So Easy

Sezane dress
Shop Chelsea King hair clip (similar)
Celine necklace (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Sixteenth Arrondissement – Paris, France

Paris, June 1, 2023

Dear friends,

I woke up this morning with an old song running through my head. It’s one I listened to on repeat when I was newly eighteen, but I can’t remember hearing it in the years since, so I’m not sure where the memory came from. The band, Something Corporate, wrote only two albums in the early 2000s – and though their lead singer, Andrew McMahon, remains one of my favourite artists, I haven’t reflected on the origin of my appreciation for his work in decades.

But there I stood, at the dresser in our Parisian bedroom, closing the clasp on my necklace, humming the bars of Walking By.

“And what did I do that you can’t seem to want me?
And why do we lie here and whisper goodbyes?
Where can I go that your pictures won’t haunt me?
What makes it so easy for you to be walking by?”
– Something Corporate

It’s been a strange experience, reexamining years worth of memories after decades of refusing to acknowledge them. And although I thought, rethought and, of course, overthought where the process of doing it might lead (because I’m me), it’s still proven to have consequences I failed to consider. There are so many other memories tied to that story; so many people who were significant for me, if only temporarily, and songs that played as the soundtrack in long ago moments. I let them all loose at once, unintentionally, and now they’re free to roam around my psyche at their leisure. I recognise how this sounds, so I’ll be clear: they’re not bothering me. I’m not writing to you about my experience with intrusive thoughts. But they pop up from time-to-time, unexpectedly, as if to say hello. That’s what happens, with memories. We remember them.

Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

Maybe that’s all this old song is doing; stopping in with a casual reminder of something that I thought I’d love forever but let go of effortlessly, almost thoughtlessly, as I grew up. But it gets me thinking, anyway. It’s the words so easy that strike the nerve. I’ve heard them before. Or rather, they’ve been said to me.

“You always make it look so easy.”

“It was so easy for you to just walk away.”

As if not showing the effort it takes me to do something is a personal affront. The judgement in those statements is implied and thinly veiled, at best.

This will probably ring false, coming from someone who’s spent the better part of the past decade documenting their life in public, but I’m a relatively private person. My circle of friends is small, and close knit. When I was little, I was a stomper and a door slammer. If someone upset me, I wanted them to know it. But I also wanted to get away from them. I didn’t want to share the experience of being angry, or sad, or whatever I was feeling; that was mine alone. And while I can’t remember the last time I slammed a door, I never really outgrew the desire to keep my emotional life private. Or at least, to control access to it tightly.

I’m willing to share – but in my time, on my terms. And what that looks like from the outside, I’ve come to understand, is like nothing I do causes me any emotional strain, or requires any meaningful effort. Like everything is, to borrow phrase from Something Corporate, so easy for me.

Spoiler alert: It isn’t. But also, I shouldn’t need to spell that out for people to know it. And yet, as the bars of Walking By play in my head, I remember all the times I’ve needed to. All the people who’ve told me, “You’re so calm,” while I roiled with anxiety they simply couldn’t see. And worse, all the times I’ve been accused of being unfeeling because I’m not willing to be vulnerable for just anyone. I’m still not, to be clear – so many people are neither worth the effort nor the risk, and I’m careful with my heart. That hasn’t changed, although the ways I protect it have evolved with them.

And that’s fine. I don’t owe anyone access to my emotional life. You don’t, either, in case you were wondering. Maybe you already knew that, but sometimes we all need that reminder. Maybe I needed it today, and that’s why that old song was running through my head.

Shop the Post