The Unreliable Narrator

I long suspected that my capacity for magic would atrophy if I ever conceded to being medicated. Now I write love letters to Zoloft.
The mythology I had previously built around my own brain was all consuming and wildly ill informed. I worried that the same thing making me miserable was also the thing making me creative, intuitive, ambitious, funny, and interesting. What if I couldn’t medicate one without medicating the others? Was mental stability really worth risking the only version of me I had ever known and for the most part loved?
Most people would likely say “yes” if they lived with the type of inner turmoil I use to experience daily. Despite identifying as always anxious, I didn’t realize how much I was suffering because suffering had become my baseline. I had confused emotional intensity with emotional depth and revered it like a proud one trick pony. If suffering has been woven into your identity for long enough, who are you without it?
I’m not a medical professional, and I urge you to always seek the guidance of your health care providers. I’m not qualified to weigh in on what might be right for you. However, I can speak with distinct certainty about the ways that accepting help from a little blue pill has changed MY life for the better and how wrong all my preconceived notions, about what that meant about me, were.
I first committed to trying to solve my afflictions the old fashion way with therapy, meditation, diet, exercise, journaling, breath work, exposure therapy the list goes on and on. No matter how complex my “survive with me routine” became I couldn’t shake the ancient ache of despair within me. As someone who lived with both overwhelming anxiety and curiosity about how it would feel to be chemically supported, the decision to finally try an SSRI was not one I made lightly. I googled relentlessly for success stories to confirm that it was safe for me to jump from the runaway train that was my brain. Immune to confirmation bias, I also scanned for every smoke signal imaginable that would indicate I would be destroyed and never be the same if I dared to give it a try. My hope is that my radical honesty will help answer questions and ease the minds of anyone currently doing the same or if nothing else entertain the normies who have never been at war with their own brains….
“I’m super happy for you guys”. (sarcastic b****y voice)
After plenty of sleepless nights and endless rounds of 20 questions with all my friends already on an SSRI, I decided I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I picked up a brown paper bag from CVS, it felt like I was participating in an illegal drug ring as I sat in the parking lot staring at my name scrawled across the little orange bottle. The high highs and even lower lows, had become “a narrative I’d very much like to be excluded from.” I felt like a century-old paper doll, constantly ripping at the seams and dissolving with the smallest indication of turbulent weather. So I popped my first pill and washed it down with a swig of açai flavored vitamin water.
When it finally hit my bloodstream for the first time, I felt like I was falling down the hole in Alice in Wonderland. The world felt so far away, my body didn’t feel like mine, and I panicked with spiraling thoughts that I had made a horrible mistake. But like most things in life, major changes take time to recalibrate. My psychiatrist had warned me that it would take a few days to feel anything and 3-6 weeks to fully settle into my new normal. She reassured me that It was completely normal to feel off or out of body at first. So I sat in the discomfort, waiting to arrive at the promised land.
SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) essentially change the way serotonin moves through the brain. Serotonin is one of the chemical messengers our brain uses to regulate things like mood, sleep, and appetite. Normally, after serotonin carries a message between nerve cells, much of it is reabsorbed by the cell that released it in a process called reuptake. SSRIs slow down that reuptake, leaving serotonin available between the cells for longer and changing the way those signals are communicated.
This was important for me to understand because I had always imagined medication as artificially pumping my brain full of chemicals it was somehow failing to make on its own. That isn’t really how SSRIs work. They don’t simply dump serotonin into your brain or manufacture happiness. They alter how serotonin signaling functions, and researchers believe the benefits that develop over time involve much more complicated changes in the brain than serotonin alone. In other words, Zoloft wasn’t replacing some essential part of me with something synthetic. My brain was still my brain. It was just getting a little help with the traffic of serotonin.
