Things to do instead of staring in the mirror
10 better ways to feel sorry for yourself
Write a book. Or pretend that you have. Arrive in a place of doubt whether you’ve got anything worth saying. Well, does anybody? Most of everything is letters on pixels. Fantasize about meaning, which isn’t the process, of course, that’s secondary pleasure, but the acclaim, and the sweet time to soak in your triumphs, however disproportionately short to your efforts.
Don’t get too cocky; you’ll be in the clearance section one day, and not because you suck, which may be the case, but because the real democracy of the world is that eventually, unanimously, no one cares. Eternity is scarce. I once saw Dostoevsky and DeuxMoi paperbacks next to each other in the discount corner, sitting so neatly side by side you’d think one was a prequel to the other.
Love the life you’ve built without any help. Feel resentful there was no help. Be grateful you never had to ask for help. Born wise beyond your years, you’ll die responsible and jittery. Now turn to him and ask for help, grab help by the belly, drag it to your house, feast on it. People want to be needed. It’s what makes them care.
Describe things as they are or aren’t, in detail, from the moment they wreck you to the forgiveness, the dissatisfaction found in it. Love your nose, your job, and wearing heels in Paris. In that order. Do lunges. Inhale deeply. Use your soft heart to prepare for braver times. You may never feel deserving —a built-in ancestral feature from your long lineage of Eastern European Jews— but a good lip liner and a blowout, the put-togetherness of both, will delude you into readiness. They were stingy with approval, so now you do just what it takes to feel safe: red light therapy, an expired Lexapro blister for good luck, ClassPass points, excessive sex and food. See yourself as an intricate creation, Vermeer’s Lacemaker when you’re hard at work. Even if others see you as dismissive and whoring yourself out for something vague and underpaid.
Believe in everything, be defined by nothing. Get hate comments, sleep on them, tossing-torning like a rotisserie chicken in the sheets. Make an elevator pitch, call yourself ‘talent’ unironically, find an agent, sell out and blur into evaluation, your juicy existence resting on numbers and equations. Appeal to the masses or reside in the crevices of niche taste; both are pathways to hell, one is just longer. You are a marketer, you are a shark — you’ve got an eye and hunger for this. Bragging feels like having your tits out in public. It is the only way. Don’t fear.
Find your dad’s poetry from when he was young. Unsure how you should feel about the one on Hitler. His empathetic take, contrarian. Not the first jew to do that, not the last one. Wish you’d inherited this trait, his endless need to sympathize extending to everything except your attitude, but shaming your vices is just about your favorite thing. You’d have nothing to think about if you woke up with no enemies. Feel beauty on your fingertips as you wrestle with hateful words. Every parent fucks up, every child gets to use it as a write-off for their own shortcomings. This is the order of things.
Embrace being no one; there are things scarier than flatlining in the public eye, such as the inevitable timebomb of a call about one of your grandparents or catching a fold of loose skin in the gym lighting on a fine Saturday. Is that deliberately fluorescent? You’re not even thirty, time is flying by, taking with it everything you’ve claimed as yours-to-be. Get carded at the wine store, feel better, exhale. Today you are a princess, tomorrow a dragon or a gargoyle; it’s all fluid and pure.
Buy more Agent Provocateur, dip in your savings if you have to. Political unrest sure makes you want to spend. Kiss lustfully, with authority. Stare in your lover’s eyes with childlike admiration. Sleep naked. Wake up in the morning. Feel eternal. Get head and get ahead. We all want to be overloved and underquestioned. There are public affairs and states of knowing, and unfair demands emptied of significance such as Am I the best? Are you the most in love, like, ever? My girl, you’ve been in love since you were five. You didn’t need the best from anyone, just the unflinching fountain of your smothering affection. Trace your ribs. Pinch skin between your fingers. Feel what it’s like to be wasteful and vacant like an off-season beach resort.
Walk to the nearest bar that doesn’t do reservations, get an Amaretto Sour, feel washed up and adult, think about botox, Paloma Wool, an upper bleph. Your mind is an assortment of targeted ads delivered freshly to your inbox. The bartenders are always flirty when your heart is heavy and eyelids clearly too droopy to let the face exist as is. Everyone’s getting work done except for you — for unknown reasons, you’re fighting to be the very last miserable girl. Lie to your doctor, and your boss, and to yourself. Walk home and rest.
Reside in what feels wrong to logic and right to the heart. Don’t feed yourself illusions. Take many pictures but few of your face. Sink into yourself like Venice, like a reply guy that had lost all hope for getting some, like a lifelong friend that went astray and doesn’t call. Be wise and difficult. Meet deadlines. Stop posing in front of those who see you out of the shower every day. You’re not scoring extra points. You wish you were.