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I spent most of yesterday asleep on my couch.  My sleep patterns have been less than stellar as of late.  Maybe I’m not used to having an actual bedroom to sleep in.  Maybe I’m not used to the simple yet priceless luxury of being able to see the sky from my bed rather than another building.  In any case, I rarely sleep through an entire night and even on a good streak, it’s not past the hour of 7am, which leaves me with lots of time to fight with myself, trying to force my body back into a slumber.  It’s the battle between the anxiety and the pressure of needing to get up and write and the yearning for just a little bit longer in the warmth and safety of my sheets.  In most instances, neither side wins and several hours of the early morning are wasted.

But yesterday, sleep won.  My body physically said, “Nope, not today.”  Minus a few menial tasks in the morning, returning emails, free therapy to friends, and making a breakfast bowl, progress into my grand future was not made.  I put on a guided meditation, placed my phone as far away from me as possible, and drifted into a soft sleep.  I woke up several hours later and considered continuing this rare hibernation well through the night and maybe into morning, but there were two black eyes staring at me and on came the shoes and off came the sleepy haze.

Now, here I am.  Sitting on the floor in front of my computer; candles lit, phone off, silence in my apartment, brain frozen.  Writing is a funny thing for me.  When I do it, I love it, but the trick is that in a subconscious way, I fear it- much like sleep.  It’s kind of like when you put your sneakers on to go for a run, but somehow find a million things to do in order to avoid going.  You know it’s good for you, yet you dread it.  You’re never disappointed when you’re done.

A guy I went out with recently said to me within the first twenty minutes of meeting, “You don’t really like to be challenged.”  I hadn’t really ever thought about it, but he was right.  My whole life, I have gotten by simply by doing the status quo.  It’s not something that I’m proud of, but it’s a hard truth.  And if I can handle anything, it’s a hard truth.

I have always recalled telling myself stories in my head.  I’ve always had the best conversations with myself and just like we all wish we could “take pictures with our eyes,” I’ve always wished I could record the conversations in my head.  It seems I am never able to get them down on paper fast enough to recall them.  And so some of my best stories and revelations are lost just like dreams disappear in the early morning light.

The stories that ended up being written, the copy that was composed, therefore remained quite superficial; surface level.  Even when I read some of it back later, I roll my eyes at its immaturity.  You see, writing forces you to face your thoughts and arrange them into some sort of semblance and when you write something, you are putting yourself onto a silver platter for rejection and judgement.  Any therapist I’ve met, any intuitive who has “read me” has told me that writing will be what saves me, but still I eschew it.

So, why am I telling you any of this?  I wonder that sometimes too.  There are times I begin writing without any idea where it is going and sometimes I start somewhere and the path takes a detour from where I’d intended to go.

My objective was to wax poetic about the last nine years of WhyDid.  But I think, by now, we all know the story.  So, I started to think about why I have been having such a difficult time writing and where I am now, nine years later.  And that falls in line with me being unable to peel myself from my very uncomfortable couch yesterday.  While I am considered a “public persona,” and I do share quite a bit about my life whether through these posts or others on Instagram, I doubt most people know much about me at all.

The truth is I’ve spent a lot of my days in a place of not belonging.  I was never going to be the most popular Queen Bee, but I was captain of the cheerleading team and landed on Homecoming Court.  However, I didn’t have that cutthroat gene and could never really get into the social politics of it all.  On the other hand, I aced Economics, looked forward to French class, and relished sitting in the back of senior English reading all of the books that had been banned at other schools.  I was too “weird” for the cool kids.  Too “cool” for the weird kids.

Because I was never fully accepted by either side, my lunches were spent eating my sandwich in my guidance counselor/history teacher’s office, which is a whole other topic that will be discussed later, if ever, in a personal memoir.

This pattern followed me well beyond the highschool cafeteria.  I’ve never been without friends and have been truly fortunate to make some of the ones that I still have.  Even so, it was very rare that I truly felt a sense of belonging, a sense of understanding.  At times, I can come across as impatient or critical because I find it frustrating that the way my brain works doesn’t always mesh with those around me.  And so I withdraw.

I’ve disappointed and delighted people on many occasions when they are surprised to find that I am much more complex than what they see on Instagram or who I externalize upon initial introduction.  Some say, “You’re much sweeter than I thought you would be,” while others are let down to realize that I’m not always all “bad b*tch” and Beyonce.  Sometimes I’m Fiona Apple and I just want to spend some time crying,  Alone.  In the shower.

The world felt as if it was telling me, “Pick one!”  I can’t be sexy if I want to be taken seriously.  I can’t be wickedly sarcastic and deeply charitable.  I can’t stay out all night dancing then wake up and go to yoga.  I felt pushed. I felt pulled.  But I never felt at peace.

But why can’t I be all of those things? Why must I choose one? Why do any of us have to choose?  I was blessed to have parents who allowed my brothers and me to be who we were, chase what we wanted, and wear whatever we pleased. Okay, there may have been some fights over bra straps at some point in high school but I’ve eradicated that problem by ditching bras all together.  But sometimes the freedom to choose whoever I wanted to be became burdensome.  It seemed it wasn’t okay to take ballet and listen to Tupac.  Identity didn’t present itself like a buffet– choose a little from here, a little from there.  It was more like a wedding reception: chicken or beef?

