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Open Thread: How Do You Practice Self-Care?

Miri, , , , 28 Comments
A teapot and a mug that says, "Write like a motherfucker."
90 degrees outside. No fucks given.

I’m going to give open threads a try! The folks who comment here seem to have a lot of interesting things to share, so I thought it’d be cool to have some threads where you can talk about yourself as much as you want.

The topic I’m starting with is self-care. Whether or not you have what could be called Mental Health Problems, everyone needs to calm down, unwind, or get their mind off of things sometimes. Different things work for different people, and sometimes something that seems really weird or counterintuitive will help someone.

Self-care is not a replacement or substitute for treatment (if you need it). It’s a way for people to cope with stress and jerkbrain, maintain recovery from a mental illness, or help manage mental illness symptoms if you have them. So none of these things are intended to cure or treat anything, and a lot of frustration tends to arise when people offer them up as “advice” for those with mental illnesses.

We each know best what helps us best. Here’s how I like to do self-care:

  • Hot tea. (Even in the summer. Must be because I’m Russian.)
  • Writing, even if it’s about something heavy.
  • Taking a hot shower, even if it’s just to have a place to cry in private.
  • Cleaning, organizing, doing dishes. My apartment tends to get cleaner the more life problems I’m having.
  • Going for a walk and listening to music. Unfortunately, I don’t get to do this so much now that I live in the city, where it wouldn’t be relaxing or necessarily pleasant. But my high school years, back in Ohio, were full of leisurely walks around the neighborhood.
  • Playing music. Now that I finally have a keyboard piano, I’ll finally be able to do that again.
  • Reading sci-fi novels or nonfiction articles. For some reason, it has to be one or the other. Nonfiction books don’t work, and short stories or poetry don’t work.
  • Watching something that tells a good story but doesn’t require careful attention. So, Star Trek and Doctor Who are in; West Wing and Damages are out.
  • Talking to a friend about something totally unrelated.

Some things that help lots of people but not me are: YouTube videos, animal photos, talking to someone about the thing I’m upset/stressed about, eating, video games (though I like them at other times), basically anything that’s supposed to be funny/uplifting. The first two are especially frustrating, because the first thing many people will do if I say I’m feeling down is send me YouTube videos and animal photos. Then I have to either pretend that it helped, or tell them that that doesn’t help. (Except sometimes. Hard to predict.)

 

What works for you? What doesn’t?

Open Thread: How Do You Practice Self-Care?
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My CONvergence Schedule!

Miri, , , 4 Comments

ConnieonCONvergence

There’s just a few days left until CONvergence starts in Bloomington, Minnesota on Thursday! I’m already in the area; I went to Twin Cities Pride today and got a ton of stickers and also a sunburn.

If you’re going to CONvergence/Skepchickcon, here’s where you can find me:

Tech Sex: Friday, July 4, 11:30 PM

New technology is often used to explore sexuality and sexual identity; its more sexually charged uses often determine the course for technological innovations. We will explore the complex intersections of sexuality, gender, identity, and technology. Panelists: Miri Mogilevsky, Lyndzi Miller, Heina Dadabhoy, Samantha Bitner, Catherine Lundoff

Science of Irrationality: Saturday, July 5, 11:00 AM

Your brain has been deceiving you all your life! Our brains often trick us into making irrational decisions and it does so in ways that are generally predictable. No one is immune, not even you. Come learn how your own brain has been misleading you. Panelists: Mary Brock, Bug Girl, Megan Press, Jamie Bernstein, Miri Mogilevsky

Criticism and Empathy Online: Saturday, July 5, 12:30 PM

When people abuse anonymity to give hurtful, damaging criticism, is this merely a failure of empathy, or is there something more there? How do you criticize people without triggering a flame war? Should you even TRY to avoid flame wars? Panelists: Miri Mogilevsky, Jason Thibeault, Wesley Chu, Kameron Hurley, Ted Meissner

Mental Illness Myths: Saturday, July 5, 5:00 PM

Myths about mental illness pervade our society, including our health care system. We’ll examine research, clinical practice, and experiences on everything from psychiatric drugs and the “dangerous” mentally ill to how these myths dehumanize and harm. Panelists: Megan Press, Miri Mogilevsky, Julia Burke, Olivia James, Desiree Schell (mod)

Organizing Online to Make a Better World: Do We Need to Tear the Old One Down?: Saturday, July 5, 8:30 PM

Criticism and even rage blazing across social media has proven remarkably effective in getting complaints heard, but what are the downsides? How do we maintain communities when anger and volume get things done? Panelists: Miri Mogilevsky, Jason Thibeault, Beth Voigt, Stephanie Zvan, Debbie Goddard

Bullying and the Bystander: Sunday, July 6, 11:00 AM

What can you do to support people who are targets of online bullying and harassment? We’ll discuss what works, what doesn’t, and why, as well as how much of a difference a bystander can make. Panelists: Miri Mogilevsky, Amy Roth, Will Robertson, Amanda Marcotte, Rebecca Watson

(Yes, that’s four panels in a day.)

I’ll also be at the FtB and Skepchick party rooms in the evenings if you want to say hi.

My CONvergence Schedule!

Submit Your Panel Proposals for #FtBCon by July 22!

Miri, 7 Comments

FtBCon 3 is fast approaching: August 22-24, 2014. As always, we’re going to have a full weekend of panels, talks, and Cards Against Humanity. This time, we’re going to be more organized about how we plan the sessions, so we’re giving you until July 22 to submit a proposal for a panel or talk.

proposalcall

To submit your proposal, just email ftbconscience[at]gmail.com with a title and description of your panel or talk, potential participants, and any relevant speaking or writing experience you have.

Some anticipated questions:

What sorts of topics do FtBCon sessions cover?

We’re going to have some blog posts up in the next few weeks with suggestions, but basically, anything you see on FtB itself is good material for the conference: atheism, science, philosophy, politics, social justice. If you haven’t seen any previous FtBCon panels, you can see last summer’s here and last winter’s here.

What do I need in order to organize a panel?

You and the other participants need a Google+ account, an internet connection that can handle a Google+ hangout, a webcam, a microphone (usually included with the webcam!), and headphones or earbuds. You don’t have to worry about setting up the hangout yourself or streaming it via YouTube; an FtB host will do that for you. We’ll be testing the Google+ hangouts with all of the participants a week or two before the conference.

Do I have to know exactly what I’ll call the panel or who the participants will be?

No, but you should have some ideas. The more fleshed-out the proposal will be, the more likely we are to accept it. (The past two cons, we had a lot of really vague proposals that we put on the schedule and never really got a good description for, so it was hard to promote them or anticipate what topics would be covered.) You might want to email some potential participants before sending in the proposal.

Do I have to have speaking/writing experience?

Nope! We’re looking for people who can organize an interesting and meaningful discussion or talk. Having speaking or writing experience is a plus, though.

How much time do I have for the panel?

Most FtBCon sessions are 50 minutes each, including Q&A time if you want it. We’ll also have some 80-minute sessions like we did last time.

Can I participate if I need to remain anonymous?

Yes! Make sure that your Google+ account doesn’t use your real name. Google Hangouts include a tool that hides your face with an image of your choice (I like using the troll memes, personally). You can also just turn off the video part of the hangout and do it audio-only. If voice recognition is a concern, you can download software that will distort it.

[Update] Can I do a solo talk, or does it have to be a panel?

We sorta prefer panels for several reasons: they tend to be more interesting and engaging than solo talks in the Google+ format, they allow more people’s voices to be included in the conference, and they’re less likely to have to be canceled at the last minute because one person gets sick or busy or their internet fails. If you really want to do a solo talk, you should have previous speaking experience, and you should have a reason why you’d like to do the talk by yourself.

If you have any other questions, leave them in the comments rather than emailing them (if possible) so that others who may have the same question can see.

I hope to see lots of you in the chatroom and on the panels in August! For updates, please follow our Facebook, Twitter, and blog.

Submit Your Panel Proposals for #FtBCon by July 22!