I was put on 25 mg of off-brand Zoloft, and whatever the traffic controller in my brain had been failing to conduct seemed to now be flowing effortlessly like the LA River after major rainfall. The things that used to derail me for days didn’t even register as an issue. The texts that would send me into a spiral of anxiety no longer phased me and I responded rationally and with ease. The intrusive thoughts that plagued my quiet moments had finally been muzzled. I woke up every morning thinking, I can’t believe this is how everyone else has been feeling all these years. Life didn’t need to be the constant uphill battle that it had been for 28 years. My only regret? Not accepting the help sooner. I finally realized that being able to raw dog life wasn’t an accomplishment and it didn’t make me a better person and perhaps only made me a more neurotic and judgmental one.
It is not normal to feel like a hostage in your own mind. It’s not normal to cry uncontrollably every week. It’s not normal to constantly wonder how people survive the overwhelming pain of the human experience. My body operated in a permanent state of fight or flight and I felt so profoundly alone in my loneliness. Convinced that no one else felt the way that I did because surely no one else was capable of surviving the relentless onslaught of tests and intrusive thoughts the universe injected into my mind.
I don’t want to love bomb you. There are, of course, pros and cons to everything in life. I have been exceptionally lucky because the most common side effects never manifested for me. I know there are many people who struggle with a loss in sex drive, weight gain, nausea, headaches, and more. Emotional blunting is the one and only side effect I found to ring true for me. The profound sadness or extreme joy I once felt over anything and everything suddenly became harder to access. Crying, something I used to do almost daily, became a distant memory.
Beyond this, Zoloft has been mostly sunshine and rainbows for me. I am so grateful that the first thing we tried was such a great fit for my brain. When I need an emotional release, I am able to tap into what’s needed within me to let the tears flow freely, and the natural morphine follows, flooding my system as it always had before. Joy and excitement are apart of my everyday because I’m not constantly crashing from the whiplash of my emotions. Finding what’s right for you might take time. Adjusting doses or switching medications is both a science and an art, and there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty what will work for you until you try.
If you sought out this essay during your own reconnaissance into Zoloft or other SSRIs, I can only assume you share some of the same fears I did. Mainly, the fear of losing my spark, my it factor, the indescribable thing that makes me…me! I won’t lie to you, the placebo effect of fear is powerful, and at first I was certain that some invisible string connecting me to my gifts from the universe had been severed. My ability to channel greatness, gone!
I’m happy to report that these delusions were only temporary. Did I feel different? Yes. Does a little blue pill, or anything else in this dimension or beyond, have the power to rob me or you of our essence? NO! It is simply something I know I inherently possess, even when it’s harder to feel. If nothing else, I’ve learned that my emotional chaos was never a side effect of my “spark” but actually something that inhibited me from reaching my highest potential and brightest aura.
As more time has passed, I’ve become the master of my mind. Life is now coming from me, not at me. I feel grounded and steady. My mood and emotions no longer shift with the wind, and my nervous system feels like a car that’s slipped comfortably into neutral. Of course, I still experience a vast array of emotions, but the massive dips and jet-fueled highs that used to control my life are few and far between. When they do come, it’s no longer out of thin air, and I can usually trace the bad habits or situational overwhelm that are contributing to this shift in brain activity.
Before Zoloft, I woke up every day wondering how I would feel and if my intrusive thoughts would derail me for hours or days. When things go wrong, I no longer have to feel like I’m a caveman being chased by a lion toward an impending cliff. Life is simpler and deliciously predictable. This feeling is a sweet treat I hope everyone who has defined themselves as chronically anxious gets to feel one day.
Until next time,
AME



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Perhaps it’s a symptom of my mental afflictions, but I find it impossible not to tell the truth. My Aquarian heart demands me to pursue truth and justice at all costs, but where do we draw the line between being honest and being an a*****e?
I’ve fumbled across this high wire act through all my adult friendships and romantic dynamics. Upon reflection, surely my honesty must of rubbed people the wrong way in my youth. Only in recent years have I possessed the self-awareness to clock the seismic shift in the air when I compulsively say what everyone else is thinking. In the past my erosion of what was deemed socially acceptable would have gone right over my head.
