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Apr 13, 2026

NYBG: ORCHID SHOW 2026

Apr 13, 2026

The most fantastic thing about the New York Botanical Garden’s annual Orchid Show is the orchids themselves

Apr 13, 2026

Alexandra 7/9/21 Alexandra 7/9/21

Call me by my name

We all carry several names over the course of our lives—some are heavier burdens than others, but we say and hear our own names so frequently that they become inextricably linked with our identities (for better or worse). Every time I walk through cemeteries, I think that they are perfect places to brainstorm baby names. I’m pretty certain I won’t be giving birth to biological children, but I’ve always thought that naming anything is a huge responsibility—and I have several names picked out, just in case.

When I was born on August 31, 1985, my parents named me like they were Dickens getting paid by the letter: Alexandra Catherine Charitan. My middle name came from my mother’s grandmother, and I like to think my Eastern European ancestors reached through time to influence the Russian-royalty-inspired “Alexandra.” Although it was her idea, my mom says that when she looked at such a tiny baby, she found it impossible to call me “Alexandra.” She opted instead for “Allie,” with the hope that I would grow into my full name, eventually.

And maybe one day I will be the type of woman who refuses to make things easier or provide shortcuts for others at my own expense. I’m getting better at carving out a space for myself. Say all four syllables, I dare you. But I’m nearly 36 years old, and almost everyone who interacts with me in real life still calls me “Allie,” including both of my parents. It’s how I introduce myself, it’s the name that I give to baristas, and how I sign most of my thank you cards. I’ve made some progress: “Alexandra” is the name I use in all work communications, and the name I give when paying bar tabs and bail money. If I really think you know me, you might just get cards signed with a simple “A.” The more you know, the less I figure I have to say.

Despite my pack rat nature, I have very few mementos left from my actual childhood. My box of Beanie Babies moldered in my dad’s garage and mice chewed through my oversized, junior high t-shirts I stored in his attic in case the ‘90s came back (they did, unfortunately). When I was really young, my great uncle gave me a personalized cassette tape with songs about “Alexandras.” I don’t remember the specific lyrics—and I have no way to play the tape now—but it felt special enough to keep in a waterproof bin with my other “important” documents and mementos, including my birth certificate, photo booth strips, souvenir squished penny books, and COVID-19 vaccination card. The official documents all say “Alexandra,” but the people who squish pennies and crowd into photo booths with me call me “Allie.” Which one is the real me? Depends on who you ask, and when.

As an extremely shy and nerdy introverted kid, I both loved and hated the first day of school for many reasons. Introductions and first impressions are important; we don’t usually get many first chances. There’s a small window to inform teachers and anyone else I meet that, “Yes, I am Alexandra, and you may call me that—but, oh, I also go by Allie.” There were classes in college or entire jobs to which I felt so little attachment that I passively pushed back when someone would arbitrarily assign me a nickname. Emails addressed to “Alex,” “Ally,” or even “Allie,” were returned, signed stubbornly, Alexandra.

Names, and the problems and frustrations they can create, are as varied as the people who have them. But my personal pet peeves of living a life of two names come not from the two names I have, but from the several others given to me in error, or on purpose. I had a particularly clueless gym teacher in elementary school who called me “Alexandria” no matter how many times I corrected him. One “i” might not seem like much, but names have power; whether or not I had control over its creation, I’ve always felt the need to maintain tight control of mine.

As far as the internet and the government are concerned, I am Alexandra. So why do my “real” friends call me Allie? Is it for the same reason that my mom did initially? The more you get to know me, the more I must begin to resemble that tiny baby born in the summer of ‘85: Still cautiously unsure, but immensely curious about the world; navigating a name with more letters than a full Scrabble rack, but one that is mutable and unintentionally gender fluid. I’ve often felt grateful to possess a name that is rare enough to feel special, but still common enough to pop up in a display of personalized souvenir license plates. I still think that having an “x” in my full name is just objectively cool. It’s fun every time I sign a check, although I worry that my inconsistent signature will expose me as a fraud. Is it still considered “imposter syndrome” if the person you feel like you’re failing to live up to is also you?

Having several identities can sometimes complicate matters: some forms don’t have enough boxes to accommodate my full name, signing into anything on AppleTV with my email address takes way too long, and when we went to the Ocean City, Maryland boardwalk, as a kid I wondered: “Would my name actually fit on a grain of rice?” But sometimes it’s also practical to have two names and even kind of fun. I tag in “Alexandra” for the business in the front, and “Allie” for the party in the back—it’s the in-betweens that are always tricky, but I’m trying to practice patience with myself, and others, as I go through them.

For years people have been calling me Alex, both in virtual and real life encounters. Sometimes I tell them, “Actually, I go by Allie,” and other times I don’t. I’m not even sure if it’s always a conscious decision, but even as I correct them, I sometimes wish that my parents had chosen to call me “Alex” instead. I’m in no hurry to consolidate my identities or declare an entirely new one—but maybe I’ll start mixing them up more just because I can. I have no interest in ditching the miniature “Alexandra” souvenir license plate I bought on my solo honeymoon in the Poconos—but I also seriously considered buying the “Alex” one as well, if just to see how it felt to be someone else for a moment.

I still think of myself primarily as “Allie,” but I’m gaining on “Alexandra.” Maybe “Alex” is next, or maybe she has been there from the very beginning, swirling around in the alphabet soup into which my mother thrust her spoon and pulled out an A, L, L, I, and E. We may not have much choice in how things start out, but, if we’re lucky, somewhere along the line we get opportunities to direct where they are going. We are a mix of both the identities we give ourselves, and the ones that are thrust upon us by others. “Allie” was given to me, and I’m not sure I’ve fully earned “Alexandra” yet—but “Alex” could be whatever I want her to be, and blank slates are seductive.

So, if we ever meet in real life (or we’re already old friends), you have my permission to call me Allie, Alexandra, or Alex. My current pronouns are she/her, and “they” is totally fine too—lately I’ve been identifying as “a dad on vacation” (minus the pesky kids). But it’s all subject to change, so just pay attention and follow my lead; I promise I’ll try to do the same for you.

Nothing stays the same forever, but many decades from now—when I die a Collyer-brothers-style death trapped under a pile of my hoarded newspapers—official documents will most likely still bear the name with which I entered the world. Those 26 letters I’ve been given may never be able to say it all, but they try their best. I understand now that names are not immovable objects; they can evolve and ultimately add up to more than the sum of their parts—just like the people to which they belong.

Alexandra 6/20/21 Alexandra 6/20/21

My one year DC-iversary

A Fathers Day march in D.C. on 6.21.2021.

In May 2020, I was living with my dad in Ohio. I had been furloughed from my job with Roadtrippers—and had no idea when it would be safe enough to truly hit the road again—but I decided to buy a car anyway. Two days later, I asked Kristine, a Fire Drill Friday acquaintance (and fellow arrestee) if I could stay at her Capitol Hill home for a few days to document the ongoing protests sparked by George Floyd’s death. She texted back immediately: “Absolutely.”

I visited Washington, D.C. exactly ten times before I moved here on June 20, 2020. The first time was with my family when I was young; the second with a college boyfriend, then for a Cat Power concert with the boyfriend after that. For the inaugural Women’s March in 2017, a friend and I took an overnight bus from New York and left before nightfall. I took five solo trips in 2019 and early 2020: the first in April to see the cherry blossoms, and four times from November to January to attend Jane Fonda’s climate justice rallies.

During my tenth visit, I joined several incredibly powerful marches and walked or biked dozens of very sweaty miles around the city; on day two, I was offered my job back. On the drive back to Ohio, I suddenly felt about Washington, D.C. the way I once did about New York, and thought: “How soon can I return?” The answer ended up being two weeks.

In the beginning of 2020, I had been living with my mom in Harlem for six months. Already working remotely for Roadtrippers for more than a year, I had began drafting plans to leave the city on an indefinite road trip around the country—following the paths (and staying on the couches) of friends who had departed before me pursuing adventures of their own. My overly-ambitious trip started to take shape at the same time as COVID-19 was secretly circulating around the city.

A mysterious virus may have traveled farther than any of us this last year—but as my Mikey Burton poster says, I “went nowhere, mentally everywhere.” That first part isn’t technically true—I’ve been to plenty of places in the Midwest and along the East Coast in the year since making the 347-mile drive from my Ohio hometown to Capitol Hill. I may not have seen the whole country (or most of my friends) as I expected to by now, but I’ve racked up just as many miles on my mental odometer as I put (or didn’t put) on my VW Golf.

I had barely settled into my sublet at the end of June when my mom told me that my cat, Mozart, was sick and I returned to New York for a week. On July 15, I signed a lease for an apartment on Capitol Hill, but a few days later, I was in New York again. Less than an hour after I made the gut-wrenching decision to end Mozart’s suffering, I drove the four hours home to my new apartment, filled with boxes but still devoid of life. Mozart had been my constant companion for more than 11 years—seven of those in New York—and it will never feel the same without her. For me (and all of my unlucky, but exceedingly patient, roommates), her signature screech and foot-sucking noises were as interwoven into the sound tapestry of the city as honking horns and bus brakes.

My D.C. soundtrack still includes bus brakes, but during the pandemic (and protests) it has been heavy on helicopters and light on horns. My kitchen window overlooks a corner with two bus stops. At night, I sit and listen to the busses arrive and depart; they’re almost always empty. I have an articulated skeleton that I refer to as my “roommate” (he doesn’t say much), but this is the first time in my life that I haven’t lived with an animal. I do not miss caring for a cat and I can’t imagine getting another; but I do miss Mozart, specifically. Quite a few pieces of me died with her but I now understand why they had to. I always joked that if I was a witch, she was my familiar; and now I would say that this past year I’ve felt like a Phoenix rising from her ashes—except that the animal hospital never sent them to me (what’s the statute of limitations on cat cremains?).

Luckily, it’s hard to get lonely in my current studio apartment—which I describe as a “Funhouse of Trash”—due in part to my affinity for things that have faces (whether they’re supposed to or not). My introverted, socially anxious, and self-entertaining tendencies made me uniquely suited for pandemic life. But there’s no doubt that Washington, D.C. was a slightly more civilized place for me to ride out the rest of quarantine: by the time I moved, the infamous traffic had disappeared, and the brick sidewalks, quiet alleyways, and sweeping wide avenues felt far less oppressive than the 24-hour ambulance sirens I heard in the weeks before I left New York.

I didn’t flee New York in its time of need, I fled it in mine. I have MS and a suppressed immune system; I already had one foot over the George Washington Bridge by the time the city went into lockdown—a pre-toilet-paper-panic trip to an UWS Trader Joe’s pushed me all the way to Ohio. In D.C., I’ve been able to live by myself, easily own a car, and walk, bike, or take the Metro. From behind my handmade face mask (or two when the MAGA losers were in town), I have attended countless marches and rallies, taken more than 20,000 photos, and wrote about most of it (or have nebulous plans to, one day). I’ve filled up five journals, met a lot of extraordinary people, and turned the best acquaintances into real friends.

I admired Nicky before I officially met her—or heard her extraordinary story. But now that we’ve spent countless hours exploring the city together, I am constantly surprised at just how right I was to suspect that Nicky was someone worth knowing. Since the beginning of November, we’ve taken walking tours (following our whims or using one of her tattered Nixon-era guidebooks) of Georgetown, Anacostia, and Old Town Alexandria. We’ve explored historic districts, an abandoned hospital, and the Navy Yard. On Christmas morning, she made me waffles and we walked around a cemetery. I could write 10,000 words just about our walks (and maybe I will someday), but it’s hard to believe there was a time when I lived here and didn’t know Nicky—and I feel that way about everyone else I’ve met along the way.

Post-vaccine, and with pandemic restrictions lifting, in some ways it feels like I’ve moved to a new city all over again. The Capitol grounds are still frustratingly off-limits, but I’m now eating inside of Pete’s diner nearby almost every weekend. Diner breakfast is the number one thing I missed from the Before Times—but I’m not sure what I dread more: the return of tourists or the traffic? (Actually, wobbly tourists on electric scooters might be the number one threat to our nation’s capital every day that isn’t January 6, 2021.)

When I visited for Fire Drill Fridays—in between dodging the scooters—I sat on a bench on the National Mall and watched people run around Capitol Hill. I had run on and off when I lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but infrequently, and never more than 2 or 3 miles at a time or because I really wanted to. Both Prospect and Morningside parks have significant hills that I was never confident enough to attempt, but on December 30—around the time I was also running some particularly harrowing mental miles—I successfully ran up Capitol Hill (which is very much an actual hill) for the first time; I’ve been doing it several times a week since.

Sometimes I stop on the Mall to watch the school groups and families, so many like mine when we first visited in the early ‘90s. As they walk from the Capitol toward the Lincoln Memorial, I wonder if they know that in D.C., every landmark seems way closer than it actually is—those sweeping avenues are great for political parades, protest marches, and stunning sunsets, but the grandiosity of it all can be deceiving. If I’ve learned one thing in the last year it’s that, unlike in life’s rearview mirror, the objects on your map of the future are often further (or completely different) than they appear to be.