And then I became a “brand.”  I had no intention of this ever becoming something I did for a living.  When I started writing WhyDid (WhyDidYouWearThat for all my veterans), I did so anonymously.  It wasn’t until people took a serious interest in the person behind the blog that I began to personalize the posts.  It’s a funny thing that happens when you allow yourself to be public.  People begin to believe they have access to you.  People begin to believe they know you.  They believe they have a right to have opinions about your life.  And in some capacity, they do.  You’ve given them an entry into your life.  Post one thing that is slightly left of center and the entire internet falls into a frenzy.  Sure, Kim K may have blown up the internet, but before that happened, all of Instagram lost its sh*t when I posted a photo from a bathtub in Paris (don’t search for it, it’s since been deleted).

But here’s the thing.  Even if you haven’t chosen a career that placed you into the public eye, you are a brand.  You’ve been made into a brand because society has encouraged us to choose identities from religion to sexual orientation to social circles — even gender.  You have to pick something and identify with that.  It’s much like picking teams and even as adults we continue living our lives like a highschool cliques in the lunch room.

We keep preaching “authenticity” when in reality, that is the opposite of what is happening.  It is a curated authenticity, which may be even worse.  It’s like the “no makeup” makeup look for personalities.  Look like you aren’t trying.  Look like this is natural.  Look like you’re too cool to care.  And it’s because people like to be able to size each other up and put them in categories, boxes.  It makes them feel safe.  And maybe even it makes us feel safe to be in a box too.  How many times have you heard yourself say, “That’s so not me.”  Maybe that is you.  Maybe you prefer yellow mustard over brown and like black olives on your pizza (okay, that’s me).  Maybe you don’t like reading Fitzgerald.  Maybe you don’t want to work a nine to five.  Maybe you’re not all of those things you were told you had to choose.

I met a guy once who dressed only in a very specific style, listened to only very specific music.  I found it to be the most curious thing.  Almost as if he was frightened that if he stepped outside of his image, even for one second, he might “lose himself.”  That maybe he might realize all the time he’d spent building this persona would be wasted if he found that there were other things he loved as well.  He’d built a wall around himself in the form of a character.  And maybe that’s how we get stuck and attached to these personas that are really ever changing, or at least they should be.  To remain the same means that there is no growth.  And if there is no growth, is there really any life?

Having sense of self is important, but it can be a slippery slope if you hold on to it too tightly.  You may miss out on becoming who you really are if you’re afraid of losing who you were. Or you may just remain status quo, eating your sandwich alone in your guidance counselor’s office.

But if you ever felt you didn’t belong, know you belong with me.

Photos by Michael Stiegler

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In the last decade, I have lived in ten apartments and homes, moving a grand total of eleven times.  Until recently, I hadn’t lived in a place for longer than a year.  Usually, not even making it a full year before some sort of dramatic uprooting and domestic chaos ensued.  Whether it be a breakup, the sale of a condo I was renting, or a rent increase enough to make Drake call his accountant, there was always a reason to hop on StreetEasy and search for a new home.  While the majority of my moves remained local, there was that one time I moved to California…

Most of my friends spent this summer vacationing and tanning in tropical locations, I spent my summer scouring the internet for an apartment.   And while I’m fairly certain it was equally hot and humid here, it was much less sexy and did not require a passport.  I can’t quite be certain the exact moment the seed was planted (and more than one person would like to take credit), but after I’d made my mind up that I’d be vacating my current apartment– a place I’d lived for the last four years, a record by any account– the unthinkable happened.

Once known to be a bit of a neighborhood snob, I’ve been quoted as saying, “I don’t do the east side,” no one would have ever thought that I’d consider moving above 23rd street, let alone another borough.  And I don’t think my highschool best friend will soon let me forget that I never once visited him in the seven years he lived in Windsor Terrace.  But alas, having ventured to look at apartments in Fort Greene with a good girlfriend, she’d swung me to the other side by the end of the afternoon.  Seeing that I could get a lot more for my money (a bedroom!!!) and a complete change of scenery was reason enough to consider swapping subway lines.  Either that or the copious amounts of rosé generously served to us at Madiba completed my conversion.

But Brooklyn was like a foreign country to me.  I had always lived in Manhattan and truth be told, I still get mixed up when exiting the train in the city.  And anything below Houston?  Forget about it.  I don’t know up from down and I’m the least desirable candidate for co-pilot, unless you’re willing to credit me for my skills as a DJ and ability to make a game out of anything to pass the time on a stretch of rural highway.  In any case, deciding to move to Brooklyn presented me with the process of exploring all of the neighborhoods to try and figure out which one felt most like me.  But who am I?