Help Miri Speak At Cons!

Miri36 Comments

As I mentioned in a recent link roundup, I’m doing a decent amount of speaking/paneling at cons this spring and summer, including Women in Secularism 3, CONvergence, SSA East, and the already-completed Skeptech. Most of these cons do not cover my flight and hotel room, and even for those that do, food at cons ends up being around $100 for the weekend. That’s a significant amount of money for me.

In the past, I’ve kept to a very strict ethic of “If you do not have the money for something then you do not get that thing unless you need it in the way that you need food and shelter,” but a bunch of people have convinced me that this is unnecessary and that there would be plenty of people happy to donate some money so that I get to do something I want (and that they presumably want to see me do) rather than need.

However, I feel more comfortable asking for donations if I’m also including some sort of reward structure, so I’ve stolen Stephanie’s with her permission and made some modifications. So if the idea of donating bothers you, consider this me asking for payment for services rendered: namely, articles. Alternatively, if you don’t care about that, you’re also welcome to simply donate.

  • $1 donation level–You will receive my thanks in a post once I wrap up the fundraiser. If you choose this level, please use the ability to add a comment with your donation to let me know what name you want to be credited under.
  • $10 donation level–You’ll receive my thanks as above. I will also produce a blog post addressing the argument of your choice. This can be a bad argument you expect I’ll refute or a good argument you think I can do justice to so you can link to it later when the topic comes up again. While you control the topic, my take on the argument will be my own. You can also use the comment function to request this, or you can email me.
  • $25 donation level–You’ll receive my thanks as above. I will also produce a blog post addressing the scientific paper of your choice in psychology or related topics. (I can access most academic papers through Columbia, but there’s a small chance a given paper will be unavailable.) While you control the topic, my take on the paper will be my own. Keep in mind that if you stray too far from the fields of psychology, sociology, and social work, I may be unable to do it. You can also use the comment function to request this, or you can email me.
  • $50 donation level–You’ll receive my thanks as above. I will also produce a blog post addressing the men’s rights, anti-feminist, theist, or politically right-wing article of your choice. In other words, this is your chance to try to make my head explode, which is why it costs more. While you control the topic, my take on the paper will be my own. You can also use the comment function to request this, or you can email me.

A few caveats:

  • Some MRAs will retaliate pretty dangerously against feminists who criticize them. If you ask me to respond to an MRA article, I will gauge the risk myself and I may choose not to do it. In that case, I’ll contact you using whichever email you used with Paypal and offer to either return your donation or get a different topic to write about.
  • You can see that I haven’t specified any timelines. I’ll work on these continuously throughout the rest of the spring and summer. I may unexpectedly get a summer job, in which case it’ll obviously take longer.
  • Any money that I don’t use for conference-related expenses, I will use to live on rather than donating as is the norm for these fundraisers. This is because we live in a society that has apparently unanimously decided that it is acceptable not to pay a person with a college degree for their work, as long as you refer to them as an “intern” rather than an “employee.” I would love to be in a position where I can comfortably let go of “excess” money that I’ve raised, but unfortunately, at this point I’m literally not sure how I’m going to make it through the summer and through another move (in NYC you generally have to put down about three times the first month’s rent just to move in, and you know how our rents are). For what it’s worth, not doing a crappy unpaid internship that forces me to waste money on public transportation and lunch means I have more time to write!

I’ll be taking donations via Paypal. There’s a little text box where you can add the info you need to request your article, or you can also email me.

If you have any creative ideas for other reward levels, let me know in the comments!

Thank you all so much for your help. 🙂

You can donate here.







Help Miri Speak At Cons!

#FtBCon Review and More Secular Things

Miri, , 4 Comments

We survived FtBCon2! There were tech disasters and no-show panelists and not enough food or sleep, but it was, like last time, a really fun weekend during which I learned a lot (and hope you did too). If you saw our final session, you know that we’re already thinking about the next con, so stay tuned for announcements about that within the next few weeks.

There were a few moments for me this weekend that were especially rewarding: our two-hour-long panel on polyamory on Friday night, hearing all the criticisms of the mainstream atheist movement (in panels like this one with young women of color, and this one with atheists who deal with chronic illness or disability), getting to play Cards Against Humanity online with people, and helping amplify the voices of people who otherwise might not reach an audience. Some other panels/talks I particularly enjoyed were godless parenting, sexual harassment law, Jewish atheism (that was one of mine!), and the secular support movement.

I’m also just really impressed, as usual, by the amount and quality of the work that was put into this. Stephanie, Jason, and Brianne worked their asses off, and all the non-FtB friends we had organizing panels, such as Courtney Caldwell, Benny, and all the folks from Secular Woman, put an incredible amount of work into this so much. Thank you to all of them, to everyone who helped out in the chatroom, to everyone who spread the word, and to everyone who watched.

Here, for your edification, is a playlist of ALL THE TALKS:

Last year, FtBCon helped spur the creation of the Secular Asian Community on Facebook. This time, it prompted a friend of mine to create a Facebook group called Secular Exchange NYC. It’s for New York-area atheists/agnostics/nontheists to exchange job postings, apartment listings, goods, services, and other needs, in recognition of the fact that as atheists, we don’t have ready-made communities like churches and synagogues that can provide us with these things.

If you’re a nontheist who lives in or spends a lot of time in the NYC area, you’re welcome to join the group. It’s still new and really small, but the bigger it gets, the more benefit there will be from it.

In other secular news, SkepTech is just two months away and they’re raising money! SkepTech is a technology-/skepticism-themed student conference. I went to the first one last year and had an amazing time. They had “safe zones” where people could get some quiet time and unwind, their speakers were diverse and awesome, Zach Weinersmith drew me a picture, and hijinks ensued. The IndieGoGo page also boasts that last year’s conference features “1,000,000,000+ salacious postures,” so you should go and see them for yourself. If you can, please help out their fundraising campaign and/or attend. Registration is already open (and free!), and the speaker lineup will be released later this week. From what I know of it already, it’s going to be really, really good.

Finally, here’s a cool documentary called Hug An Atheist that’s raising money to go to festivals. The documentary is important because it exposes people to the views and lives of actual atheists and does a lot to dispel the stigma that lots of people still feel towards atheists and atheism in general.

That’s it for now. I hope to write some more soon. I’m going to a polyamory conference in Philadelphia this weekend, so maybe that’ll provide some inspiration.

Don’t forget to join Secular Exchange NYC if it applies to you!

#FtBCon Review and More Secular Things

#FtBCon Preview!

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FtBCon2_bannerFx

As previously mentioned, our second FtBCon is this weekend. You can find the full schedule on the Lanyrd page. Here’s a roundup of the stuff I’m doing, and a few more panels and talks you shouldn’t miss.

(All times are in Central)

Friday night at 9 PM, I’m leading a panel on polyamory with a bunch of great people: Heina Dadabhoy, Ania Bula, Alexander Gonzalez, Jesse Menard, Benny, and Sasha Pixlee. We’ll talk about what polyamory actually means and how we do it, and also touch on issues like the intersections between polyamory and our other identities.

Saturday at 6 PM, Chana Messinger and I are going to have a long-overdue conversation about Jewish atheism. We hope to correct misconceptions that many non-Jewish atheists have (for instance, yes, you can be both Jewish and an atheist) and discuss the place Jewish ritual and community has in our lives.

Saturday night at 11 PM, I’ll be leading a G+ Hangout-based game of Cards Against Humanity. Each game is limited to ten people total (although more can watch and chat with us via the chatbox), so hopefully I can wrangle some other FtBers in leading their own sessions. (Since this won’t be saved to YouTube, streaming will work a little differently for this. Look out for a link at the start time.)

Sunday at 11 AM, I’ll be talking about mental illness and society with Stephanie and Kate. Specifically, we’ll focus on the DSM, the manual used to diagnose mental illness, and the idea of defining what it means to be able to “function” in society.

Sunday at 5 PM, Ginny, Benny, and I will be talking about skepticism and sex education, sharing our experiences as sex educators, and pointing out the problems with how we approach sex ed in the United States.

