The rocks were painted red like bricks, but there was nothing artificial about the miles and miles of peaks and valleys and pure canyon. I could barely see the trees that sprinkled the earth below, but I could see a hazy green. Someone next to me — who’d smartly brought binoculars — said they could see horses and a cabin. But to me, I saw nothing.
In retrospect, I was barely above the canyon. I wasn’t up in space, looking at the planet from a ship and reflecting on how everything I’d known is dust. Yet I did reflect. And it’s not only that I am dust, but nothing I can do can really matter.
I promise this isn’t a doomsday post.
It’s sort of like how you can have two takes on unemployment: on one side, you’re unemployed and you have no idea what’s next. On the other side, there’s an immense amount of freedom that has just been placed before you.
I should rephrase my previous statement by saying that nothing I can do matters to everyone. Not even the most powerful, most influential, most arrogant billionaire in the world could really do something that harms or benefits or matters to every single person. Even Taylor Swift doesn’t exist to certain people.
Today I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for the second time, which is also what got me on this spin of thoughts.I’d read it in sophomore year of high school, which was the only book that stuck with me besides Gatsby — I love the classics, what can I say. But I’m not an adolescent boy, so there was nothing about Caulfield that really called to me. I wasn’t chasing anything like he was — women, freedom, violence, etc. Instead, it was the fact that I was reading about him: his internal monologue, raw and unfiltered. And in him, the way his dialogue ran through the pages, I saw myself.
It’s controversial to see yourself (a now twenty-two-year-old woman) in a fictional teenage boy. But there was something about him that made me realize that I think and feel the same way. My brain runs selfishly, and I put myself first. If you were to suck out the thoughts from my brain and tap them onto a piece of paper, the things that would be apparent after the dust settled would be 99% about me.
And honestly, forgive me if it’s selfish, that’s the way it should be.
It’s my world, and you just live in it.
It’s your world, and I just live in it.
Or, even better, it’s your world and I’m just a writer you read words from on a Monday and then forget about.
What I mean is that your life is your own. You and I exist here at the same time, but we don’t have the same experiences. But if a third person went up to space and looked down on the Earth, they wouldn’t even see us. Hell, they wouldn’t even be able to tell where we were on the planet, even if you owned the biggest house and I owned the biggest boat. From up there, you can only see the sea and the earth, like how, above the Grand Canyon, you only see the red and purple rocks, and how far down they go.
Nothing you do matters to everyone. But everything you do matters to you. Which is why living as close to my authentic self is important to me. If I’m not making choices that make me feel close to my soul, then who am I making choices for?
You’re nothing but a speck of sand. An ant on an anthill. A fictional character in a book nobody cares to read anymore. You’re a tree at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And although that seems harsh, it doesn’t demean the importance of your soul. You are supposed to be here, but you are supposed to be just how you choose. Your soul is only as important as how you make it. Saying you are small in a big world only takes the pressure off.
And when there is less pressure, that is when I can truly breathe.
“I think it’s funny that you think your mind will grow as you do, but it doesn’t. I’m chronically seventeen. And I still feel as I did when I first started writing in journals just after I turned eleven.
The thing is that I don’t think it’s all bad that I feel mostly the same. It means that, at my core, I really haven’t changed much. But it’s still sad that I dislike myself like I did at 11 and that I still feel insecure about how other people think about me even though I really shouldn’t care. Most of the time I don’t show it because I’m really good at saying no. Apparently it’s a quality of mine that people wish they had. Like I take a mental health day if I need it, or I don’t go socialize if I’m not feeling it. And I do like that about myself even though I was made fun of for being an introvert. I’ve found that a lot of my insecurities have changed and, while I have new ones, the other ones don’t bother me so much anymore. I like that I’m an artist, that I know when to take a break, and that I wear what I’m comfortable in. I’ve learned to like my hips and my teeth and my eyes and my lips. Like even at one point in first or second grade I thought people would think I’m prettier if I held my mouth smaller. It just shows how insignificant everything small is. Life isn’t just about how you look.”
