Hi lovers :) And welcome back to my Substack! Thank you so much for taking the time to read my imperfect words. Writing and sharing is scary, but community is worth it. I so appreciate you being here. If you resonate with what you read here today, the best way you can support my writing is to share it with those you think would enjoy! None of my content is behind a paywall, but if you’d like to throw me a bone, you can upgrade to a paid subscription.
This essay especially has been a labor of love - I started over a month ago, so you’ll see me jumping timelines quite a bit. *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
There is a heatwave permeating the streets of New York. I honestly don’t mind the 93-degree weather, even if it’s a little too warm for June. I enjoy baring my shoulders and watching my freckles deepen and cluster down my arms, aggregating in the way they remember how to. The humidity makes everyone slow down, and so I people watch (from my roof, Central Park hilltops, the fishbowl front window of my job) as the city folk roll out onto the streets and bumble amongst themselves. Even in the heaviest air, there is no shortage of people. People on the subway platform; clustered and melting in the heat. People in the park; strewn across grass in still-life frames of lovers, young women reading books, families with babies and dogs.
I am more comfortable as an observer of people, and so I find myself drifting to the outer corners of these little worlds within my New York Summer. In other words, I’m a bystander to my own life, and there is nothing honorable about it. My observable moments are a mosaic of curling against the D train windowpanes, picking off my nail polish, and pitching my voice up in my customer service job to sound less disturbed. Hi! How’s your day going so far? How is everything feeling? Thank you so much!
I’ve been a real, observable person before, I think. Like last summer. I held that June in the palms of my hands and I savored the feeling of it slipping - like sand - between my fingers.
*:・゚✧*:・゚✧
I was rehearsing and performing two professional shows this time last year. If you know me, you know that this is literally all I’ve ever wanted since I was eleven. It was an unspeakable gift - both of them colliding into my life like meteors, dragging me out of my selective retirement and into the streets of Midtown. Two wonderful, long-time collaborators put their precious trust in me to make something with them. The shows were, in each of their respects, extremely challenging - one had me leading an extremely niche Off-Broadway musical, and the other was an uninhibited and emotional whirlwind of a two-person play. So I swallowed any feeling of inadequacy, pushed my day job to the side, and did my best to roll with the punches. May and June were fever dreams. I spread myself thin and bare across Manhattan. I cultivated an all-too-specific summer playlist in my AirPods and used it as a shield against my own grey matter. I was always two minutes late everywhere I went - constantly rolling into rehearsal rooms with no AC, hot and flustered and two steps ahead of myself.
But my fiery New York Actor Summer™ ended quietly and without fuss. As I moved on, I wondered if I’d performed well enough (this turned into a post-mortem dread when I realized I most certainly could have, and yet, there was no chance to redeem myself. This is the curse of something as ephemeral and fragile as theatre). I haven’t worked in my own industry since.
Being given a chance at something convinces you that there’ll be a next time. I believed - I still believe - there would be. I primed myself for it, tried to build upon it, and held my breath. I quit the stable job that spiked my cortisol levels. I auditioned 40 times between December and April. Nothing really happened.
pictured: me in the throes of summer ‘23. i was so burnt out, so afraid, and so insecure - but I was having an indescribable amount of fun. every moment felt like this.
*:・゚✧*:・゚✧
Back to this summer. I’ve been working my ass off at a salon to pay the bills. My days have been unchanging - every morning, I take my Costco gummy vitamins and I fall into a half-asleep, bitch-stare haze on the subway. I walk the same twenty minutes to work with slight variations in route just to see if I find anything new. I make the same small talk with the girls who look reminiscent of the ones I went to college with, and I find myself wanting to seem cool to them. I take my SSRI and magnesium supplements every night so I can wake up as a beacon of serenity. I paint my nails green and grate the polish off with my teeth. I zone out under a hot shower and evaluate the quality of my day based on whether I can see my feet past the curve of my bloated stomach. I inspect the lines deepening between my eyebrows and wonder if I should buy a more expensive sunscreen. I tick off my brain cells with the sativa cart I’ve been prolonging since April.
I wait for someone to ask to see me, or for something to happen. I am not sure what - or who - I’d like to see. And so I drift, watching other people’s lives happen in real time, waiting for something I can’t put into words.
*:・゚✧*:・゚✧
Yes diva! Brat summer!
Anyway.
I have a tendency to romanticize the past, and I make a habit out of delegitimizing my own ability to be present. I know it’s a me problem, and I am much too dismissive, and it’s probably because I’m harboring deep-set insecurities that flare up when I see others living more interesting-looking lives than me. It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m acknowledging it and putting it into a Substack essay and this is me taking control of the narrative that I vehemently despise.
In all transparency, I find a lot of solace in every day contentments. I find it in my partner, my cats, my parents living a short drive away. Writing, in all its forms, and sharing it. Singing. My sweet, beautiful friends! The slow pace; the extended daylight of summer makes it that these glorious moments are even more visible to the naked eye.
I was in Vermont last week for a writing residency, and I found myself silently dreading my return to New York. I had even managed a corneal abrasion to my left eye on our last day, causing me to don an eye patch and a migraine for the duration of the drive back. I convinced myself it was an omen; that I shouldn’t be returning, and that I’d be better off starting an OnlyFans to fund a commune in the deep Catskills. Yet the day after we returned to New York City, the very last night we were all together, a group of us got caught in a torrential downpour between drinks in East Village bars. It was as though the sky itself cracked open upon us. We ran through it screaming and squealing, occasionally stalling in the crosswalks just to feel the warm rain on our skin. The bar AC chilled me to the bone, so I bought an oversized bar t-shirt as a change of clothes. I looked ridiculous - stringy, wet, and still wearing an eye patch - but I was laughing too hard to care.
So no, I don’t mind the heat, actually. I don’t mind the stillness. I move anyway.
pictured: part of a silly lil collage i made for my instagram ft. some sweet summer moments so far.
things i didn’t make but that i loved:
Illinoise on Broadway. Especially if you need a good cry; especially if you love Sufjan Stevens. The Casimir Pulaski Day number? Ohhh my god.
The new Clairo album Charm, but especially the song Sexy to Someone - I could write an essay on its own about the cultural impact of the line “Sexy to somebody, it would help me out/Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house”
this essay by words from eliza. cracked me open, as her words usually do.