I constantly hear eclectic variations of the same words from all the women in my life: “Tell me the truth.” “Just be honest with me.” “Give it to me straight.” “Do you think I’m being crazy or?” We all plead for an honest take we can trust, knowing that when asked to do the same, we often pad the cell walls of our true thoughts. “Yes, you’ve lost your f*****g mind, but I still love you.” becomes “I can see why you feel that way, but…” We all claim to want the truth from our closest circle, but what happens when we actually receive it and it’s not what we wanted to hear?
We have all become human flesh with the artificial politeness of ChatGPT. Finding ways to never create friction with the soul looking back at us. Analyzing what they want to hear and reflecting it back to them. Everyone seems to do this so effortlessly. It’s impressive social surgery to see how people manage to dance around the truth with such precision and ease.
I feel like a prepubescent boy when I’m asked to perform in the same way, incapable of doing the dance that all my female counterparts have memorized into muscle memory. As women, we are purebred to be people pleasers, and I feel this deep in my bones, except when it comes to telling the truth. My internal dialogue taunts me like a b****y teenage girl until the words come out messy and disjointed from their intentions.
I was reflecting on a falling out I had with one of my closest girlfriends, weighing everything I had submitted into evidence about how I was right and she was wrong. I felt like a discarded puppy in a Walmart parking lot when our friendship came to a close. I was being punished for pissing on the carpet when I did nothing but sit patiently on the grass.
I had been deeply concerned about her health for quite some time. Ignoring the elephant in the room whenever we were together. Opening the door of my home as a place to hide out, sitting for hours as a nonjudgmental ear and a loyal subject to the keeping of all her outrages secrets.
While everyone in her life talked s**t behind her back about her mental health and body, I tried to soft launch my genuine concern through strategic but direct support. Gentle parenting her into what I hoped would be a better direction. I loved her like a sister, and as the months went on, my concern for her grew deeper and deeper. I had recurring anxiety dreams about waking up to find out her heart had given out. My OCD delusions gaslighting me into the belief that these nightmares were premonitions.
I did mental gymnastics going over the pros and cons of what to do, what to say, and what not to say. On some level, I knew that telling the truth would create a void larger than the ocean between us. But I knew with every fiber of my soul that if something happened to her and I had said and done nothing, I would never be able to forgive myself. I spent hours crafting a text to her husband expressing my aching concerns and offering up resources for the best treatment in the country to help her navigate an internal demon only she could choose to face. I declared earnestly that I was there to do anything and everything in my power to help them navigate this. I told him how scared I was for my friend and that I wasn’t naive to the fact that under any other circumstances, reaching out to him would feel like crossing a line, but I truly felt that this was a matter of life and death, that left me no other choice.
Like a rear-end collision, I didn’t see her coming, or I suppose leaving. I was politely told to mind my business by her husband, and she proceeded to ghost me, block me across social media, and create what I can only assume was a smear campaign narrative that painted me as a horrible person to the rest of her friends. I was silently socially excommunicated by the acquaintances I had met over the years at her social gatherings.
I could have kept my mouth shut, awkwardly shrugging with disinterest when our mutuals insisted on gossiping about the pitfalls of her life, but I chose to operate with what I value most in friendships… honesty.
In the weeks that followed, we both participated in passive-aggressive jabs at each other like two publicly feuding celebrities, but the truth is I never stopped loving her, hoping that she would eventually come to realize that I had been the only one with the balls to confront the situation head-on. Had I cared about her less, I would have done nothing at all, like everybody else.
The game of telephone has only recently stopped ringing. I’m proud that I was a party pooper from day one, refusing to talk badly about her to our mutual friends despite our falling out. I never said a word or dared to mention her name as they informed me that she obsessively brought me up like I was a deadbeat ex.
I’m grateful for this growth experience. Though I stand by my actions in this case, my constant temptation to place blame on myself is hard to override. But with time it has evolved into a new type of self-awareness and an understanding that there have been many times where honesty was the cruel choice to make, but I made it nonetheless, to soothe the compulsive needs of my own anxiety and internal dialogue. My relentless quest for honesty and justice doesn’t make me a better person if the motives behind it are to create safety and reassurance for myself. It’s not our job to fix or save everyone in our lives, and sometimes the best thing we can do is sit back and allow them to fail and learn from the only person they actually can… themselves.
