Category: Thoughts

Stranger’s Memories

EmileeLeave a comment

Recently I opened up Facebook on a web browser. I don’t have the app on my phone, and only keep my account because it’s the only connection I have to my half-brother, and because of Facebook Marketplace. (I’m granny-core trash, y’all.) I was there to look up something specific, but got distracted (as one does) by the first post on my feed.

It was the picture of the 6 month old daughter of my childhood best friend.

A simple, unassuming post.

I had forgotten this friend had a baby. I knew I knew she had a baby, and I recalled she had gotten married a few years back, but I definitely hadn’t thought about it in who-knows-how-long. I couldn’t remember the baby’s name, so I clicked on her profile and scrolled back. It took a minute to find it, and in my scrolling I saw various pictures of her family, including her mom for Mother’s Day, and her brother for I don’t remember what.

I found myself in a bit of a mind-fuck.

Here is the person I spent the glory days of girlhood beside. The person I sat with talking about the days we would be married and have kids. The person who I dreamed alongside and whose memories are so intertwined with mine it’s impossible to think of the core of my childhood with her removed. Kindergarten through 8th grade, we were inseparable, and even after we went to different schools we managed to hold on for a good many years, keeping in touch over time, our tiny town being the touchstone. Her dad even asked me to come work for him at one point, which I did, her family feeling just as much like my family as my own.

And then her dad fired me. And her brother divorced my friend. A friend I’d only met because I worked there and her mom was worried her brother’s fiancé wouldn’t know anybody and asked if I could hang out with her, to which I anxiously agreed, tweeting my feelings of dissent in the lead up. Turns out she had felt the same and we’d both gone along with it, ending up becoming great friends in the process. All of this change was too much, too painful, the hurt too deep given everything. I was confused and somehow had sensed it would happen before it did I just assumed they’d wait until after the holidays to do it. In retrospect, I don’t hold any ill will, I’ve learned and moved on and wish them the best, I just also don’t choose to keep up with her family. I hadn’t really before anyway, she being our main connection, so it’s not entirely unheard of that our friendship distanced, as that is something that happens when people have different lives in different states.

As someone who has known a lot of loss in a short amount of time and also very young, all things considered, I have found that sometimes I forget that some friends are still alive. Distance can make them become a person in my memory, similar to those who have died, and I grieve and learn to move on and go on with my life. Some of these friends (dead or alive) are more like ghosts that have slipped out with little notice, and some are like limbs that have been amputated. Whichever, I learn to carry on over time. So you can imagine that seeing the picture of the baby of one of these amputated limbs can be a bit jarring.

Upon reflection, it sort of blew my mind because I can recall memories from our childhood, and our other close friend doesn’t feel like this. My assumption as to why this is is that the other close friend still lives in town, and even if we don’t see each other often I was at her wedding and her baby shower and hear of her updates more regularly than the other. Something about it is different. Maybe it’s just that they’re different people.

Having the reality that this friend is still alive jump right back to the front of my mind was jarring–she’s living and breathing. Her parents still exist, my own mother occasionally telling me she sees them in Walmart, though I quickly put that from my mind as the memories of how all of that ended are still painful and complicated. Her brother is remarried with kids of his own. It’s all there—this life going on.

This person with whom I learned how to exist in the world, who dreamed with and alongside me yet never dreamed we wouldn’t still be actively in each others lives is living all the milestones we imagined with a loving and supportive family along side her, and I’m over here. Separate.

It’s almost as though all the memories from before feel like they belong to someone else. Surely those are a stranger’s memories, something I’m reading about in a book and I’ve seen the documentary and my sleuth skills have lead me to the somehow still public Facebook page of the person I’d just spent two hours learning about whose name I’d hardly heard before. No, these are my memories, this is the person from my past, this is the other part of my girlhood.

Few people from those days are still in my life, which probably contributes to how distanced and othered it feels. I can actually only think of one that is still actively around, and even then its distanced to a degree, but in a loving way that I think feels natural. Everyone else, all those people I thought I’d have forever, even ones that lasted nearly to my 30s, fill that space of “stranger’s memories” in my head. People whom, if I up and moved to another state and deleted my Facebook for good, I’d never hear from or about again. Maybe I’d also have to change my number to truly make it permanent, but still.

