L’île

About a year ago, I came off my antidepressants.

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O, blissful days of my youth, happy days where I wasn’t aligned, didn’t have boundaries, and considered my body as everything but a temple, abandoning it to entire weekends of endless festivities, emotional and physical promiscuity, as well as, of course, eating toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

O, how I miss you, my darling years. Why did I ever grow up? Why did I ever learn about self-care, inner work, and proper nutrition?

“Do you know what my ex told me the last time we spoke?” I was telling my friend. “He said: “You are the best woman I’ve ever had. You’re the only one who loved me the way you did. With you, I felt like a man. I felt like I could do anything. Losing your gaze was losing everything.”

“I was like, what the fuck, how about YOUR love for ME?”

PROLOGUE

I had been invited to this podcast and had almost said no. I was in a no time of my life. I would just say, no, no, no. The world was shutting down, I was about to close my company, I had quietly let go of social media. I had lost my confidence in being any type of a public person. Maybe this was it. Maybe I’d just disappear and find peace living an entirely private life.

I was walking down the bright streets of New York City like I owned them.
I felt great, confident. I was a woman with a place to go.

That’s when I started sensing that something had changed. There were so many of them. Women with grey hair. They owned the streets.

BUT FIRST, coffee A DISCLAIMER.
(The below is not the subject of this letter; I’m just giving you a bit of context)

I am walking on the streets of London with my mother, my sister, and her son. They are visiting for the first time since I moved here. We are bundled up in our coats. It is so cold that we just piled up wools and puffers and hats and scarfs and gloves and anything we could find.

We look terrible, but we’re happy.