This Body is Bullshit

I’ve been having a conversation with myself lately. It started because I’ve been thinking about going public with this blog. Really public. Not just quietly existing out there on the internet hoping nobody finds it, but actually putting it out there intentionally. Sharing it. Letting people in.

And I keep stopping myself.

Here’s the thing about vulnerability — I don’t do well with sympathy. I never have. When people feel sorry for me I don’t know where to look. I change the subject. I make a joke. I find the nearest exit. I would rather crack you up than make you cry on my behalf. And yet here I am, 47 entries deep into one of the most honest things I’ve ever done, thinking about handing it to the world. This was supposed to be my therapy. And it totally has been. It has really worked. By no means am I cured — but it has helped so much.

The contradiction is not lost on me.

I’ve been watching other people do it and feeling simultaneously inspired and terrified. Just this week, Gloria — who we lovingly call Gogo — has put her cancer journey out there for all of us to follow. Completely open. Completely real. Letting everyone in. She lives out loud on social media through every life event, and I watch her do it and think: that takes guts. And also: I want to do that. And also: what if I’m not good enough at this to deserve the space.

The Sister Project, Kevin and his sister Heather — I was into their writing before the word journaling even entered my vocabulary. The way they write wrecks me in the best possible way. They take something devastating and make it beautiful without making it neat. Without tying it up. Without pretending it’s okay when it isn’t. I read their words and feel seen in a way that surprises me every time. That’s what good writing does. It reaches through the screen and grabs you by the chest and says you are not alone in this.

And then there’s Suleika Jaouad.

She wrote Between Two Kingdoms about her cancer diagnosis and recovery and it genuinely changed something in me. She put language to feelings I had been carrying for years without knowing what to call them. The grief of losing the person you were before illness. The strange guilt of surviving. The way your body becomes a place you don’t fully recognize anymore. I read that book and kept stopping to just sit with it. Then she wrote The Book of Alchemy — about journaling, about creative practice, about noticing your own life — and I never in my life thought I would be a person who journals. I am not that person. I am the person who makes jokes and keeps moving and does not sit still long enough to feel things on purpose.

And yet. Here I am. Forty-seven entries.

Okay — Suleika did basically start out as a polished, well-educated writer, so that comparison has its limits. But she also started out sick and scared and honest and needing somewhere to put it. And she changed people’s lives. Not because she had all the answers. Because she was willing to say: here is the question I can’t stop asking. Here is the thing I can’t make sense of. Here is what it actually looks like from the inside.

That’s all I’m doing here. Trying.

I’ve been reading and consuming so many blogs, memes, reels, books and podcasts lately. What keeps stopping me, is when something says exactly what I have been thinking or feeling for years but could never find the words for. The way trauma lives in the body. The way grief doesn’t follow a timeline. The way we perform fine for so long that we forget what not-fine even feels like. The way empathy is a gift and also an exhausting, relentless, never-ending thing to carry. Every time something like that crosses my feed I think — that’s it. That’s the damn thing I’ve been trying to say.

And then I wonder: am I just absorbing other people’s thoughts and calling them my own? Do I actually know who I am?

The answer I keep coming back to is: yes. I do. Because when those words land, they’re landing on something that was already there. I’m not learning something new. I’m recognizing something true. There’s a difference.

I know who I am.

I am someone who tries — genuinely tries — to be a good person every single day. To lift people up. To find the bright side even when it’s hard to locate. To bring joy into rooms. To make people laugh when they need it and sit with them when they don’t. I would also, without hesitation, cut a bitch for the people I love. I am not condoning violence. I am simply stating facts. My friends and family know I am their ride or die, their wingman, their person who will show up and throw punches if necessary. That’s just who I am and I’m not apologizing for it.

I am an empath to my core, which means I feel everything — my friends’ pain, my family’s fear, strangers’ struggles — and I carry it like it’s mine because it kind of is. That’s not always easy. It’s actually exhausting. I have nothing left some days. And I’m still learning that I’m allowed to say that out loud.

I am also — slowly, imperfectly — learning to care for and appreciate this body. Which is hard, because there was a time I felt completely betrayed by it. But I’m getting into exercise. I’m trying to eat better even though I am shamelessly addicted to sugar. I barely drink anymore. Drugs have been out of the picture for a long time. I mean, unless you have some magic mushrooms. In which case, call me. I take approximately nine thousand vitamins and supplements and prescriptions to keep this machine running. And I have lost over 30 pounds, which I am genuinely proud of. Even though the losses are starting to make me look older in my face and skin is doing things I did not authorize. Nobody warned me about that part. Rude.

