Diary

5/11/26

Last night I got home and, cozily in bed, drafted a diary entry. Nothing particularly profound. These aren’t really meant to be profound. They’re mostly for my own benefit, a way to force myself to write a little every day and maybe make some sense of my pathologies and the world along the way.

I didn’t post yesterday’s entry because I lightly teased someone who I seriously doubt will ever read this blog, but at this point I’ve already had a few awkward encounters where random people at events tell me they saw something I posted on Substack. I don’t like this. It’s part of why, until I retired from Twitter, I wrote and blogged pseudonymously. Maybe that’s a cop-out. Maybe we should all stand by our words and defend them publicly. But the internet is a hostile place where bad-faith readings are the norm, and once something is online it no longer really belongs to you. So for the time being I’m trying to avoid unnecessary controversy.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, which is a rough day for me every year. The only person who reached out was my godmother, Ingrid, who sent me a kind Instagram message saying my mom was like a sister to her and that she still thinks about her every day. I think about her every day too. I regret the years I didn’t send flowers, or acted petulant, or assumed there would always be more time. It’s a cliché because it’s true: you never get that time back. Hold closely to the people in this world who love you unconditionally. There are fewer of them than you think.

I reached out to L— and she didn’t respond. Last year, pathetic simp that I am, I bought her and her mother a spa trip for Mother’s Day. Why did I do that?

I can’t believe it’s already mid-May again. This year has gone by so fast, and I keep replaying where I was a year ago and realizing, with some horror, that emotionally I don’t feel all that different. For a long time now I’ve existed in a kind of suspended state. Not rock bottom exactly, but stasis. A holding pattern. I’m forty years old and sometimes feel stunted, like I’m still living some slightly modified version of the life I had at 25. Same loops, same fantasies, same mistakes. Rise, wash, repeat. At some point that has to change. I want to look back on this blog a year from now and feel embarrassed by this version of myself in the healthiest possible way, because it would mean movement actually occurred.

Lately I’ve felt a little like Chance the Gardener in Being There. Accidentally profound through pure boilerplate. Or maybe so untethered from reality that it starts to resemble wisdom again. “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.” There’s something moving about his total simplicity, which is of course why the movie works. The idea that growth has seasons. That winter isn’t failure, only part of the cycle. That things can look dead for long stretches before returning unexpectedly to life. And this can all happen quickly.

I started psychoanalysis last Friday and have my next session on Tuesday. When I jokingly posted about it on IG, a friend replied, “Just go to church!” The funny thing is, I want that too. I want religion at the center of my life. I want someone to read the Bible with, to talk about the Gospels with seriously, without irony or distance. I want some form of salvation, whatever shape it takes.

But I’m excited to begin analysis too. I know psychoanalysis doesn’t offer easy fixes or neat life hacks, but I want a space where I can speak honestly and have someone listen carefully enough to help me understand why I continually make terrible decisions I can see coming in advance. Why chaos feels magnetically familiar even when what I consciously want is peace. Why I keep seeking out unstable situations while fantasizing about an ordinary, stable life somewhere else. More than anything, I want my desires and my actions to stop pointing in opposite directions. Hopefully this is at least a step toward that.