Until Next Time,
AME

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From the moment I entered the scene on January 26th, 1996, I knew that I was destined for greatness and that unwavering delusion has carried me through every high and low of my life.
As a 10 year old, I loved going to the grocery store with my dad. My black pleather boots clicked dramatically with each step as I walked through the frosty air of a Canadian winter in an oversized fur coat. My head hung low as we walked because I needed to block out the flashes of the relentless paparazzi. Of course, I wasn’t bestowed with the gluttonous joys of nepotism. The paparazzi were a figment of my imagination, and I lived for the hypothetical attention. I was certain that despite the lack of their physical presence, the people around me could feel the star quality that radiated from my tiny body.
In the 2008 classic “4 Minutes” by Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake and Timbaland she rhythmically chants:
“If you want it, you already got it. If you thought it,It better be what you want. If you feel it, It must be real. Just Say the word, I’m a give you what you want.“
At the ripe old age of 12 I really took this to heart and viewed it as a promise between not only me and Madonna but me and the universe.
Never was this more true than when I landed myself in a circular board room at CAA, arguably the biggest and best acting agency in the world, with absolutely no acting experience. I was 17 and naive, the meeting was unmistakably taken as a favor to someone and when asked why they should want to work with me I said “I don’t know, I have no experience, BUT I have a good feeling about ME.” They laughed and by some miracle decided to send me on a couple auditions that week. Walking into the 3rd one I said out loud: “I’m going to get this one.” A week later the part was mine, and the rest is history.
As I got older my fantasies became a little more humble and rooted in reality, but if I’m honest with myself, and you, they have never and will never go away. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am confident about the inevitability of my success in everything I do. I believe, therefore I am. Words of affirmation are modern day spells and as someone who believes that our thoughts and words shape shift our reality, I religiously put them around my apartment as constant reminders to train my brain into the blind belief of all my dreams.
In the 1980’s Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov conducted a foundational study on dogs learning to associate a neutral trigger or cue with treats and food this study became known as classical conditioning. He paired a neutral stimulus like the ticking of a metronome a light or a bell with the presentation of meat or food. After repeated pairings, the dogs learned to associate the neutral sound with the incoming food reward, causing them to salivate at the trigger alone, even when no food was present. This proved that animals acquire new behavioral reflexes through learned associations.
I found this to be true even for the animal within me. Every time I read the encouraging notes a chemical reaction took place in my brain and sure as s**t something magical would happen during the day. Perhaps the release of dopamine simply made me more present to the good things naturally happening around me, or maybe the universe orgasmed with delight giving me what I wanted with each energetic release of belief in who I was, what I wanted and where I was meant to be.
Either way, I didn’t care… it was working and it continues to work to this day. Everything I want comes to me easily and in the most unique unexpected ways possible. Every time I’ve thought: “F**k I’m a cat and this must be my ninth life.” The universe steps in and flips things in my favor, I always land on my feet. Even my biggest failures have lead to my greatest success. I don’t know why I was born with this level of confidence and trust; though there are plenty of other things wrong with me, I know this headspace is unique and a true gift.
After exiting a decade-long relationship, I experienced my first lap in this confidence and inner knowing. I had been dismantled so deeply, that who I knew myself to be felt as if it had been amputated from my physical being. I assumed it was drifting out in the ethers waiting for me to magnetize my essence back into my soul. So I decided to put a note to self on the inside of my front door. Knowing or rather hoping every single time I walked outside I would be actively rewiring my brain into believing that I was still in a constant state of abundance.
Today these notes are all over my apartment. Hidden inside cabinets, on my fridge, next to my desk. On the back side of my computer is a note that says “Avra Kehdabra” which means “I will create as I speak” in Hebrew. In some capacity whether through the notes around my home, journaling, or the thoughts jotted down in my phone I have written about everything that has ever happened to me before it became a reality and that is manifestation in its purest form.
