82. The Week in Me
I prefer when people write essays off of ONE theme but here are twelve for you.
I don’t have much to report. I am not doing well. It is dark and scary and Mirkwood in my brain.
I have, even after many years of being therapized to the contrary remained convinced that no, I’m not just depressed and no, I'm not just a “little bit” abused, and no, diving deeper with a scalpel and a smirk that something is seriously, innately wrong with me. I have fallen prey to vultures too many times, and for all of my hypervigilance…I make them out to be beautiful black stallions in my mind. Every. Time. And I want to ride.
I had a breakdown so severe after driving past the Bowery Hotel (my personal Black Lodge) that Matt had to physically get me out of the car, carry me on home, and tuck me into bed with a Snapple. He was terrified. We both were. The next day, he sat with me and held my hand while I recounted what happened (of all things, yet so obscenely me of me to say, prior sexual abuse triggered by watching the Tommy Wiseau sex scenes in The Room that led to the worst type of connection with my inner child, my 26-year-old child too). And my therapist, who is woefully diagnosis-averse, nodded and said that, uhh, yeah, that does sound like CPTSD.
I have CPTSD. It has a name. And I love that name. I don’t trip over my own tongue sounding out the letters.
I am not alone.
Matt, because he is a man of security and safety and supreme insight, rebutted my therapist, who asked what a diagnosis would even do for me. And he said something that made me fall in love with him all over again, something I will never forget.
He said that a diagnosis, any diagnosis, was better for me to identify myself with than what I call myself now: a bad person.
And I do. I tell myself I am a terrible person every day. I mine for the way I may have overreacted or forced someone’s hand in my hurt. I seek out the most empathetic read of their behavior, and spare none of that empathy for myself. I am bad. I am wrong…I have CPTSD. From people, malignant, unhealed people, who have wounded me and not done a fourteenth of the therapy and introspection I have to stop their violence.
I have CPTSD.
And I am not ashamed.
This diagnosis was validating, but it did not remove my depression. It did not turn Mirkwood into merriment. Something bad happened after, two weeks ago now, something that becomes wronger and wronger the more I (meaning my friends, who have another ass they want to kick) sit with it and sit in the hotel room at the Bowery with the teddy bear on the bed, a room now submerged in water in my mind. Maybe this makes it more justifiable in my mind as to why I froze. As to where my voice went. As to why my knee didn’t fly into balls with resounding alacrity.
But I was always a ferocious swimmer. I was a competitive swimmer as a child. I have the ribbons to prove it, in a box in my parents’ attic. Some of them are blue.
Why did I not swim away?
I was not assaulted, don’t worry, but I was put in a precarious position and one that I told myself, like so much shit that was not, was okay.
It wasn’t okay. I’m not okay.
Maybe I will be. Maybe I won’t.
I feel I am on death’s door these days, with a tin of Royal Dansk cookies in hand, dusting a stray cat hair or two from my best black dress. Matt is worried. My Instagram reply guys are checking in two or three times a week. My mom has told me I just need to be stronger like she is.1 I have multiple exes spending hours a day with me unpacking other men being royal shits to me. I’ve been taken out on pity friend dates and my purse hand swatted away. My poor dad…he looks at me with so much worry that it has proven the most successful guilt towards not letting this depression win. We share the same eyes. The same brown, the same crinkle when we laugh, bright, polished wooden buttons tilted flat with mirth, the thickness of a dime. I love my squint. I love his.
Someday, if I get through this, I will remember that I should look at myself with those same worried eyes. That same tenderness behind them.
And the same, smiling, saved squint.
Before we move on…
My friend
invited me to join him and my new friend Charles Skaggs on their Doctor Who podcast to discuss the episode “Midnight”! Yes, I AM a Whovian, though I gave up during Capaldi’s era (I explain why in the episode). I felt like the biggest nerd alive taping this and it was bliss. A real heartbalm.My sweet Venezuelan sons in Zeta encountered some (absolutely racist, POW-On-Drugs nonsense) legal issues and as touring performers here are being milked dry by our penal (defamatory) system. Please consider supporting their GoFundMe, or checking out their music and throwing them some funds that way. They are lovely boys with huge hearts and stunning talent. I have seen them just once (twice soon) and they are that type of band that starts playing in a movie and converts a room of bored teenagers into shrieking, dancing dervishes. They’re good dudes, simply: hard workers who bring a sincere passion for their work into every interaction and performance. I love ‘em.
My friend
is looking to give YOU advice. Jules also recently included me in a Brooklyn poetry reading, where I read a new poem I hope to share with you all soon (pray it gets accepted somewhere!). The next Herbal Supplements reading is coming up and if you’d like to submit your work, see below!
To read:
I went silly for the Met Gala this week:
The 2024 Met Gala
Shalommmmmmmmmm!xoxo Gossip Giancaspro is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A year ago, I wrote an exhaustive Met Gala style recap. This year, much like Backstreet, I’m:
And then HORNY, for the Met Gala this week:
Hattie Jean Hayes sent me this poem by new paid subscriber Kristen Zory King (thank you) that reminded me so intricately of my lost best friend that I made a Kermit face2 for like a full hour.