Finally, here are some sessions from others that you should make sure to catch:

Saturday at 10 AM, a panel of secular leaders discusses secular support groups and networks. If you care about providing affirmative, evidence-based services to atheists struggling to cope with difficulties in their lives, you’ll want to see this.

Saturday at 11 AM, Russell Glasser, Jen Peeples, Elyse Anders, and Dale McGowan talk about raising atheist kids. I’ll be taking notes for…hopefully the very distant future.

Saturday at 2 PM, Ken White, attorney and blogger at Popehat, discusses sexual harassment law.

Saturday at 3 PM, Ania Bula leads a panel on chronic pain, disability, and the atheist movement. It was planned as a follow-up to last year’s fantastic panel on chronic pain, and I expect this one will be just as informative, if not even more so.

Saturday at 9 PM, Greta Christina will stream her Godless Perverts Story Hour live from San Francisco. Do not miss it.

Sunday at 9 AM, Ania Bula, Heina Dadabhoy, Vyckie Garrison, and Jamila Bey will discuss spiritual abuse. This important topic deserves more recognition than it gets, so make sure to wake up early for this one.

Finally, Sunday at 3 PM, Courtney Caldwell will lead a panel on the intersections between veganism and humanism. I’m really excited to hear what they have to say.

I really hope to see lots of you online this weekend! Don’t forget to follow our Twitter and Facebook for updates, including conference panels as they go live. The Pharyngula chatroom will be available for your questions and discussions.

Happy FtBCon!

#FtBCon Preview!

Some Fucks I Will Try Not to Give in 2014

Miri, , , , , , 29 Comments

I came across Chantielle MacFarlane’s list of fucks she refuses to give in 2014 on Medium. By fucks she refuses to give, Chantielle means anti-resolutions of a sort: rather than trying to do something or change something, she wants to stop caring about or trying to change things that she’s realized don’t really matter or aren’t worth making an effort for.

I know I’m about to sound silly, but this is revolutionary. It is still difficult in our culture, especially for a woman but really for anyone, to say, “I am good enough.” I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t need to keep lifehacking and self-improving. Maybe I have goals I’m still working on, but I do not need to keep trying to level up on every single conceivable attribute.

After I read the post and shared it widely and argued with some rando who called Chantielle “selfish” for not wanting children (can someone please explain this convoluted reasoning to me?), I thought about the things that I care about way too much and want to stop caring about, or the things that I’ve been half-heartedly trying to change and have now decided it’s time to give up on. Here is my own list of fucks I don’t want to give anymore, but since I’m a little less optimistic than Chantielle in this regard, I’ve called it “Some Fucks I Will Try Not to Give in 2014.”

1. Wearing nice/cute shoes.

I came to New York in August with my prodigious shoe collection that I have nowhere to put and thought, Wow, I finally get to do cool fun things and wear all these shoes. LOOOOOL. The first half of that definitely came true, but most of the shoes are now stuffed under my bed or in the storage space above my closet because it’s just not happening. And I know everyone does that thing where they wear comfortable shoes to take the subway and walk to where they’re going, but bring nicer shoes to change into while they get there, but honestly, hauling around an extra pair of shoes is a pain in the ass. I need the space in my bag for books.

So yeah, I’m not really going to give a fuck about this anymore. I love my walks through the city, whether they last five minutes or five hours. I’m not going to let cute shoes ruin them.

2. Obsessing over whether or not I am qualified/talented enough to do a given thing.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this, but the first thing I do upon hearing of (or, in fact, being offered) an opportunity is to conduct a thorough mental inventory to decide whether or not I am qualified to accept this opportunity. Yes, even if it has already been offered to me. Hello, impostor syndrome! I live in fear of agreeing to do something, doing it poorly, and never being offered any opportunities ever again because the world has finally learned how utterly talentless and undeserving I actually am.

The last straw that made me put this on my no-more-fucks list was a recent incident in which a friend recommended me for a radio show about social work that she had been interviewed on. One of the show’s staff emailed me and asked if I’d like to be interviewed. I asked for some more information about the show, and she replied with a brief description and mentioned that previously the show has interviewed authors, community organizers, etc.–basically, professional social workers.

I immediately started drafting an email saying that I was very thankful for the invitation, but that it seems that I’m not exactly qualified to be a guest on the show because the other guests are all professionals and I’m just a student who hasn’t really done anything worthy of talking about on a radio show.

I was about to hit send when I noticed a line in the email that I’d completely missed the first time I read it–the one that said that the show’s producer had seen my blog and liked it, and was therefore interested in having me on the show.

And that’s how I nearly said no to a cool opportunity because I didn’t even realize that my writing could make me a worthwhile radio show guest and that that, in fact, had been communicated to me by the person who invited me.

Even after that, though, there was still a part of me that was like…really? You’re interviewing published authors and actual people with actual jobs and then some random student with a blog? But ok, they said they wanted to have me on, and I wanted to do it. (So I will in fact be doing it later this month and will post a link when it’s up.)

Then I started wondering how many other opportunities I had thrown away in the service of Making Sure I Never Seem Too Confident Or God Forbid Full Of Myself. I’ve had offers to be a staff writer for various online outlets, I’ve had people ask me to submit posts to well-known blogs and websites, I’ve had people ask me if I’d be willing to come speak to their secular group. I’ve somehow managed to ignore or deny most of these. And those are just the opportunities that straight-up landed in my lap. I have no idea what I could accomplish if I actually pitched articles to websites or asked for opportunities myself.

I don’t think 2014 will be the year I stop abhorring the very notion of self-promotion (for myself, not for others), but it can definitely be the year I stop giving a fuck about whether I’m good enough to do things that people invite me to do, and just fucking do them.

3. The fact that I am not particularly invested in pursuing serious relationships at this point

Over the past year and a half I have accomplished a previously unprecedented state of being: I don’t care if I’m single. I even kind of like it. At the same time, I’m open to the idea of getting into a serious relationship at some point soon, and there have even been a few people I would’ve wanted one with, but I’m a passive coward (that’s another story, though).

But over the second half of 2013, in a feat of meta that few could even aspire to, I found another thing to worry about now that I wasn’t worrying about being single: the fact that I’m not worrying about being single. Yes, I’m concerned that I’m like never going to have a relationship again (let alone ever get married or have children) because I just can’t be arsed to do anything about getting one. And while I’m happy to be single now, I’m not sure I still want to be single in 10 years.

A lot of the worrying came from watching my close friends make major life decisions based on people they’re romantically involved with: where to move, which jobs to take, whether to be polyamorous or not, and so on. I was happy for them, but I also couldn’t see myself ever doing such a thing. I want to live where I want to live (here) and do what I want to do and be polyamorous. Maybe–I thought with a deepening horror–I am way too selfish and uncompromising to ever have a serious relationship again.

Well, if so, then so be it. I will not leave my beloved city for some guy, I will not give up my weekends of reading and exploring the city because I’m expected to see the exact same person every weekend. If I find a way to have a serious relationship without feeling like I’m giving up my life, that would be wonderful, but for now I’m going to try to stop giving a fuck about the fact that I’m not pursuing one and give myself permission to be cold or selfish or inflexible or whatever the hell I constantly accuse myself of being. (Not that those accurate are even accurate.)

(Please do not leave any patronizing comments about how This Is Just How Young People Are and When You’re Older You’ll Understand About Relationships.)

And besides, I now own a makeup bag that I take everywhere I go that literally says, “New York is my boyfriend.”

4. Whether or not my Facebook posts could possibly be making someone feel bad or annoyed

I spend way, way too much time carefully curating Facebook lists that I use to selectively hide various Facebook posts from various people. Some of this is for my own good (as in, I don’t want a given person to see something because I just don’t want them to know it), but most of it is to prevent anyone from feeling in any way bad.

