In a year I want to forget
(here I am remembering)
I had to take the last couple of weeks off because I was sick. I won't give any further energy to it because it's done, and thank goodness, and goodbye to the lurgy.
My birthday is barrelling towards me in a few short days. This time last year, I wrote a post for Instagram — which I have often done before on my birthdays and which has acted as a sort of weird time capsule. I've been happy that I've done it (despite feeling corny in the moment) because you don't remember the things you don't remember, and it's helped me to touch into where I was at certain moments in my life.
But last year, I didn't post the thing I wrote, and it sat in my drafts for a year. I remember looking at it a couple of months ago and thinking, “Oh wow, I never posted that, I wonder why.” As I've inched closer to my birthday — solidly now in my mid-30s— I realize that part of why I didn't post it is because I wasn't sure I wanted to commemorate that year. I think we can all agree that the past few years have been a shit show of monumental proportions and it’s not always been easy to find the joy.
Now that I'm faced with the prospect of the next birthday, I don't feel like commemorating this year either. Not because I didn't have some lovely times with lovely people. I did. I got to travel, volunteer, break bread, write. But this year, I have also been desperately lonely. I have longed to feel connected to my community. I have longed to have people in my daily life in a way that I haven't had for what feels like a long time. This year has felt like another round of the shitshow (though not without its bright spots). Admitting this here feels vulnerable and raw.
Shortly before my last birthday, I moved into an apartment that I promised this newsletter I would write about at some point. Well, dear reader, now's the time. I was so hasty to move upstate as soon as I returned from the UK. I didn’t want to spend more time than I had to in New York City, nervous my anxiety would flare up immediately on entry. The city felt pretty hollowed out from COVID, many people I know moved to other places that are potentially easier to live in.
My family has been here, for better or worse, for generations. I’m reading a People’s History of the United States at the moment, and beyond the harrowing retelling of the details of how “the people” have been screwed over at every turn in this country’s history — I keep thinking of my ancestors in reading of factory workers and the designation of the Irish as non-whites in the 19th century. Many people come to New York to build a dream, hoping to make it here — this city is in my blood, and sometimes I don’t understand why everyone flocks here. I wanted to flock away from it as soon as I could.
I found an apartment on the Listings Project that advertised that it was for artists and creative people wanting a haven from the suddenly skyrocketing prices in Hudson. My landlord fancied himself a bit of a man of the people. In the advertisement, he wrote a land acknowledgement and that he wanted it to be a building full of artists to live in. That meant that the rent was significantly cheaper than other apartments in Hudson, it also meant that much of the building was in disrepair.
I booked in to see it in a rush (the landlord said he had a lot of people interested, and I needed to get up there ASAP). I toured the apartment in a desperate rush, too. I advise against this, it’s something I’ll never do again. I just needed to move upstate — I was obsessed. I imagined I would learn to grow vegetables, make my own kimchi, dig my own well and source my own water in and amongst the home goods shops with $300 napkins, $12 pastries and a candle bar (it’s what it sounds like, a bar where you make your own candles).
The apartment itself was dusty. Actually, it was caked in dust. It smelled like smoke. The walls were yellowing. And the toilet had a plank of wood underneath it, so every time you sat down on it it would bang to the ground - uneven and improperly installed. There was black grout lining the shower.
Earlier that day, I had gone to see another apartment that was about $300 more, and it was gorgeous. It had new appliances. It had two bedrooms, a room I could sleep in and a room where I could write, work and teach meditation. Then I went to see the place that I eventually moved into that, was for all intents and purposes, a complete and utter shithole. And to no one’s surprise, I took the shithole.
I liked my landlord at first, he was a Buddhist practitioner, and we had a great conversation. He said maybe we could work together, because he was opening a meditation studio in Kingston - of course, I was charmed by that. I hoped I would meet people I would be in community with and I could truly plant roots with in this new upstate existence, maybe he could be my entry into that. Reader, he would not be my entry into that.