So with that, here are a few notes to self you can use to enter into the same reality of luck and abundance that I have found myself in since exiting the womb.
If I’m being honest, some of my notes hide only where I will see them, because there is sometimes underlying shame about admitting what we desire most in life. There is a fear that we will look silly for dreaming big and believing in ourselves. I want to share these notes because they are honest in a way that I hope will get other people to be honest with themselves. Naming what you want is the hardest and first step of manifesting your dream life. You and the universe can’t make things happen if you don’t know what you want.
Until next time,
AME
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What the f**k is that smell? I’m three dates in with a guy who’s not my type, the ultimate compliment because my type has historically been the love child of Ted Bundy and Randall Boggs from Monsters, Inc. - the creepy purple guy for those of you who aren’t as intimately familiar with this cinematic masterpiece. I digress. He’s funny, charming, and easy to talk to. His style is elevated without being preformative. He has a great job and drives a nice car. There is just one little problem punching me in the face like a runaway freight train… WHAT THE F**K IS THAT SMELL?
It’s not a rhetorical question. I have the nose of Toucan Sam. I can smell anything and everything from a mile away, but I’m unable to identify the source of this sensorial assault. I attempt to discreetly sniff in a 360 around his black leather car. Is it him? Is it the car? For the love of God, it can’t be me?! He must have gym clothes in his back seat? Maybe a dead body in the trunk? I could get past that, but I can’t get past this smell.
I acknowledge that I run the risk of being labeled a stone-cold b***h by writing this. I am definitely the problem, but what’s a girl supposed to do when Prince Charming smells bad? The question swirled around in my head as he drove us to an overpriced dinner at an east side hot spot. Like an episode of Jeopardy I fantasized about freezing time to phone a friend, perhaps they could arrive at my side to confirm or deny if we could get past this. I’m not writing all of this to shame or humiliate this sweet soul but to pose the question: what do we do when there is a catch that can’t be overlooked when we meet a great guy?
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that this had to be, as Malcolm Gladwell so eloquently waxed poetic about - an outlier experience. There was no way a man could make it well into his 30s without ANYONE telling him that there was something seriously disturbing about his aroma. Despite all of this, I have always lacked the ability to leave any stone unturned so I agreed to see him again.
The next time we got together, instead of holding my breath as butterflies wreaked havoc on my insides, I held my nose, bracing for impact. Though social norms wouldn’t allow me to hold tight to my literal nostrils as if I were jumping into a murky pool, I tapped into my inner neuroscientist and harnessed selective attention and cognitive reframing to protect myself from the possible impending stench.
I had pleaded with the tarot gods and promised to cash in some karma coins with the universe, the worst still prevailed. Out of his car and within the crisp fresh air of dusk, it became clear that this scent could only have one source. Not even the prospect of future nerve adaptation could save us from this. According to science, your brain naturally blocks out constant background odors over time, a phenomenon often referred to as going “nose blind.” Your brain downregulates the signal once it decides the smell isn’t a threat, but I couldn’t picture a world where my sensitive sensory system didn’t find this “unique” combination of pheromones and body odor to be a very serious threat. The kind of threat that affects national security. How had TSA not warned him that his lack of antiperspirant or a signature cologne compromised the safety of the crew and all 8.3 billion souls on board this spinning rock?
The biggest issue wasn’t the smell but my inability to address it. The mission was quickly deemed impossible, and I was certain that Ethan Hunt would agree. How are you supposed to tell someone, let alone a grown man that you barely know, that they smell bad? It sounds childish and insane, but it didn’t feel like my job or place.
A damned-if-you-do and dead-if-you-don’t situation.
I told myself addressing it was sure to create a life long complex. I was being selfless, maybe even brave by saying nothing at all. I would know, once after devouring a garlic-loaded pesto sauce, a date unexpectedly kissed me and then asked if I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet today. We were doomed from that moment forward. Though I knew this unfortunate mishap was the cause of over 15 cloves of freshly chopped garlic, I was never able to move past the fear of him thinking my breath actually smelled like that. I started pecking him on the lips like a conservative grandma and brushing my teeth five to six times a day when we were together. I couldn’t condemn this man to that same never-ending spiral of scent sensitivity. Instead I would leave him in ignorant bliss.