The reason I hide all of my political stuff from anyone I know on my friends list who’s conservative isn’t because I have a problem with the conservative comments they would leave, but because then I would argue with the comments and then they would feel bad. The reason I hide most of my personal stuff from most people on my friends list isn’t because I don’t want them to know it (wow so I went on an expedition to Union Square and its bookstores, again, big deal), but because I don’t want them to feel annoyed at seeing random personal babble from someone they don’t know well or haven’t seen for a long time.

To some extent, this has done wonders for my peace of mind and ability to enjoy Facebook. But on the other hand, sometimes there are bugs in the system and those bugs are WHAT IFFFFF SOMEONE SEES THIS AND FEELS BAD FOR FIVE SECONDS UNTIL THEY EITHER KEEP SCROLLING OR HIDE ME FROM THEIR FEED OR UNFRIEND ME.

I’m so, so tired of giving a fuck about this.

5. Whether or not I’m about to arrive at the subway station just as my train is pulling away.

The trains go every 5 minutes. I will survive. Enough said.

6. Whether or not anyone is going to care about the blog post I’m currently writing.

Slightly similar to #4 above, I often obsess over the fact that I may post something on my blog that people don’t care about and will be annoyed that they saw in their feed reader until they mark it as read and move on and forget that such a thing was ever written.

Luckily, as you can see, I’m already making fantastic progress on not giving a fuck about this, because I’m writing this post, hopefully with the intent of publishing it after it’s done.

And I seriously had this thought that I should put a little note at the top about how this is a silly personal post and if you come here for the Super Srs Feminism Discussions then you should skip it, but then I thought, my god, so someone will waste five seconds until they realize they don’t care. It has fuck in the title, for heaven’s sake.

As someone who writes independently, I can not only put “fuck” in a blog post title and also in the post itself (fuck fuck fuck fucking fuck), but I can also not care how many people read my post or how many times it is shared on Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Tumblr/Pinterest (yes, that’s happened). I’ve done a great job of not caring about this thus far, so my concern with posts like these isn’t so much “But what if nobody likes it?” as “But what if someone is annoyed that I wrote it?”

Well, it’s time to stop giving a fuck about that, because as a feminist atheist woman with an attitude, every word that emerges from my keyboard is going to annoy someone. This sentence is probably annoying. Sorry. (Not really sorry though.)

7. I can never go home again.

I cannot go back to my childhood home. Sure, I can visit for a few days at a time, but I can’t go back. There is nothing for me there except crappy old memories and awkward smalltalk with strangers. I will never spend summers with my siblings at the pool again, I will never go biking with my parents every weekend again, I will never be forced to help my dad rake leaves again, I will never drive past my old high school and stop to hear my old marching band practice again.

The time I spend with my family from now on will be limited by how many plane tickets I can afford and how many vacation days I can eke out. And that’s if I’m lucky to be able to afford any plane tickets and have any vacation days at all.

Shortly before the New Year I actually had a legit depressive breakdown over these hard facts.

In 2014, it’s time to try to get over it and stop giving a fuck. So this is adulthood. Nobody gets to see their family all the time who isn’t fortunate enough to have grown up in a place they love and can get a job in.

8. Trying to fit all of my possessions into the proper storage spaces.

Ever since I moved here I have been waging a war against my room and its paucity of storage space. I won the latest battle by spending too much money at Bed Bath & Beyond and installing some sort of rudimentary storage system into the bottom half of my closet.

However, the uneasy cease fire between my room and me will not last long, as inevitably my mom will buy me even more clothes, I will buy even more books, and/or somebody will buy me the keyboard piano I have been desperately wanting for years.

(No, I’m not going to throw or give away my things. I paid good money for them and I value them. Fuck that.)

9. It will be a long time (if ever) until I have a job I like, a sense of financial security, and a comfortable living space.

Knowing and accepting the fact that I have made two choices–moving to New York and getting a degree in social work–that, together, make it nearly impossible to have all of the above three things and to have any of them any time soon has been a struggle this past year.

It’s hard to find people who understand, because people seem to either sanctimoniously preach at me about how some people have it so much worse and anyway I should be focused on Making A Difference rather than affording an apartment in which I don’t have to leave all my stuff lying all over the floor and call the super every few days because something is broken, or they roll their eyes and patronizingly tell me that I should’ve gone into software development or finance and then prattle about how they would never accept a job offer that doesn’t include a relocation package.

To both of those types of people, I pretty much have only two words left to say: That’s nice.

In my life now, lots of seemingly contradictory things are true. I’m passionate about making a difference, but sometimes I wish I could have an apartment building with a laundry room and maybe even a little gym. I think being a therapist would be really fulfilling and awesome, but sometimes I wonder if it might’ve been better to get a boring job that pays a lot of money and use that money to make a difference outside of the office. I don’t care about having “status” in the financial sense, but it would be so amazing to be able to take my possible future children to see other countries, to visit their relatives in Israel and Russia. I don’t need a lot of money to be able to live comfortably, but I also hope to spend my life in one of the most expensive cities in the country, which is rapidly growing even more expensive. I refuse to ever marry “for money,” but when I think about spending my life with someone who makes as little as I will, all I can see is a once-beautiful relationship torn apart by financial stress.

Yes, it’s easy to say that money doesn’t matter as long as you’re “making a difference,” but some really wonderful things do require money. How will I visit my family? How will I see my amazing friends and partners in other cities? How will I donate to causes I care about? How will I make sure I’m healthy? How will I continue my education? (Yes, some of it can be free, but much of it can’t.) Money.

It will take me a lifetime to figure this out. It will also take a while to decide whether or not Making A Difference is worth not having enough money to do anything with my life but that. (All I can say is, it’ll have to be an amazing job if it’s all I’ve got going for me.)

But for now, I hope that in 2014 I can at least make some progress towards not giving a fuck about any of this. I have time to figure it out, and it doesn’t have to be right this damn minute.

Here’s to a year of much fewer fucks. (Of the not-fun kind, that is.)

Some Fucks I Will Try Not to Give in 2014

New Year, New York

Miri, , , , 3 Comments

One exact year ago I stood shivering in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, waiting for the fireworks. There was a huge crowd gathered, people of all ages, kids with silly string and noisemakers, couples with their dogs, all waiting. I was with friends–some new ones, some old ones–thinking about the year I’d just had and the one I hoped was coming.

Whatever else happened that upcoming year, the most important thing was that by the end of it I would be back here in the city I love.

In a sense I’m still waiting for the fireworks. Still waiting for everything to be happy and okay. Still waiting to be completely certain I was right to come here. Still waiting for this story arc of my life to come to its perfect finish.

I know I’ll be waiting a long time, probably forever, for that.

But as the clock struck midnight a year ago, I wished to come here for good and I did. How often in life does a wish that urgent and overpowering actually come true?

I’m very lucky.

~~~

Before I moved a number of Well-Meaning Adults told me condescendingly that they so hoped I wouldn’t get disillusioned by New York once I had to actually live in it and have all my dreams shattered. That does seem like the typical young-person-moving-to-New-York narrative, but it didn’t happen.

Of course, I haven’t been here all that long yet. But I’ve been here long enough to watch one season shift to another, and then another. That means I’ve been awestruck by all of New York’s seasons now, and I feel like I’ve been here much longer than I have. I’ve played tour guide to visiting friends and done the various little things you start to do as you realize that it’s time to settle in. I’ve had my fair share of those late New York nights, come home after 3 AM to find kids still playing in the streets where I live. I’m learning where all the Chipotles and Barnes and Nobles are and which subways take way too long to show the fuck up.

I don’t know that I’m happy yet, but I don’t regret having moved, not at all.

If I ever leave New York–which, someday, I probably will–I don’t think it’ll be because I stop loving it. It’ll probably be because the rich and powerful of this city have decided to make it a place where, increasingly, only the rich and powerful can afford to live. Or it’ll be because some dream job turns up somewhere else, or because too many of the people I love will be somewhere else for it to be worth it to stay here, enchanted but alone.