All of this makes me incredibly grateful for the people who are in my life. The people from different times throughout who have found themselves walking a similar path, that are living along side me from their respective places, whose memories I can look back on and smile and whose memories are still being made. Those people who don’t feel like strangers, but are people I know surely. There’s some from nearly every phase of life, and I cherish them more than I have words for.

Life is wild and weird and doesn’t always take us where we expect, but I truly believe, if you’re open to it, it’ll take you exactly where you’re meant to be.

(photo is a picture of the author on stage at a church her private school used for talent shows, signing the word “yes” while also singing along to what was the song “Jesus Loves Me”. I am wearing a white dress with blew flowers, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, with ankle high white socks and brown loafers I never remember owning.)

Just ramblings.

EmileeLeave a comment

8 June 2025

I often find myself opening up a browser on my laptop with no real aim or goal in mind except that I’m following a feeling I haven’t been able to explain.

Tonight, I think I pinpointed what it is I’m looking for.

I’m looking for the rush that came with the mid-00s experience of having a Xanga, Myspace, Livejournal and other such sights; what it felt like to post on there, read comments, view likes, etc. Before influencers were a thing, back when we were dramatic and emo (just me?) and honest. 

Some of the most painful memories I have from high school come from experiences with these sights. I wasn’t always the most responsible internet-goer and lost some quality friendships in my folly. Still, I learned so much about myself, about the world and existing in it, about expression from those sites. They were an experience that I feel can’t be replicated in this day and age—a golden era, if you will.

And yet, here I am, writing a blog post to a substack no one reads but that I also don’t post about. I know I’d get traction if I posted under my own name, as I have random followers on that one even though nothing is on it, but that’s not the point. The point isn’t to be heard, the point is to have the place that feels safe enough to pretend it’s something similar to those early days. To write and pretend like someone, somewhere might feel the same and come across my words and feel a little less alone. 

Maybe that person is just future me, who knows. You’d think I’d fill this void enough with all the journaling I do, alas, here I am anyway. 

The world is a messy place tonight. Trump has sent National Guard troops to peaceful protests in Los Angeles, even though the local authorities do not want them there and the protests are peaceful. The flotilla heading to Gaza with 12 people aboard, including Greta Thunberg, has been intercepted by Israeli police and they’ve arrested all on board, subjecting them to who knows what unimaginable terrors with an uncertain future ahead. Gaza’s people are starving. Israeli’s are in the streets protesting, walking with photos of Gaza’s dead children. People are protesting all over for Gaza. American’s are gearing up for protests against our president and the spectacle he’s got planned for his birthday, which also conveniently is the 250th anniversary of the United States Army. I’m in a very red state in a rather red city. I’m watching all of this unfold from so many different angles and wondering how extreme things will go before the tide turns and how safe those I love actually are, how safe I actually am. I can convince myself all day long that it won’t get as bad as I’m afraid it will, but isn’t now the time to be taking action? Except I won’t have the ability for 3 years yet. Will it be too late then? Or do my many privileges protect me? Is it even safe to be writing this? Though this blog has no readers now, it’s still on the World Wide Web, making it the most public thing possible in this day and age. 

But, even so, how can anyone stay silent in a time like this?

Who knows what news tomorrow will bring? We must continue on the purest path, the kindest road, the journey that helps the most people. That is the purpose of existence. If we’re not helping, what good are we?

In light of Taylor Swift (finally) owning her own work.

EmileeLeave a comment

31 May 2025

I became a Swiftie right before the 1989 album released, so by the time reputation came out I was all in. Back then, the fandom was centralized on Tumblr and followed Taylor’s instagram and the speculations were that there would be some secret album called Eclipse that she would drop the night of the eclipse that August.

We stayed up late, just in case, freaked out as Taylor’s entire social media was wiped, and lost our collective cool when we first saw the snake. We were rewarded with the first single called Look What You Made Me Do from her upcoming album, a noted difference from the musical stylings of her five previous albums, and we ate it up like a lavish Thanksgiving dinner.