I’m really good at buying plants and planting them and watching them for a little while, but come the colder months, I tend to pay less attention.
The plants, if pertaining to my life, are the friends I collect. I’m great at finding them, maintaining them for a little while, but when I find that, when I’m mentally in a “cold weather” month (or week or day), it’s difficult for me to check in and make sure the plants are still doing alright.
See, if it happened for one singular season, then it’s whatever. But I’ve had a few of my plants from my garden tell me they wish I paid more attention to them. And while they’re in the right, that maintaining consistent effort helps them to grow, am I also in the right for not trying to tend to my garden when it’s wintertime?
What’s a Bad Friend?
It was the fourth time a friend had come to me saying she wished I put more effort into our friendship that I realized, perhaps, I could be a bad friend. If my friends didn’t feel I cared about them, then was I really their friend at all?
But technically, I wasn’t a bad friend—not entirely. I’m not abusive, not narcissistic, not only using them for leverage or money or to provide free therapy. Now that being said, I’m not saying I don’t have the flaws that some bad friends have. I’m a notorious flake. I know this. I disappear when I have a mental health flare, and I have horrible communication skills. I’m not great at balancing my feelings versus the feelings of others, so there’s a time when I pour into their cup and everyone else in my life so much that there’s nothing left in mine, leaving me drained and in need of rest.
So I step back for a moment without realizing it. I need alone time. Now that looks different for everybody: for me, that looks like running errands, going to work, reading a book, or running all by myself. For my sister, that’s knitting under a tree in the backyard. For my boyfriend, it’s camping deep in the woods for days.
Alone time is not only normal, it’s a necessity. Some people do need it, though, more than others, and if you’re on the lesser scale, I’m sure it’s hard to understand. But that doesn’t make me a bad friend.
My Priorities, Your Priorities
I’m not one to text 24/7. Besides Spotify and social media (that’s just me posting and beating the algorithm to see if I can make some quick cash), I avoid using my phone as much as possible. I’m also someone who kind of does their own thing on most days. And even if I post, nobody really knows all that’s going on. I know we all know the concept that social media is fake, but then when we apply it to real people in our lives, we can sometimes forget.
So I don’t text. But I also never forget a birthday. I may not make plans, but I’ll send gifts in the mail for no reason. I won’t be attached at the hip, but I’ll always be there when you need me.
And maybe that’s not the friend for you. I’m an air plant type of friend. I don’t need water to keep me alive, or in friendship terms, I don’t need constant attention for the friendship to be maintained. But some people are more like sunflowers, who need a fair amount of sunlight to function. And then there’s a parlor palm, which doesn’t need a lot of sunlight and will dry up if it gets the same amount as a sunflower.
Sometimes it may be hard to coexist with each other.
A New Age
Despite the fact that we think we know everything at 18, then nothing at 22, we’re all learning at different rates, with unique experiences and individual anxieties. The one thing we should all have, however, is empathy. Empathy for the fact that friends won’t be carbon copies of yourself, and while friendships are relationships, they are usually based upon proximity as opposed to similarity, meaning your friends will be different from you.
And with age comes the ability to practice agency. If it’s not working for you, then don’t entertain it. But perhaps open communication would be effective.
Because nobody likes finding out from a TikTok repost that you’ve been purposely not texting as a way to test if they’ll text first. What a juvenile practice that is, while also holding the expectation of an adult friendship.
it’s interesting what happens when you’re no longer told what to believe and realize you can choose to believe what you wish.
I’ve recently been thinking about why I believe what I believe.
In the winter of my junior year of college, I took a linguistics anthropology class. It was 100% to fulfill a credit, but I ended up loving the class. Not only was it about language, but also about how humans connect with one another.
To open the class, the professor asked us to write down six things that we believe to be true. After, we would share our top three that hadn’t yet been mentioned — proving that the belief system, while being one of the things that unites us, is also highly individual.