“If you can’t address a minor offense like smell, how will you ever be able to address the stuff that really matters within partnerships?” said the angel on my shoulder.
“You’re a smart, successful, funny, cute girl. Should you really have to settle for a guy that literally stinks?” said the devil on my other.
Getting the ick was unavoidable, despite my best efforts to soldier on. Thirty seasons into the Truman Show of my life, I’m trying to trust that rejection is protection in all its forms. Not because I’ve become enlightened, but because every time I’ve ignored a warning sign, it has eventually returned wearing a larger and much scarier costume.
Perhaps if he were the one for me, my nose would have detected sweet notes of vanilla bean where I smelled the unmistakable undertones of whatever liquid drips from an overstuffed garbage bag full of last week’s leftovers. Our bodies often know something long before our minds are willing to admit it. Learning to trust those instincts feels like learning a new language late in life -hard to do but obnoxiously impressive once you become fluent.
Do you feel calm? Does your blood pressure spike? Are you unsettled or at ease? Does he smell like the peony section at Trader Joe’s or like that dude who sat too close to you on the subway during a New York heatwave?
I’m learning to trust my body and, more importantly, question the stories my mind has spent years rehearsing. The ones that insist I should be grateful for any affection that comes my way. The ones that tell me I am difficult to love and therefore have no business being selective about who I let into my life.
The problem wasn’t that “prince charming”smelled bad. The problem was that with every unignorable incompatibility I consistently attempt to convince myself that it doesn’t matter and that I should settle for something that doesn’t feel right in my bones.
Maybe growing up is realizing that compatibility isn’t something you negotiate yourself into. Maybe it’s learning to trust the voice that says no before you’ve gathered enough evidence to defend why.
And maybe the right person won’t require me to hold my breath.
On the off chance that the sweet boy with kind eyes has recognized himself in this essay, please know I am sending you nothing but love, luck, and a short list of products that may very well alter the trajectory of your life. Your future wife will thank me. Frankly, so will everyone else.
* Lume Acidified Odor Control Body Wash
* Harry’s Extra-Strength Odor Sweat Control Antiperspirant
* Dude Wipes
* CYKLAR Crescent Perfume Oil
* CYKLAR Glycolic Acid Exfoliating Body Spray

Till next time,
AME

The Unreliable Narrator by Allie Evans is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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Recently, I have been examining my own subconscious blockers. The fear of my own success seems to come up a lot for me. What happens when I get the thing I want? I’m like a dog with a bone. The pursuit of what I desire drives me into unbridled insanity, but once I arrive at the desired destination, I don’t know what to do with myself. My dreams are so big, I feel as if I’m not allowed to have them. I’ve seen what happens to successful women. Everybody loves an ingénue, but the one thing they love even more is taking a promising young woman and dismembering her down to the bone once she reaches the top of the mountain. You are not allowed to look out at the view for too long because, when the light hits your face, it illuminates your every flaw, and society will always make you pay for being something other than what they thought you were.
I look at the systematic takedown of successful women over the past decade. Often, their greatest crime seems to be that they dared to be more than just one thing. You are not allowed to be pretty and smart, or young and successful, or strong and kind. You can’t like fashion and sports. You can’t be funny and complex, or gentle and brave.
Taylor Swift, Megan Fox, Serena Williams, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Sydney Sweeney, Kim Kardashian, Amber Heard, Blake Lively, Kamala Harris, Lena Dunham, Greta Thunberg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alex Cooper. The list goes on and on, but the story is always the same. The women who get the harshest scrutiny all share traits society claims to value: beauty, ambition, sexuality, confidence, visibility, intelligence, and success. But like the curated box of chocolates that sits on your grandma’s 1970s coffee table, you are only allowed to have as much as they deem acceptable.