I don’t know what time I finally was able to fall asleep after the excitement, but I don’t think it was very long as I was developing some concerning symptoms that would later upend my life, one of them being extreme fatigue. When I woke up the next morning at 6:30 unexpectedly, the air felt different even inside my house. I looked out my window and the sky looked different in ways I still struggle to explain. I grabbed my phone, checked the radar, and saw that the hurricane that was slated to go south of us moved in the middle of the night and was now aiming straight for my county. We weren’t planning on leaving—we never leave—but this one was making us nervous. My sister had a 2-week-old baby and quickly she and my mom as well as her in-laws were on the road in the direction of Austin and out of harms way. Dad and I were staying behind with the dogs and to hopefully fend off looters. As we worked to secure everything on the property to avoid projectiles, we became increasingly nervous. By 10am dad and I had a discussion, loaded up the dogs, and followed our family, 2 hours from the suggested evacuation cut off time.

We passed National Guard vehicles going in the opposite direction and ended up in a hotel that also had Red Cross vehicles, lying out of harms way but poised to jump in to help in the aftermath. To say it was surreal is an understatement.

I sat on the hotel floor, watching storm chasers while also going on Target’s website to pre-order the reputation album and the magazines that were being released, pausing briefly to wonder if there would be a home to deliver to by the time it shipped and how would I change the address if not. Whose address could I use? Whose would be left?

I stayed awake riddled with anxiety, watching storm chasers as they showed places I knew well blown completely off the face of the earth, describing what couldn’t be seen in the darkness, wondering how my family that stayed behind was faring. They were told to write their social security numbers on their arms with sharpie so their bodies could be identified later. It was all surreal. (They survived, thankfully.)

The next morning, Dad received texts from our neighbor who stayed and we heard his horror story of holding their door closed for the entire duration of the storm while his wife mopped the never ending stream of water and their chickens blew away. He checked on our house which was still standing but ended up having to be stripped down in what was a nearly 4 year endeavor to get my parents back into their house. Dad heard from our neighbor and we learned of an open route we could use to reach home. We filled up any gas can we could fined, loaded up the dogs again, and headed home. Once we surveyed the damage, seeing the full extent of their house, fired up the generators and plugged in the fridges, we drove to the outskirts of the nearest town while dodging downed telephone poles and the cast offs from the cotton fields that covered the roads until we found a bar of service to call mom. As we parked on the overpass of this now ghost town, I pulled up YouTube and watched the lyric video for LWYMMD, trying to memorize the words and get the proper cadence to the chorus, not knowing the next time I’d have service to hear the song, wondering what I was missing in all the excitement everyone else was experiencing.

I don’t remember much of the next few months, and the preceding year is quite a blur. Not only did Hurricane Harvey obliterate my home town, my health was in sharp decline. By Spring 2018, I had to quite my job and stop dancing ballet because my health had gotten so bad I was nearly passing out at the simplest task. I was also losing friends to various different things in one of my biggest years of grief-by-friend-death that I’ve known, which if you know me you know is saying something.

As I found myself faced with all of these terrible things happening at once, all of this loss and change and grief and pain, there was a moment when I was walking from my parents trailer they were living in to my tiny house in the back yard that somehow faired best of any of the houses. I looked at the tree that held up the storage building next to my house which kept it from taking out my north wall. I’ve named this tree Fred, and he was in bloom. I thought back onto everything I’d lost, and considered everything in front of me. Every nerve was raw and, as someone who didn’t know how to let herself feel let alone grieve anything that was happening, I realized I had a choice:

I could stay the way I am, making the choices I’ve always made, doing what I was told and living a life that wasn’t serving me, or I could try something new. 

Somehow, I knew deep down that the choice I had to make was the latter. If I wanted to survive, if I wanted to not become the ward of my parents and then my sister once they’re gone, if I wanted any hope of taking my life back and improving any smidge, I had to ask myself two questions with any thought I had:

Why do I think that? Who told me to?

Sounds simple enough, right? Oh, sweet summer child. “Simple”, yet it would go on to be the string I pulled that unraveled the sweater I had been stitching my entire life.

