these stories. The most recent one, for an amazing soda pop gal named Sierra Mist might be, not just my best story, but the greatest single piece of work I’ve ever created.
I hope I haven’t oversold it.
Turn on your sound, dudes.
Adopt Sierra Mist. And also hire me to make silly videos for your next party.
When FRIENDS first premiered, I had just started my junior year of high school. I was busy pining over my very gay best friend, performing in the local youth theater, and writing angsty prose in my journal. Thursdays at 8pm I was tuned into My So-Called Life and was entirely uninterested in six trendy twenty-somethings living a dream reality in NYC.
I don’t actually remember when I first started watching; I can’t even remember if I watched any episodes when they aired. But, I do remember catching reruns on TBS and experiencing a gentle sensation, like warm soup in my belly. I remember collecting each season on DVD and enjoying all the extra scenes and bloopers like one experiences a new meal at their favorite neighborhood restaurant.
As streaming started taking over, the idea of getting off the couch to swap DVDs went from an inconvenience to intolerable to offensive. My DVD collection – all 10 seasons of FRIENDS, included – sat on my shelves as a memorial.
And then – January, 2015. I was six years deep in a job I wasn’t even sure I liked. I was signing up for, and not attending, different classes at Brooklyn Brainery and Gotham Writer’s Workshop. And I was looking for a new therapist.
I have been in therapy on and off since I was 12. The first time I went was after I saw Tales from the Crypt: The Movie and became convinced a mummy was going to come into my bedroom and pull my brains out through my nose. I could hear the coat hangers rattling in the closet outside my bedroom door. The second time came after listening to the Muppet Show soundtrack, and getting the Kermit the Frog classic, Lydia the Tattooed Lady, stuck in my head. Not in the way that songs normally float in your brain. This was non-stop, repetitive torture that kept me awake at night, praying a mummy would come and end my misery.
Then there was ‘high school’ therapy (see above re: gay best friend and angsty poetry), ‘college’ therapy (my first foray into medication), ‘making bad decisions’ therapy (more medication, a misdiagnosis of bi-polar), and ‘trying to get back on track’ therapy (a relationship that lasted 3 sessions until I caught a glimpse of his computer reflected in the window, and saw he was perusing cars on Craigslist).
Now I was looking for ‘I think I need help’ therapy. I was flailing – unmedicated and depressed. I had been in New York for 13 years, and I wasn’t living the life I had envisioned for myself. I had abandoned all my hobbies – concert tickets sat unused in my desk drawer, travel plans abandoned in mid-stream. I had few friends and no meaningful relationships. While searching for a doctor to help, I also found another source of comfort – streaming the unreality of six friends who had many hobbies, many plans, and endless meaningful relationships.
FRIENDS became the thing I came home to every night. It was a bright and familiar refrain, where even the most troubling of concerns (someone stole your credit card!!) is resolved with ease and comedic relief (you’re now friends with the thief and your credit score is entirely unaffected!)
Netflix doesn’t actually show you your view count – but I would guess I’ve watched the entire series at least 50 times since its streaming debut (one full viewing every six weeks). By watch, I don’t actually mean pay attention to. FRIENDS is on when I’m cleaning, when I’m cooking, when I’m taking a nap, when I’m writing blog posts. In fact, it’s on right now [Season 10, Episode 9]. It’s basically like an agoraphobic roommate that doesn’t make a mess and lets me walk around naked.
FRIENDS is the white noise of my apartment. If you spend any time watching Frank’s instagram stories (full name: Frank Jr Jr – a FRIENDS reference) you’ll hear FRIENDS in the background of 87% of them.
Frank Jr Jr dressed as Spudnik aka Space Doody, Halloween 2019
Then, eighteen months ago, I woke up in Kenya’s Maasai Mara, breathed in the cool, morning air, and felt nothing. I would be turning 40 in a day and about to face the hardest year of my life.
I went through stretches of being completely hollowed out and moments of feeling absolutely everything. I encountered a new level of anxiety that left me agoraphobic, paranoid, and exhausted.