Alexandra 5/23/21 Alexandra 5/23/21

Cutting

Twin Arrows abandoned trading post in Arizona

I started cutting when I was 16 years old. Almost exactly nineteen years later, the once-red and puffy scars have mostly faded and flattened. My memories of the moments that led to me sterilize my X-ACTO knife and drag it across my upper thighs—and the years of blood and bandages, shame and secrets that followed—have receded as well. But I’ve always been a writer and a textbook Virgo; I keep fastidious notes. So I know exactly when I chose this particularly gruesome coping mechanism, because on June 6, 2002, I wrote in my journal: “I cut myself tonight. Translated feelings for actions, trading pain for pain. I have a high tolerance for pain. I scarily enjoyed it.”

The “why” part is more complicated, but I was surprisingly cognizant of that too, at least as much as I could be as an extremely introverted, sexually confused, teenage girl. Growing up in Ohio, my life was full of love and laughter—what we didn’t have as a family were conversations. Unspoken issues aren’t as immediately alarming as physical violence or screaming fights, but over time they’re just as corrosive.

On the surface, I more or less knew why I was struggling. I was also convinced that my problems paled in comparison to others’, and voicing them would only make me appear weak and selfish. I kept a running list of all of the reasons why I shouldn’t feel the way I really did (one of many habits that I’m trying to break today) and I thought the only thing worse than disappointing my parents was to add to their respective piles of trauma.

My parents weren’t even thirty by the time they had two daughters and a dead son. They were barely out of their teens when they got married (my mom was actually 19) and nine months later, my sister was born. A baby boy followed, and Matthew was only four months old when he died of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). Two-and-a-half years later, I arrived and survived—conceived on purpose to replace the one who hadn’t.

Growing up, my sister used to tell me that if Matthew hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have lived. It’s probably true, but it’s weird to grow up in the shadow of a brother you’ve never met. It was never explicitly stated that expectations were high for me—and it’s entirely possible that most of the pressure I felt to be perfect was self-generated. But my parents lost a son and their consolation prize was me: a queer, boyish girl. There’s a common misconception that cutting is in some ways, suicidal; for me it was always the opposite. I longed for love and life so intensely that I grasped at anything to help me get safely through to the other side—scarred and scared, yes, but a safe life without shame or secrets was always the ultimate goal.

My sister also insists—in part thanks to our 7.5-year age difference—that we had an entirely different set of parents, and she’s probably right about that too. I was raised by two people who loved me unconditionally and told me that I could do anything. And for 16 years that had been mostly true. My parents would probably disagree about whether I was a good kid by nature or nurture (I say both), but I mostly kept to myself and didn’t go looking for trouble. So when I developed feelings for my female high school teacher—and began questioning my sexuality in general—I feared that I was changing into someone my friends and family would no longer be able to understand.

When it became impossible to deny the truth, I lashed in instead of out. I punished myself for what I thought was not only a personal failure, but one that if exposed, would rip through my small family like a wildfire. “I don’t want any parents or relatives to find out. Never,” I wrote. I was talking specifically about the cutting, but continued, “Tonight grandma asked me if I wanted a ‘big splashy wedding’ and grandpa said that I better ‘marry a rich man.’ A man. I’m gay. How the hell am I going to tell them?!” So the secrets piled up like mismatched Jenga blocks, each one with a corresponding slash in my skin and a less stable foundation than the last. But even my self-mutilation wasn’t safe from my equally damaging self-criticism.

“I could have pressed harder,” I wrote on June 6. “I ran my fingers over the ten raised slightly scared slashes, they’ve hardly broken the skin. Nothing huge, I won’t die and I don’t want to. I know my life will get better. Not easier, just better … I know it’s not normal, but I’ve tried everything. If I try to gain anymore knowledge about myself I’ll explode. A few scratches seems less harmful. It’s a nice pain. Just enough to keep me thinking about it. They say actions speak louder than words. Mine are screaming.”

For too long, I thought if I was strong enough, I could just get over it—or that my feelings were something I could, and should “get over” in the first place. No matter what your circumstances, I think everyone can agree it’s hard to be 16 (or … any other age). “I just have such deep intense longings for near-impossible things,” I wrote. I both chastise myself for wanting more out of life, “Why can’t it all be enough?” I write several times, and recognize that a friend is being frustratingly flippant after I finally come out to her.

“She has no right to dismiss my problems unless she’s actually experienced them,” I wrote on June 24, 2002. “She has no idea what it feels like to be a constant contradiction. To thrive on your dream world, never actually getting to experience anything you ache so intensely for. She doesn’t know what it’s like to incessantly pretend, to lie, to omit thoughts, make up feelings while never quite deciphering your own. And she sure as hell doesn’t know what it’s like to be in so much emotional and unidentifiable turmoil that you intentionally inflict pain upon yourself because you’re confused, hurt, depressed, and you have no clue why.”

I conclude the entry with a sentiment that has aged much better than most of my chaotic and endlessly embarrassing journal entries: “Until she has thought my thoughts, and felt my feelings, lived my life, she has absolutely no right assuming that she knows what’s right. She doesn’t understand. Why does she pretend she does?”

My mind never stopped asking questions without easy answers—or screaming, in general—but I no longer expect it to. I stopped cutting and running my fingers over the raised lines a few years after I started, but I made more than 50 of them. It’s hard to get an accurate count today; skin sags and stretches, forever mutable like the painful memories I once etched into it. A few years ago, I decided to start getting tattoos over the scars. Not in an attempt to cover them, but to turn an area of my body that had served as a macabre art gallery of my mental anguish for far too long, into something more joyful. My plan worked too well: I quickly realized that if I wanted to show off my new ink, I’d be forced to expose my old scars in the process.

Twin Arrows tattoo by Kat | Jackalope tattoo by Karen Glass

My days of wearing a swimsuit in public had abruptly ended with the first swipe of that X-ACTO blade. They’ve resumed somewhat recently, but access to my upper thighs has always come with caveats: the shorts can’t be too short, no, you can’t come in the changing room, lights off before bedtime. I’m tired of constantly flipping through my mental Rolodex of who knows what; it’s a waste of time.

When the temperatures in D.C. recently began approaching 90, I started running in shorts shorter than any I’ve worn in 19 years; it feels both freeing and terrifying. I’ve been planning my next tattoos: a Mozart memorial piece and maybe even a Brood X cicada. I can’t be the only morose millennial to identify with the iconic insect; is there anything more gay than emerging after 17 (or more) years spent underground, immediately shedding your shell, growing wings, changing colors, and loudly announcing to the whole world: I am here and I am deserving of, and ready for, love.

Nearly two decades after I first cut myself, I long for different, but still sometimes impossible things—however, my coping mechanisms have become more self-constructive than destructive. I now run several times a week, an activity that feels strangely similar to cutting: I am once again translating emotional pain into physical action, only this time I’m carving my body from the inside out. I still feel protective of my parents, but I’m trying to communicate my feelings and ask for help when I need it. Losing one child is more than anyone should have to bear. I thought I was sparing their feelings by hiding mine, but I know now that in denying them access to the most vulnerable parts of me, I was doing us all a disservice. At least I was right about one thing: it never gets easier, but it does get better.

There were huge swaths of my life in which I abandoned my journals all together, and I both understand why and still regret it. It took me a while, but I’ve finally realized just how important it is for me to work through my screaming thoughts on paper, over the phone, or in person. I’ve made (and continue to make) a lot of questionable choices, but writing it all down as never been one of them. Words have always been my lifeline, an invisible hand reaching out across generations and experiences. No longer to destroy, but to create—to say, even if I’m only ever talking to myself: “You’re not crazy, and you’re not alone. You may never get over it, but you will get through it.”

Alexandra 8/31/20 Alexandra 8/31/20

35

On December 31, 2013, I was more than happy to say goodbye to a year that had, for many reasons, been both the worst and best of my 28 years thus far. As I rang in the New Year in Brooklyn, I sent a variety of tragically misspelled drunk texts to friends around the country; my words (like me) were barely coherent, but my general feelings about the previous 12 months were clear. “Fuck this fucking year,” I typed and I meant it.

I don’t believe in fresh starts necessarily—especially ones arbitrarily based on calendar pages—and when I moved to New York on July 1, 2013, I had no clue what the next seven days, seven months, or seven years would bring. But I had dreamed of living in the city for so long, that I probably would have told you that I planned to stay forever. And for almost seven years, that was mostly true. Sure, I was charmed by other cities and imagined what my life would be like within them, but every time I returned to New York I felt as if I was home.

So I was just as surprised as anyone else when, at the end of 2019, I began to think seriously about making a life for myself outside of New York. I had no idea what that meant at first, but it was impossible to ignore the feeling that my time in the city was coming to a natural end. In hindsight, I should’ve been more prepared. Today, I turn 35, and in reflecting on my “previous lives,” a pattern has begun to emerge. Every seven years (give or take), without even realizing it, I’ve experienced a year full of pivot points.

I started high school the same week I turned 14; shortly after, I developed a debilitating, years-long crush on a female teacher that made it impossible for me to ignore the complicated feelings about my developing sexuality. The seven years that followed were fraught to say the least. But there were moments of hope and signs of progress mixed in with the shame and fear that hung like clouds over so much of my life. I slowly came out to friends in high school; I was vice president of the LGBTQ organization at KSU, I found a group of friends I adored, and I kissed my first girl.

In 2006, a burgeoning Meryl Streep obsession coincided with my first serious relationship with a man. He was a typical “college boyfriend” in many ways. We met working at a record store off campus; he was the first person I slept with, the first person I smoked weed with, and the first person I took a road trip with. We were better friends than lovers and although it’s obvious to me now, at the time I was so deep in denial I simply felt broken.

This feeling only intensified over the next seven years, during which I graduated college, got a job in Akron, Ohio, and began dating my boss. I moved into his house in 2009 and until 2013 I tried desperately to live a life of ‘shoulds.’ I ‘should’ be attracted to men. I ‘should’ be content to make all of the meals, do all of the dishes, and keep a clean house. I ‘should’ be grateful that I have three jobs and ignore the fact that I can’t seem to get ahead. I ‘should’ overlook the infidelity, laugh off the daily emotional abuse, and keep my mouth shut.

No one can say I didn’t try—but no participation trophy is worth losing the best parts of yourself in pursuit of something you never really wanted in the first place. Seven years ago, it all fell apart, but I took those pieces and built a life for myself in New York that was better than I ever imagined it could be in almost every way. It was never perfect but I never expected it to be—of course it was never really about New York at all but the version of me that arrived there, feeling broken but hopeful.

When I left New York in March of this year, I no longer felt broken—and, in fact, I had begun to realize that maybe I never had been at all. Reframing the ‘shoulds’ into ‘coulds’ opened up my world in ways I never thought possible. No longer constrained by what I thought I should do, I suddenly felt the possibility of all of the things I could do. When I moved to Washington, D.C. in July, it was the first major decision I made in my life simply because I wanted to—I didn’t move for a job, for a family member, for a friend, for a relationship, or for how I thought it would look for me to do so. This is an absolute privilege, I know, but one I suspect more people have than they realize.

35 feels significant not only because it’s the beginning of my sixth ‘seven,’ but because it’s the first time I feel as if I have complete and total control of my own narrative. The life I’ve built in just a few months in D.C. feels like the one I’ve been chasing in one way or another my entire life. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not one to do something casually—if my first two months here are any indication, the next seven years won’t be any different.

I wasn’t broken because I couldn’t force an attraction to men, or be fulfilled by stacking firewood, or dig in my heels and commit to New York long after our relationship stopped being mutually beneficial. I didn’t change my mind, I evolved. I didn’t make mistakes, I made choices—each and every one of which led me to where I am now. I didn’t fail at being a woman, a girlfriend, or a New Yorker; after 35 years of trying, I’ve finally succeeded at simply being myself.

Alexandra 5/12/20 Alexandra 5/12/20

There's No Place Like Home

A beautiful spring day in Northeast Ohio.

When I was little, I watched The Wizard of Oz so much that I wore out our family’s VHS copy. I have no idea why our tape had a muted mauve plastic outer shell instead of black; what’s less of a mystery is why the movie’s central protagonist—a young girl who feels misunderstood and out of place growing up in Kansas and longs to “wake up where the clouds are far behind” her—resonated so deeply with me, a young girl who felt misunderstood and out of place growing up in perpetually cloudy Northeast Ohio.

When I got a bit older and was able to identify some of the concrete issues contributing to my unease, I began to obsess over the idea of finding my own version of a place where the “dreams I dare to dream really do come true.” Even before I first visited New York City when I was 14, it seemed to me that—while I had no illusions that any change of scenery would cause my troubles to “melt like lemon drops”—going over the George Washington Bridge and into Manhattan was about as close to going over the rainbow as I could get.

I did try to be at least somewhat realistic about New York City’s ability to heal my spiritual and physical wounds, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t idealize or inflate its powers. For more than a decade after that first visit, I still physically lived in Ohio, but my head and my heart were both trapped in limbo—somewhere between my increasingly bleak real life, and the objectively better one I imagined was waiting for me, should I ever actually make it to New York.

