guts out
"so how are things??"
When I was a kid, like starting around 8ish or so, I would do this thing about once a year where—triggered either by a stomach virus, or food poisoning, because honestly my parents’ relationship with western food safety standards were and remain a bit fast and loose—I would lie on the couch and just throw up, over and over and over, until (usually a day or so later) I would get to go to the emergency room at the downtown hospital where a bunch of nice midwestern nurses would pump my dried husk body full of IV fluids and the occasional cherry popsicle. They always gave me a blanket still toasty from some invisible industrial-strength dryer and a pink, kidney-shaped tray for me to barf in. I would not say it was fun, but it was kind of an event. One time, my parents were so scared about the fact that I even threw up water that they called an ambulance to take me to the hospital.
Hilariously, the lead EMT turned out to also be the dad of a kid I knew from school (this is how small my hometown was), and I remember being carried by Kinsey’s dad downstairs and into the ambulance, grandly wondering if they were going to turn the sirens on for me. One year, this annual upchucking happened on New Year’s Eve, because I woke up in the ER to see nurses wearing little “Happy 2003” (I think it was 2003?) hats. Eventually, I just grew out of the habit, retaining only a vague memory of sipping Sprite out of a plastic tablespoon while my parents sat exhaustedly in chairs nearby. But I think being a kid who was so regularly, randomly sick does make you grow up with this lifelong suspicion that you’re a weak species, and sooner or later everyone will find out.
Well, ICYMI: earlier this summer, COVID got me—and got me—and got me. After two and a half years, I was honestly ready for all the flu stuff: I still have the go bag with Tylenol and a change of clothes and contact solution that I packed in like, April 2020, back when I had to visualize exactly how I’d crawl to the neighborhood hospital if I got sick. After a few days, on the Fourth of July, natch, I wound up in the ER for dehydration—it looked like COVID triggered that childhood reflex of nonstop vomiting again. They sent me home with a prescription for nausea medication that I found out days later my insurance did not cover, but overall, things seemed to be looking up.
After two weeks, I wound up back in the hospital again: what happened was that I got seemingly better and went to a workout class (which had been fine!) and then had a few drinks with friends (which had not been fine; to the fine folks at Mission, I’m sorry about the floor). I learned a lot in the 24 hours after being put in a cab home about all the different colors that stomach acid can be when you continuously summon it up from the depths of your soul. Who knew there were so many different shades of green? Also: did you know that when your body is pretty much out of electrolytes, your hands and your face start to get tingly and numb?
I went back to the emergency room 99 percent certain that I was simply a dumbass who gave herself alcohol poisoning right after recovering from COVID, and I ended up staying there for 24 hours. The only memories I have committed about the day is one of the intake nurse with the Southern accent who made the executive decision to give me an IV and, once I leveled up into the part of hospital is where they keep you under observation, a fond recollection of the nurse who wore lime green jeans and knew how to baby me by asking me who did my hair. Also, the first bit of solid food I had—a little turkey sandwich and cup of mashed potatoes a doc thrust at me—was so good I wanted to give it every Michelin star on earth. The rest of it I just kind of blacked out because it was every bit as boring and maddening and terrifying as any trip to a hospital can be, but also because the whole ordeal revealed and made caps lock what I’ve been afraid of my whole life: that I was always going to end up in a situation like this all alone.
It turned out that I had a UTI and light, but untreated, kidney infection (likely a COVID / dehydration complication from earlier)—not alcohol poisoning (though this did not prevent them from slipping a little brochure on alcohol consumption into my discharge papers). You could say (though my doctor won’t, officially) that actually, going out and railing some shots saved me from doddering around with an unknown infection for a few extra days. What a relief! I’m not that stupid!
It is hard to talk about loneliness in a way that doesn’t resemble, or devolve, into a feral howl. But I have been thinking a lot about personal contributing factors including the formative (family stuff, language barrier stuff), the structural (Asian-American stuff, single tax filing status stuff), the historical (living during a pandemic) and the way I’ve set my life up over the past couple of years, where I live by myself and do work that basically requires sitting around in my own head by myself, with the occasional professional interaction with people whom I frequently may never hear from again after the piece comes out. It feels helpful to recite these factors to myself, because it reminds me that this armored vault of isolation is not entirely my fault, although some of it certainly is: how can it be a coincidence that my closest friendships are almost all safely long-distance? How did I get to be 29 years old without filling in whatever space in your life ensures that you’re asked how was your day with regularity? Why does it fill me with dread when the exercise class receptionist says “see you next week,” and all I can think about is how this sets up some unmanageable expectations, because inevitably, one of us will let down the other here?