Every day became a battle. A battle to get up, take care of myself, take care of the animals. Even walking Frank became fraught with anxiety – we would walk through a plaza flanked by large buildings on either side and I imagined snipers on the roof picking people off. I imagined a crazed driver plowing his van into us. Eventually, I changed our route and shortened our outings. But I battled. Every day. My world became very small – bite sized pieces of life that I could manage. Determined to take another bite.
After any notable suicide, there are lots of social media murmurings about ‘asking for help’ and ‘checking in on your friends’. But here’s what I learned during this time. It’s impossible to ask for help when you can’t even notion what it is you need. Hopelessness doesn’t seek out help. It seeks out silence.
Every week in therapy my doctor would ask me if I had suicidal thoughts. And my answer was always no, which was true. But he didn’t ask me if I ever thought about just not waking up in the morning, or getting a rapid and fatal disease. Not being suicidal doesn’t mean you want to live.
But, watching Chandler and Monica fall in love, laughing at Phoebe’s bad taste in men, imagining hanging out with my own coffee at Central Perk, was a salve and an oasis from the darkness. The characters on the screen didn’t look at my pained face and ask me what was wrong. They didn’t question my tears or my silence. They just lived and laughed, worked through their challenges and always ended up okay. I knew them people so well, their pasts and presents (and even futures) that anxiety was unnecessary. The familiarity saved me. My brain was so overloaded, but FRIENDS was a pause button. Twenty-two minutes of predictability.
Therapy is how I fought the beast, and FRIENDS is how I let the beast sleep.
Combined with new medication, a compassionate family, and the passage of time, I eventually found my way through the worst.
Next year, FRIENDS is leaving Netflix. It will find a new home on HBO Max, but I’m thinking it might be time to let these six pals move away. At least for now – when the beast seems to be hibernating and the world becomes more expansive. But, it’s comforting to know that they’ll be there if I need them.
note: portions of this were originally written in May, 2019
For years, I was living in what could rightly be described as a Depressive’s Paradise. I had a beautiful garden level apartment that allowed in exactly two minutes of direct sunlight in the height of summer. With control over my heat (a luxury in the city) I was able to keep the temperature at a balmy 65, requiring the constant layering of mismatched pajamas. My two feline roommates enabled, or even encouraged, full day sleeping marathons. And I thought I was doing fine. I was “enjoying” my dark, cold cave.
But my shrink thought maybe there was more out there for me. He suggested I get a dog. So I did.
Did you know that dogs wake up really f*cking early? They wake up at the same time every day, look at you and say, HEY HEY! It’s MORNING. LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!
Did you know that dogs don’t care if it’s cold outside? Or if it’s raining, or if it’s humid, or if there’s something really important happening on TV? They look at you and say, HEY HEY! It’s WALKING TIME. LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!
The first major revelation I had after getting Frank Jr Jr is how many people are awake and out in the world before 8am. This sounds like a joke, but it’s not. I remember going to the park that first Saturday, around 7:30, and thinking, ‘My god! There is an entire world of things that I didn’t even know existed.’ This world that’s comprised of dog owners and baby owners and often both, all walking their dogs and babies in the park. Drinking coffee they made at home. Talking to their partners or friends who also have dogs and babies and coffee. And this happens every day. Every. Single. Day. While I was asleep underneath piles of orange cat, these people were throwing Chuck-Its and Frisbees and talking to each other.
Did you know that dogs don’t care if you don’t want to talk to anyone? They will run up to any random person and look at them and try and steal their ball, or successfully steal their ball, so you have to go over and say, ‘Hey, sorry about that’ and then you’re talking to a person when you specifically made up your mind that you did not want to talk to people today.
The sense of pride I feel when someone tells me how cute Frank is, frankly, absurd. But still, I beam with the light of 1,000 suns. Yes, he is cute. He is adorable. He pooped in the office, right in front of my boss this morning, but still he is unbelievably cute.
We moved. We moved to an apartment six stories up, with windows that frame the sunrise (HEY HEY! Look! SUN’S UP! LET’S GOOOOOOOOO!). I bought a coffee maker – one that drips the coffee directly into my stainless to-go cup. We live in a world of the AM. With dogs, and babies and made-at-home coffee.