I’m not proud of how quickly and willingly I cast my Ohio roots aside when that day finally came in 2013. Before my plane had even reached the gate at LaGuardia, I had already scrubbed my vocabulary of any telltale signs that I was an outsider: I trained my Midwestern mouth to say “soda” instead of “pop,” I would order food “to stay” instead of “for here,” and wait “on line” instead of “in line.” I gladly surrendered my Ohio driver’s license, even if it meant a five-and-a-half-hour wait at the “express” DMV and an even more excruciating weeks-long wait for my photo reveal (mercifully, New York’s ID photos are printed in universally flattering shades of black and white).

I didn’t hide the fact that I was from Ohio, but I didn’t exactly volunteer to share my origin story either. When the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship in 2016, it seemed like everyone in Brooklyn was celebrating but me. I was the first to admit that so-called “flyover” states were easy to ridicule (and frequently misunderstood), but more often than not, my home state supplied seemingly endless sources of embarrassment.

I had helped the county I grew up in turn blue in favor of Obama twice; in 2016, Trump won the bellwether state by nearly half a million votes. In 2019, less than a year before he would deftly handle the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed the notorious “heartbeat” law, essentially banning abortions. And that desire to wake up where the clouds are far behind me was very real: The Buckeye State is consistently included in the top ten rankings of cloudiest places in America. According to the Farmers’ Almanac, cities just south of Lake Erie see only 63 to 68 days of sunshine a year. Two months before I headed east in search of (metaphorically and literally) sunnier skies, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis; while there are several contributing risk factors, a pronounced lack of vitamin D is one of the major ones.

Try as I did to remain objective, I was not immune to blaming my miseries, at least partially, on my surroundings; with some perspective, it’s clear that I was not completely wrong in that assessment. My life did improve measurably in ways both big and small after I moved to New York. I no longer had a car, so I walked significantly more. I spent more time outdoors, enjoying those objectively sunnier skies. I traveled more, developed meaningful relationships, and advanced in my career.

Over the past seven years, I’ve gone entire days without remembering that I carry a potentially debilitating neurological condition along with me wherever I go; is it nearly invisible because of the daily medication I take or because of the lifestyle changes I made? I’m sure, like anything, it’s a complicated mix of factors, but I have no doubt that moving to New York helped me thrive in many, quantifiable ways.

So when it became clear to me over the last year that my life in New York was coming to a natural end, I wondered where I would go next. I had planned to spend a large portion of 2020 on the road, traveling across rural America—including the true Midwest, to which I argue Northeast Ohio does not really belong. I wasn’t being coy when I declared that I had no idea where I would end up once my trip ended; I truly had no idea if I would want to restart my life in New York or plant new roots elsewhere. For the first time in my highly-structured, true-to-my-Virgo-nature life, I planned not to plan too far in advance. I hoped that a few months on the road would change me; somewhere along the way I imagined that a clearer path would emerge.

A family of squirrels outside of my childhood bedroom window.

Well it turns out that sometimes life is also what happens to you while you're busy not making other plans. I did leave New York, but the COVID-19 pandemic put my road trip plans on an indefinite hold, left me unemployed (at least for the time being), and has me sheltering in place with my dad in my childhood home in Ohio. When I moved out in 2009—to live with a boyfriend 45 minutes south—I never imagined I’d be back 11 years later.

During the seven years that I lived in New York, I’d visited Ohio several times—for holidays, short family visits, and most recently, for work-related functions—but never for more than a few days at a time. I enjoyed exploring my home state as a tourist, catching up with old friends, and eating at regional food chains (Swensons’ cheeseburgers truly are life-changing). But I was always eager to get back to my adopted home of New York which, for at least six-and-a-half years, felt more like home to me than Ohio ever did. I had built a life from scratch there, and I relished the control and autonomy. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine—and I tried not to take it for granted.

The harder I worked to scrub the “Ohio” from my life, the more I started to warm to its charms. All but invisible when I was living a life that had, for various reasons, never felt like my own—and with enough distance and perspective—they started to slowly reveal themselves. A day spent in Amish country used to be anything but relaxing; the inconvenience of getting stuck behind a painfully slow buggy, the fecund smell of farmland, and the lines of Midwestern moms waiting for free cheese samples all tested my tissue-paper-thin patience in different ways. But gradually, I not only stopped dreading my return visits, but actually started to look forward to driving those same rural roads in search of a weird roadside attraction, an abandoned cemetery, or a sprawling suburban grocery store.

Since I arrived at the end of March, I’ve had nothing but time to consider the pros and cons of Ohio. During the two weeks I spent in quarantine, I took daily walks, never straying too far from the same streets and sidewalks on which I used to wander as an angsty teen (and later, as an angsty college student). After it was clear that I wasn’t a vector of viral plague, I began to go farther, driving my grandpa’s ‘98 Buick to points both north and south. I explored an abandoned bridge, drove two hours just to photograph a storefront, and visited the former Longaberger Basket headquarters twice. I still take walks as often as I can and I’ve come to appreciate these daily sojourns as a sort of “this is your life” review of my past.

Within walking distance of my house is the church parking lot where I learned to parallel park, the orthodontist who tortured my tiny mouth with a Medieval palatal expander, and the playground where a friend and I used to sneak cigarettes. Today, I couldn’t parallel park a clown car if my life depended on it. I long ago lost my retainer and regained my snaggle tooth. I could never tolerate the taste of cigarettes, and I’ve since lost touch with that friend. She was the first person I told when I realized I was attracted to women; it would be 20 more years before I could finally come to terms with what that meant personally—and feel secure enough to declare it to the world.

With the Buick, I can go even further into my own history: to the drive-in movie theater where I first got my period, to the neighborhood street where I had my first kiss (with a boy), and to the college campus where I met my first girlfriend. I recently drove past the house I shared for more than four years with that notorious boyfriend—the one I grew to resent because I blamed him for keeping me in Ohio, and then later, for other much worse (and more objectively bad) reasons. He doesn’t live there anymore, and now, thankfully, I barely recognize the version of myself that did. My journal entries from that time in my life are laughably morose; now, I write things such as, “I’m proud of myself” and “I can’t lose anything that never rightly belonged to me,” without any shred of irony.

The things that I couldn’t wait to leave behind—suburban sprawl, a car-dependent society, desolate streets—are the very things that now make Ohio feel like a literal breath of fresh air. Yes, it’s still perpetually cloudy, and the weather is hilariously unpredictable; in the weeks that I’ve been here we’ve had several inches of snow, rain, hail, a tornado warning, and a few picture-perfect 70-degree days (there is a frost advisory today and next week is supposed to be in the mid-80s). Regardless of the weather, I still take those walks, during which I rarely encounter another person. I used to lament the lack of sidewalks and foot traffic, but now I’m grateful for the ability to clear my head without playing a game of human Frogger—a mild New York annoyance that became increasingly stressful as COVID-19 ravaged the city and everyone, whether they intended to or not, suddenly posed a real threat to my compromised immune system.

I haven’t shed my New York persona completely, and I likely never will. I still recoil from strangers’ friendliness, walk to the grocery store even though I have access to the Buick, and relish wearing a face mask because it means I never have to force a smile (minus the face mask, I did those things even when I lived in Ohio, to be fair). I don’t regret a minute of the time I spent living in New York. I realize that no life choice is one-size-fits-all, but I do think most people would benefit from the perspective gained when you leave behind the comfort of familiar surroundings and leap into the unknown. There are as many ways to do that as there are people in this world; I urge you to figure out what that means for you, and then actually do it.

Against a backdrop of ‘90s playlists and Jane Fonda’s audiobook, I had more than seven hours to think and re-imagine my future when I left New York, driving west over the George Washington Bridge. Suddenly, what had before seemed so unclear—where to put down roots when my road trip came to an end—seemed maddeningly obvious. What if I just stayed in Ohio for the foreseeable future?

Even before the pandemic suddenly shuttered (hopefully temporarily) everything that I loved about New York, I had become increasingly disillusioned with the high costs—again, both literally and metaphorically—of carving out a life in one of the most expensive and dense cities in the world. The cost of living is much lower in Ohio; yes, I will need a car, but I now relish the control and freedom it will bring me, especially in a post-pandemic world. Everything that was a nightmare even in pre-COVID-19 New York is a comparative breeze here—laundry, grocery shopping, road trips, etc. There are just as many things that I will (and already do) miss about New York as there are things that I won’t.

But what I’m learning is that nothing in life is objectively good or bad; for a brief moment, most things may be weighted heavily in one direction or the other, but more often than not, they fall somewhere in between. I moved to New York because, for many reasons unique to me at the time, it seemed like a better choice than Ohio. Now I, and the reasons, have changed, with predictably different results.

Will I stay in Ohio forever? I have absolutely no clue. Is it the right place for me right now? I think so. It may look different than it once did, but I’m extremely grateful to have a place to come back to—even if it doesn’t feel like I’m going back, but rather, forward. I lost the puzzle box long ago; I have no idea what the final picture will look like, but I’m picking up the pieces and connecting them as I find them.

As smart and clever as I’d like to think I am, sometimes the most obvious solutions are the most elusive. During the years I was busy building a life in New York, I would have insisted that I would never end up back in Ohio. Even now, I’m dragging my feet surrendering that driver’s license—and not just because I like my photo, it’s valid for six more years, and the wait in the stuffy and chaotic Midtown DMV felt as if it was at least that long.

I’m reluctant to admit that something so cliché—something that must have embedded itself into the tightly-woven fabric of my brain long before that fragile VHS tape turned to dust—could turn out to be so true: “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with … There’s no place like home.”

Alexandra 5/4/20 Alexandra 5/4/20

May 4, Fifty Years Later

1970 was a historic year for the environmental and anti-war movements; inspired by protests of the 1960s, the first Earth Day was held fifty years ago in April. Opposition to the United States’ involvement in Vietnam had been spreading across the country for years, but also in the spring of 1970, student protestors and military units clashed—with violent, and often deadly, results.

I didn’t know much about the events of May 4, 1970 when I enrolled at Kent State University in August of 2003. During the five years it took to complete my undergraduate degree, I learned many things, but I was mostly focused on myself. Students have been increasingly robbed of the same luxury of self-absorption—thanks to active shooter drills, mounting loan debt, dire climate projections, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.

I know that marches and movements—even historically significant ones—don’t immediately change the world in any real way, but I also know that isn’t really the point. Over the past three years, I’ve attended countless protests for various issues; most recently I was arrested three times for civil disobedience with the climate justice organization Fire Drill Fridays.

When it was announced that Fonda was scheduled to speak about activism at KSU to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the events of May 4th, I felt something about my home state that I wasn’t used to feeling: pride. Almost immediately, event organizers faced the inevitable backlash from a small, but vocal minority of the “Hanoi Jane” contingent—fueled by long-simmering resentment surrounding Fonda’s largely misunderstood 1972 visit to North Vietnam.

Detractors called on KSU to cancel Fonda’s speech, ignoring—or not realizing—that she has always been consistent with both her support of soldiers and her opposition to war. When the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students protesting the bombing of Cambodia, Fonda was in the middle of a cross-country road trip, speaking at college campuses and meeting with servicemen who objected to fighting in a war that had become increasingly difficult to justify.

This year, I had plans to embark upon a cross-country trip of my own. Ohio was meant to be a temporary pit stop on my way from my adopted home of New York City—but in the wake of the pandemic, I am sheltering-in-place in my childhood home for the foreseeable future. I recently returned to Kent State’s sprawling campus for the first time since I graduated. Classes and commencement have been cancelled in the wake of COVID-19. Buildings are shuttered and the streets are devoid of students; manicured lawns and lecture halls sit empty.

Taylor Hall, now home to the May 4th Visitor Center, still presides solemnly over Blanket Hill, carpeted with daffodils blooming defiantly in isolation. Each of the 58,175 bright yellow flowers represents a life lost too soon in Vietnam. The war may be long over, but in just a few months, COVID-19 fatalities have already surpassed that grim number; casualties from the climate crisis are far harder to calculate, but they too will only increase exponentially over time.

The ways people gather and spread ideas may have evolved over the past 50 years, but the core issues and enemies we face have not. Technology now both connects and isolates us; mass demonstrations are (rightly) prohibited at the very time when they’re needed the most. In the wake of stay-home orders and bans on public gatherings, organizers and activists have scrambled to find alternate ways to come together. KSU’s virtual commemoration program unfortunately no longer includes a speech by Fonda, but her activism—now focused entirely on the climate crisis—is more needed than ever.

It may be too soon to tell if the beginning of 2020 has taught us anything, but if so, it’s that “business as usual” is not the solution, but rather the problem. We may be impatient to reopen the country, but if we don’t use this time to reflect on our past, remake our present, and reimagine our future, then we have failed at a time when we have very little margin for error.

A granite memorial to those killed and wounded on May 4th, 1970 sits at the top of Blanket Hill, encouraging visitors to “inquire, learn, and reflect.” There is no limit to the lessons waiting to be mined from our personal and collective histories, but we must be willing to ask the right questions and not be afraid to face the uncomfortable answers.

Alexandra 4/24/20 Alexandra 4/24/20

Beginnings and endings

I love celebrating beginnings, endings, and everything in between. I relentlessly documented my move to New York, posting exhaustive monthly wrap-ups for the first year, and yearly recaps after that. For the first five years, I hosted a gathering to commemorate my July 1st “New Yorkiversary;” the attendees and venue were never the same but the sentiment was consistent: nothing is too big or small to celebrate.