The truth is that women are encouraged to pursue all of these things right up until they become “too much”. Too powerful, too outspoken, too sexual, too ambitious, too emotional, too visible, or too difficult to control. So we box up our egos and put them away in our cedar-lined closets like an old winter coat. The cure-all remedy to the threatening shadow that our success seems to cast on the world is to never allow anyone to know just how smart we are. Turns out you have to be pretty smart to act dumb. When we act like a broken baby bird or a clueless bimbo, our success is suddenly something that has happened in spite of who we are and not because of it, and this seems to be one of the few ways to remain palatable to society.
We quickly learn that being underestimated can sometimes be more useful than being recognized. Paris Hilton is a pioneer of this perspective. Her self-control and unwavering suppression of any need for credit is a master class that should be studied. For over a decade, she altered the sound of her own voice and allowed herself to be the butt of every late-night joke while silently building a $400 million empire. Society allowed her to succeed because they had no idea she was succeeding.
There is still something socially uncomfortable about a woman who openly wants a lot. Women are encouraged to be successful, but often only if that success appears accidental. We celebrate ambition in theory but tend to prefer women who stumble into greatness rather than pursue it relentlessly.
Every time I see a woman make her way to the top of her respective field, I begin to hold my breath, wondering if they are doing the same. How long will the world allow her to be there, before she falls from grace? Why do we build people up just to kick them back down? Humans are masochistic cannibals, hell-bent on destruction.
These thoughts seem to be woven meticulously through my fears. My fear of failing and my fear of not being loved are at constant odds. In order to succeed, you must be okay with failing. Once you succeed, you must be okay with not being loved. How can my anxiety-prone skeleton come to terms with this fucked-up nightmare? Society is my sleep paralysis demon, so I sit and bed rot into the wee hours of the night, refusing to come face-to-face with my fears.
“If people knew how smart you are, they would be very afraid of you.”
One of the kindest things an ex has ever said to me, though in retrospect I’m not sure it was a compliment…
I discussed this very sentiment with my dad over a fried chicken sandwich last week as we talked about the impending venture capital meeting I had for a project I’m working on. He asked if I would ever acknowledge this work publicly, and I said most likely not because it felt dangerous to be seen in this light.
“I don’t think society will ever allow a woman to be pretty and smart. I’d rather just live a double life where people see me as one thing, and I know myself to be something very different and infinitely more complex.”
He didn’t pause for even a moment before saying;
“I think that’s pretty smart.”
Even a 60-year-old man knows that beauty opens doors while simultaneously creating assumptions about what should be behind them.
Successful women always become cultural projection screens, where the conversation shifts from their work to their likability, bodies, ambition, sexuality, or perceived flaws, and I don’t know if my skin will ever become thick and weathered enough to take this. I pretend to be brave with unwavering confidence, but on the inside I am a gentle glass doll, one wrong move away from shattering at all times.
So what the hell are we supposed to do about it?
I wish I had a profound answer. I wish I could tell you that after years of introspection, therapy, meditation, journaling, and aggressively overthinking in the shower, I have arrived at some enlightened conclusion. However I’m writing this piece because I’m hoping that one of YOU will have the answer.
Unfortunately, for now, all I’ve got is this:
Society doesn’t actually need to drag every woman back down the mountain because most of us start climbing with a parachute strapped to our backs. Ready to jump and make ourselves small as soon as we sense we have overstayed our welcome. We learn to soften our opinions, disguise our ambition, and laugh off our accomplishments, before anyone asks us to because we’ve seen what happens to the women who don’t.
I’ve spent so much time worrying about whether the world will allow me to be pretty and smart that I’ve never stopped to consider whether I’m willing to allow it myself. That’s the cost of being fully seen, not everyone will like what they find.
Perhaps the women I’ve spent years studying aren’t fearless at all, they are just willing to be misunderstood. I don’t know if I’ve reached that point yet and I’m not sure how you get there. I still find myself stuffing pieces of my personality into neat little boxes and praying nobody notices what’s missing. Maybe the goal isn’t to convince the world that women can be beautiful and intelligent. Maybe the goal is to stop pretending we’re not.
Till next time,
AME
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