My entire New York life, I have been associated with the west side and was lumped into the West Village stereotype, which varies dependent upon who you ask.  Billy Joel never wrote a song to explain it.  I really didn’t know where I belonged.  I just knew that it was time to move on.  I was sick of the frat parties happening bi weekly down the hall, if you asked me where I wanted to eat I couldn’t name a place within a five block radius, there was a general feeling of unease and restlessness, and I just knew I no longer felt at home.

I spent my days wandering Brooklyn and even rented a bike one day with a friend who lived in Crown Heights so she could show me how the neighborhoods connected and I could get a feel for each of them, something that a man I was dating at the time could hardly believe as I’d stared at him open mouthed on our first date when he informed me he’d ridden his bike… from Brooklyn.

When I make decisions, which often takes me a while, I become fixated on them.  I like to pick something and put on the blinders.  Some would call that steadfastness others insouciance.  Just like I don’t like to say goodbye at airports or linger too long over multiple choice answers.  For someone as emotional as I, I can also be quite binary.  Once I have finally come to a verdict, that’s all there is, no turning back.  Unfortunately, this time wasn’t quite as cut and dry as most situations.  There were several times where the doubts began to creep in and the cold sweats consumed my sleep.  I wondered if my friends would ever come and see me.  Would I be cool enough to hang with the makeup free beauties and man bun babes?  Did I have to stop being so “city”?  What the hell is the G train?  Do I need another tattoo?  And why is everyone looking at my tiny hoodie wearing dog like a freak?  Almost up until the day I signed my lease, I was still scoping out apartments in NoLita and SoHo, wondering if it was too late to back out.  Did I really want to cross the East River to a land of unknowns?  I then pondered, why didn’t I just keep going east until I landed in Paris?

Then came moving day.  My landlord had already allowed me begrudgingly to extend my lease by a couple of months.  My boxes were packed.  My keys in hand.  There came the movers Auckland.  I watched them carry out boxes of books, piles of pillows, container after container of stuff.  And I wasn’t sad at all until I sat in my windowsill after the last box had been moved.  I was alone in this big rectangle of a room.  It looked so much smaller.  And I felt a bit nostalgic for all that had happened there.  This was my first apartment back in New York after a fairly dark period in my life.  I remember when I moved in, I thought that I was going to write my first book there.  My building manager assured me I’d meet my soulmate.  My friends were certain this is where Kirsten would get her groove back.  But none of those things happened.  And when I thought about what I was holding onto, I realized it was nothing that I needed.

Just like when we become attached to a perception of ourselves, we can become quite attached to physical things as well.  I never thought I had that much stuff.  I’d waited to pack completely until a few days before.  It wouldn’t take me that long.  Suddenly, what had fit comfortably in four closets, looked like an amassing of a hoarder of forty years.  I found a presidential Barbie doll from 2012 and a book by Trump given to me as a gift when I’d first started in real estate, a garage remote from our house in California, and a faux Christmas tree my mom had sent me several years ago.  How do we collect so much stuff?  At that moment, I wished I had taken my friends up on their offers to help, but my dad reminded me, “You don’t have any friends when you’re moving.”  There was a moment towards the end while packing my dishes that I just considered laying down on the tiled kitchen floor and giving up.  But that’s not my style.  I may come across as delicate at times, but I am from West by God Virginia afterall, and I know how to dig in and get things done. I picked myself up and got help from a moving company I have heard a lot about. You must check out Sky Van Lines here! They are the best at what they do and I can vouch for their service.

And so then the sadness hit me again after the last box had been delivered to my new home.  A place that had felt far larger than my last when it was empty now seemed cluttered and cramped.  The crowning glory and probably what sealed the deal for me walk-in closet was completely full from top to bottom, side to side.  How had I not left more of this behind?  The melancholy feeling reminded me of a similar phenomenon when I’d moved to LA.  Having too much stuff makes me sad.   A space that was clearly large enough to be shared was completely crowded with all of my old stuff.  And it struck me that it was an analogy for life, namely mine.  I’d moved, but I’d brought the past with me.  How much can we fully make a change if we aren’t willing to really let go?

The first couple of weeks in my new apartment and new neighborhood was like a honeymoon.  I was quite pleased with myself and my decision.  I’d get up every day excited to explore and generally just get shit done.  The people at the plant store know me by name, my coffee order can be recited on sight, I met my  handsome neighbor, and I was settling in quite nicely.  Then old habits started to reemerge.  Staying out a little too late, sleeping in a little bit longer, the laziness crept in… I’d convinced myself the “bad juju” in my old apartment and that brick wall most definitely covered in some sort of energy zapping dust were the culprits for all of my past problems.  Moving was the answer to all of my restlessness.

I was half right.  Letting go of my perceived persona and comfort zone was the right decision, but I hadn’t fully committed.  I’d physically moved, but not mentally.  Much like getting a new toy only to soon grow bored, the excitement will wear off anything superficial.  My pillows were perfectly arranged and my closet color coded, but my brain still looked like that of the hoarders.  Moving can be a great catalyst for change, but only if you are willing to truly leave things behind,  because moving old boxes of stuff from one place to another isn’t really moving at all.