At the beginning of this summer, I finally went on vacation. I picked Berlin because my friend Michelle lived there, and I figured that if everything went to hell and I was marooned in Germany with COVID, I’d have at least one Whatsapp contact to drop off soup. It was cold and rainy and absolutely not nearly as fabulous as everyone’s Positano photos you all kept posting to Instagram last month (how were you all in Positano), but I ended up cobbling enough meet-ups and hang-outs both with Michelle and the really lovely contingent of expat mutuals that I barely remembered it was technically a solo trip. I came home all smug, like wow! If I’m capable of making so many connections in a kind of random European city, how much more full is my life here in New York, if I just choose to believe it is? I felt like I had cracked the code, and the last two point five years of societally sanctioned and self-imposed isolation were just a thick fog I could positive-think my way out of. Having COVID in July, of course, quashed that flat, made the humiliation apparent the minute I found myself sitting outside a hospital at 5 a.m. watching hopefully as the Uber edge closer on my phone. What am I doing??? What am I doing!!!!!!
Now that it’s September, the temperatures have done an unsettlingly effective job of lowering the volume on the existential spin-out, but I still haven’t figured out a good answer. I’ve started going into the office for most days of the week (more on that below, lol) and find that whole entire days spent interacting with others/being perceived drives me regularly to the brink of tears, like an overstimulated toddler. I’m avoiding some friends and deep gut-renovating relationships with others, while also treating new proto-friends with the suspicions of a long-time stray. Do you like me as much as I like you? Does this mean to you what it means to me? Is everything okay? It’s so elementary. It’s driving me crazy with self-doubt. And it makes me terrified that the last couple of years have rewired everything more than we can begin to understand. Do you know what I mean?
Things I wrote:
The Professional Try-Hard Is Dead, But You Still Need to Return to the Office - I’ve been at VF now for a year, and this is the piece I’m proudest of writing! Had a lot of fun with it, plus Ed Zitron and Anthony Klotz made for really great interviews.
The Pop Power of Niki’s Very Recent Nostalgia - Had lunch with Niki Zefanya, the 88rising poster girl, and was blown away the way she models a kind of success and artistry that feels energizing at this moment in Azn Things.
Zoo Day With Ed Yong, Resident Animals (and Pandemic) Sense Maker - This is from May back when Ed’s (extremely good) book came out, but I got to spend an afternoon in DC with probably the one person most responsible for keeping us all sane in the past couple of years; as predicted, it was lovely and thought-provoking and set the bar extremely high for all zoo trips past present and future.
Things I loved:
Hua Hsu is my favorite New Yorker writer, and his memoir Stay True comes out at the end of this month, and if you preorder it right now, you will not regret it. My thing with Hua’s writing is that he makes the most esoteric topic (fungi, poster culture, every single obscure music thing I’ve never heard of) feel familiar and accessible, and this time, he turns the lens on his own coming-of-age as a college student at Berkeley in the ‘90s, and one particular friendship that changed everything. It’s weird to describe the experience of reading a book (especially when it’s also about tragedy) as “peaceful,” but that’s how it was for me—I found myself getting into bed earlier and earlier so that I could read it for longer before falling asleep.
The Elvis movie!!!! I waited and waited for the Baz Luhrmann situation to come to streaming because that shit was absolutely too long to watch in a public setting, but I was surprised how much I loved it. Tom Hanks’ character is a bit of an affront to the senses (and to the general career of Tom Hanks), but Austin Butler completely dazzled me. If you, like me, thought perhaps this ex Disney Channel bb was just a walking pretty mouth, prepare for some unexpectedly feral feelings.
Okay I also actually enjoyed Netflix’s The Gray Man, too, because it fits the exact genre of exciting, not terribly plot-heavy action movies that I can enjoy with my parents. On a critical level, it is worth watching just to see exactly how Netflix lit $200 million on fire—the globe-trotting! The park bench shootout! the random expensive hedge maze! Plus, Chris Evans as a total dick is never displeasing.
Inside the Mind-Boggling World of the Antiquities Theft Task Force (Culture Study): one of the most gripping Q&As I’ve read in recent memory, though clearly I am on a bit of an action/detectivey kick…
To be totally honest, I always skip the Shouts & Murmurs section but this one got so oddly poignant that I find myself thinking about it at random times throughout the day…
Sleepover Kits Are About Making Content, Not Playing Pretend (The Cut): “Expertise in creating an attractive scene and posting about it gives moms a certain kind of social power, and moms naturally wish to pass this power on to their kids. Enter the tools of pedagogy, disguised as special experiences for the kids.” God I hate how much I love reading about this weird, weird time.
xoxo THANKS FOR LETTING ME CRAZY AND EMO xoxoxo, D