I started small, “Why do I think that I have to keep this job that I’m passing out at? Who told me to stay here?” Well, my parents told me this is the adult thing to do, and that life is hard so I need to just learn how to deal with it because it’ll be hard anywhere. So I quit. 
”Why do I keep going to this church, even though the drive alone drains me and sets me back for the entire week, and I don’t feel like it’s adding anything to my life? Who told me I have to go?” Well, I go because I know everyone there. If I don’t go, they’ll definitely ask questions. I can hear them already in my head talking about me when I’m gone, speculating as to the real reason and assuming I’m a “heathen” or “fallen off the wagon” or whatever other things I’ve heard them say about other people. I’ve been raised in church my entire life, deeply committed, purity culture poster child, salutatorian of a bible college. I thought back to after I was in a bad car accident, and how no one from this church reached out to see if I was okay, and instead they assumed I was disgruntled and left the church. I was without a car and injured, not bitter or disgruntled, but they assumed. So I left. 

On and on I used this metric to peel apart the layers of my life, identifying the different things that actually caused me stress which was triggering my health issues. Over time I learned I have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, an inflammation of the brain stem that causes issues similar to that we’ve since seen in Long Covid patients. I had to get a handicap parking placard because I didn’t have the energy to walk a grocery store, let alone stand up long enough to make the food. I was pricing wheel chairs, but my chiropractor, the one medical professional who believed me, told me to avoid getting the wheelchair as long as I could because, “once you’re in the chair, you’ll never get out of it.” I couldn’t afford one, anyway, uninsured and now unemployed, except for teaching ballet classes at my studio which consisted of me sitting on a stool and pointing with a stick while my assistants essentially did everything. I owe my studio owners so much for allowing me to adapt the way I needed to in spite of it all. 

Now, it’ll be 8 years this August since the hurricane. I’ve managed to slowly but surely push my baseline in ways I didn’t even expect. While I was considered relatively mild back then, I’m definitely considered mild now. I learned my ME was caused by stress (shocker, I know) and triggered by my inability to eat monounsaturated fats after my gallbladder was removed. Turns out it didn’t need to be removed, and my issues were caused by a genetic condition doctors said I didn’t have called Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, which affects connective tissue, and a co morbidity called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, which is where (TL;DR) your body is sensitive to histamines. Once I learned this, I was able to know how to treat, fuel, help my body and slowly work my way back to a baseline that allows me to not only work, but also as of this week begin college classes. 

My therapist asked me on Thursday how it felt to be in school. I told her it feels fake. This degree is something I’ve wanted for 20 years but wasn’t allowed back then because my family couldn’t afford it. Then when my health tanked, I never thought I’d be able to handle the course load to do it. So much so, that I never even considered it until a friend of mine heard me mention it casually and she said, “Well, why can’t you?” and when I tried to list all the things, she debunked them, gently, one by one. Finally I said, “I can’t do math, Rose” and she said, “Emilee, there’s AI now you’ll be fine.” Listen, I’m not a fan of AI and avoid it as much as any human can, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t that I would use AI for any math class I have to take, but moreso that I felt supported. I realized in that moment that I had friends now who knew math and would be more than willing to help me. I’ve built a life filled with people who add to my life, not just suck it out of me because I’m helpful and convenient. 

It used to be difficult for me to listen to reputation because it brought back really painful memories from the hurricane and the life I used to live before. I got to go to the reputation studio tour, though I couldn’t drive to Houston because that one limitation I still have even to this day, I had a friend graciously offer to go with me, even though she didn’t care for Taylor’s music and stayed somewhere else while I was at the concert. I took my cane with me. My phone fell outside the stadium, only breaking my back camera leaving me only with unzoomable selfie camera and my polaroid. I remember so little of it from my own memories given my physical limitations at the time affecting my cognitive function, but I was there.

As the Eras Tour came around, I was too afraid to be disappointed (at no fault of Taylor’s, mind you) and thus ruining things that I almost didn’t even try for tickets. When I decided to at least try, I panicked when I didn’t get them first day, being thrown to the back of the line instead of the front with our reputation tour boosts. Thankfully they corrected the second day and I scored tickets to Kansas City night one.

My fear was rooted in experience, but what I forgot in that fear was all the things that were happening last time that weren’t happening this time. I was a completely different person then, living a life I was told to live, grieving the loss of friends who had died and ones you’d decided not to be in my life anymore, figuring out the limitations of my illness, filled with so much uncertainty. 

But now?