I am now living in Frank’s Paradise – and I’ve gotta say, it’s pretty awesome here.
note: I wrote this in March of 2017, in celebration of Frank’s adoptaversary. Since this was written, we have swapped apartments and parks but the rest remains the same.
As I was unpacking from my move earlier this year, I looked around at all of my belongings and had a sense of disappointment. I had become increasingly consumed with sustainable lifestyle content – scrolling through my Instagram feed, looking at beautiful handwoven baskets holding bamboo and glass toiletries – and frowned at my plastic bin smeared with toothpaste and filled with the 372 small containers of floss that my dentist gives me each time I visit. I was clearly not living my best life – or the planet’s best life.
My tenth move in 17 years, I decided that this was going to be the home I turned into my vision board. The home of a thoughtful, plant loving reader who lights fine candles, sleeps in eco-friendly linen, and owns a glass jarred spice rack – good for the planet and as delectible to the eyes as it to the stomach.
I measured and researched. I looked for brands made with sustainable materials and ethical practices. I took inventory. And I shopped.
When my new items arrived, I realized the first flaw in my plan.
this is embarrassing.
At least one entire tree had given its life to deliver my new sustainable life. Some of these boxes had additional, smaller boxes inside! Plus air-filled plastic, styrofoam corners, and the undetectable but omnipresent scent of underpaid and exploited Amazon workers.
Then, almost immediately, i uncovered the second flaw in my plan.
As I dumped my spices from their plastic containers into the new vessels, and poured my oats into a beautiful mason jar, I watched this pile of trash building in the corner. All of the containers and plastic bins that did not fit into my eco-conscious aesthetic, ready to be tossed.
I suddenly realized that my dogged pursuit to live ethically was really just an irresponsible shortcut to living beautifully.
I (mostly) blame instagram. A place where a fantasy is set dressed to look like real life. A place where we can turn ourselves into real-world SIMs, and design our homes, tables, and pets to be perfect figurines.
I started to reconsider. I returned, gifted or donated what I could. I cleaned the toothpaste off my plastic bin, offered my new neighbor some floss, and started thinking about what a sustainable life really looked like. And I’ll tell you what – it’s not pretty.
instagram vs real life
I realized that if I really cared about sustainability, I needed to actually sustain the life of things I already owned – for as long as possible. This meant abandoning the idea of a perfectly edited bathroom shelf, and embracing the chaos of reusing all the random crap that needed a second life.
Soup can? You’re a planter! Cereal Box? You’re a tool box now! Ice cream container? Hang on to these leftovers for me, k?
It’s far from a perfect system, and I’m far from perfect in it. Whenever I fill up my (plastic) tupperware with some red sauce I pray that maybe this time, the sauce will stain the sides enough so I will have no choice but to get rid of it. I still marvel at the perfectly appointed cabinets of the instagram elite.
But I also realized something else. By embracing this messy hodgepodge of reuse, I haven’t abandoned my search for beauty, I’ve simply expanded it. Because I do believe that our truest beauty is in nature. It’s out in our expansive world, in our lands and seas and secret corners.
Beauty is a parade of elephants, dusting themselves in the morning sun. It’s a lion yawning after his nap and a leopard impatiently waiting for his mother to return from a hunt. Beauty is the smile of a child’s face as she spies her first sea turtle, and it’s the dew that wets Frank’s paws every morning in the park.
In 2014, I booked a safari to Tanzania through Yellow Zebra Safaris and I’ve gone back to explore different African countries almost every year since. It was during these travels, beyond Tanzania to Botswana, and Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, that I began to understand a profound truth. The spaces we create around us – the walls and structure and comfort – they keep us safe, but they also keep us isolated. They allow us to shut out the larger world and give us the false notion of importance. The world is vast and we are so very small. It is our responsibility to exist in that smallness and not allow our personal kingdoms to damage and erode our shared planet.
But, to me, that’s a small price to pay for a world that looks like this:
Note: this blog post was written as entry to a competition being held by Yellow Zebra Safaris and Asilia Africa. James & YZ Safaris has been my trusted resource for five years and I wouldn’t consider traveling to Africa without having them plan my trip.
thoroughly modern molly 