Introducing: The Brookie Project

 2020, AM I RIGHT?

I look back at that last post from April and that feels like that came from a whole ass lifetime ago.

May 2019: I left my job of 3.5 years to start a new one. I thought my life was heading into where I finally wanted to be. YES. A REAL ADULT JOB IN MY FIELD. I AM AN ADULT.

June 2019: My dad had a heart attack the day on his birthday and the day before my brother graduated from high school. A moment that was already going to be pretty emotional for me turned into this whole other thing that I guess I couldn't really process at the time. I didn't have time to process it. I was less than a week into my new job, which was overwhelming in itself, and I was already anxious about asking for my first day off at said job for something that was really important to me because my baby brother was officially no longer a BABY. And then suddenly, I'm thrust into this world where my dad was on the verge of life and death on top of everything. Thanks, universe!

July-September 2019: it took a couple of weeks for it to happen, but the twin curse of severe anxiety and major depression decided to set up camp in my brain. Great. I had just started this freaking job, and now I have to call out because I'm having terrible, blinding headaches, my heart is palpitating, and I have trapped gas in my stomach that makes me feel like I can't breathe. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep. I had to ask for two, almost three, weeks off and I had just started! Who does that? Why was this happening to me? 

I had a panic attack at a makeup studio with my best friend and my mom had to pick me up. I made her take me to the hospital because I had never ever felt the way I did that day. I was on the edge, my heart felt like it was going to stop or pop or do something bad, plus I felt a sense of doom. It took days that felt like weeks, weeks that felt like months, to see a psychiatrist. I took Xanax that belonged to a family member to chill myself out, then I was prescribed a benzo to take as needed and then I was put on an antidepressant. The first couple of weeks of Prozac was heavy shit: I felt like my nerves were electric, prickling me throughout my body; I had sleep paralysis, I felt twice as worse physically. But slowly, my appetite came back and slowly, the headaches went away...

October 2019 - December 2019: things are getting back to normal! I had to drag my ass back to work, but once I started feeling physically and mentally better, I got to know my coworkers better and I enjoyed spending time with them! I was having somewhat of a life and doing things. After work, I would try to stop and shop in Downtown, see something new, go to a bookstore and just soak up the holiday season. I gained all the weight I lost during my breakdown, plus more, but I didn't care because things were looking up! 

Then, our collective annus horribilis happened. 

I don't need to tell you, dear reader, what's been going on because I'm sure, even if you happen to be reading from a distant generation (as if!), 2020 will have been over documented. Kobe's death, coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, a threatened democracy...you'll know all about it. 

I've been working at home since March. I've had the most free time at home that I've had in years. In many ways, this suits me just fine. In so many ways, I am extremely fortunate to work for a company that has not seem to have been greatly affected by COVID in the ways other industries have. I have been reading, playing, making, doing. I'm happier in some ways than I was before. 

The stress of this year has gotten to me in other ways, though. I'm annoyed that my life has hit pause in some areas. I'm angrier than I have ever been in my life at all forms of injustice. I'm sad for Breonna Taylor, for George Floyd, for all the Black lives we have lost. I go to sleep stressed or pissed off at the world all the time, and I would really, very much for this not to be the case. 

Naturally, I've done a lot of reflecting, specifically on the years 2015-2019 and what they have meant to me. I guess one of the biggest mistakes one can make in life is thinking that if your teenage or college years weren't full of staying out at night, having lots of sex, drinking, dancing and partying that somehow you are developmentally stunted and THIS IS THE WAY IT WILL ALWAYS BE, because that's ridiculous. I always wanted to go back and figure out who I was because I thought it would tell me where things went wrong, why I became isolated, why I became introverted, why I'm socially anxious... but what if I never know? I can't let the loneliness and emptiness and sadness and frustration that I felt as a teenager consume my whole life. 

2020 has taught me we don't know shit. Life is what happens when we're busy making other plans. I've had some of the best days and experiences of my life from the ages of 21 to 26, and there's still so much I haven't done. There's a lot of good things to look forward to. There's a lot that I'd like to talk to my younger self about confidence, about believing in yourself, about letting shit go because I've grown up in so many ways since I graduated college. I thought I was supposed to feel like an adult then. I feel more like an adult now, but I also feel like I agree with Morrissey. He is undoubtedly a piece of shit, but he was right when he said to Rookie: "I am still my teenage self. If you think that we all step through a door marked Adult, or that we sign a Grown-Up Document, you’re quite wrong. We remain as we always were, and that, alas, is one of life’s many nasty tricks".

This is not to say I don't believe that we can change ourselves - not at all! It's actually a freeing concept! I don't have to be an adult on anyone else's terms because there really are no terms or conditions. There is no Adult Contract that you sign in which you have to check all the boxes by a certain date. The line that separates Teenage Me from 27-going-on-28 Me is a thin one. In so many ways, I am still the same. This isn't a bad thing. This is going to sound cheesy and Disney Channel as fuck, but it's what makes me me. 

Essentially, what this boils down to is embracing the teenage Me inside, not trying to stuff her in a bottle, hoping she never exposes herself. I am letting myself read Rookie without the guilt that I had because I'm way older than the intended audience like I did when it was first introduced to the world in late 2011. In late 2011, I was only 19! I thought I was soooo mature.

You reader will know soon, if you don't already know me personally, that this is clearly NOT the case. I'm baby. I 'm every woman. I am the eggman. I will be using this specific project to read and respond to Rookie's themes month by month, because I think Tavi did an excellent job at making the themes specific enough to capture a mood but broad enough to include the stories, journeys and work of many teenage girls. The crazy/weird/wild thing is that most of these themes relate to my life not only as it was ten or fifteen years ago, but NOW.

I'm going to step back in time, talk about today, and plan for the future all at once. Thanks for joining me.