Now, I’m living a life I’ve chosen, filled with people who love me and actually care about me as a person. I’m working a job I enjoy, going to school for my dream degree. I’m setting myself up for a life that is sustainable, where I won’t have to rely on people who don’t understand me and who bring me down simply because they’re the people I know. I’m building a life where I am enough. I’m doing the work to unlearn everything that doesn’t serve me and relearn the things that make my nervous system stay calm. I’m learning to trust myself, my voice, my inner knowing even if it offends someone else. I’m learning not to disappoint myself even if it disappoints others. I’m working with an incredible therapist who, ironically, lives in the town we evacuated to and who has done more for me in our 16 months together than I could have ever hoped for in a lifetime.

As I stood in my kitchen making eggs this morning, I was thinking about Taylor’s letter she wrote about being able to buy all of her previous work, and how reputation was so perfect she couldn’t imagine how to improve it in a re-record. And now she doesn’t have to. And at first, I felt that pang of hurt I’ve felt from the pain I experienced during the release. But then, I played the album, safe now to stream without lining the pockets of assholes.

And what filled my head was memories of Eras Tour, memories of redemption, memories of recounting seeing Karyn in Houston in 2018 and how much this album still does truly hold up. I could listen to these songs and not feel pain, but feel freedom.

And I stood there, and I thought, “goodness, this feels like it would have been such a perfect representation for when I took my life back” and as I started to think, “I wish it would have been around then”, I realized, it was. 

This album was what I was listening to as I stood next to Fred, considering my next options, every nerve exposed and emotion raw. This album is what I played as I was taught by my dear friend Nargiza how to learn to grieve. This album is what was playing as I made hard decision after hard decision, playing as I built myself back, playing as I made new, true friends, playing as I reclaimed myself.

This album was introduced to the public the exact day of my life that I point to when people ask if I can remember the day everything changed for me, and it’s been with me ever since, and now it’s with me as I stand here, a new person, living boldly the life I was always meant to and building a life I’m so proud of. And I can stream it, knowing full well that Taylor gets all of the credit for her work after her long, hard fight to do so.

What an incredible ride.

The weirdest thing my therapist has said to me

EmileeLeave a comment

15 May 2025

I’ve been in therapy for a little over a year now and today’s session included me admitting that I realize I have abandonment issues. So original.

If you knew me in real life, that’s not something you would expect to be my reality, and if you knew me in real life you might be tempted to mansplain my own experiences to me. If you did either of these things you’d be shit and I’d either not have spoken to you in enough years that you don’t *actually* know me anymore and/or are family and I can’t write you off. (I can, technically, but it’s not something I know I can do without having regrets. Damn my bleeding heart.)

One of the places I’ve known abandonment is through previous therapists who somehow heard what I told them and thought, actually you’re doing just fine. What she told me was, “You have really good instincts. I don’t think you need me anymore.” When I heard that I just said, “okay, thank you” because I’m not one for challenging authority. I’m more of the working-really-hard-to-make-sure-you-like-me-and-don’t-dread-when-you-see-my-name-come-up-on-your-calender type. What I was thinking was, “you just diagnosed me with OCD during a global pandemic two sessions ago and also, is there any hope if you’re saying I have good instincts and no longer need therapy after three months while I’m also still trying to convince myself life is worth living?”

Ironically, what got me to give therapy another try was a guy. It’s ironic because if you knew me, truly or not, you’d know I’ve never had a boyfriend. *gasp* So when there was this perfectly lovely guy who was interested in me and vetted by a dear friend, I didn’t feel I really had any reason not to date him except that my scalp felt tingly? I don’t know how else to explain it. Anyway, I found my current therapist based off vibes and its seemed to work out. I’m still low key afraid she’ll decide I’m fine and we’re finished, even though the last time I expressed this she said, “Well, you are fine, and we’re not finished.” Bless her.

There’s been less than a handful of sessions that have caused her to make a comment in the realm of, “I’ve never seen you like this before” which I take to mean she’s worried about me in that moment and can tell I am in the thick of the darkness. Today’s choice of words was, “I don’t often see you like this”, because we have been here before, but it is indeed a rare state of being. I tend to err on the side of optimism, yet if you know me you know I’m a walking oxymoron and my life is full of juxtapositions. 