I didn’t intend to make much of my exit from New York, but I couldn’t leave the city—even temporarily—without acknowledging and celebrating the people that made my nearly seven years as a New Yorker so special. Most of my friends had already left themselves, each in search of different things in different places, but I still planned a night of “goodbye for now” drinks. I kept the event on my calendar for much longer than was realistic, reluctant to delete it even when bars (and most of New York City) officially shut their doors in March.

We’re all experiencing a unique brand of collective and personal grief. For me, it comes in waves: there are moments when I’m able to conjure up hope for our future and clearly see the opportunities we have to improve society and right many of the wrongs that got us to where we are now; but there are also plenty of low points. I knew leaving New York would be hard, but I didn’t expect so much of what I loved about it to essentially vanish overnight.

It’s human nature to hold onto people, places, and things past their natural endings. We invent fantasies and false hopes, latching onto seemingly impossible situations to cope—even death, the most permanent and universal ending, has been rendered more palatable with the notion of a blissful afterlife, or in the fruitless quest to preserve our physical form.

Sometimes, we’re given the luxury of planning our beginnings and endings. But more often than not, we only recognize the significance of such moments with the benefit of hindsight. Sudden deaths—of people, ideas, or routines—rob us of our ability to properly prepare ourselves, but they also remind us that very little is in our control. We have no choice but to go on living our lives, hoping for more, while simultaneously knowing that nothing is guaranteed.

On March 5th, I met a friend at a bar in Brooklyn, and we ordered the mac n’ cheese—one of my top five favorite meals in all of New York. The next morning, I met my uncle for breakfast—baked eggs at Cafe Luxembourg, inexplicably only available on weekdays—and in the evening another friend and I went to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire at the Angelika. We took the subway to Broadway Lafayette and then back to my apartment in Harlem.

The next morning we picked up a ZipCar and drove upstate; the threat of COVID-19 was looming, but we laughed at the notion of a lockdown. We stopped for lunch at the Historic Village Diner in Red Hook; it was packed but we scored the last vinyl booth, staying until the chrome-and-neon dining car emptied out. I drank several cups of coffee, left the friendly waitress a generous tip, and washed my hands twice.

On our way to the diner, we passed a literal fork in the road; after lunch we backtracked to get a closer look. The 31-foot-tall “punny sculpture” was erected by local artist Stephen B. Schreiber in 2000, who told Hudson Valley Magazine, “I think sculpture should do something other than just sit there.”

We stayed at the Rivertown Lodge, ate dinner at a local pizzeria, and had drinks in a crowded bookshop bar. The next morning we browsed antique shops, had brunch, and I pulled over to snap a few photos of a ramshackle mansion straight out of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World.

There was nothing extraordinary about these four days, at least not when viewed within the larger context of the life I’ve intentionally created for myself. But since March 9th I’ve been in some semblance of quarantine, with nothing but time to consider the rearview. I’ve wondered what it would be like to live through periods of great historical significance—the 1918 flu pandemic, WWII, New York in the late 70s—and I’ve often immersed myself in the past, trying in vain to glean lessons that I can apply to the present. The greater the distance we have from something, the easier it should be to analyze, digest, and learn from.

It may not feel as if we’re in control of much—especially now—but that’s not exactly true. We are in control of our own celebrations and only we get to say what matters most in our own lives. I don’t regret celebrating the beginnings or honoring the endings because we almost never know when a seemingly ordinary moment will be made extraordinary by factors that will always remain outside of our control. I’m optimistic that I will ride the subway, drink countless cups of diner coffee, and carve out a space for myself in a crowded bar again; nothing lasts forever and life will resume eventually, even if it will never look or feel exactly as it once did.

On our way back to the city—and due to my reluctancy to rely on a GPS—I took a wrong turn. We had intended to go to Kingston but ended up in Woodstock instead, a town that had been on my travel wish-list for years. We had lunch and bought books from a witchy bookstore. The clocks had been turned ahead early in the morning; we lost an hour, but gained something too. We sat outside, enjoying the sun until the last possible second, trying in vain to slow the relentless march of time.

Alexandra 3/29/20 Alexandra 3/29/20

Hello, to everything else

The thing I’ll remember most about my last few weeks in New York is the near-constant sound of ambulance sirens. When I picked March 30th as my date to leave the city, I couldn’t have imagined that I would be fleeing what had quickly become the epicenter of a global pandemic. When the numbers of COVID-19 cases started accelerating, I wasn’t sure what to do about my plans. For weeks I’ve wrestled with the question: should I stay, or should I go?

The city has been on virtual lockdown for weeks and the daily news briefings have become increasingly grim. I have stayed in my apartment more or less for 21 days now; my mom (and current roommate) is a medical assistant at an OBGYN office and considered an essential worker. I have a job I can do remotely and enough food to last me weeks. I could stay, but what happens if I get sick, or worse, if my mom gets sick? I’m immune-compromised and as I write this the city is rapidly running out of supplies and hospital beds; field hospitals are currently being constructed in the Javits Center and in the middle of Central Park.

So I decided to go; tomorrow I will walk 3.3 miles from Harlem to Columbus Circle to pick up a rental car. I will drive straight to Ohio, stopping only for gas and bathroom breaks. I have a few face masks, latex gloves, and disinfectant. When I get to my dad’s house I’ll begin another 14-day quarantine, but I suspect it will last much longer than that. The virus is in all 50 states; but life is a constant game of risk versus reward. I’m trying to be smart and safe, while resisting the paralyzing effects of fear.

I wrote the following about my decision to leave before the pandemic hit—this is not how I imagined my time in New York coming to an end, but life rarely works out exactly how we imagine. The best we can do is move forward; adjust the sails but never stop the ship.

I know that the world does not need another Goodbye to All That-style essay about loving and leaving New York. The city barely batted an eye when my plane touched down at LaGuardia nearly seven years ago on a one-way flight from Ohio—and it won’t lose any sleep when I drive away from it in a one-way rental car, back to Ohio and then beyond. The city famous for never sleeping historically has very little sleep to lose.

There’s a reason the city’s bridges charge steep tolls to cars entering the city but let you leave for free. A real New Yorker—whether you’re a lifer or you opt in until it's time to opt out—knows that a $16 bridge toll is the least of it; the expenses of New York are well-documented and oft-complained about, but it costs much more than money to carve out a life here.

As a kid growing up in Ohio, I dreamed about living in New York so long it became an obsession of mine. I visited countless times, but I tried very hard to view the city realistically—even going as far as living and working here for two, cold and grey winter months in the beginning of 2013 just to make sure I truly understood what I was getting myself into. Those two “trial period” months were hard for many reasons, but as my March departure date loomed I knew I would be back. A complicated medical diagnosis coupled with the slow dismantling of my personal life set me back a few months, but when I saw the “Welcome to New York” sign from my plane’s window seat on July 1st, I felt like I was coming home.

Within the first six months of 2013, it had felt as if my whole world was falling apart. It had been slowly unraveling for some time, but I’m only realizing now how good I was at putting on blinders and ignoring the obvious signs (and there are always signs). My four-and-a-half-year relationship, which was far from perfect even in the beginning, ended for good when I discovered that my boyfriend—with whom I shared a house, a cat, credit cards, and several car leases—had been involved with my closest confidant and best friend for an indeterminate amount of time (with enough time and perspective, the details cease to matter as much as the general outline).

Less than 48 hours after I confronted them at her house in the wee hours of the morning—sometimes life really is like a Lifetime movie—my personal medical drama reached its inevitable conclusion: at 27 years old, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. MS is a scary and unpredictable disease and maybe I should’ve taken my diagnosis more seriously. But when it rains it pours and I could only focus on one traumatic event at a time; I boxed up my fears of losing my independence and got to work changing nearly everything about my life.

It’s incredibly difficult to change any one thing; when it became apparent that I would have to change almost everything, it’s no wonder why I shut down, dug in and held onto my Ohio life far past its natural expiration date. Or maybe I’m being too judgmental; maybe things end exactly when they should and we simply do the best we can with the information we have at the time. Sometimes that means we’re not ready to face the truth because there’s still more to learn, even if the hardest lessons usually come with painful endings.

But before I could start over in New York, I needed to dismantle my former life. I remember writing out a seemingly-insurmountable checklist that included tasks both big and small: change my bank, sell my books, find a job, find an apartment, settle up health insurance debts, etc. Taken altogether it seemed daunting—impossible, even—but one by one I put check marks next to the vestiges of a life that no longer fit me. I was a hermit crab—exposed and vulnerable—who had somewhat violently shed her old shell but hadn’t yet found a new one.

I had initially planned to move to New York as soon as I graduated college, but life really is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I got a job intending to save money (I had $8k in savings but thought I needed a mythical $10k) and started dating my boss instead. Around the time I thought I would be moving east, I instead moved in with him, an hour south of where I grew up and a world away from where I had imagined I’d spend the bulk of my 20s.

Months turned into years. I learned a lot from both my relationship and my job, but I lost a lot of myself in the process. I stopped reading. I went years without taking a single vacation day. I made personal and professional sacrifices I’m not proud of and never imagined I would make. I kept a journal, but the entries were increasingly bleak and infrequent. In one entry, I simply wrote “I don’t matter,” over and over again until my handwriting became unintelligible. I was a frog in a pot on the stove. I may not have had full control over the knob, but I could see the flame getting higher and higher. I logically realized that the temperature of my life was slowly increasing to dangerously inhospitable levels but I was too tired—physically, emotionally and spiritually—to jump out.

I never did find the strength on my own to jump out, not really, if I’m being honest. I would love to say I woke up one day and magically had the bravery to demand more of my life and the confidence to think I deserved it. But life is not actually a movie. In my experience, people don’t fundamentally change that quickly or drastically. And when we do, we almost never do it without help—whether we know it or not, we change not in spite of others but because of them. No one does anything entirely on their own.

Yes, I had one foot out the door when I returned to our shared home in March of 2013 and told my boyfriend that I had to move to New York—whatever that meant for our already-tenuous relationship. He offered to marry me. I knew enough about him at this point to know that was an empty promise. But as sure as I was that I had to leave, it still took the discovery of his infidelity —not the first time he had cheated on me, but only I had the power to make it the last—to push me fully out the door.

Nearly seven years later, my feelings about this tumultuous time in my life are ever-evolving: I still get angry when I think of all the times he lied to me, I’m still hurt by my former friend’s betrayal, and I’m annoyed when I hear they are still together. But I mostly just feel gratitude. I’d like to think I would’ve left eventually, spurred by the ticking time bomb of my recent diagnosis, or some other nudge from the universe, but I’ll never know.

What I do know is that their betrayal—so obvious, so simple—was in many ways my golden ticket. I was no longer a woman leaving a man for the selfish dream of making it in the big city. I had been wronged. I was a victim. No one would question my motives: I now needed a change of scenery if only for my health—my MS doctor had urged me to avoid emotional stress, as if that’s ever possible. But if it was possible, it meant changing my job (never date your boss), my friends and my living situation; five years after taking the job to ‘save money’ I now had even less in savings than I had started with—but if I was going to have to start over, it might as well finally be in New York.

As hard as I tried to be realistic about New York’s ability to heal my wounds, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I relished the possibility of leaving my old life behind and moving onto something bigger, brighter and objectively better. I didn’t realize it at the time—and it’s embarrassing for me to admit now—but in some ways I crafted a new identity for myself from the outside in. I used to sit in Central Park and watch people walk to work—coffee cup in hand, impossibly stylish and aloof —and imagine myself in their place.

Then, one day it happened: I caught my reflection in a store window and it was exactly how I’d imagined it could be; I got a job in publishing, and then at a historic cultural center, and then at an even bigger publishing house. As much as I loved the subway, I loved walking the city even more.

Right before I moved, I changed my blog title and all my social media handles to “The Only Living Girl in New York” a feminist spin on the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Only Living Boy in New York.” The lyric “I’ve got nothing to do today but smile” couldn’t have been further from how I felt as I tried to begin my life in New York essentially from scratch—“I’ve got nothing to do today but build an entire apartment’s worth of IKEA furniture by myself” would have been a more accurate description—but moments of delirious happiness begun to sneak in between the sadness and homesickness for a place that had never even felt like home.

Slowly, I begin to heal, to grow and to change. The “old” me—the me that went into hiding every time I got into a relationship—started to poke her head out of hibernation. I began to read again. I planned road trips. I made new friends—ones who were shocked when details from my old life inevitably leaked out. They didn’t recognize that version of me and for that I was thankful; I had done what everyone says is almost impossible. I had run nearly 500 miles away from my pain and landed on my feet. I had made it in New York.

Two years, two jobs, and two apartments later, I found myself in another relationship. This one was different in many of the obvious ways from my first one—he was gentle, kind and quiet. But after a few years, I felt my inner light dimming again. I began to make concessions in the name of compromise—some barely noticeable and some actually life-threatening, like when I agreed to hike the Inca Trail and woke up halfway through the four-day hike sicker than I’ve ever been. I had been on immune-suppressant medication for my MS for a while, but I’m a reckless patient. I thought I had taken the necessary precautions but I also want so badly to appear as if I’m FINE that I often ignore the obvious—that I am sick, at least according to some very good physicians and yearly MRIs.

