DISCLAIMER:
I got a haircut yesterday, and the woman put layers (!!!) in my blunt bob (!?!?!?)
So nothing matters to me anymore!!!
This newsletter is stupid!
Everything is stupid!!
I am and will forever be HIDEOUS!!! There is simply nothing that can be done!! Read at your own peril because this is now the blog of a swamp creature!!!
Happy Sunday!
2016 is having a moment, and I’m mad about it!
Everyone is wistfully posting throwbacks with VSCO filters, pink Starbucks drinks, and flannel shirts.
That’s not what I remember!
2016 was the year I went through the biggest breakup of my life.1
The year all my clothes became too tight.
The year I moved apartments three times.
The year I lost faith in the American people.
Mostly, I remember it as the year Hilary lost.
2016 was the beginning of the end!
It was the time before the fall. We were dangling on the precipice of political hell, and we didn’t even know it!
We were Mufasa, right before he was trampled by wildebeasts!!
And, truthfully, that’s what the clubs felt like.
They were messy.
They were uninhibited.
They had weird, sweat-infused condensation stains on the ceilings.
We were all dancing like we were running out of time.
I can practically taste the nausea!!
I can feel the porcelain on my forehead!
The sticky bathroom floor on my knees!!!
In 2016, puking was just part of the going-out experience.
“Let it out, girl”, we’d say in unison, because it was totally cool and normal and healthy and fun!!
Now you can even drink MORE!
Because your stomach is EMPTY!!
And therefore SKINNY!!
And therefore ready for more SHOTS!!!!
That’s how it works!! That’s just basic science!!!!
Looking back at pictures is a jumpscare.
My Instagram grid is filled with a girl I don’t recognize (only in part because of too much FaceTune).
She’s aimless.
She’s attention-seeking.
She’s never once checked what her hair looks like from the back.
She’s never even heard of “setting spray.”
Of all my 2016 offences, these are the ones that keep me up at night:
Accidentally flashing an entire gala during a speech
Being banned from a bar for trying to make my own jager bombs
Puking on my degree after a night out2
Getting headbutted by a man I picked a fight with
Crashing a wedding
Wearing heels that I couldn’t walk in
Wearing a tiny velvet choker to a rave that my best friend had to remove so I wouldn’t die in my sleep
Wearing black lipstick out, and letting it slowly migrate all over my face
Passing out in a snow bank
Making out with a friend’s ex-boyfriend, simply because we shared an Uber home
Making out with my ex’s friend, simply because he was being nice
Making out with literally anyone, because any male validation was enough
Regularly finishing small jars of Kraft peanut butter with a spoon3
Dating a man who scalped tickets out of his van.
Dating an aspiring YouTuber4
Dating a man with a toddler, who then became my stalker
Dating a 19-year-old, which doesn’t sound that bad, but at 22, it felt horrific
Forgive me, Internet, for I have sinned…
The worst part is, at the time, I saw most of this list as a badge of honour. I thought it was all fodder for a stand-up comedy career that I was 100% not pursuing in any real way.
I thought I could, and therefore the chaotic, hot-mess behaviour was justified. It was actually in service to the amazing career I was surely going to stumble into one day! I would make a joke so hilarious, tell a story so shocking, that Netflix would appear on my doorstep and beg me to do a special.
As I write this post at 8 am on Saturday, face mask on, getting my steps on a walking pad, it seems impossible that I was ever that girl.
This is not the same body.
This is not the same brain.
All of the qualities I thought were my best — sarcastic, impulsive, unfeeling — turned out to be the parts of myself I like the least.
But somehow, that is still me!
We are intrinsically tied, for better or worse.
It’s a nightmare, and all of you are forcing me to remember!!
Why!?!
There is simply no need!
Isn’t the current state of the world enough to grapple with?!
Are we going to do this again every ten years??
In 2036, will the AI overlords even allow this time to stop and reflect!?!?
Probably not!
I guess, then, I should take this moment to also contend with who I was in 2006, wearing bandanas and snarky graphic t-shirts.
Making up imaginary worlds and reading the Brothers Grimm fairy tales.
Thinking the world was going to end on June 6th.
Entering the talent show with an airband called the “Food Fighters,” dressed as a banana and performing a Weird Al song.
And in 1996, with a pink satin pillowcase over my head, pretending to be a ghost.
Colouring in my mom’s anatomy textbooks.
Eating creamcheese out of the container with my hands.
Locking myself in the crate with our dog.
Those girls are much easier to trace to my present-day self.
They were maccaab. Imaginative. A little shy.
2016 is the only part of my history where I truly feel that I lost myself.
It happened and unhappened subtly.
I didn’t even notice how far a departure it was until one day I was 31, and the internet was asserting that 2016 is back(!!), and I was accosted by a version of myself that I no longer recognized. Someone who’d been caught up in the partying and the showmanship and the shock value.
A quiet girl who became popular dyed her hair blonde and turned into a menace.
That’s a rite of passage for any pop star, really.
Except for Jennifer Lopez!
J. Lo exists outside of any eras or album reinventions.
She revisits old versions of herself (ie: Ben Affleck) freely, earnestly releasing Dear Ben in 2002 and Dear Ben, Pt. II in 2024.
She has no shame.
She has no fear.
She is and forever will be Jenny from the block. No matter where she goes, she knows where she came from.
Which, to bring The Lion King back into this, is basically the same message ghost-Mufasa gave post-wildebeast death:
Look inside yourself. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the circle of life.
Remember who you are.
The lesson here is all the usual therapy bullshit we’re used to.
Extend yourself grace.
Be kind to your past self.
Know it all happened for a reason.
Yadda yadda yadda.
But I don’t want to be nice about it!
2016 was a bad year!
I hate that bitch, and you can tell her I said it!!!
This is me…now, formally disavowing who I was…then.
And! Since I can’t change anything about the past, I’ll be doing this instead:
Last thought
The best thing to come out of 2016
So far! Look out Mark!!
I know. The puking was really a problem.
Hence, the too-tight clothes
Would you believe he was also the scalper???