~~~

The truth is that I’m pretty sad a lot of the time. I miss my old routines, my friends, my family, Chicago, college, nature, pretty much anything in the world I could conceivably miss. As I wrote in my guide to moving, it’s a process that doesn’t end once you get there and your stuff’s unpacked. I have plenty of friends and relatives and things to do here, but all my brain seems to care about is that it’s just…not what I had before.

I predicted this would happen, that this would be one of those things where things have to get much worse before they get better. I thought my first year or two here would be awful. I worried that my depression would relapse completely (which maybe it has, who knows). I didn’t tell many people this because I didn’t think they’d understand why I’d do something that I thought would make me feel awful for a while.

John D. Rockefeller said, “Don’t be afraid to give up the good and go for the great.” Sometimes “the great” is actually real shit for a while. Sometimes you never even get there, and in the real world, you don’t land among the stars if you miss the moon. You end up floating in the vacuum of space.

Sometimes I seem to do a lot of things that make me sad. This is only the latest in a long line of them. I don’t understand it except that, as someone for whom happiness has always been elusive, I don’t prioritize it very highly anymore. Living alone in New York is sad, but at least I get to live in New York.

~~~

Over the last few months I’ve watched myself change to fit into my new surroundings, sometimes in surprising ways. I’d remarked many times when I visited that people in New York are extremely helpful and kind to strangers, and while I’d never been one to refuse help when it was asked of me, I rarely offered it proactively. Now I find myself picking out the tourists and giving them directions, stopping to help someone carry something up the stairs out of the subway, suddenly sinking down onto the pavement in the dark to pick up the groceries that had spilled from a woman’s cart.

And then I think about how some of the people I’ve casually, thoughtlessly helped went home and told their friends how kind people are in New York, and how maybe when they come here for good someday they’ll carry on that custom. Maybe that’s how it gets perpetuated, despite what people think about New Yorkers.

But assertiveness and proactiveness are traits that can manifest in lots of ways. I used to shrink down and try to shrug it off when people harassed me, maybe thinking up witty comebacks hours later. But recently I surprised myself when I was walking down the street at night in Queens, listening to music, and some dude suddenly shoved an open stick of Axe in my face. (For a fun exercise, count the number of things wrong with his behavior.) I didn’t hear what he or his friends were saying, but without thinking about it or missing a beat, I yanked my earbuds out, shoved his arm out of my face as hard as I could, yelled “What the FUCK are you doing?”, and continued on my way without listening to the reply. I’m quite sure he meant no harm, but my response was mostly instinctual, and anyway, that should teach him about violating women’s personal space on the streets at night. It doesn’t really fucking matter what he intended.

I stand up for myself all the time in other ways, things I wouldn’t have done before I moved.

Another weird change, but this one I have no idea if it relates to moving to New York or not: although I’ve been playing music since I was 11 years old, I have never willingly practiced in earshot of people and have performed solos maybe once or twice. The thought of being listened to made me so uncomfortable that no matter how much I loved playing piano, it wasn’t worth it. But last week I came home to my family where I have a piano, and I completely shocked myself by sitting down and playing it in a room full of people. Even though I needed to relearn the piece that I’d forgotten and was completely out of practice. The fact that people were listening didn’t bother me a single bit, and over the course of the week I relearned the piece almost to perfection and felt even better about playing it in front of people. I am good, goddammit, and I will fill up the house with music if I feel like playing.

(One wonderful thing that came out of that was that I decided to ask my parents for a keyboard piano for New Year’s, so that I finally get to have a piano in my residence for the first time since I left for college. I think it’ll do wonders for my mental health.)

At the same time, moving here has made me crave and cherish alone time in a way I never have before. In Ohio and even in college, socialization was a sort of rare luxury and my brain operated in scarcity mode. That is, if I had the opportunity to socialize, I took it, because who knew when I’d have the opportunity again. While I enjoyed the things I did when I was alone, they always felt “pathetic” to me somehow, like I “should” be out there interacting with people instead.

Then I came here and social interaction became so easy to come by that suddenly I was desperate to cut down on it. I still felt weird about declining invitations or not going to events that I thought were cool, but it calmed me down to remember the sheer volume of things there are to do in the city, most of which recur at least semi-regularly. The world will not end because I didn’t go to some queer book club or poly party.

~~~

Usually with these New Year’s Eve posts I try to reflect on my life over the past year, in general. This year, moving to New York seems to be overshadowing everything else I’ve done with myself, which is probably not for the better. I did do a lot of cool stuff. I started speaking professionally-ish, I made a ridiculous amount of friends and started seeing a number of new partners, I went to grad school (which I rarely talk about either in my writing or to people because it doesn’t feel very important to me, but I still did it), I read a lot and revised lots of my opinions and ideas in response, I started working out again (which is a really big deal), I wrote lots and lots (and spent the entire year here on FtB, which is just awesome), and mostly kept depression at bay.

There’s not much to say about all that now but that, except at my worst moments, I really do feel extremely lucky despite how hard and sad things are a lot of the time.