I don’t fault my then-boyfriend for wanting to hike the Inca Trail—and I survived, obviously, with more than a few priceless memories, both very good and very bad. I spent a great deal of our relationship lying to myself; I don’t fault him for not noticing. Once again I had tried to deny what I always secretly felt: that I was no longer being true to myself.

That relationship lasted nearly four years, and I don’t regret a minute of it. He was a safe harbor, a place to shelter from the storm that had been raging in some way or another in my head as long as I can remember. There were lulls of course, stretches of calm when it seemed as if I could coast on this easy life forever; I was traveling more frequently, my job was secure, my relationship was easy. I loved exploring odd, dusty corners of New York and the passion I lacked for my day job was made up for with the work I did on this blog, where I tried to document it all.

But then for completely unremarkable reasons, the storm became impossible to ignore. I ended the relationship but it would take another six months before I was ready to admit to the world what I had always known to be true (and at various times had actually been brave enough to admit, though never fully): that I was attracted to women.

Once that keystone clicked into place, I felt far from secure; to my surprise, the floodgates opened. They had been quietly unlocked at the beginning of 2019, when I got my “dream job” with Roadtrippers, but they flew open violently when I began the painful process of sifting through the deep shame that had shrouded everything I did for as long as I could remember. It seemed like such a simple thing—declaring to yourself and the world, “this is who I am”—but it broke me open in ways I’ve only just begun to discover.

And then, one day New York just didn’t make sense to me anymore. My job didn’t necessarily require me to leave New York, but the nature of the work I am doing encouraged it. I’m no longer tied to a desk, a specific office building or even a certain region of the country. One by one those friends I had made—the ones who helped me heal and grow—left New York for various reasons, each in search of something that even the greatest city in the world couldn’t provide. I had my first significant relationship with a woman, but that too reached a natural end.

Who would I be if I left New York? Where would “The Only Living Girl in New York” go after she crossed the George Washington Bridge headed west? I realized that as much as I had used New York to rebuild my life, my life no longer depended on the city. I had grown stronger here, I had healed a lot of wounds and opened up new ones; I was confident and independent and open in a way I never could have been if I had stayed in Ohio. But as much as New York has shaped me, I knew that I could now survive—and even thrive—outside of it. Leaving didn’t mean I failed, quite the contrary; it means I succeeded in doing the very thing I came here to do: fan the flame of my own inner pilot light and make it burn brighter than I ever imagined it could.

New York was a passive participant in all of this, but it used me just as much as I used it. It took my money, yes, and probably a good deal of my hearing. Two years of sleepless nights spent in a bedroom overlooking a noisy stretch of Flatbush Avenue inevitably took years off my lifespan. But the city gave me much more than it took; it gave me perspective and autonomy; garlic bagels and falafel wraps; a deep appreciation for classic diner coffee, fanciful architecture, and public transportation. I could write 10,000 words on everything I learned and loved in my seven wonderful years here, and it would barely scratch the surface. But in some ways I did just that. This blog’s name and focus may change, but I relentlessly documented my time here and I’m thankful that I have a place to go whenever I feel nostalgic or forget what it felt like to see the Unisphere fountains, the city blanketed in snow, or eat my first knish.

The best cocktail I ever had was at the Waldorf Astoria before it closed for renovations: a perfect Manhattan that cost a ridiculous $36 (perhaps even crazier: I had two). But that’s the thing about New York. You can get the best of everything, but it will cost you—in one way or another. Eventually, we’re all faced with a choice: keep upping the ante—make more money, buy more things, keep going round and round on the carousel grabbing for that elusive brass ring—or decide that the cost-to-reward ratio is just too great. Life has a way of propelling us forward with or without our permission and I realize it’s an immense privilege to be able to stop the moving car on our own terms and look around. But when I did just that, I realized that what I saw ahead of me was no longer in New York.

To stay would have been, in some ways, the easy choice; after all it’s what I’ve been doing for the last seven years. Sure, finding an apartment is a pain and dismantling and reassembling my IKEA furniture for the seventh time might actually be dangerous, but I did it all before and I know I could do it again (and maybe, one day, I will, although that furniture is definitely not coming with me).

What I’ve never done before in New York is feel out of place; I know it’s time for me to leave simply because I feel as if New York is no longer for me. I know now that I am not defined by my relationship to a man (or woman), to a job or to a city. I am me no matter where I go. My pilot light might fluctuate and even dim dangerously low again in the future, but I know I’m capable of getting it back. I am a work in progress for sure—and likely always will be—but for the first time in my life I feel as if I have grown strong roots that aren’t tied to anything external. I carry them with me no matter what the future holds.

Like the gingko trees around the city that shed all of their leaves at once, I am not defined by what I have, who I love, what I do or where I live. I am strong enough to shed my leaves and confident enough to know that I can grow new ones, even better ones. The ancient trees don’t thrive because they live in New York but in spite of it. So I’m not saying “goodbye to all that,” but rather, “hello to everything else”—whatever, and wherever that may be.

Alexandra 12/31/19 Alexandra 12/31/19

Tomlin, Wagner, and Fonda

Growing up in inner-city Detroit, Lily Tomlin found an escape from her working-class life at the movies. When she describes her impressionable teenage years, she often mentions the movie stars—exclusively female—that had the greatest effect on her. She says that she was “mad for them” or, my personal favorite, that she suffered “damage” (seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s caused Tomlin to have “Audrey Hepburn damage,” for example).

I am now well beyond those impressionable, hormonal teenage years when I first experienced “damage” of my own, from influences on screen or close to home. But I decided this year, after a 10-year detour into the world of compulsory heterosexuality, to fully embrace my complicated sexuality which resulted in—to borrow a line from Tomlin’s partner of nearly 50 years, Jane Wagner—not so much of a breakdown, as a breakthrough.

So it’s not a mystery to me why, at the beginning of 2019, I felt as if I was flailing around in uncharted waters. I began desperately grasping at any lifesaver I could grab a hold of, and this year I was lucky enough to find three: Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Jane Fonda.

The main players and tools of the trade may have evolved over the years, but none of these three woman represents the first time I’ve been afflicted with so-called “damage.” Conventional time has no measurement for how long it takes me to go from casually clicking on someone’s Wikipedia entry—scrolling at lightning speed to the “personal life” section, as one does—to browsing for a lock of that celebrity’s hair on eBay (this “genuine celebrity artifact” is a real thing that exists, if anyone is looking for a belated Christmas gift for me). Obsessions happen to me like most things: very slowly and then suddenly, all at once.

Whenever real life becomes, for lack of a less obvious descriptor, too real, I find myself grasping for something or someone to guide me into a safe harbor. The root of an obsession may not be obvious until much later but these spiritual guideposts—TV shows, celebrities, real life teachers and friends—float in and out of my life as I need them. In some ways I’m almost a passive participant. It often seems as if I don’t have much choice in the matter; my obsessions choose me.

Tomlin—who finally made an honest woman out of Wagner in 2013—seems to reluctantly identify as a lesbian (and more enthusiastically, as a feminist). Through the years, she has simultaneously deflected questions about her personal life while at the same time emphasizing Wagner’s crucial role in her success. Their relationship was never a secret, she insists, but she never felt the need to call a press conference about it.

It’s widely reported that Tomlin “officially” came out in the early 2000’s, although I recently discovered this article published in the Chicago Tribune in 1994. Cheryl Lanvin’s very explicit and compassionate profile describes two women who very obviously love each other deeply. Lanvin first profiled Tomlin and Wagner even earlier, in 1986, and while she writes about the couple’s “professional and personal relationship,” the article’s eye-roll-inducing headline “Best Friends” is missing the world’s largest set of air quotes.

In a twist of divine programming fate, the Film Society of Lincoln Center honored Tomlin and Wagner in September with a series that included screenings and a talk with the couple, one half of which is notoriously press-shy (notably missing: Wagner’s directorial debut and notorious Tomlin/Travolta bomb, Moment By Moment, which I unironically love). If there is a heaven, I thought at the time, it must look an awful lot like the theater’s lobby, which featured an eight-hour continuous loop of highlights from the Tomlin/Wagner archive.

It’s hard for me to pinpoint when my “damage” began to shift from Tomlin to Fonda, but I do remember the first time I saw Jane Fonda in Five Acts, Susan Lacey’s deep dive into Fonda’s remarkable life (so far). It was April and I had just arrived in Cincinnati for a business trip. I was tired from traveling but started the documentary on a whim. Two hours later, I was wide awake, fascinated by Fonda’s various transformations and insistence that “anyone can change and become fierce.”

When Fonda moved to Washington, D.C. and started Fire Drill Fridays in October, I really started paying attention. Of all the roles she’s played over the last 50+ years, Jane Fonda the Activist interests me the most. She’d famously (and yes, controversially) visited Vietnam in the ‘70s, challenged the Archbishop of Canterbury on The Dick Cavett Show, and continuously fought back against a calculated effort to silence her (by Nixon nonetheless). She had spoken out against the Iraq War, canvassed in middle America for One Fair Wage, and provided Thanksgiving dinner to water protectors at Standing Rock. I finally had a chance to witness her fighting for a worthy cause in real time, and the first few Fridays I pored over Twitter and Facebook livestreams, watching Fonda (resplendent in red) and a rotating cast of characters—Ted Danson, Sam Waterston, Diane Lane, Sally Field—as they got arrested for civil disobedience in an effort to draw attention to the increasingly dire climate crisis.

I subsequently devoured everything I could about Fonda’s life. I had exhausted Tomlin’s archive in a few months, but Fonda was born famous and she has been unusually prolific: there is a seemingly endless supply of materials to mine, including books, movies, TV shows, interviews, and of course, dozens of workout tapes. I was deep into my Fonda damage when I began to consider dressing up as “Jane Fonda getting arrested” for Halloween—but never one to do anything casually, I decided to actually go to D.C. and get arrested myself (or at the very least, see Fonda doing what she does best, in person). That’s how, on November 1st, I found myself in police custody with Fonda—along with Catherine Keener, Rosanna Arquette, and Fonda’s two daughters, Vanessa Vadim and Mary Luana Williams—for five, transformative hours.

Getting arrested was a culmination of the changes that had been brewing inside of me all year (and, in some ways, my entire life). My journey is still too fresh for me to have any real perspective, but it seems to me that once I finally began to dismantle certain constraints—my need to please, self-destructive behaviors, deep-rooted shame for my sexuality, and the ever-pervasive feeling that I didn’t “fit in”—the floodgates opened. Without intending to, I broke myself apart and I’ve just begin to reassemble the pieces into something new. I flung myself off of the moving walkway of life—the one that says we must keep going forward no matter the cost, accumulating more and more wealth, titles, people, things, etc.—and began to pay attention to my surroundings in ways that I never have. It hasn’t been easy and I have no illusions that the process will ever be “complete,” but for the first time in my life, that’s ok. Maybe it’s the “seven year itch” or maybe it’s the new decade, but I feel more open, flexible and empathetic than I ever have—like a raw, exposed nerve—better in tune with myself and the whole of humanity. I am, and commit to always be, a work in (sometimes painful) progress.

A famous quote often attributed to Tomlin (but most likely written by Wagner) says that “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.” I’ve shared this revelation with numerous people this year and I’ve realized that I’m far from alone in feeling this way. Fonda has been remarkably candid about her own struggles through the years, but she says it wasn’t until she was in her 60s that she realized the goal wasn’t to be perfect, but to be whole.

In November, I emerged from detention a changed person and on December 27, I got to tell Fonda just how much she has inspired me this year. Despite my penchant for obsessions, I have been famously shy in the past, reluctant to have a traditional shallow celebrity-fan interaction. But when I approached Fonda at the morning Fire Drill Friday briefing, it felt different. I didn’t ask her for anything—she has already given me so much—and simply wanted to tell her “thank you.” I did just that and she was unbelievably receptive. She enveloped me in a huge hug and we chatted about transformation and activism. She recommended that I read Naomi Klein’s book On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, which I had devoured the week before. During our conversation two people tried to get her attention, but both times she turned back to me; she asked me how old I was and when I replied “34,” she scoffed and said, “Well you look 18!”

In another twist of fate, Fonda’s celebrity guest star that day was Lily Tomlin. I didn’t speak with her in the morning, but around noon I found myself protesting on the Capitol steps right behind her. It would be her first-ever arrest and as she was handcuffed I put my hand on her shoulder and said, “You got this.” I was arrested soon after and placed into a police transport van with Tomlin and three other women. The woman next to me said that watching Grace and Frankie had brought her mother joy in the last year of her life. “What would she think if she knew you were in police custody right now with Lily Tomlin?” I asked. “She’d be so proud of me,” she said, smiling.