And for kicks and the purpose of highly educational text, here were my six truths:
1. Karma.
What you give is what you get. You give good, you get good. You give bad, you get bad. It’s a simple concept — which I feel is the secret to the truths of life and the point of why we’re here. The meaning of life isn’t complicated; it’s simple, just as karma is.
Now, if you put out bad energy by accident, that’s different. That’s a learning opportunity. But putting out bad on purpose (cough, cough, some people in politics), then karma will come back. I swear it.
2. Both God and the Universe exist as separate powers — it’s neither one nor the other.
This one is tricky. I grew up Mormon, a rather new religion with structure, specific teachings, a specific God, and, of course, Heaven and Hell. But as I grew, I didn’t believe in some of those concepts so much. There was much more power in Mother Nature than Joseph Smith ever had. The things of the earth belong to the universe.
My concept of God came next, and that being is the umbrella over everything else. If Mother Nature and the Universe are the now, God is the past. My truth is that there is more than just our solar system, so something had to have created all of that before our Universe existed.
3. Humanity has been ruined by the implemented biased government systems.
Humans are humans. We’re all here for the first time (unless you believe in reincarnation), just trying to make it. Some are richer than others, though. Some are treated better because of their skin tone. Some are treated worse because of where they’re from. Society, right as it began, created a bias. The governments only made it worse.
There’s a hierarchy in every society. This much is obviously true. But you add a government that tries to make the majority happy, but it’s never the case. And suddenly, humans are pitted against one another like we don’t all bleed the same blood. Sides are taken based on what you believe about people.
If you’re reading this and you’re up to date on American politics, you can see this bright as day. It’s Democrats vs Republicans. More recently, morality vs no morals. Blue vs Red. Either way, it is human against human. All are just trying to survive. In a place where we used to sing and dance and tell stories and make art, we’ve created a war. But you can’t win a war when it’s you vs you.
4. Dreams unlock the subconscious.
Say what you want about your ability to suppress emotions until they cease to exist, but I swear they will always bubble up. This comes from someone who chronically overuses the words I’m fine and acts as though things that bother them don’t bother them anymore than the shower faucet running cold for the first fifteen seconds of the water being turned on.
I’m not in on the philosophy of the mind. I smoked far too little weed and didn’t take a lick of hard drugs in college, so I believe that part of my mind is not unlocked. But I know enough to understand that the dreamscape is a completely separate universe from our own reality — a separate universe in the sense that our reality created it. Your brain can’t just create a face, so every face you’ve seen in a dream has already existed. But this mind wanders, unlike reality. In reality, what is happening right now and in the past is and has happened.
But the dreamscape? The dreamscape is all of that plus more. In the dreamscape, the mind can problem-solve. And what better problems to solve than the ones buried so far down that the mind needed to be completely exhausted of your current reality to find them. It makes you face things in your sleep that you refuse to face in your reality.
5. Religion is flawed because people are flawed.
While I believe in the concept of God, I cannot believe in religion. I believe it stemmed from the fear of not knowing — not knowing where we came from or where we’re going. As humans, we love to know things — we’re curious by nature — but the not knowing of the beginning and the end kills us.
So for years and years and years we’ve workshopped what could happen and what could’ve been. For example, in the Mormon church, I was taught that I chose to come to Earth and I chose my parents. And after you die, you have to be baptized to get to the highest heavenly kingdom. There are options, though — think of it as Gold, Silver, and Bronze. Bronze is Hell.
Hell was created because we got bored. We created stakes, created a black and white, good vs. evil type of protocol.Those who lived their lives believing in God live well after death, but those who don’t burn with Satan. But these good vs.evil lists vary between religions. Some might go to Hell if they drink coffee, while others will join them if they have premarital sex. Others may only burn if they kill someone. Confusing, right?
Humans aren’t perfect. That’s a fact. And because humans aren’t perfect and each carries their own set of beliefs and experiences, one who creates a religion creates a flawed one, my fault. There is no perfect religion.
And I must say, this always led me to question why people (me included, for a bit at least), get so obsessed with trying to find the “perfect” religion.