Since this is after all my blog and most of you are probably here for the actual writing and not the rambling about my life, I decided to make a list of my favorite posts that I wrote in 2013. Not necessarily the most popular ones–just the ones I still find myself thinking about, linking to, and feeling proud of.

~~~

A few weeks ago, I was on a completely frozen 2 AM trek through upper Manhattan with a friend after having hitchhiked across the bridge from New Jersey (as you do), trying to get to the subway. My hands and feet were in that uncomfortable stage of freezing the fuck off where they just hurt a lot, and it was dark and almost completely deserted (some parts of the city do sleep). Had I not been with a friend, I probably would’ve honestly been terrified, but as it was, I was merely exhausted and extremely cold.

And then I looked up and saw a fire escape completely covered in Christmas lights. It shone like a beacon in the night, red and green. And though it probably wasn’t the first time I saw a fire escape decorated for the holidays, something about it went right to my heart–the fact that even something most people consider ugly and utilitarian can be turned into a celebration of something, the fact that you couldn’t even see the rust underneath all that light, the fact that folks don’t even really see their own fire escapes unless they happen to be looking out the window, so who could it even be for but for people trudging through the night in a lonely, out-of-the-way part of the city?

But this is something I’ve noticed New York does all the time. When I’m feeling my worst, when it’s the darkest and the coldest it ever gets, I find that the city shines through.

Until the fireworks–until leaving my friends and family to come back to New York starts to feel a little less like heartbreak and a little more like homecoming–I’ll keep looking for those little flashes of beauty in the dark.

New Year, New York

Miri's Survival Guide to Moving Across the Country Alone in a State of Terror and Panic

Miri, , , , , , , 17 Comments

I have known I was going to write this post ever since I first stood in my stifling Chicago apartment looking at a bunch of empty boxes and thinking, “Wow, moving is going to be difficult! I’d better take good care of myself and give myself time to be a little sad and process things.”

Juuuust kidding. What I actually thought was, “Fuck me I hate this why am I doing this why am I such an idiot this is what I’ve always wanted fuck these boxes I don’t want to put my shit in these boxes I’m going to get Chipotle now.” And so I did.

Unfortunately, when it comes to emotional self-care, I’m a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kinda gal. I’m working on it. But, to paraphrase a John Green character slightly, if you don’t say the honest thing, it never becomes true. I’m writing this as much for myself as I’m writing it for you–I’m giving myself permission to need the advice that this post provides.

I was and remain incredibly lucky. I moved not out of necessity, but out of passion. I had a loving family with the resources to help me move, and even more family who welcomed me when I got here. I moved to my favorite place ever. It continues to amaze me every day. Not everyone is so lucky when they move, but given how difficult a time I still had with it, I figured maybe someone might benefit from this advice.

To be clear, this is not a post about the logistical/practical side of moving. It’s a post about the emotional side of moving. I’m the last person who should be talking about the former, but maybe only the second- or third-to-last who should be talking about the latter. So latter it is.

Care for yourself.

I don’t just mean in the typical self-care ice cream/chocolate/funny movies/bubble baths way, although that can also help. (Good luck getting a New York bathtub to cooperate with that, though.)

What I mean is to be kind and gentle with yourself, just like you’re (hopefully) being with the fragile things you’re packing up.

Sometimes before and during and after the move, I had to talk to myself sort of like a child. “Okay, we’re going to get in the minivan and drive for a very long time. No, we’re not coming back. We’re going to a new place.” “I know this apartment feels weird and scary right now, but this is where you live now. I promise you’ll start to like it when you get used to it.” Sometimes that was the only way I could handle thinking about the immensity of the changes that were happening. Sometimes you need to let yourself be a little kid again.

But other times I was very bad at this. I berated and blamed myself endlessly, guilt-tripped myself for not being more grateful for the opportunity, played the sort of endless games of “But you TOLD me you wanted to move” and “Didn’t you SAY this was where you wanted to live” that I absolutely despise other people playing with me, and would never try to play with someone else.

Finally I had to ask myself how I would treat a friend who was moving to a place they loved but was having a lot of trouble coping nonetheless. What if it were one of my partners? What if it were Kate? What would I say to them?

I felt so ashamed when I realized that I was speaking to myself as though I resent myself. I realized that even if a random person from my friends list whom I barely know messaged me and shared concerns like the ones I had, I would still be infinitely kinder and more patient with this person to whom I have no connection and owe nothing than I was being to myself. There was no good reason for this.

Be as kind to yourself as you would to anyone you love and value.

The internet is probably your friend.

If you’re reading this, you probably use the internet at least a fair amount. Congratulations!

During this transition, just like all the previous difficult times of my life, the internet kept me sane. Not only did it help with all the logistical stuff, but it gave me something to “come home” to when home didn’t feel like home. (I mean, home still doesn’t really feel like home.) There were definitely days when I came home, threw my stuff down, closed the door to my room, went online, and talked to my friends. And the amazing thing was, the internet is the same internet no matter where you are. The same people I talked to when I was in Chicago were still there. I watched Grey’s Anatomy on Hulu in Chicago and I watched it here in New York. I read the same blogs. I listened to Citizen Radio. Finally, something in my life was stable!

It’s important not to go overboard with this, but use it if/when you need to.

But remember to go out and try to put down roots.

I am, again, incredibly privileged to live in New York. As soon as I got here I started seeing the friends and family I already had here, and quickly made a bunch of new friends. I went to lectures and films, I tentatively ventured to some Meetups (although there are still tons of interesting ones I haven’t gotten to), I went to parties I got invited to, I saw friends in neighboring cities that were once a plane flight away but now just a $30 roundtrip ticket and a 2-/3-hour bus or train ride away.

And, as always, I went out alone to explore the city. Wandering around as an inhabitant of the weird space between tourist and New Yorker is fun.

But even when you’re not sure you really want to, try to get yourself to do social things at least sometimes. In my experience, the most amazing friends/partners will appear in your life in a way that seems random, but really isn’t. Maybe you go to a party that’s totally boring except one of the people you talk to there mentions offhand a cool-sounding Meetup group and you look it up and go to it and meet a cool person who doesn’t become a super close friend but who does eventually invite you to a poetry reading where you meet someone awesome who becomes one of the people you cherish the most.

This process can be extremely frustrating. But, given enough chances, it will work.

BUT try not to fall victim to FOMO.

I got FOMO bad. Real bad. I have, in the short time I’ve been living here, somehow managed to convince myself that if I don’t do every single thing to which I am invited and/or hear about then 1) I am a Failure and 2) I will never make good friends and find my people.

Something that helped was hearing my friends talk about when they moved to new places. Some of them didn’t do social things for weeks or months, either because they couldn’t handle it emotionally or were too busy with whatever they moved there for or just couldn’t find anything to do. And yet, somehow it ended up working out. Now they have friends and partners and communities and activities. You don’t have to Create Your Entire Life all at once.

So there were also nights when I made myself stay in because I was exhausted and I needed it. I fidgeted at my desk or in my bed and told myself that I have a very long time to do All Of The Things, and that doing All Of The Things at once is not worth it if I’m exhausted and miserable. 

If you need to, get some perspective.

I’m lucky to have a family of immigrants whose stories are horrific and hilarious and inspiring enough to have kept me going at times. My aunt told me about how she moved to New York from Russia years ago and spoke no English and had no money, and ended up doing the same long walk from Battery Park to Central Park that I once took in the summer heat with no cash to spare for a bottle of water or for the bus. She worked cleaning houses before she was able to pass her medical licensing exam and become a successful physician. My mom told me about moving to Israel from Russia right before I was born and living in one of the worst neighborhoods in Haifa, while pregnant with me, taking care of my then-8-year-old brother, and trying to find work. And, of course, not speaking any Hebrew.

Their stories of awful landlords and crumbling apartments and culture shocks and exploitative jobs makes me grateful, despite all the difficulties, to have been able to move here relatively easily.

Your mileage may vary with this strategy, because hearing other people’s tales of woe may not necessarily make you feel better about yours. For me, it often doesn’t. But the way my family members tell these stories and the fact that I can see how far they’ve come since then gives me a good dose of perspective.

One thing that I’m really sensitive to, personally, is condescension. I had more than my fair share of Adults being really (unintentionally, but still really) condescending and giving me patronizing advice that I didn’t ask for and telling me that I was Doing It All Wrong. So go to people you trust for things like this. My family was great about it. Random people on my Facebook, not always.

Speaking of which, now is a great time to enforce your boundaries.

While enforcing boundaries is always important, it becomes especially important when moving, when so many other things are out of your control. It’s not too much to ask of your friends and acquaintances not to do things that really bother you, whether it’s bombarding you with patronizing unsolicited advice or constantly asking for updates on how packing’s going or (if they live in the place you’re moving) pressuring you to make plans to see them when you’re not ready to yet.