While in custody, I was seated directly behind Tomlin. Just a few months before, I had been scouring the internet for Tomlin/Wagner deep cuts—and now here I was, just mere inches from half of the iconic duo. She made a few jokes (after processing, she said that instead of the $50 post-and-forfeit they asked her to do a 10-minute monologue) and I made her laugh, but I mostly just sat in awe, silently marveling at the unpredictable magic of the universe. Whether you choose to believe it or not, my horoscope did say that December 27th was considered by some to be “the luckiest day of the year,” and for me that turned out to be true. My mom has always told me I’m lucky and maybe she’s right—but I also think much of what is attributed to luck is actually the result of accidental privilege or choosing to live a life of intention. This was the year I realized I could simply stop asking (or waiting) for permission to do anything. No one is going to live your life for you. Fonda frequently recounts the deceptively simple life advice she received from Katherine Hepburn: If you don’t stand up to your fears and continue to challenge yourself, “you become soggy.”

After we were released (I had learned enough from my first arrest to have the required bail money this time), Fonda was waiting for us with open arms. “I’m so proud of you!” she said as she squeezed me tightly. “You know, I’ve been thinking all day about what you said this morning. It just meant so much to me.” We chatted some more about life, activism, and my desire to really see, and understand, more of America. She urged me to visit Native American reservations and she led me to the snack table. This time, I asked for a selfie and we both looked to the sky, positioning ourselves in the most flattering light.

Fonda told Tomlin that I was a writer, and I told Tomlin that I had read The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe earlier in the year and it changed my life. She perked up as I explained how much Wagner’s words had touched me and she said “Oh, tell Jane!” I think it’s safe to say I basically blacked out as Tomlin dialed Wagner and handed me her iPhone. After (an understandably-confused) Wagner picked up, I rallied long enough to tell her “I just got arrested with your wife and I just wanted to say that I read The Search many times and it changed my life.” Despite my babbling, Wagner was incredibly gracious, lovely, and unsurprisingly eloquent.

Whoever said “don’t meet your heroes” obviously had the wrong heroes. In the course of one day, I got to tell the three people who have undeniably shaped my year (and life going forward) just how much they meant to me. Tomlin, Wagner, and Fonda have helped me through a difficult year, each in their own ways, and being able to tell them—and really feel as if they heard me—is the greatest gift I’ve been given this year. People come in and out of our lives as we need them, and it’s up to us to do the rest. Maybe “damage” is the wrong word because it implies destruction—or maybe it’s perfect because often we need to deconstruct our former selves in order to build something new, to become someone better. Fonda has said that people, like countries, should be “in perpetual revolution,” and no one should be expected to fight in isolation.

As Susan Minot writes in Evening, “She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.”

Alexandra 12/20/19 Alexandra 12/20/19

I told you I was sick

Almost seven years ago, I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I was relatively lucky; I received a diagnosis fairly quickly, after three months of CT scans, MRIs, and other various tests. I had health insurance, but It took me two full years to pay off a single emergency room visit. Still, I consider myself lucky, but that shouldn’t be surprising. In America—especially when it comes to healthcare—we’re taught to be thankful for scraps.

With every diagnosis comes a “Why me?” period of grieving, and I still have days where I feel sorry for myself. I get overwhelmed by the not knowing. MS is an unpredictable disease, one that could eventually rob me of some of the basic functions that I value most. I try to stifle the fears, the endless “What ifs?” What if I wake up tomorrow and can’t walk? What if I eventually lose my already compromised vision entirely? What if I lose control?

I try very hard to focus on the positives. I have had only a few minor physical challenges and my yearly scans are consistently promising. But as a woman, I’m used to bearing pain in silence, dismissed by male doctors and told that I should just grin and bear it. As a queer woman who has made the conscious choice not to bear children, society says I matter even less. If I were to become physically disabled, my currency would dwindle even further. But I am very, very white. I have a job with flexible hours and adequate medical benefits. I live in New York City and have access to some of the world’s best doctors and hospitals. My disease is very real, and very scary, but for the time being it’s under control.

I take one pill every night that suppresses my overactive immune system enough that it no longer attacks itself. I don’t get sick as often as I expected, but when I do it can be dangerous. Extreme temperatures—within my own body and outside of it—exacerbate my MS symptoms. Stress is very, very bad for me.

Every month I get thirty pills with a total sticker price of eight thousand dollars. Every night I take a pill, and if I skip seven days in a row, I could go into cardiac arrest (for reasons that are still unclear to me). Yet nearly every month some unforeseen glitch in America’s shameful healthcare system forces me to negotiate with either my insurance company, my personal doctor, NYU Hospitals, a large pharmaceutical company, a specialty pharmacy, and FedEx (sometimes all six) just to get a 30-day supply of my medication. After these lengthy negotiations, I owe nothing, but like so many Americans, I pay in other ways: with my time, with my elevated stress levels, and—if I’m not very careful—with the very thing I’m fighting to protect: my health.

Again, despite these inconveniences, I still consider myself lucky. So many people do not have the privilege of being inconvenienced by insurance. Healthcare should not be a privilege—it’s a basic human right. Any setback in wealth, employment, health, etc., disproportionally affects the most vulnerable segments of the population: women, the LGBTQ community, any non-white person, and people with disabilities. The same people who have been taught their whole lives to grin and bear the pain inflicted on them by those with the most privilege and power; to not only put up with it, but to smile politely and be thankful for scraps.

At the beginning of November, I went to D.C. somewhat impulsively—inspired by Jane Fonda’s bravery and passion—to join a Fire Drill Friday protest. The topic was ‘women,’ and during the rally, I decided that I had no choice but to start putting my body on the line while I could still do so. I got arrested with 46 other similarly-moved people and I intend to do so at least once more (after two civil disobedience arrests within six months, the consequences are more serious than a standard $50 post-and-forfeit). Today I’m in D.C. again and the FDF topic of ‘health’ resonates deeply with me for obvious reasons. Only now, it’s our entire planet that is sick. Greedy corporations and short-sighted politicians have pushed our Earth to the brink—and it’s up to us to save ourselves, something we’re unfortunately all too familiar with here in America.

As a civilized society, we have the moral obligation to help those who are more vulnerable than ourselves, in whatever way we can. We are, and always have been, stronger together and our planet needs us—all of us—more than ever.

I’m done smiling politely and dismissing the pain. We have to stop settling for scraps.

Resources:

Text ‘Jane’ to 877-877 to get updates and information about starting a Fire Drill Friday in your own city.

This book is great if you want to more about the climate crisis.

This book is a good place to start if you’re new to activism.

Alexandra 11/8/19 Alexandra 11/8/19

What I learned from getting arrested with Jane Fonda

Like so many women, I grew up internalizing other people’s perceptions and opinions of what it meant to be me. Whatever the world decided it thought of me quickly became what I thought of myself — Allie is shy, Allie is a bookworm, Allie does what she’s told and doesn’t rock the boat. And for a long time, that seemed true. I’m a textbook introvert and small talk has never come easily. I’m usually much more comfortable observing than I am participating. I don’t like surprises and I’m not impulsive so I move very slowly, preparing for a long time before I act on anything. I viewed these qualities as character flaws and described them as such — I carried around words such as shy, withdrawn, and quiet as burdens; further proof that I didn’t fit in, that I wasn’t trying hard enough, that I was inherently broken.

I spent so much of my life feeling constrained by the world and the persona it had assigned to me. Recently, while watching the documentary Jane Fonda in Five Acts, I was struck by Fonda’s own realization that “anyone can change and become fierce.” I wondered, “Could that possibly be true?” And then I thought, “Why not?”

For me, change happens slowly, germinating for seconds, minutes, days, or years before finally bubbling up to the surface — often when I least expect it. It’s only in looking in the rearview mirror do I see that it’s been there all along; nothing happens all at once. But after 34 years and two months with nary a parking ticket on my record (I was pulled over once because my car’s window tint was too dark and let go with a warning), something small but fierce finally surfaced. Last Friday, I got arrested for the first time — with Jane Fonda.

Fonda, a life-long activist, moved to Washington D.C. recently and pledged to get arrested every Friday while protesting the fossil fuel industry and advocating for the Green New Deal. She founded Fire Drill Fridays to help organize and mobilize others. Every Thursday she joins experts and other celebrities to discuss a topic related to climate change, live-streaming these ‘teach-ins’ on social media. On Fridays, following a rally on the Southeast lawn of the Capitol, Fonda and friends march to a predetermined location and engage in a bit of light civil disobedience (blocking a street, for example), for which Fonda has indeed been arrested — four times so far in as many weeks.

I’ve been fascinated by Fonda’s life recently and it’s not hard for me to see why. I’m 34, just a few years older than Fonda was when she began her very public — and sometimes painful — transformation from Barbarella to boots-on-the-ground activist. I’m not the first person to feel an existential need for meaning creep into my life in my 30s, and I’m certainly not the last. But recognizing the need is just the first step — lately I have begun to ask myself: but what can I actually do?

Inspired by Fonda’s refusal to live out her remaining years in the comfortable cocoon of celebrity (she will turn 82 in December, by the way), I booked a train ticket to D.C. for October 31. I had considered dressing up as “Jane Fonda getting arrested” for Halloween, but quickly realized that actually getting arrested with Jane Fonda would be a more constructive use of my time and resources. The focus of the November 1 Fire Drill Friday was “women,” a group that is poised to unfairly bear the brunt of climate-related catastrophes, so it was an easy choice. I recruited a friend to join me, and spent an afternoon painting my very first protest sign (this wasn’t my first protest, but I preferred to have my hands free in the past so I could take photos). On one side I wrote, “Destroy the patriarchy, not the planet,” and the other said “Respect your mother,” with a (poorly drawn) image of the Earth standing in for the ‘O’.

Before I left, my mom said to me, “Don’t get arrested!”

Although getting arrested is central to Fonda’s participation in Fire Drill Fridays, I arrived in D.C. with no clear idea of my own intentions. I figured I’d go to the rally and see how I felt. I’m a meticulous planner by nature, so the fact that I had left our itinerary on Friday completely open may have been the first clue that I was ready to do something out of character — for once in my highly-controlled life, I adopted an open-ended, come-what-may attitude, and it felt perfectly natural.

The rally, which began at 11 a.m., started small, but grew to a sizeable crowd. Fonda — looking resplendent and fierce in her now-iconic sweeping red coat — introduced the speakers, which included Eve Ensler, Rosanna Arquette, Catherine Keener, and Emira Woods. I was moved by Woods’s grace and Ensler’s emotional plea (a hard act to follow, Keener nailed it when it was her turn to speak and she looked back at Ensler and said, “Aw man, I was going to say the same thing”). I had come to D.C. to see Fonda, but in the end, it was the powerful words of two poets — Asali DeVan Ecclesiastes and Sunni Patterson — that shook me to my core.

I decided in the middle of Ecclesiastes’s stirring speech that I had no choice. I had to get arrested.

Around noon, a large crowd marched to the lobby of the nearby Hart Senate Building. While we waited in a long line to go through security, a man in a MAGA hat yelled “Hanoi Jane!” and I marveled at Fonda’s courage. It’s been nearly fifty years since Fonda was photographed on an anti-aircraft gun on a trip through North Vietnam — a momentary lapse of judgment that she says she will forever regret — and in spite of the backlash that followed, she’s still here. A lot of people would have retreated from the public eye, but while Mr. MAGA was yelling his outdated (and woefully) ignorant insults, Fonda was already inside giving an impromptu press conference. She was explaining once again exactly why she had moved to D.C., and revealed that her coat — which by now, belongs in the Smithsonian — was not only the last coat that she had pledged to buy (ever!), but the last piece of clothing, period.

We moved as a group to the building’s atrium and sat on the ground around two banners, one of which read, “Women demand no new fossil fuels.” The Capitol police wasted no time in issuing us warnings, and it wasn’t long before the women (and a few men) were arrested one by one. Because of my sign (seen as an instigating influence), I was arrested fairly early. A policeman leaned down and issued me a final warning: “Would you like to move?” he asked. “Otherwise, just so you know, you’ll be arrested.”

“I’m good,” I replied.

My hands were bound behind my back in plastic cuffs (I didn’t know that you can site a physical impairment and request to have them tied in front) and I was led into a plant-filled entryway. I was searched and all of my personal belongings were placed into a plastic bag labeled with my last name. I was photographed with my arresting officer — certain corners of the internet have been clamoring for an updated mugshot from Fonda (her 1970 one is so iconic that it also belongs in the Smithsonian), but I’m not sure where these photos end up. The only tangible proof of my arrest is an 8.5” x 11” arrest report, that plastic bag, and a temporarily black thumb.

We waited while the others were similarly processed; Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette asked my name and we chatted like old friends. Keener, a first-time arrestee who knew enough to request that her hands be tied in front, obliged when my friend asked her to scratch an eyebrow itch. We discussed the need for catchier protest chants (let’s be honest, some of them are duds), and then we were led outside into awaiting paddy wagons. Not much scares me, but I’m extremely claustrophobic and I wasn’t too thrilled to be shut into the back of a divided van. Luckily my seat mates were two incredibly kind women who chatted with me and encouraged me to breathe.

The ride was short, and when we arrived at the holding facility — more warehouse than prison — our plastic cuffs were replaced by black zip tie cuffs (everyone’s hands were tied in front and we were told the cuffs are reusable). We were again sorted by arresting officer and told to remain in our assigned seats. Fonda, one of the last to be arrested, was seated two rows and about ten feet away from me. Keener and my friend ended up right behind me.