I work here! I am contracted to temp for the Ford Foundation until mid-July, and as I have said loudly and within earshot of several HR executives, “I am going full Effie White, and they are dragging me via the goddamn reflecting pool which I will have jumped from if they don’t keep me3.” I don’t want to speak too often or much about this role, because it has been such a marvelous experience and when I am happy, the universe intervenes to piss all over it. But I feel fulfilled in my work, DISTRACTED FROM MY DUMBSHIT PERSONAL DRAMAS, received gratefully for my talents, and have found myself to be, blissfully, the dumbest person in every room4. That’s all I ever want, and how lucky am I.
Look at how beautiful the lobby is. On that Fern Gully tip:
Today in the newest edition of “Girls Go to Tulsa and Then Find Themselves, Often Painfully”: Sophia Bush to Glamour on leaving her marriage and trauma healing.
Speaking of, from
:
Death with dignity forever. Elective (regulated) euthanasia forever. Murder is more enabled in our world than peaceful transition to a new reality. The fuck.
If you saw me emailing this to a certain Banana Republic-shoppin’ ex-boyfriend of mine, no you didn’t: (via Margeaux Feldman of CARESCAPES)
Ishmael Reed’s poem “The Diabetic Dreams of Cake,” on The Paris Review.
Poignant poetry from
:
Was enthralled, simply delighted, just tickled by this piece from brad efford of montage:
To watch:
Matt and I loved Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a movie that takes Henry Cavill’s character in Man from U.N.C.L.E. and makes him British with a little mustache, and then takes the largest man I have ever seen in my human life (Alan Ritchson from Reacher) and puts him in the tiniest tortoiseshell glasses I have ever seen in my human life (Stuart Little-ass opthomology at work) and basically a latex camisole that I would have gotten sent home from wearing in middle school. Thank you, Guy Ritchie, for your service. It’s a blast and I now love Alan Ritchson, who seems like a nice man who loudly thinks Trump is an idiot despite starring in *thee* MAGA Dad show, croons beautifully, has been married to the same woman since 2006 and posts about her a lot, has been astoundingly open about his sexual abuse, bipolar disorder, and suicidal ideation, AND does sweet little voices when reading to his kids. I’m watching Reacher ASAP.
To listen:
I wanted to boost my friend
’s new release! You can listen here or below. Sailor Boyfriend (@sailorboyfriend) will be performing at the single release party with Friendship Quest Booking over at Bar Freda in Queens, NY this Saturday, May 11th with Orca Bones, Funeral Doors, Vi Viana, and Cyphvin. Show at 8pm, Andy at 10:45p. Tickets here.This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Lugosi:
Actually my babies:
And basically:
Various and sundry:
I do this little dance for Matt sometimes:
My reaction to this photo:
Matt is a backseat watcher of all things Bravo in our house. His favorite characters are Hazel (a woman who appeared in one episode of Real Housewives of Atlanta, Chris Laurita from Real Housewives of New Jersey, and any beleaguered food or bar service employee hired to service a crowd of fighting, inebriated women on these programs. Matt also loves this one random clip of Austen Kroll getting busted cheating on Madison LeCroy. This made me laugh:
He is a senior señor and won last place and no one cared in any way bad. This is nice!!!
Phaedra Parks all but confirmed that Dorinda Medley will be on the next season of The Traitors and I am wholeheartedly terrified for every single person involved:
I have watched this video of Elmer (IG: @theculturedcritters) about 353 times over the last two months. Please listen with the sound up to enjoy the sound of his little nails clicking on the floor. It is everything I have experienced when doing a sound bath, but there is a teeny tiny pig, so it is better.
I hope you are like Elmer this week and beyond, doing so good with your turn and spin.
Love you bitches,
TG
*extremely Triumph The Insult Comic Dog voice* I KEED, I KEEEEEED!….👀
Imagine being the smartest person in the room. Imagine the famine of education and perspective to glean. How gauche! How dull!
Sending out a big virtual hug to you. I'm a fellow CPTSDer (is that a word? it is now), and I fully agree that having something to name is so much better than feeling like you're inherently a bad person. You're not. I promise you that you aren't. I hope you can find that path forward where you believe that you are good and worthy, even as you have gone through some shit. I'm happy to chat if you need an ear.
Gah like you really couldn't be more beautifully broken in a stained-glass, arresting your vision kind of way, Tara. Not just because you are so open, but because you are sharing that with whoever. Now THATS STRAIGHT COURAGE and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. Even if writing it is just for you.
We're all just a little bit worn in parts aren't we? Smooth from shining pride on some ends, pieced together on others (with probable duct tape if we're lucky to be pieced together at all). Some of what you said rang true to me, most spoke volumes of my "adopted" daughter and her struggles. I often tell her she will see the fruit of her labor of therapy someday when she least expects it. I did. I also tell her it's totally okay to not be okay.