I asked that he would paint the apartment with a paint that a friend recommended that covered the smell of smoke and that he would get a cleaner to get rid of the dust, clean the fridge, which still had food remnants in it, that the drawers be removed of crumbs and could the bathroom be made into an entirely different bathroom? (I didn’t ask for that last part).
He agreed. I moved in, and it was still full of dust. On my first night there, I was completely bewildered. At least the smell of smoke was gone. But what was all of this dust? This skylight that looked so good the first time I looked at it had dust particles streaming down from it.
I took my trusty dust-buster and went to work to get rid of a lot of dust, but not before taking lots of pictures for my new friend, the landlord. And as I was cleaning under one of the radiators, a huge, scary-looking bone slid out. At first, I thought it was a dog bone, but it looked much bigger than that — and like something you just didn’t want in your house.
And that's when I realized (surprisingly, none of the other red flags fazed me, it took fishing out a bone from under the radiator) that maybe this was not the best idea and maybe it was not the best thing to have moved in such haste to this cute little town two hours north of New York City. And maybe I should have taken that beautiful apartment that was $300 more because why am I living in a shithole, and why whenever I sit on the toilet, does it bang beneath the wooden board and the floor, and why does the toilet paper holder not stick to the wall and oh god what have I done.
It felt more like a slum for artists than the haven it had been advertised as. There were some good bits, and I tried to make it as much a home as I could. I met my neighbours, Kim and Roxie — a newly engaged couple who were funny and sweet. Roxie was into astrology and human design, and we’d have long chats on the porch, her on a smoke break, me on a break from my depressing apartment. We'd gossip about the landlord. Kristen, a few doors down, worked with refugees and was a firecracker with a huge heart. JJ and Jesse moved in right before I moved out, and we became friendly, too, they were a musician and an artist.
I had another neighbour, a Greek guy, who said he worked for the Associated Press, but when I Googled him (like the creep I am), it seemed like he worked for a strange offshoot of the Associated Press. We started friendly (and we texted constantly about whether the heat was working), but after getting into a huge fight with my mother in the stairwell (which the whole building heard), we never really interacted.
The heating was temperamental — it was either freezing or boiling, with no in-between. It was very quiet in that little apartment. I spent an inordinate amount of time by myself, so if I was invited to any social engagement in the city, I would sprint to my car and speed down to New York City to get some social interaction. After a few months, I started to feel bad in that apartment. Bad in a way that I've never experienced. And, just as a reminder, I've been in liver failure twice.
This was a different kind of bad. This was bad, like there's a bad mamajama Juju in this motherfucking apartment. One day I ran into Kristen — we started talking about the freezing cold night a few weeks previous when the heat was off for a 12-hour period, and everyone had to get hotel rooms next door (luckily, I was in the city on one of the aforementioned human interaction escapades). I told her that I really didn't feel good in my apartment, it felt like there was some strange type of darkness there. She immediately said, “Oh my god, I lived in that apartment for two weeks, and I hated it. I hated everything about it. I couldn't sleep — it felt horrible. After two weeks, I had to get out, so I moved to the apartment next door.” A deep existential dread washed over me. I fucking knew it.
She told me that there was a Vietnam veteran who lived in the apartment before and died there. Kristen was about to leave for Greece for five months for work. She said, “Well, there's a leak in my apartment, but you could always live there. I mean, water just pours in. It’s filling buckets, and I can’t get the landlord to fix it. It’s yours if you want it.”
As enticing as the offer was, I declined.
I then consulted a beloved psychic (you always need a psychic to help you in terrible situations like this), and all my suspicions were confirmed — there was some bad mamajama Juju. At this stage, I had already been in the apartment for five months. I asked some generous friends who had a house up the road if I could stay there whilst I figured out my next move. As I pulled out of the driveway, a twig pulled off my fender from my car. I promptly sent a photo to my friend Georgia and said, “the bad energy has taken over my life.”
I decided I had to get out of there. Did I mention there was also mould in the walls? This was the press release that I gave to everyone, so I didn’t seem completely nuts since I don’t think it’s the most socially acceptable thing to move out of an apartment because there’s a ghost.