My own personal issue was that, as soon as I started making plans to move, and especially as those plans drew nearer and nearer and especially after they happened, a large portion of my Facebook friends list decided that I would be their Official Repository for “Humor” Articles About How Much New York Sucks. How expensive it is. How shitty the apartments are. How hard it is to find them. How annoying the subway is. (It’s not even that annoying.) How rude New Yorkers are. (They’re not even.) I try to think that people thought I’d find this funny because I can relate rather than doing it to piss me off. Unfortunately, though, it turned out to be a huge anxiety trigger. Because guess what! I do have doubts about moving here. It is hard sometimes. The housing situation really is a little dismal. Shit really is expensive. Do I really need to be reminded of this? No.

The entire genre of LOLOL WOW LOOK AT THIS CRAZY STUPID NEW YORK SHIT LOL NEW YORKERS ARE SO WEIRD LOL articles really needs to die out, in my opinion. But until it does, I didn’t want any more of them posted on my wall. So I told people that and explained why, and enforced that boundary whenever people broke it afterward. It made my life just a little bit happier, at no cost to me or anyone else.

If you’re someone who likes routines (and most people do), create some as soon as possible.

When you move to a new place it might be tempting to Try All Of The Different Things to try to get yourself to feel more comfortable and at home. Sometimes this can be really helpful and fun, but sometimes what you need to feel at home is routine.

That’s why I quickly established My Gym and My Deli and My Work!LunchPlace and My School!LunchPlace and My Cafe. My School!LunchPlace is Chipotle, which people make fun of me for because why would you move to New York and just eat at Chipotle. Cause it makes me feel comfy, okay? I will probably eventually get tired of my love affair with Chipotle, or its CEO will say something really bigoted, and I will stop going there and start enjoying food from Every Country In The World. (For real, right next to the building where I have class is a Mediterranean place, an Ethiopian place, an Italian place, an Indian place, a Chinese place, and a Japanese place. And that’s without walking a few blocks to where Harlem begins.)

Routines help me feel like a resident rather than a tourist. In a city of tourists, that feels nice. Knowing exactly where to stand on the platform so I get on the train at such a spot that when I get off the train I’ll be right by the stairwell that will take me to the next train I need is cool. So I stand on the platform in the same spot every time.

Relatedly, unpack as soon as you can. Unless it’s too stressful. Then don’t.

Typically, I find that unpacking helps me feel at home and gives me fewer things to worry about, since I can finally stop living out of boxes and start knowing where all my shit is. But this time was a bit different, because it was very difficult to fit everything into my limited storage space, and every time I tried to unpack I just got terribly anxious. If this happens to you, let go of any perfectionism you may still have after moving across the country alone in a state of terror and panic (that tends to really cut down on the perfectionism) and let things just lie in boxes or piles on the floor. There will be time enough to put all of the thingies where they need to go.

Avoid reminders of your past home when you need to.

The wisdom on this goes both ways; some people feel comforted by such reminders, while other people, such as me, break down crying in public. That happened today, which is actually what prompted me to finally write this post and stop putting it off.

It was the first actually cold day of the season, and the first snow. There’s a Target near where I work and I needed to get some stuff. Tights. A pillow. Whatever. I found the Target and walked in, and the glass door slid shut behind me, and suddenly…I was home.

I don’t mean home as in a shopper’s paradise, although that too. Home home. The Target was laid out exactly the way the one back in my hometown in Ohio was, with the women’s clothes and the accessories just to the left of the entrance. I walked over to some purses and scarves and just stared stupidly at them. I remembered doing my college shopping four years ago. I remembered buying Pokemon cards for my little brother. I remembered when my ex-boyfriend and I bought identical folding sphere chairs. I remembered clothes shopping with my mom. I felt like I could do a 180 and walk right back out and be in the sprawling wasteland of a parking lot with the mall across the street and the pool down the road. I could get in my parents’ car and drive home (driving?!) and my family would be there waiting for me.

If you’ve never walked aimlessly through a nearly-empty Target crying and not being able to breathe properly, I don’t really recommend it.

It just felt so stupid. It’s a stupid fucking generic store. They have them everywhere. I’ve even been to plenty of other Targets in plenty of other cities and states, without any bouts of Sudden Crying. But there it was.

I bought my shit and left the store without my coat on, thinking that maybe the sudden cold would make me snap out of it. It didn’t. The wind reminded me of Chicago and I just cried even harder. I put the coat on and went to the subway. I cried all the way back to Manhattan, half-napping part of the time. By the time I got to Times Square, I felt like I was back in New York again and not wallowing in some Midwestern past, and I felt a little better.

The point of that whole story is: I’m probably not going to go to Target again. At least not alone, or at least not until I’ve settled in better. It’s not worth it. I almost want to, because that stupid store is the only place in the five boroughs that has ever given me that visceral I-could-walk-right-out-into-Ohio feeling. I know I could chase that feeling if I let myself, but I won’t. I moved here for a reason. I left that place behind.

But remember where you came from.

I spent many useless years trying to shed Ohio and the Midwest from my identity like so many useless outgrown and unfashionable clothes. In college, I remember being extremely proud whenever anyone told me that I looked or sounded like I was from New York, which was often. And in my junior year when I was taking Hebrew, I was practicing with my teacher and asked her how to say, “I want to be from New York.” She said, “You mean, ‘I want to live in New York.'” I said, “No, I don’t just want to live there. I want to be from there.” (The correct translation, by the way, is Ani rotzah l’hiyot meh-New York.)

I am not from New York. I am never going to be. That ship sailed 22 years ago when I was born in Israel (not too shabby a place to be from), and sank somewhere in the deep sea when my parents bought a house in Ohio. So it was. Instead of a childhood in Central Park and the Met and Rockaway Beach, I had a childhood reading in my backyard and hiking and going to the pool and riding my bike for miles and miles. Oh, and unlike kids here, I never had to take a fucking exam just to get into middle school. Could’ve certainly done worse.

Even if your move is not quite like Miri’s Brave Quest To Finally Be In A Place She Belongs, you might still be struggling with the desire to fit into your community versus the desire to remember where you’re from and the way you lived there. As you get to know new people, tell them about your old life and what your past homes were like. Let people understand you as the product of all the experiences that led up to your move to this new place, not just the new ones you’re having with them now.

It’s tempting sometimes to see moves as opportunities for total reinvention, and I definitely had a bit of that going on. But sometimes that can feel very isolating, like there are huge pieces of you that you didn’t bring with you when you moved. So bring them.

Miri's Survival Guide to Moving Across the Country Alone in a State of Terror and Panic

812 Miles

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Mile 1

Of all the car doors I’ve shut in my life, this one feels the most final.

Mile 31

I can finally breathe properly for the first time in days or weeks (I’m not sure). As soon as we got on the road, I instantly felt better, so instantly that I’d call it miraculous if I weren’t already so familiar with my own patterns.

The last fourteen or so hours have been some of the worst of my life. I was up till past 3 AM, crying and panicking too much to sleep. Everyone I knew nearby was either out of town or asleep, not that I’d ask to see them even if I could. I wanted to quit everything. I regretting signing my New York lease more than I’d ever regretted anything. If only, I thought, I could unsign that piece of paper, drop out of grad school, go home to Ohio, get a boring job, and never have to leave anyone or anything again.

I was online and made a bunch of rather miserable tweets that you can probably find if you wanted to, and luckily there were a few people around to talk me down from it. I suddenly remembered that my friend Andrew had, earlier that day, brought me a chocolate muffin and I’d left it in the disheveled kitchen. That got me out of bed, and I mechanically walked–though it felt more like crawling–through the ghost of an apartment until I found it and brought it back with me. For some reason this made all the difference.

But the morning wasn’t much better. I got less than three hours of sleep. I woke up at 6 AM when my alarm went off and realized this was not a nightmare. Through the gaps between my drawn curtains, I saw that it was sunny, beautiful out. My soon-to-be-former home was waking up and starting the day with complete disregard for whether or not I would be there by that day’s end.

I could barely open my eyes all the way and I cried about everything. I cried when I saw my room completely empty, I cried when I had to throw away some things that wouldn’t fit, I cried when I walked down the street to get a bagel (with lox), I cried in the shower, I cried when I hugged my roommate (and friend) goodbye.

For one morning I was the world champion of crying. I could cry at literally anything. I could cry about taking my apartment key off of my keychain. And I did.

Mile 85

I’m lucky that the biggest moves of my life–from Israel to Germany back to Israel and finally to the United States–happened before I was 7 years old. I was too young to understand what I was losing, too young to remember more than the fuzziest outlines of the architectures of my former homes.

The only time I start to understand is when I visit Israel and walk through its streets. Suddenly, unbidden, an alternate universe unfolds in front of me and I start to wonder–who would my friends be? Which cafes would I write in? Would I even be a writer? What would I sound like, speaking Hebrew fluently and without an accent? How different would I look and dress? What would I study?

(All I know about that alternate-universe me is that they would still call me Miri, because that’s how Israelis abbreviate my name.)

And I start to mourn a self that could never be. I idly consider moving back, even though I know it wouldn’t work, I could never get back what I’d lost.

But the life I’m leaving now is not hypothetical. That me existed. I had friends here. I had routines. I had places I loved to go. I pelted my friends with snowballs and read by the lake on summer evenings and cried on benches surrounded by gardens that were more beautiful than I felt I deserved.

I loved people there, and I was loved.

Mile 116