6. Sixth senses.
Call it manifesting, call it your dreamscape, call it a sixth sense. Either way, I feel as though I and many others have a sort of predictive power about us. I’ve predicted jury duty for three different people. My friend Rosie has a sixth sense about numbers. And I’ve had a few times where I’ve written stories based loosely on the people in my life, and it’s come true.
Now I don’t know what causes these senses. I’ve wrestled with the idea that perhaps we saw a preview of our entire life before we were even born, and we get some sort of weird deja vu before the event takes place, hence why I returned to my belief in the concept of God. But wherever it comes from, whatever it’s caused by, it’s no fluke. You’ve got five senses…and then a special sixth sense for good luck.
Anyway. I grew up believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and Zeus. Now I’m here.
I prompt you with this: what are six things that you believe to be true?
in a world of Conrads vs. Jeremiahs, I feel there’s an obvious answer.
There’s still three episodes left of S3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty (thanks Ms. Han for the cliffhanger) but I assure you that I’m hopeful Belly will choose the correct Fisher brother.
if sexuality was really a choice, I wouldn’t keep choosing men after the guys I’ve dated.
It was a rule in my childhood home that I could start dating once I turned sixteen. While I didn’t go on real “dates” until college (thank you, COVID lockdown), I had my fair share of situationships as well as the supply of horror stories from my friends to tide me over before I dated men I actually liked.
And while I’m now dating a stellar specimen of this particular genre, the ones I dated before were rather…well, I’ll let you decide. I’ve pulled together a comprehensive guide of the types of men you might come across while trying to find your person.
1. Mister Boy-Man
To preface, if you’re over 18, hopefully you’re not dating a boy under 18.
Anyway, Mr. Boy-Man is the guy you liked when you were younger. You thought you loved him. You’d sneak glances in the hallway, and he’d add you on Snapchat, and when he saved your snap in the chat, you believed that was basically a proposal.
Eventually, he’d do something stupid, or you’d get jealous, and your heart would be broken. The first love, and the first death of love. You’d listen to Halsey like the bad b***h you were, but your eyes would still wander to search for him. It’s all very juvenile in hindsight, but you were young. And he was young, too.
Mr. Boy-Man never knows what’s going on, and he’s grappling with raging hormones that, unfortunately, rule over his critical thinking skills until around 23.
2. Mister Long-Lost Lover
Mr. Long-Lost Lover is the guy that you periodically have a crush on.
Maybe you knew him when you were young, and he shows up out of nowhere, periodically, as if reminding you he exists. He’s simply a comfortable idea, but an idea that you think about often. He’s a fantasy, no more real than a fictional character in a book you reread.
It’ll never be anything, but you often think about what could’ve been. Especially when it’s midnight and he appears on Tinder after you haven’t seen him in years. Suddenly, he’s a man now.
And as quickly as he reappears, he’s gone again, fading into the background of your life and into the foreground of his own.
3. Mister Bad Idea
Mr. Bad Idea is the guy you told your friends you wouldn’t see again…except you totally did.
Second chances, right? Except it’s more like the fourth or fifth chance with the same exact outcome. He’s low commitment, usually a guy who’s like working on himself, or isn’t into labels. This is the guy who’s wasting your time, but you hold onto hope that maybe if you give him one more chance, he’ll call you his girlfriend.
If your friends groan and shake your shoulders every time you mention him, take it as a sign that he may fall into the category of Mr. Bad Idea.
4. Mister In Your Face
Mr. In Your Face is the love bomber. He’s the guy who’s obsessive right off the bat and will do anything to please you. And it’s nice, at first.
He takes you out to dinner on your one-month anniversary. He buys you jewelry. He writes you long love notes. He starts talking about marriage at month three. He has you meet his family at month four. And like, it’s great.
Except the guy is like gum on a shoe. Annoying, inconvenient, and lowkey stresses you out because it’s a fat wad of bubblegum rubber stuck to the sole of a red bottom heel.
It’s almost like he switched up overnight. He starts saying things like I’ll die without you or you’re the reason I wake up. You don’t know if he’s doing this because he wants to sleep with you or because he’s genuinely lacking brain cells, but it’s pissing you off. Personal space? Never heard of her.