My first experience with the criminal justice system was eye-opening in a lot of ways, and I’m embarrassed to admit how little I knew (and still don’t know) about my own rights as an American citizen. Getting arrested once by no means makes me an expert, but everyone needs to start somewhere. I was the second-youngest person in the group (the youngest was 30).

The biggest mistake I made was not having the required $50 in cash to pay my bail. Because it was my first offense, I was eligible for what is called a “post and forfeit.” After answering a few questions and paying $50, I would be free to go without any further charges. I had $20 and was assured by several women that it wouldn’t be difficult to crowdsource the remaining $30, but I was mortified. My friend told me later that Keener, who had $100 in cash, had offered to help — “Catherine Keener paid my bail” would have been a good headline — but before I could accept her offer, Codepink’s Jodie Evans generously offered to make up the difference. I vowed to pay it forward as soon as I could and felt embarrassed at both my ignorance and privilege.

Very seldom does one have the choice to be arrested in this country; I thought I knew what I was getting into and yet still didn’t have the requisite cash — what hope was there for the people less fortunate than I, less prepared, less, well, white? 45 people got arrested alongside me and I know that most of them (generous, caring, socially-conscious, middle-class women) would have gladly loaned me the remaining $30. I’m embarrassed and uncomfortable with the knowledge that I have a safety net that so many go through life without, but the first step to changing a mind — or a society — is admitting that there’s a problem. And the existence of cash bail is a huge problem. It’s not just a minor inconvenience — it’s inconceivably inhumane, and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable segments of our population.

This was Fonda’s fourth arrest in a month and she had been warned that she may have to spend the night in custody. She was processed and confirmed this was true by clasping her hands together and tilting her head, miming “sleep.” When it appeared as though she was being escorted out, we began to cheer. “Calm down, I’m just going to take a leak!” she said, laughing.

Fonda did, indeed, end up spending the night in a D.C. holding cell (among the cockroaches, eating a baloney-and-cheese sandwich for dinner and using her coat as a mattress), so she remained seated stoically as the other protestors — including her daughters Vanessa Vadim and Mary “Lulu” Williams — were all processed and released.

“I love you mom! Be good tonight!” Vadim yelled as she walked out the door.

Throughout the entire process, I was consistently surprised at how gently and respectfully we were treated — but I am also acutely aware that’s not always the case. Getting arrested on purpose might seem extreme, but it was an easy decision once it became obvious just how little risk was involved with an 81-year-old, white, celebrity at the helm. I may not be a celebrity or elderly, but I am very, very white and in America especially, that makes all the difference. I risk almost nothing putting my body on the line and with that realization came the urgent need to do just that — for our planet, for the people who cannot (for various reasons) do the same. What’s the point of privilege if you don’t at least try to use it for something constructive? The scales will never balance if those of us with weight — be it wealth, education, race, etc. — don’t actively try to redistribute our good fortune.

Fonda has been accused of “performative activism,” but she knows exactly what she’s doing. She can’t change the fact that she was born to a famous father, but she can (and does) use that fame to call attention to the injustices and inequalities from which she benefits. We may not all be rich or famous, but every single person that has any advantage also has choice. In fact, choice in itself is a privilege and going forward, I choose to at least try — and use whatever privilege I have going forward to amplify the voices of those who are not as fortunate.

The reasons that compelled me to buy that ticket to D.C. no longer matter. What matters is that I decided that only I have the authority to write my narrative. It is up to me from now on how I define myself and what I choose to do with the time and resources I have. Fonda said she realized that if she could change, anyone could and I now know that to be true. There’s nothing more powerful than choosing to be fierce, to stand up for those who can’t, to put your body on the line in whatever way you can. And if you think you might get arrested, don’t forget your bail money.

Alexandra 8/31/19 Alexandra 8/31/19

34

Mr. Wonka: "Don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted."

Charlie Bucket: "What happened?"

Mr. Wonka: "He lived happily ever after.”

When I turned 33, I invited ten friends to Jekyll and Hyde Club, a west village bar that can best be described as a “creepy Chuck E. Cheese.” We nearly had the place all to ourselves, a rarity in New York; the food was subpar, the drinks overpriced, and all of the animatronics had broken long ago. The air conditioning barely made a dent in the late-August humidity, but I loved every minute of the dinner, which included awkward interactions with the wait staff-slash-resident “actors,” and a private tour of the even-dustier second floor bar, which is now used as storage.

Some of my 34 years have passed by without much notice. There was one year during which I took exactly zero days of vacation, and others blur into each other, the clear boundaries between one another growing fuzzier with each passing day. My friends informed me that I was about to embark upon my so-called Jesus year. Jesus—the man, the myth, the deranged carpenter—was believed to be 33 when he amassed a c̶u̶l̶t̶ group of disciples, and preformed m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶r̶i̶c̶k̶s̶ miracles. He never made it to 34, but his 33rd year was so impressive, you can’t blame the guy for going out on a high note (although of course, like Cher, he couldn’t resist a brief comeback tour).

I shrugged off the idea of a “Jesus year” as I do most things related to the OG JC, but as mine comes to a close, I must admit that—while I didn’t amass a global following or walk on water—my 33rd year was quite an extraordinary one.

My 33rd year began much like my 32nd ended: I was working at Penguin Random House and in a 3+ year relationship. In November, that relationship ended and in late January I received an email from the CEO and founder of Roadtrippers, asking if I’d be interested in discussing potential job opportunities. I initially dismissed it, trying not to get my hopes up for a job and a company that seemed too good to be true. But at the end of February, my life changed overnight when I started my new job as their Community Editor, managing social accounts and writing stories for their online magazine.

Everything about the new job and career shift spun me off my axis; six months later I just feel as if I’m starting to catch my breath. I’ve been recently promoted to Managing Editor of Roadtrippers Magazine and working remotely has been both wonderful and disorienting. Turning my hobby into a full-time job has had its challenges, but ultimately the fact that I get to think about, write about, and plan road trips for a living is an absolute joy.

For someone who has only dated coworkers, working from home also forced me into the world of online dating, which is absolutely scary and endlessly confusing. Coming to terms with my own identity has been a lifelong struggle, one which I have only really begun to feel comfortable sharing in my personal and professional life, but the journey has also been more rewarding than I could have ever imagined.

On paper, I now have nearly everything I’ve ever dreamed of—a job that I feel passionately about, a promising relationship, close friends, and a supportive family. I live in the only city I ever wanted to call home and I’m relatively healthy. In a lot of ways my life feels as if I have peaked. “It can only go downhill from here,” is an insidious thought that usually creeps in when I least expect it. But the flip side of that is the possibility that my life may improve beyond what I even imagine is possible. Much more likely, if the past is any indication, is that the future will be some combination of the two. There will be peaks and there will be valleys, but most of my life will fall somewhere in between.

So much of any life lies within the boundaries of the ordinary: those long days, weeks, months, and years when nothing much seems to happen. But more and more, it’s those banal stretches that interest me. They are the unsung heroes of a life; the unsexy, unremarkable, completely forgettable, comfortable building blocks that slowly lay the foundation that your life needs to fully take flight. Deceptively ordinary moments make up the hidden framework of any extraordinary life.

And yet, I don’t think anyone is immune to the pursuit of happiness: thinking that just maybe the next job, the next city, the next relationship will be the One. But here’s a thought that I hesitate to admit because it may appear as if I’m ungrateful: There is no Golden ticket. Having keys to the chocolate factory doesn’t solve everything. Seeking external validation (personally and professionally) and the acquisition of things (money, fame, and physical stuff) can only do so much. Eventually, the call needs to come from inside the house.

So what happened when I got (almost) everything I ever wanted? On most days, I feel much like I did before. I’m still 13-year-old me, agonizing over my crushes on girls; I’m still 22-year-old me, nervous to start a new job and feeling like an imposter in her career; I’m still 27-year-old me, packing up her old life and moving it halfway across the country; I’m still 33-year-old me, unsure about how to end a relationship that never quite felt right but didn’t quite feel wrong either.

I’m no doubt evolving and changing in ways both big and small, but even the most drastic changes are clearly visible only in the rear view. Instead of feeling disappointed that a new job or new relationship didn’t fundamentally alter me to my core, I choose to take comfort in it. There’s a freedom in knowing that you’ve decided to remove yourself from the rat race because you’ve finally realized that, as Lily Tomlin said (most likely echoing words written by her partner Jane Wagner): “The trouble with the rat race, is that even if you win you’re still a rat.”

I won’t live happily ever after because of the circumstances of my life, but rather, in spite of them. Because I strongly believe that happiness is a choice: My life isn’t perfect and I never expect it to be.

How and with whom I celebrate may look different every year, but the reason for celebrating remains the same: I’m so grateful for every second of my extraordinarily ordinary, perfectly imperfect life—the highs, the lows, and everything in between.

If you miss my road trip updates, you can follow along over on Roadtrippers Magazine where I publish stories similar to what you used to find on this blog, but better. I plan to pop back in here from time to time when I feel as if I have something to say, but it will mostly stay quiet over here for the foreseeable future.

Alexandra 2/21/19 Alexandra 2/21/19

Roadtrippers

A few weeks ago, through the magic of hashtags, Instagram and the general mystery of the Internet (on top of nearly ten years spent working on this blog for zero monetary gain), I was offered a chance to join the team at Roadtrippers. Last year, Roadtrippers was acquired by TH2, a joint venture between the world’s largest RV manufacturer and the world’s largest RV rental and sales operator. I’m joining the team as their Community Editor—today is my first day!—and I’ll be writing stories, taking photos, managing social and the email newsletter, in addition to advising on design and creative challenges that arise within the brand. Millions of people have used Roadtrippers to help plan their road trips, and I’m excited to be a part of what we hope will become THE destination for all things road trip.

It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with me or this blog that I LOVE road trips and it should be obvious that this is a dream-come-true career shift for me. I’ve been an in-house graphic designer for more than ten years and I’ve worked at advertising firms, non-profits and in the publishing industry. I enjoy design and I’ve learned so much from all of my professional jobs—and gained more than a few friends (and dates, oops)—but I’m thrilled to take on new challenges and diversify the type of work I get to create.

My entire vision for my “personal brand” (lol, barf) and this blog has been authenticity and accessibility. So much of what is presented online—especially in the travel industry—is aspirational and quite often seems unattainable, especially if you don’t have unlimited time and money. I’ve been almost continuously employed since I got my first job at 15 (McDonald’s, because it was the only place in town that would hire 15-year-olds). I’ve worked a traditional 9-5 (or, more commonly 9-6) job almost every single day of my professional life and although all of those jobs had their perks, an outrageously large salary was never one of them. And yet, within the constraints of generous (but limited) vacation policies and modest paychecks, I was able to squeeze in, what one person called, a “relentless” amount of travel.

My love of road trips can probably be traced back to my childhood and the eight-hour drives (an eternity when you’re young) we took most summers from Ohio to Ocean City, Maryland. My sister and I would share the back of an old station wagon and later, after she moved out on her own, I would make a nest of blankets and stretch across the backseat. I had a cassette-playing walkman and one cassette tape that I listened to on repeat, Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill. I got horribly car sick —I still do, if I’m not driving— if I so much as looked at a word while the car was moving, so I just closed my eyes and listened to Alanis sing about things no ten-year-old should ever need to know about (it was years before I embarrassingly came to realize what “wine, dine, 69 me” meant).

Growing up, I thought international travel was the gold standard, and I so desperately desired to experience cultures and landscapes different from the ones I knew. I was well into my teens before I took my first (domestic) flight, and even hundreds of flights later I’m still an incredibly anxious flyer. But while I’m far from living that hashtag global nomad life, I’ve since been fortunate enough to get a few passport stamps, including Italy, Peru, Colombia, Egypt and Mexico (I just got back from the latter yesterday!). It was only through traveling internationally did I realize that passport stamps alone don’t have the power to instantly transform you into an interesting person. Travel opens minds and hearts but only if they’re amenable to opening in the first place.

Here’s a secret that I wish I’d known when I was younger: it doesn’t matter where you go, as long as you’re curious, empathetic and kind. In December, I planned a trip that took me through parts of Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin. I’m used to people who don’t see the appeal of “flyover” states, but I can guarantee that I enjoyed my time in Iowa much more so than I would have at an objectively exotic “Instagram destination.” Much of America gets a bad rap—and yes, I recognize that a lot of what can be considered “American” is deeply problematic and even physically dangerous to large swaths of people—but the country is so varied and resists categorization at every turn. I’ve traveled to the moon via White Sands in New Mexico, the swampy lands of Florida and the alien landscapes of Joshua Tree, all while still being able to drink the water and speak the language, without exchanging a single piece of currency.

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a late bloomer and I tried out a few different lives before settling into the one I have now. But it was on a trip to Peru that I fully realized that my travel aspirations were out of sync with what actually made me happy—a theory that I proved by planning a trip to the kitschy roadside mecca, South of the Border upon my return. South of the Border, like my first stay in a Wigwam Motel or my Route 66 trip last summer, might not seem like an aspirational locale but it was to me so I made it happen, and that’s all that matters. This world is so vast and yet it can feel surprisingly small, but no matter who you are, where you are or what your circumstances, you can open your eyes, change your perspective and take that detour.

I promise it’s worth it.