Today, I started the session convinced this would be the time I signed off and felt no better than when we began. I knew there would be nothing she would be able to do for me—there’s nothing anyone can do for me and that’s pretty much the whole reason I’m in this mess—and I was certain I would feel nothing but defeated. I’d been working for an entire week to try and find any sort of optimism, a sliver of hope to hold onto and time and time again my hands came up empty. 

At one point, I equated my experience to toilet paper, because if you’re not laughing you’re crying, right? And she saw right through my facade and made the most incredible comment that I swear will be the title of my memoir if I were ever interesting enough to actually write a memoir people would read. At the end as we recapped, and I joked that she won’t be able to look at toilet paper without thinking of me now and she’s welcome and also I’m sorry, she said, “That [the potential memoir name] is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever said in a session.”

Reader, this felt like a badge of honor.

I don’t know if she had any clue what she was getting herself into when she took me on as a client 16 months ago, she certainly had no way of knowing it would go to the depths it has in that time frame though she’s so good at her job I wouldn’t be surprised if she expected more than meets the eye to a degree most may not. I’ve made every therapist I’ve worked with cry, and it took her a while to join that club (a testament to her wonderful boundaries and also her way of knowing what is appropriate when) but one of my favorite moments was making her laugh out loud in such an unexpected way that she immediately covered her mouth. My other favorite is knowing the weirdest thing she’s ever said in a session was in my session. Heck yes. Welcome to my weird little brain, make yourself comfortable, it’s bound to get weirder.

Truly, every time we meet I’m amazed at how good she is at her job. She seems to know exactly what to say or not say or do or whatever at the perfect time. There are little specific moments that are ones I reflect back on to remind myself of reality when my brain gets all doubt-y about things. I don’t know that I have ever felt so seen or heard or known by any one person before, and even as a self proclaimed “open book”, that’s a rare feat indeed. It’s not often I feel safe enough to truly be seen, but she manages to create that space and hold it for me, no matter how much I try to sabotage my progress.

What’s the point of this post? Not much, really, other than to say that a good therapist is worth more than anything else I can conjure. I don’t know what I did to deserve finding such a wonderful one, but I’m forever grateful.

I hope if you find yourself in need of help, you’re brave enough to seek it out. And that if the first time isn’t a good fit, that you’re bold enough to try again. And I hope that you find in someone the safety it takes to truly be able to show up authentically and work through the darker parts of yourself. We all have dark and light inside of us. It’s up to us to take responsibility to learn how to manage them in productive ways for ourselves. Some of us have more privilege in the resources to cultivate this management and balance between the two, as well as the grey area in between, and we won’t all have it figured out and perfect no matter what we do. But we can start where we are, with what we have, and we can begin to see life open up for us. 

I truly believe what’s meant for me will find me, and the same for you, if we’re brave enough to live authentically. It’s difficult and ugly and painful sometimes, but it’s also beautiful and peaceful and safe. Both can be true.

(I learned that from my therapist)

If I ever do end up physically publishing anything, a lifelong dream of mine, you can bet your buttons she’ll have a dedication at the front of the book. Its the least I can do.

for the stranger

EmileeLeave a comment

7 May 2025

I’ve been writing since I was seven years old; basically as long as I’ve known how to hold a pencil and form letters with it and put those letters into (often misspelled) words and string those words into semi-coherent sentences.

When people would ask, I would say, “I’ve been journaling since I was twelve” because I knew I was not-quite-thirteen when 9/11 happened and I somehow forgot my diary at home that day so, even though it went against my perfectionist self, I wrote my thoughts on a piece of notebook paper as the teachers of my private school rolled the TV into our classroom “so we don’t scare the little ones”. 

But thinking back on that 2001 diary, I knew it wasn’t first. I bought it in what we called a “merit store” with all the “merits” I’d accumulated for overachieving or whatever. My mom was volunteering and since I had the most points I got to go first and mom pointed out the diary because she knew I was “into that sort of thing”.

Recently, I found a box unearthed by Hurricane Harvey that destroyed our town in 2017. This box was in a storage unit my dad built on our property when we moved there in 1999 and it’s where we housed the boxes we’d packed before we moved into a 5th-wheel trailer on the property as they “finished the house”. (Plot twist, it was never fully finished until after the Harvey repairs.) I packed these boxes as a ten-year-old and naturally most things that mattered to me then didn’t hold much worth to me now. Tucked in this box were a few notebooks and diaries—two of them Lisa Frank, thank you—that I had all but forgotten yet instantly recognized. The oldest was from 1995, when I was seven. The entries were scant, the handwriting atrocious, yet the statements were powerful. Somehow I managed to document in my dozen or so entries some of the most momentous occasions of my young life. 

