“You’re fine,” declared one of my friends shortly after arriving in town last weekend, as he sat down for Korean food with me his wife, who had arrived days earlier. “You’re happy and free now. You’re like Mariah Carey after divorcing Tommy Mottola.”
I love a good pop culture reference, and I enjoyed this analogy so much, I almost choked on my bibimbap. For those not as familiar with pop culture and celebrity marriages: When she was a young up-and-coming singer of 19, Carey met Mottola, who was then head of Sony music. They got married in 1993, but after their divorce in 1997, her videos got a lot more fun and she seemed noticeably happier. (On a sadder and more serious note, it turns out that she revealed he was emotionally abusive and controlling so it’s no wonder she seemed so free afterwards.)
But back to my analogy of the more lighthearted aspects. Earlier this week, I found myself specifying which Mariah Carey I would like to be. It is obviously Mariah in the 1997 “Honey” video, riding around on a jet ski with a team of sailor backup dancers. I guess Nick Cannon-era Mariah was OK, but I don’t want to be “MTV Cribs” Mariah or the Mariah going through an acrimonious billionaire breakup, though I wouldn’t mind having a 35-carat ring to sell. It goes without saying I don’t want to be angry New Year’s Eve 2016 Mariah.
It seems like it took a long time to get to this place yet it’s also been a short time. It’s been less than two months since the big breakup. I’m still discovering things that he took with him, like the can opener when I was about to make myself dinner the other day. (Is it cruel or an act of mercy to take the can opener if you know someone eats cold things directly out of cans?) I’m told by divorced friends that these discoveries will go on for years. (On the bright side, it would be nice for me to have years to discover missing things.)
It’s better to be 1997 Mariah than the “Used to Love You” Gwen Stefani of a few weeks ago. (During a late-night music video-watching session last weekend, we figured out what was wrong with the video and I explained my longstanding complicated feelings about her. Update: This Buzzfeed article touches upon many of the reasons for my complicated feelings.) Yet Stefani raising her middle fingers to the camera is better than I was weeks before that. Then I was grappling with anger like Mary-Louise Parker in her “Dear Mr. Cabdriver” essay in Dear Mr. You. I was Jennifer Aniston screaming at the ocean.
Some people make references to great literature or poetry, but my references are mostly pop culture. There was a time, I think, when I would be made to feel like I’m stupid or inferior for that. I don’t. I don’t feel apologetic about much these days.
And yet… I do. Of course I do, because I’m me. I’m sensitive and socially awkward and so there’s a part of me that always worries if I’m being a weirdo or making other people uncomfortable.
I did bloodwork this week and was actually relieved to discover my hemoglobin was low. That explains why sometimes I feel a little short of breath. I’m back to doing yoga and I even felt up to water cycling this week, but there are moments when I suddenly feel diminished, like someone suddenly stuck a pin in me and I’m deflating.
Sometimes I’ll be trying to have a normal conversation with someone and I wonder if they can tell how off I feel. Though I’m used to that feeling from when I had panic disorder. I think I’m good at faking I’m OK, but I also register every degree of emotion on my face, so I can’t tell. I usually just smile wider than usual and try to get through it.
I feel oddly apologetic sometimes when I’m not getting better physically or emotionally. People want me to be happy. I worry that people feel sorry for me and that I’m pathetic somehow.
I’ve been keeping myself busy yet worrying about what is it within myself that I’m trying to avoid.
On the other hand, I haven’t been single in 12 years and I forgot how much I enjoy it. I’m not a relationship person. Yet I also shouldn’t be left to my own devices. If I am, I stay up too late and mess up my sleep patterns. I have a chocolate-covered key lime pie for dinner. I ate veggie crumble tacos for all my meals yesterday, with a side of tortilla chips that were just the dregs of the bag, so I melted cheese on top to make them stick together. I figure I have maybe another month to pull it together and be an adult. (I also still thankfully have some meal train meals to unfreeze and a Seamless gift card. It’s still relying on others for food, but I hope to develop better habits.)