As it turns out, if his existence irritates you, you’re probably not dating the right guy. And if it’s a Mr. In Your Face, you’ll look back and realize that you only dated for a short while, but he made it seem like you’d dated for years.
5. Mister Mirror
Mr. Mirror is you. But it’s not you. He’s you if you were looking in a mirror, but he looked totally different. But when you’re playing two truths and a lie, they kind of match up.
See, this guy is the one who makes you wonder if you’re secretly related. The trauma is the same, you think the same, and you share traits like stubbornness, fitness, or the favoring of cats. He’s your twin flame.
But twin flames create huge a** fires. You and Mr. Mirror are too similar, and you start to butt heads. Eventually, you burned out, and it was chaos.
6. Mister Lore
Mr. Lore is someone who looks normal, is average height, studies law, has a cat, takes the train to work, and loves Marvel films. But he was also a drug addict. Fentanyl. For like, years.
And he brought it up randomly in conversation like he simply asked you to pass a napkin. Your mouth is gaping open, and he’s chewing on a bite of burrito while his head is tilted like he’s wondering why you’re looking at him like that.
But as it turns out, that’s the most interesting thing about him. His lore drop becomes his personality, and it was the only thing that made the date somewhat worth it. You bought a nice outfit, arrived early, and all you got was an awkward side hug and a cool story for later.
7. Mister After Ten
Mr. After Ten is just as he sounds. He only exists in the time frame between when you’re going to bed and when you’re asleep. When the sun comes up, he’s gone.
This guy is the rando you added on Snapchat from a dating app. There was nothing promising about him besides the factthat he’s hot and sends mirror pics. His resume wasn’t even super impressive — he’s limited to phrases such as u up? and your so hot (specifically without the correct spelling of you’re). He likes to talk about dates but never makes real plans, and he has no real interest in you besides where you live (if it’s within driving distance for a quickie) and what you do for a living (he actually doesn’t care, but he already asked if u up).
His hours are 10 pm-2 am, and he clocks in every night, right on time. Hey, at least he’s consistent.
8. Mister America
Mr. America is that guy you met on Tinder who happened to be on a military base in your area.
He also probably voted red.
He’s actually the guy whom you decided was the chosen one to talk to when bored, but you decided very early on that you’d never date him. Or he’s just the one you sleep with. Or he’s the one you sleep with, then decide to date, and then marry, because for some reason the military and marriage coexist like peanut butter and jelly.
But for most, Mr. America is not the type that you’d seriously date. He was just fun to argue with when you felt like arguing about politics, basic empathy, and morals. And sometimes the news comes on and the stock market is plummeting and groceries are expensive as f**k and you think about him and mentally flip him off.
9. Mister Buddy Ol’ Pal
Mr. Buddy Ol’ Pal is a BookTok trope. He’s your “guy friend” that you have “absolutely no feelings for” until it’s late at night in autumn and you feel like you need to talk to him about something.
Since you’re friends, it’s convenient. He’s seen your worst and your best and remains your friend. You’ve already got the inside jokes and hangouts and trauma bonding that only develop through years of dating. So one day you smell his cologne and your body sort of convulses and your heart rate starts racing and you think you’re dying. But it’s not death. It’s a crush.
But there’s a 50/50 chance it will be the death of the friendship. Because either you date and you get married, or you date and break up. If it’s the latter, you’ve ensured that there will always be that moment in time where you held hands and woke up next to him in his boy bedroom under his boy sheets. And sometimes you look at him and remember that and laugh about the fact that you know how your friend’s lips taste.
Or you break up and you never speak to him again and lose a lover and a friend.
Risky as hell.
10. Mister Right
And then there’s Mr. Right.
He appears like a fairy godmother ready to bippity boppity boo your life. He’s a shooting star in a night sky when you were only staring at the stars to search for constellations. He’s a penny on the street in March when the ground is coated in slush.