Clearly, something in the practice of documenting, of writing, or scratching pen to paper and tucking it away has stuck. I’ve filled countless journals, written on a semi-successful ballet blog over the years I was dancing, had two poems published and many never seen the light of day. Writing is what I do. I don’t know that I’m necessarily any good at it, but how I feel when I’m writing – either on paper or typing up one of these fella’s to shout into the void of the interwebz – is a high I’ll chase for the rest of my life. It simultaneously brings me comfort no one else can give and helps me to feel centered in a way I struggle to explain to anyone who doesn’t also experience this with something. I write because I have to, no matter what ends up happening with those words. 

I’ve been debating starting this Substack for a bit. I love the concept of blogging and really enjoyed it when I was documenting my dance adventures. That chapter of my life has all but closed, yet I still feel drawn to this particular form of expression. I just watched a live stream (after the fact) with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wamback, and Amanda Doyle in honor of their book that just released called We Can Do Hard Things and one of the notes I took was of something Glennon said, sort of off handed, that lead into a deeper realization and conversation, 

“You will never leave you”.

I don’t know how frequently I’ll post here. What I can tell you is that it’ll likely be a lot of brain dumps (like this) along with random poems every now and again, and probably some pictures occasionally. It’ll have a lot of thoughts and feelings and probably not have any sort of theme other than this is my life and I feel compelled to write about it. I’ve been in therapy a little over a year now with an absolutely incredible therapist and it’s only now that I really feel like I’m beginning to be able to sort through the muck I have surrounded myself with as I have muddled through to survive this life and starting to see the connection to all the deeper parts of me and what they’re trying to tell me – what I can learn from it.

I don’t plan on really advertising this. If you’ve found it, I feel that truly means you were meant to. I hope if you feel compelled to stick around that you feel good about it and maybe have a moment of reflection or two yourself. 

Mainly, I hope you’re able to find a way to live your life in a way that feels like home to you.

May we all be so lucky. 

This is for you, stranger, person who may know my name but have never had the chance to know me. May this space be the proverbial seat on a train next to a stranger or meet-cute in the grocery store—that interaction you weren’t expecting but leaves you feeling warm inside. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

❤ me

I’m back, here.

EmileeLeave a comment

For a moment, I had entertained the idea of moving over to Substack from WordPress. It seemed the thing everyone else was doing, so maybe I should see what all the fuss is about, right? And then someone I follow pointed out how Substack allows Nazi’s to post on their platform, so I’ve decided that’s not for me, and I’m going to bring back here what I had taken there.

There are a few posts I made that I will post in order, then post new ones from there. I debated deleting my old posts and “starting fresh”, but I don’t really think that’s necessary. I’ve lived a lot of life since my last post on this blog almost 2 years ago, but a simple post can help catch everyone up, and then we can move forward.

The end of 2023/beginning of 2024 really felt like (another) turning point. There was so much I was feeling and couldn’t quite explain. I’d survived my first season working for the Ballet, which was intense to say the least, and I was finding new layers of myself I hadn’t known before and trying to sort out where everything belongs in the grand scheme of things.

In January 2024, I started therapy.
My insurance through work covers therapy, but you have to choose from their list of approved people for them to cover it. I was apprehensive, to say the least, given the town I live in. I’m born and raised here. I don’t know everyone, but everyone seems to know someone I know and word gets around fast. What’s more, the people who knew be in my “great before” seem to have missed the memo of who I am now, whether that be intentional omission, not paying attention, or the people in my life now having more discretion, I’m not sure, but I don’t mind it. It can just get a little awkward when people expect a certain version of me to be met with someone who is staunchly Not That. Not one to rock the boat, I don’t make a big song and pony show about it all, so it can be easy to miss if you’re not looking for more than what I can add to your life (versus actually knowing me as a person) and if you’re not safe I’m not about to go into any sort of detail of “How are you? How’s life?” more than I’d give to anyone else. Ironic for someone with a blog, but still. If you’re reading this, you’re either open minded or genuinely curious, and the nature of your curiosity is none of my business. No one’s forcing you to read this. You can click away and carry on with your life at any time. All this to say, I didn’t want a therapist that would either know the players in my story, nor would bring a certain religious opinion in to the session.