I’ll still be here, yapping about cemeteries, books and New York festivities but if you’d like to follow along with me over at Roadtrippers, you can do so on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or at www.Roadtrippers.com.

Alexandra 8/31/18 Alexandra 8/31/18

33

Before every birthday I like to look back at the previous year and take inventory. 33 isn't a particular monumental birthday, but every one is in it's own way, especially the way that says "hey be glad you aren't dead." I also just objectively like the number 3—I was born on the 31st, and every address I've ever had contained at least one 3.

It's tempting to say that my life hasn't changed significantly between ages 32 and 33, although of course that's untrue. We make life-changing decisions every single day whether we realize it at the time or not. Sometimes big things turn out to be small things and the small things turn out to be the big things and if we're lucky we'll realize that it's only with time that we actually know the difference.

A photo of my 30th birthday celebration popped up on Facebook yesterday, and out of the thirteen people (and one dog) in attendance, only five (myself included) still live in New York. We're all still friends, but moving changes you, just as you're changed by the movement of others. In fact, I think it is only through others that we really change.

Francesca and I have made a tradition of having our auras read in Chinatown, whenever things are feeling unsettled and every year at the around same time. During our most recent session, I went first and after we were both done the woman who had taken our photographs couldn't locate Francesca's. She took her photo again, but as mine was being read Francesca noticed that the shirt in my photograph was actually hers—it was a double exposure of both of us.

We are all double (and triple, and quadruple) exposures—nothing but a collection of other people's stories, fed through our own internal Wonka Wash, forwards and backwards until we believe them to be our own. My own story has hundreds of pages where nothing much happens, bright spots when the words seem to leap off the page and dance around, and dark chapters where the narrative rambles and seems lost forever. But I wouldn't be me without all of the people I've met, all of the books I've read and the countless other influences—both obvious and subconscious—that I've encountered over the last 33 years.

After we realized the mistake, Francesca asked that my photo be taken again, and the above is the result. Wholly different than the one before, no longer a mixture of two auras but purely mine. I am who I am because of the influence of others, but the sum of those parts is unique to me. I can't replicate the last 33 years and I can't possibly predict the next 33. But I feel more and more confident every day in who I am and extraordinarily grateful for every single person, place and thing that I carry inside of me.

Alexandra 7/2/18 Alexandra 7/2/18

Families Belong Together March

It's hard not to feel hopeless and helpless when every day brings news of fresh horrors coming out of the Trump administration's playbook of evil. My mind literally cannot comprehend the thinking—or perhaps the lack thereof—of the people that thought there was no difference between Hillary and Trump, or of the people that still think that Trump is "making America great again."

I am of the belief that America already is great—yes, we have many, many areas to improve upon, but the more I see of this country, the more I fall in love with it. And time and time again I find that what actually does make America great, and what we get right in so many places—but New York especially—is our acceptance and appreciation of immigrants. The racist, "go back to where you came from" bigots may yell the loudest, but they do not represent all Americans.

Polling is a tricky business, but what a lot of Americans seem to agree on is that we should let DACA recipients stay and that the "wall" is a terrible idea. I won't pretend to know where to begin to try and change peoples hearts and minds—especially in a time when supposedly decent people are actually debating what exactly constitutes a child cage—but I do believe that it's the people who have the least interactions with immigrants that are most afraid of them.

I had to join the Families Belong Together march on Saturday because I had to do something. To be honest, I didn't want to march, and there were several times along the route that I considered giving up. It was in the 90s and I'm made out of tissue paper. My eyeballs were sweating. The minute I would reapply sunscreen it would melt off my face. I ran out of water halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge. I was alone and my feet hurt from standing in place for hours because like a lot of "marches," progress along the route was at times painfully slow.

I recognize that we go to events like these to make ourselves feel better, and I definitely understand the appeal. To be surrounded by like-minded, passionate, sane individuals for a few hours in a world that increasingly feels isolating and infuriating is soothing to the soul. But ultimately it's about showing up—I don't take signs, just photos—lending my physical body to a movement, to say I am here, I am present and I am pissed.

In the end, I did make it across the bridge and I'm proud of everyone else who did or who acknowledged the objectives of the march on whatever platform they have. Because I realized that no matter how uncomfortable I was, marching was a choice. I am privileged enough to opt in or opt out. I had access to water and could have left of my own volition at any time during the march. Families trying to enter the US with the hope of making a better life for themselves don't have that choice—and those of us that do will forever have an obligation to stand up for those who do not.

Alexandra 7/1/18 Alexandra 7/1/18

Five Year New York-iversary

When I (finally) moved to New York five years ago, I wrote, "I guess I'm really getting old because at least once a day I think: where did the time go? I'm sure in the blink of an eye I'll be thinking the same thing about my first five years as a New Yorker, but for now I'm trying to enjoy my first five days."

I did enjoy those first five days—I slept on my friend's couch until I found a sublet, went to Long Island for the first time, watched the Macy's fireworks from New Jersey (where I took the photo above, still one of my favorites) and discovered the home goods wonderland of Fishs Eddy. At the time, so many things in my life had changed quite rapidly—but also torturously slow, because sudden changes have their ways of stretching time. I found myself without a job, without a home, without a plan and for what felt like the first time in my life, I was rootless.

I've been immersing myself in Angels in America lately and nothing has proven to be more true in my life than the thought that, "In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead." Change is painful but essential. As Kushner writes, "the world only spins forward," and we can dig in our heels like a cat on a leash or shed our skins and move onward.

I shed many skins over the course of my move, some of which I had no idea I had until I felt them peel away. I've spoken often about my love for New York on this blog but I don't ever want to delude myself about its power. New York is a magical place, at times, sure—but the changes I made originated inside of myself.

“Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?

Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.

God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.

Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.

Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.

Harper: That's how people change.”

- Angels in America, Perestroika

For an incalculable amount of time after I moved to New York, I felt like I was "just mangled guts pretending." I was homesick for a home I knew wasn't healthy for me and I missed people that I knew didn't miss me. I was dealing with a medical bombshell that I still haven't fully processed, five years later. But there was painful progress—I got that apartment and that job and had awkward first encounters with people that eventually blossomed into meaningful friendships and relationships. Then I got another apartment and another job, and then another apartment and another job—and each time I stitched myself back together, something is lost but something is gained, and time marches on.

Try as I might to imagine the future, I had no idea what my life would be like after five years in New York when I wrote that post within the first five days. Recent events have made me feel deeply sad for this country but I firmly believe that we cannot move backwards. We are in control only of ourselves and how we treat others and we have to do better. But change won't be easy and it won't be painless.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea of 'remembering when you wanted what you currently have' and trying to be grateful for this life that I've made for myself—a life that I had romanticized for so long that I was blindsided by the pain inherent in its acquisition. Even now, I sometimes still find myself longing for what I've left behind, and it's a strange feeling to miss something that I so longed to be rid of. But, I know that I'm a better, stronger, kinder person not in spite of my past, but because of it—and I can only dream of what's ahead.

Alexandra 5/21/18 Alexandra 5/21/18

My Tiny Studio Apartment

Last August I moved into my first-ever studio apartment. I had never lived alone—unless you count a single dorm at college—and I couldn't exactly afford it but I've never once regretted the move. My mom lives one floor above me and I love the neighborhood. My friend Alisha actually used to live in this studio and I always envied her—I never dreamed that I would have my chance to move in a few years later.

This was my fourth apartment in five years of living in New York, and I don't waste time when it comes to decorating my spaces (or subscribe to anything remotely resembling "minimalism"). A month after I moved in, I had a guy over from Con-Ed to check for gas leaks (it's a long story) and he asked how long I had been here—I told him a month, and he looked around and said "wow, it looks like you've been here for years" (I chose to take this as a compliment and not a comment that I'm on the on ramp to HoarderVille).

This apartment is on the first floor of a brownstone in Harlem, in what used to be the parlor. There's one huge window in the front and a rectangular living space followed by a tiny kitchen and bathroom in the back. There are huge double doors—only one of which opens—high ceilings and beautiful decorative trim. There's a ledge in the middle that used to have a mirror above it, but it's since been replaced with drywall. I was originally annoyed by the ledge since it limits my furniture placement options, but that was obviously silly since I managed to fill it up immediately.

The kitchen is comically tiny and I lost one lower cabinet to Mozart's litter box, but I don't cook elaborate meals so it works for me. I joke that I basically have an Easy Bake oven but that's not far from the truth. My fridge doesn't exactly keep things cold but it does have giant googly eyes and is the perfect place to hold my Halloween costume from last year. Speaking of faces, you might notice them everywhere—anything is more whimsical and endearing when it has eyes.

When I moved into this space, I made a mental note that I would only buy things that bring me joy, and I've slowly been replacing items to make this a reality—I recently traded a boring stick lamp for a dinosaur lamp and I have zero regrets since adopting this strategy.

I have a tiny stall shower which is probably my least favorite part of the apartment, but I think I'm getting used to it—taking a shower in David's normal-sized bathroom now feels like the ultimate luxury. There's no overhead fan so it gets a bit steamy, but I bought a tiny desk fan that helps keep the air circulating. The bathroom is the best place to display my collection of vintage enamelware medical trays, and it's the only place where there's room for Mozart's automatic feeder.

You might notice that I don't have a closet, but I do have a curiosity cabinet. I keep most of my clothes in the dresser and I have three plastic tubs under my bed for sweaters. I could fit a wardrobe near the dresser if I didn't display my curiosity collection but obviously my priorities differ slightly from most women my age.

I just bought LED lights for my cabinet and they make such a difference—every time my mom visits to see a new acquisition, she reminds me that I should be charging admission to my own personal Mütter Museum. Other utilitarian things with a high dose of whimsy include a vintage bedside glasses holder from an optometrist's office, a South of the Border ashtray that holds memory cards and lip balm, and a shark cup that doubles as a holder for my remotes.

My bookcase is organized by color—I once heard this called the "hipster decimal system"—and it's always filled to capacity because living in a tiny space hasn't helped me curb my bargain book-buying habit. The bottom shelf holds some of my shoes, and the skinny shelf next to the bookcase holds my socks (in a bin out of reach from Mozart, who loves to play with them), scarves, blankets and a bin with more shoes. I am the Queen of using Command hooks to hold bags, umbrellas, oven mitts, jackets and hand towels—the rest of my jackets are hanging behind the bathroom door, which is almost never closed.

I don't know the square footage of this apartment and I call it my closet, but really it's all the space I need. I've managed to fit everything I need in the available space like puzzle pieces—most of the furniture is IKEA or curb finds. I'm sure I won't live here forever, but I did sign a two-year lease so I'm excited to not have to move again this year. The apartment isn't perfect but having a living space all to myself has been nothing short of life-changing.

Alexandra 5/2/18 Alexandra 5/2/18

Springtime in New York

Spring took its sweet time arriving in the city this year, but the cherries are finally in full bloom and it’s supposed to be 88 here on Thursday (too soon!). Each season has its positives and negatives, but spring in the city holds a special significance for me. Six years ago, it was among the tulips in Central Park and under the cherry blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden that I mentally made the decision to move to New York.

I had lived in Ohio for all of my 26 years and wanted to be anywhere but there for most of those years. I stayed of my own volition for several reasons—some made more sense than others, especially in hindsight—but New York was never far from my mind. I didn’t have any illusions that a move would fundamentally change me, however, and I tried to have a realistic view of New York’s power to “fix” my life. But I was deeply unhappy.

Uprooting my entire life seemed overwhelming, but it became clear to me on that visit to New York that I needed a drastic change. I jokingly blame Ohio for all of my problems because it’s an easy target, but I take full responsibility for all of the choices that I made to keep me there. I don’t regret anything that I’ve done in my life (even all of those college haircuts) because it’s a monumental waste of my energy and I firmly believe in valuing all of your experiences even—or maybe especially—the challenging ones.

The purpose of that spring trip to New York was an innocuous one—my friend Trent had just completed watching every Meryl Streep movie, and he invited me to attend a Devil Wear’s Prada viewing party. We made Lemon(y Snicket’s) Bars and Hope Spring(s) Rolls and I never imagined that I would have such a personal awakening on a trip that also included me drunk texting everyone I knew and passing out earlier than everyone else in attendance (never invite me to a drinking game). But that’s how these things happen—drastic changes aren’t actually so drastic when you realize that they actually happen very slowly, and then, suddenly all at once.

My New York move was anything but sudden—I didn’t actually move until July of the following year—but every spring I’m reminded of how I felt sitting beneath the blooming cherry trees. It’s cliché to say that I felt myself coming alive again along with the city, but sometimes life really does feel like the movies. The challenges ahead of me at that time were more difficult and exhausting than I ever could have predicted, but in the end I made it through every single one of them—stronger and more grateful than I ever thought I could be.

Six years later, I recognize now that New York didn’t save my life—I did that. I made a choice to be happy, to seek out the joyful things in life, to stop apologizing for who I was and to start cultivating the life I wanted. It’s easy for me to get caught up in daily annoyances and to feel anxious when everything is going smoothly. But every spring I can’t help but be reminded that we are in charge of a large portion of our lives and that we make our own happiness—and when I'm feeling stagnant I now understand that everything eventually blooms again, but only when it's ready.