You didn’t expect him to be Mr. Right because you’d been so focused on all the Mr. Wrongs that you started to give up on love. And once you gave it up cold-turkey and your body adjusted, it didn’t bother you so much anymore. You didn’t have that itch, that craving, to star in your own version of a Hallmark Christmas movie. You were just fine doing your thing and doing it solo with a little fun here and there. But mostly, it was all about you.
But then you and Mr. Right met. And you talked for hours about nothing and everything. Your breathing slowed, and you followed him into the darkness of a forest, trusting him to be your guide. He is comfortable. He isn’t wild. Mr. Right isn’t about wild passion. Mr. Right is just…right. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.
And it might take a few tries (or more than a few) to find him. But Mr. Right is out there.
That is, of course, if you’re looking for a Mr. Right. Maybe you aren’t, and that’s fine. While this post is about men, it doesn’t mean that you need one. It doesn’t have to be that serious.
This is your life, after all. And everything you do is for the plot of your story. Don’t feel bad about writing a fun or dramatic episode. Just try to make sure that the episode’s love interest won’t murder you on a first date.
I think there’s still hope for the future of storytelling because the modern era has produced these brilliant artists who would KO AI in a second flat.
Art will never die. It’s threatened, sure, but as long as there are a few people who can understand the human world in a way AI can’t, I expect we’ll be alright.
I really thought I’d have my career set up by now.
Career is a big word. An all-encompassing word that’s technically supposed to include a lengthy amount of time in which someone spent in a singular field (and received a salary, not hourly). So really, it’s not a bad thing that I’m 22 years old and don’t have my career set up. At least that’s what I tell myself, or else I will spiral.
Primarily, I believed that I had done everything I was supposed to in order to secure a career immediately after graduation. I went to college. I wrote so many words and developed migraines from staring at my computer for so long. I volunteered as a writing mentor. I graduated with a BFA in writing from a well-known and highly acclaimed art school. And, of course, I had a few odd side quests here and there where I painted sails or published poetry for digital magazines.
Except I keep getting rejected from publishing houses. I don’t get emails back from online magazines. I can’t even get internships because they’re exclusively tailored for college students and college credit.
I can’t help thinking about what I did wrong. Or it wasn’t even what I did wrong, it’s what I didn’t do enough of.
Like maybe I should’ve done two other internships during my junior and senior years. But then I would’ve been juggling portfolio class with an internship, or personal life things that exploded during my junior year. Or maybe I should’ve stared a little longer at my laptop and pretended I loved grant writing instead of enjoying my college time with friends (or taken that extra nap). Because whatever I had done, there was always room for more.
But it sucks when I was promised a career. It was a loose promise, like how you’re promised that you’re going to figure it all out. At the time, though, I believed it was pretty set in stone. So did all my friends. And now, here we are. Most of us are jobless.
But it’s not our fault.
To be honest, the job market is about as unstable as I was at sixteen. An entry-level job in NYC doesn’t pay enough to afford to live there — not that it matters anyway because, even though it’s entry-level, you’d need 3+ years of experience and also a master’s degree and also maybe experience in social media.
It’s just all so bizarre. Because if I had a master’s degree and that much experience, I’m not going to apply for an entry-level position. Sort of like how I’m not applying to unpaid internships because I have a four-year bachelor’s degree. And although I could’ve focused all of my time and energy on my career during the process of obtaining my degree, I might have still ended up in the same spot I am in now. At the end of the day, it’s the luck of the draw. It’s internal hiring. It’s hiring as little people as possible to make the biggest profit.
What I’m trying to say here is that we’ve been set up to fail.
So if you feel like you’re failing at the moment, same. But you know what? If you got up today, if you cooked a meal, if you made someone smile, if you texted a friend, if you did something nice for yourself — that’s all succeeding in and of itself.
Your career isn’t the only thing that makes you successful or impressive. But if it’s something to chase, you’ll get there eventually no matter your pace. Like I said before, we’ll figure it out.
As most things, success is a construct. And I have a feeling that I — and you — are exactly in the place we’re supposed to be.
Dear Digital Diary 