What I have found is the most perfect therapist for me. I didn’t really know going into it, based on some past experiences, that therapy was supposed to feel this safe. I knew it was supposed to be where you could say the things and receive the help or whatever. I have had one counselor before, ironically attached to a religious organization, who was the first to really make me feel like I wasn’t some hopeless lost cause that couldn’t amount to anything more than I was. She was wonderful, and I’m grateful for the work we did. Still, it wasn’t what I have found therapy to be this time. The person that I had seen (unintentionally) during Covid lockdown meant well, but wasn’t good for me. She brought in a lot of her own stuff and me, being an empathetic person who wants to make sure everyone is taken care of, ended up holding space for her as much as she for me. It wasn’t any big unloading on her part, but I can feel everything she was carrying, and that made it difficult for me to feel safe to give her my burden as well, even if it was her job. After three months she told me, “you have really good instincts, I don’t think there’s anything else I can do for you.” and what I wanted to reply with was, “okay, but I still want to die more often than I think a person should” but what I said was, “Okay, thank you.”

My therapist now is the boundary poster child, while still managing to be relatable. She is the safest person I’ve ever been around and is so damn good at her job I make sure to tell her as often as I can because I’m sure not everyone feels that way. People are people, after all. She’ll reassure me if and when I need it, but also won’t hesitate to call me out on my bullshit when necessary. I’ve seen exactly one tear fall from her eye, and that was the session after Honey died. Her expression of emotion and the radiating empathy showed me that I’m actually allowed to feel this loss. That dogs matter, sometimes more than people, and this wasn’t any small matter to be facing. After seeing that one tear, I went into, “oh gosh, are you okay?” mode and she promptly shut that down with, “This isn’t about me” and we carried on. I did ask the next session if she was okay, or if that was for me because I didn’t want to be presumptuous. She thanked me for asking, and said it was for me, and I told her how that made me realize all the things I’d realized about being allowed to feel because if my loss was enough to make my therapist cry, surely I was allowed to as well. Another layer peeled back on myself, revealing more things I didn’t know were there the whole time.

Recently, I’ve found myself keeping to myself more, which would have felt counterintuitive or even illegal to the me who was last writing here. Instead, I’m learning it’s not only allowed but encouraged. It’s a good thing to me to feel safe enough to keep to myself and know my world isn’t going to fall apart with my sadness. Emotions happen, and they’re allowed to, I’m going to be okay. I don’t have to tell other people about it to be safe. I’m safe with myself. I’m not a danger.

I, of course, am also not an island, and this doesn’t mean I don’t need people, on the contrary. We are such social beings we’re hardwired to need others. I still vent to friends or whatever, keeping them in the loop of the things that matter. It just means I don’t have to look to them to carry everything. I have my own two shoulders, and they’re strong, and some of this is stuff only I can carry. This is all done, thankfully, under the guise of my therapist and I am grateful every day for the privilege of knowing and working with her. How did I get so lucky to find her, first try even? All I did was look on our list of approved providers, paid attention to how each name made me feel, looked up websites, and called (after hours so I wouldn’t get an actual person, that’s too much). She actually lives about 4 hours from me, though she has an office here locally, but all the clients local to me are virtual. The best of both worlds–not here, but from here enough to know the places I’m talking about but not enough to know everyone I’m talking about. And even if she did know everyone I’m talking about she’s so good with boundaries that she won’t let on one bit. I’m learning this is how it’s supposed to be; who knew?

Now that it’s been a year and a half, I feel like I’m finally in a place where I can start writing again. I mean, I’ve never stopped. I journal and slap together stanzas I call “poetry” and what have you, but now I feel I’m in a place where I can write here again, in a more public setting and in a way that’s authentic without worrying about saying too much, or whatever. I don’t need this to be what holds the space for me; I’ve learned how to hold space for myself.

The next few posts will be from my Substack. I’ll put the publish date on them, so you can keep up with the timeline or whatever.

Thanks for coming along for the ride, I’m glad you’re here.