I try my best at work. I think I do a good job. I genuinely love my people — my MP crew, the employees who come to me when things are hard. But it is stressful in ways that are hard to explain and emotionally draining in ways that don’t show up on any job description. Some days I come home and I have given everything I had to everyone else and there is just nothing left for me. I am working on that. I am not there yet.

And I keep coming back to this question: have I found my calling?

I don’t think so. Not fully. I think it has something to do with animals. I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet — working with them, photographing them, advocating for them, being near them in some capacity that feels like purpose. I just know that when I’m around animals something in me settles. Something that is usually braced and scanning and managing just — relaxes. And I want more of that. I want to build something around that feeling eventually. I don’t know how yet. But I know it’s there, and I’m paying attention to it.

There’s something else I’ve been sitting with.

There’s a quote that found me recently — the way the right words always seem to find you exactly when you need them: Forgive yourself. You did the best you could with who you were at the time.

I’ve been applying it to my mom.

Our relationship was complicated. She loved me with everything she had — I know that. She loved Grace even more than that. But it was hard. There were years of frustration and hurt and distance that I didn’t always understand and couldn’t always forgive. And now she’s gone and I can’t call her and sometimes I’d give anything just to hear her voice, even if we were arguing.

But that quote has started to crack something open. She did the best she could with what she had, with who she was, with everything she was carrying that I didn’t fully see or understand. And I was doing my best too. We both were. Imperfectly. Messily. With love underneath all of it even when it didn’t look like love.

I’m healing that. Slowly. It’s not linear. But I’m healing it.

And I think about Grace. About the ways I’ve fallen short as her mother — the things I couldn’t give her, the mistakes I made, the times I got it wrong. And I hope — I really hope — that someday she finds her way to that same quote. That she understands I was doing the best I could with who I was at the time. That the love was always there even when everything else was imperfect. That she heals whatever needs healing, the way I’m healing mine.

That’s the thing about motherhood. The grief passes down and so does the love and sometimes you can’t separate them and you just have to trust that the love is louder in the end.

So. Back to the blog.

I’ve written 47 entries. I found my voice — which is raunchy and tender and sarcastic and earnest and messy and sometimes all of those things in the same paragraph. I’ve told truths that scared me. I’ve written about nearly dying from sepsis, that after Matt had to drop me off at the hospital door alone for a mastectomy because of COVID and then went home to cry. I’ve written about carrying cancer in my body for two years while doctors called it a cyst. I’ve written about sitting on the shower floor until the water runs cold because getting up felt impossible. I’ve written about my dad — the man who once made a citizen’s arrest, handcuffed an attorney, drove him from Carbondale to Chicago, made the Sun-Times, and still has a felony kidnapping record — now shuffling around in cowboy boots at a protest because he thinks they make him taller. I’ve written about giving him virgin cocktails and watching him not notice. I’ve written about Drew spending seven hours stuck in an elevator because his caregiver fell asleep. I’ve written about the Wednesday Waffle and the Twat Waffles and the murder boat and microdosing mushrooms on a beach in Sayulita. I’ve written about the poop memo. Again. I’ve written about Gus — always about Gus. And I’ve written about two strangers at Northwestern who called me pretty on a hard day that I held onto for the rest of the afternoon.

That’s the blog. That’s all of it. The full catastrophe, as someone much smarter than me once said.

And maybe, just maybe, someone out there needs to read it. Someone who is also sitting in the shower until the water runs cold. Someone who is also watching their parent disappear and not knowing what to do. Someone who is also trying to be the strong one and running out of strong. Someone who also consumes memes and reels and podcasts at midnight looking for the words to describe what they’re feeling and finding them and thinking oh thank god, it’s not just me.

It’s not just you.

That’s what I want to say. That’s why I want to go public. Not for sympathy. Not for attention. Not because I think I’m Suleika Jaouad or Kevin or Heather or Gogo or Lauren and Michelle.

Just because I know what it feels like to find the right words at the right moment and feel less alone because of them.

And if I can be that for even one person, that’s enough.

I think I’m ready. But also, I read this back and wonder if I write about the same things too often. If I’ve beaten the proverbial dead horse. Whatever. This is what I’ve got. And maybe it’s a good opener. Even though technically it’s the end, this blog runs backwards, which also seems fitting.