Amid my attempt to extricate myself from this apartment, I went to an Easter party at my friend Michael's house in Brooklyn. I had taken refuge at Georgia’s house in New York City because I just couldn't stay in there any longer — I felt like the ghost was crawling all over me. It didn't feel very good (understatement). I go to the party, and I'm introduced to someone who is finishing up the same graduate program that I'm about to enter. We start chatting, and I tell them that I live in Hudson, and they say, “Oh, I used to live in Hudson.”,
So I said, “Oh, really, where?”
And they said, “Oh, I lived on Warren Street.”
“I live on Warren Street.”
“Oh, where on Warren Street?”
I told them the number, and they went wild:
“Oh my god, I used to live in that building, it was the worst apartment that I ever lived in. There were these cats that would just come into my apartment through the roof, and it was just disgusting and smelled like cat piss. It was probably the worst place I’ve ever lived. And THEN a guy died in the apartment across from me, and it was a really grues-.”
I stopped them right there:
“That’s my apartment. Please don’t tell me what happened to him, I don’t want to know until I’m out of there.”
I still haven't reached out to them to find out exactly what happened to the person who died in my apartment, but from what I gather, he may have been eaten by his cat. And he was a very, very sad person. And he was stuck. But I didn't want him to be stuck on me. The spookiest thing about that interaction was that I felt like his energy was following me. What are the odds that I run into someone I've never met three hours away from Hudson? Who happens to live in the exact same building and happen to have lived there at the exact same time that the energy that I'm trying to release from my life died????
That was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back: I was out of there. I terminated my lease early, which seemed like an insane thing to do but, to me, felt like self-preservation. I then spent many months being a vagabond, and it was intense. And the entire time, I was trying to write a book, record a podcast, work my job, teach and somehow have some semblance of a social life (which I did not manage well at all).
Finally, some very generous friends let me sublet their apartment in NYC when I couldn’t find one, with the insane real estate market being what it is. And so I've been settling. My nervous system has been in repair for a couple of months —though it hasn't really had the opportunity to fully settle because, as I said, I started a graduate program which I feel like only insane people decide to do. I've been trying to get to the finish line with my podcast and my book proposal and continue to work. It’s been quiet in a good way and a little less lonely with more access to old friends.
When I look back on this year, it's been one of the loneliest of my life (and I've had some lonely years). So on the eve of my birthday — in this commemoration, I suppose, of a year that I'd much rather forget, I'm calling in more community, I'm calling in more friendship, I’m calling in more love, I'm calling in more connection.
I have no more capacity to spend so many days alone. It's not a way to be, and yet so many of us are living this way. Unless everyone's just Hanging Out Without Me, confirming my worst nightmares.
In my studies, there are a set of values, and one of the values is placing a high value on human relationships. I had no idea that there was a set of values attached to social work when I entered into the program, and I've entered into it with a great deal of resistance. But when I read those values, I thought, okay, well maybe, maybe, maybe I might be in the right place because I, too, place a high value on human relationships. Over this past year, I haven't been able to have any consistent connection with other humans beyond the phone. I don't know what the solution is. All I know is that friendship and community are things that we all need. And that I truly long for it more consistently.
I guess this year that I'd like to forget is the same as any other year that I've had that's been challenging. That's been painful. It's — wait for it — taught me something (omg, I know). It's shown me the parts of myself that I don't want to ignore anymore and that I have no desire to tolerate the things that feel intolerant to me now. I want to shift out of the silence that has informed so much of my time since I moved back to New York.
I don't know what the solution is because I'm in my mid-30s. I don't know if you've heard, but it's really hard to make friends in your mid-30s.
So, on the eve of my birthday, I’m welcoming a new paradigm, and I'm giving thanks to all those people near and far that I did touch in with daily, even if I didn't get to hug them, even if I didn't get to break bread with them in the way that I might want to — I'm honouring the many, many, many human relationships I already do have. And acknowledging the caring community that I'm already a part of, even if it's not out my front door.