Though my ex didn’t take much in the way of furniture, I have been rearranging the apartment and have become obsessed with cheap and free furniture from the NextDoor neighborhood classifieds and Facebook buy-nothing groups. (People in New York in particular don’t keep things around their apartments because of lack of space.) I have two TV stands, one of which is now serving as a side table. I fixed the pull for the other TV stand and forgot how empowering it is to use a drill, even if my work is a little imprecise.
I’m not buying new things because 1) I’m cheap, 2) I love free things, and 3) It seems silly, given my life’s abbreviated timeline. Yet I’m eager to make a fresh start with my apartment and move things around and make the space my own.
I recently found a listing for a free queen bed frame in my neighborhood; the only cost would be finding last-minute movers. It’s now the nicest thing in my apartment and everything else looks shoddy. I feel like I should put my bargain KitchenAid mixer (also from NextDoor) on the nightstand to display all my nice things together.
It’s just a bedframe but it feels like a fresh start. Before I went to the apartment to meet the previous owner of the bedframe, however, I had to meet someone else a few streets over for some cheap purchases. I found myself wheeling a side table atop a rolling kitchen cart with a food processor in its basket down the uneven sidewalks of my Brooklyn neighborhood. It went pretty smoothly, considering, and I lost my food processor only twice and have some big shin bruises to match my arm bruises from my overly ambitious moving of items. Then a TaskRabbit came over to finish assembling the Hemnes daybed (the only thing I purchased new and couldn’t drag off the street) that my friend started on last weekend but didn’t have time to complete. Though we did watch some metal videos during the assembly as I recounted some of my favorite hair metal facts and memories, and that was extremely fun.
In fact, I’ve been having a lot of fun lately. More fun than I’ve had in years. I seen so many people town: a friend I met in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot when I was 16 and his wife, both of whom were in town from D.C. and who I also knew when I lived in Columbus; someone in from California who I know from Columbus through countless people; my mom’s cousin’s son who stopped off in NYC with his girlfriend as they hike the entire Appalachian trail, and a friend who I sat near 20 years ago in anthropology class with his wife, who I also know from when they lived in NYC, and their two new additions within the past four years.
I took a few days off the Fourth of July weekend. My friends in town from D.C. have been calling this the Summer of Josie based on the Seinfeld “Summer of George” episode, when George Costanza declares it the “Summer of George” but just ends up eating a lot of cheese in his apartment and falls down the steps. I’ve already fallen down the subway steps last month and I’ve eaten a lot of cheese. But the weekend included: fireworks, vegetarian Asian food, Coney Island, fried Oreos, the Continental, the Wonder Wheel, watching someone throw up on the train into his backpack, a David Bowie tribute performance, the Russian Tea Room, eating on a waterside barge, seeing a friend’s performance at an art gallery, and lots of pizza. We also did a transcendental meditation intro talk. I’m not sure if it’s for me, but I’ve heard such good things about it.
Now I’m working on a freelance story and continuing to put my apartment together. I still feel like I need to do as much as possible as quickly as possible. As I try to plan for the future, I know I don’t have much time left. My symptoms have been clearing up and I’m often able to lock out the thoughts of my illness and when it will return in full force, but it scratches at the door, insistent. It wants attention. When I’m not distracting myself, it reminds me that it’s coming for me. Mostly because my hair is falling out a lot. The thought that I will never have a full head of hair again before my time is up bothers me for some reason now in a way it never did before. It really depresses me that I’ll be so bald so soon. On days when it doesn’t bother me as much, I’m still annoyed that I won’t be able to be Annie Lennox for Halloween, as I’d planned. Instead I’ll have to be Ripley or someone balder.
However, this week I was also reminded that my wishing powers are still working. I’ve noted before that I sometimes wish for random things, then they manifest themselves. (These items include: an ice cream sundae, a tray of yogurts, a blow dryer, shoes, a lightweight jacket and stick of deodorant. They are gifts from the universe.) I had just been looking at the blinds in my living room, broken in some spots. I wondered if I should bother buying new blinds.
When I walked outside, a few doors down, there were some things up for grabs. Including a box of blinds that probably fit my window.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been remembering the person I used to be years ago and reconciling her with the person I’ve had to become with cancer and with the person I want to be. Until then, I’m sometimes 1997 Mariah Carey.