There’s not a single cloud in the sky in northern Indiana today. We drive past fields of soybeans and ripe corn, interrupted here and there by patches of woods. The sunlight flashes off of silos and tractors standing idle in the fields. Occasionally, there are solemn wooden barns in various stages of disrepair.

Soon enough these landscapes will be a sight as rare as a good bagel outside of New York.

Mile 147

But actually, the second-worst part of this morning was the shower. After we’d packed everything into the van, my dad and I each took a shower so we wouldn’t be all sweaty and hot in the car. He went first, then went to wait outside. I took my shower and couldn’t make myself get out of it.

Not that I’m by any means an expedient showerer on the best of days or anything, but this time I really, really, really didn’t want to get out of it. At the other end of that shower awaited the rest of my life. After I got out of that shower and got dressed, there’d be nothing left to do but to say goodbye and get in the car and leave. There would be no more excuses. I had thrown away everything there was to throw away. I had vacuumed very carefully. There was no way to delay it anymore except have a tantrum and refuse to go like a four-year-old.

I didn’t do that. I turned off the water with shaking hands, leaned against the shower wall to try to catch my breath, dried off, reapplied my clothes, and left.

Mile 165

My dad wants to prove to me that the iPhone car adaptor he has is jacked up, so he tells me to play some music. He has an idiosyncratic music taste (everything from classical to Amy Winehouse), so I went with something safe: the Russian music I grew up with.

The song is called “We’re Leaving” (except in Russian) and I obviously chose it on purpose. I can’t do it justice in translation, but I’ll just say that it’s a sweetly optimistic song about leaving and going somewhere you know you’re loved, but leaving behind people who love you too. There’s also some stuff in there about not really knowing what lies ahead, and about understanding that time will heal you, and about, basically, getting your shit together and helping other people. So, needless to say, it’s at least a tiny bit relevant to my particular situation.

It also talks about how quickly time always passes when you’re about to leave, or when someone is about to leave you. That’s the part that always hurt me the most about leaving. I’d know that I have just a week left and that it’s killing me, but that soon I’d feel like I’d do anything to still have a whole week left. And then there’s a day left and it’s killing me, but soon I’ll wish more than anything to still have that day. And then an hour, and then half, and then no time at all.

For the last few weeks I’ve been terribly worried that when my dad arrived to pack up my things into the van, they wouldn’t fit, or some other calamity would happen and we’d fight about it and arrangements would have to be made and it would be a huge mess. This thought was extremely stressful, but there was little I could do about it because I couldn’t exactly visualize how much space the van would have or how much space my things would take up once they were all packed up.

But then my dad showed up, looked over my things, and made absolutely no comment about the glaring possibility that they would not fit and a Disaster would occur. We carried the stuff down the stairs quickly and easily because I’d packed it into many small boxes rather than fewer large ones. It fit into the car easily, without anything fragile being squished, and with space to spare. I was sort of dumbfounded.

Then during the drive my dad mentioned to a few people on the phone that I’d packed very well and everything had been easy, and I realized an embarrassing truth: I had been hoping that the things wouldn’t fit and there would be fights and it would be a Disaster.

After all, it would delay the inevitable moment when I’d have to leave.

Mile 247

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than any academic program, harder than hiking the Negev in August, harder than band camp in 95-degree heat, harder than applying to college or grad school, harder than any breakup, harder than getting into (and staying in) treatment for depression. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. There will be harder things in the future, but for now this is it.

Mile 293

Last night at some point I went on a bit of a rant about sexual assault and victim-blaming, because it’s been on my mind lately since I’m completely terrified of going anywhere alone in New York after 11 PM.

As I tried to explain to someone who has never had to worry about it: imagine going through the WORST thing that could ever happen to you, and imagine knowing that no matter how it happened–no matter HOW–people you love, people with legal and social authority, people with power would blame you for it. The first words out of their mouths would be to blame you. No matter how it happened. You could be sitting on your fucking couch in your ratty sweatpants, eating popcorn, when it happened, and they would tell you that maybe you were sitting too attractively.

That, to me, is worse than the sexual assault itself. Much worse. I can probably deal with physical pain and trauma, but the social isolation that will follow is a different beast.

That, to me, is why it doesn’t actually matter that New York is totally safe these days and come on stop acting like it’s such a terrible place when it’s totally not anymore. (I know that. I love it, after all.)

If I get raped or mugged in New York, people I care about will ask me why I was out alone in New York. Full stop. If I get raped or mugged in New York, my options are 1) hide this from people I care about, including lying about any injuries that result, or 2) get blamed.

That many people find it acceptable that half of the world’s population is terrorized and trapped indoors at night by the threat of gendered violence is a testament to the dismaying power of cognitive biases to create and perpetuate oppression.

Mile 423

The Midwestern farmlands have gradually turned into nearly-unbroken deciduous forests and lazily rolling hills. The sun is setting. I’ve just eaten chicken nuggets with barbecue sauce, which I generally end up eating at some point on just about every road trip.

I mentioned once before that the first time I went to New York City on my own, it was for a stupid reason. I’ll elaborate: it was for a guy. The same one I could barely make myself stop hugging back in Chicago this morning. (Was it really just this morning?)

That was the reason I went, but it wasn’t the reason I stayed. New York eventually helped me rediscover the person I used to be, before depression and before I started clinging desperately onto people in an attempt to avoid the misery I felt. I used to love being alone. I used to take long walks and write for hours rather than in short bursts. I used to treasure my own company. I used to need no one else to have fun.

In New York I started doing all these things again. During the summer that I spent there two years ago, I’d hole up in bookstores and read entire books in a single city. One time I walked from Battery Park all the way to the northern end of Central Park: nine miles in a day. I took the bus to Rockaway Beach alone. I sprawled on the grass in Central Park alone. I even went to Times Square alone, although in Times Square you can never be alone.

As terrified as I still am of being alone in the city, I know that it’s my favorite place in the world to be alone.

Mile 482

For the past four years I’ve believed earnestly that coming to Northwestern/Chicago was a huge mistake, one of the biggest I’d ever made. Although over time I stopped imagining what life might’ve been like had I chosen better, I never really stopped believing that it had been the wrong choice.

Until last night. Only last night, sitting on a cold rock at midnight while Lake Michigan danced beneath me, did I realize that it had not been a mistake, and I had been in exactly the right place, and there was no reason to regret anything.

But all I could do with that realization was go home, try to sleep, wake up early, and move far away.

Mile 692

It’s dark now. We’re driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania. They’re black silhouettes against a slightly less black sky, full of stars I’m not going to see again for a while. We’re not talking much anymore, but my dad is playing me some music he’s discovered recently.

We thought that love was over,
That we were really through
I said I didn’t love him,
That we’d begin anew
And you can all believe me,
We sure intended to,
But we just couldn’t say goodbye.

This brings up all sorts of memories of my now-former life and I almost choke up again.

Mile 743

For the first time this entire trip, we hit traffic. We inch forward painstakingly until the traffic jam clears up. It does so right as we pass the “Welcome to New Jersey” sign. Go figure.

Mile 789

I can tell we’re close. The sky is a dark, dirty orange, and more and more signs for New York City are zooming past us.

Now I’m thinking that this is a huge mistake, that I shouldn’t have moved to New York or I shouldn’t have decided to study social work or neither. I know why I feel this way, though. The move is triggering memories of college, of how sure I was that Northwestern was the right place for me to go and journalism was the right thing for me to study, of how dearly both those decisions ended up costing me.

But I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t like that. I did my research this time. I found out what the social work curriculum is like and what my professors research and what services Columbia offers and what I can do with my degree and what sort of starting salary I can expect and which agencies Columbia works with to provide field placements and how to get licensed to practice therapy afterward and whether I can transfer that license to another state should I leave New York and how much it would all cost and how long it would take me to pay back the loans and what loan forgiveness programs are available and so much more.

I researched New York, too, by traveling there so much and visiting different parts of it and becoming very, very well-acquainted with Google Maps. While my love for the city is probably not very rational, my decision to move there was very much so. I did my research. I will not have to regret this. I will not.

Mile 800

In the distance, I see the skyline.

Mile 810

We’re speeding over the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge. Literally speaking, I know what lies before me (it’s Manhattan), but other than that I have no idea. I might love it, I might hate it, or–most likely–I will have some complicated combination of feelings about it.

I do know that across that bridge will be a graduate degree, maybe even two. Across that bridge, barring any huge setbacks, will be two licenses that will allow me to do the work I want to do. Across that bridge are people I love, people my family has known for years and years. Across that bridge are people who will eventually mean the world to me, but I haven’t even met them yet. Across that bridge are the places I go every chance I get.

Across that bridge is a city where the lights never go out and the trains run all night. Across that bridge is a city I know is home, even if I don’t feel it quite yet.

But the rest is largely a mystery. In a few minutes I’ll be there.

812 Miles