The Sunday Scaries: May you find your footing

For the girls.

The White Lots (HBO)

The thing I keep saying is that it feels impossible to be a person in the world.

To work 10 plus hour days, to be a friend on the pulse of what’s new, and what’s wrong. To be up on the shows, the movies, the records, the albums, and what everyone is doing for pants lately (it’s always pants, why are pants so hard?). To be a daughter, and a granddaughter with an open phone line, and a partner, who remembers to vacuum up the dog hair, and close the tube on the toothpaste. To book the routine blood work, and the dental cleanings, above what truly ails me (chipped nails, and brows in need of a tidy). I keep seeing commercials and advertisements for something called “tax season” and I feel ready to hurl myself into an active volcano.

Life is an Instant Pot, no recipes, just fear it might blow up.

On top of needing to be a person in the world, I am now required to hear words like “tariffs,” all the time and listen to terrifying podcast episodes about what said “tariffs” will mean for the “economy.”

I am a walking meme — because internet brain rot is a highly effective soother — and mutter to myself incessantly, and earnestly: “I’m just a girl.”

Which is true. I am just a girl, floating through the world, powered by cortisol and terror.

Speaking of cortisol, I got a requisition to get mine checked. TikTok tells me high cortisol is the reason I cannot stop gaining weight—amongst many other symptoms that I meet. I was instructed to be as calm as possible the night before and morning of the blood work. “You cannot be stressed out, it’s not a very accurate test to begin with, so try to lay low the night before,” my walk-in clinic doctor told me at a robotic tempo. “Tall order, but sure,” I said.

The night before my blood test, I wasn’t sure how to go about laying low. I made a piece of peanut butter toast before the fasting cutoff, and scrolled Aritzia to once again figure out the pants situation. I’m not entirely sure I made the right call. Pants are very divisive! At the blood test, it took three techs and 45 minutes to find a viable vein. I’m not sure the poking and prodding did good things for my cortisol, but at this point, I’ve surrendered.

I am also poorly attempting a bit of a “spending freeze.” I bargained three new items a quarter — excluding skincare, haircare, and other essentials, of course. I haven’t stuck to it, obviously, but I haven’t blown it out of the water — I went over the limit with a new pair of knee high boots I excused as a birthday present. The “spending freeze” is surely spiking my cortisol. Order confirmed is the thrill of my life — where am I supposed to get my jollies now? I am now “online window shopping” which means I add things to my cart, and then close the browser. Usually, I forget about the items in my virtual cart the moment I go back to my app cycle (Instagram, Gmail, Slack, TikTok, Instagram again), which is a hard truth because that means the shopping addiction allegations are true — and once again, I’m just a girl. Who can blame me? We’ve got roughly three weeks left on this planet, I may as well credit and forget it, honey!

Back to being a person: I am very addicted to Max’s The Pitt right now. I caught up on a few episodes this weekend, totally sucked into the brutal humanity of this show. So many storylines happening on this 15 hour shift — the premise of the show is that every episode is roughly one hour of a 15 hour shift in a Pittsburgh ER, and the season will conclude after one day at work — are triggering, or relatable, or feel sinfully close to home. Right now, I am in my own teeny, tiny, micro, inconsequential-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things Pitt at work and in business. I should start thinking WWDRD (What Would Dr. Robby Do?), perhaps then, I could make a decision.

I need to start walking more. Every day, when I straighten out my hunchback and claw myself out from under my desk like Gringotts troll, I think about how an old friend once told me that sitting all day is worse than smoking. Who knows if that’s true in the end — why is it only North American people have to live by these platitudes, and a 90-year-old man in Italy whose diet has only consisted of pasta, red wine, and cigarettes since WWII can live to see the other end of 100? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not an Italian man; I’m JUST A GIRL, which means I need to start walking.

I famously hate walking. It’s one of my little quirks: it hurts my feet and makes me feel all jammed up. Before I got a dog, I didn’t walk anywhere if I could help it. I’ve invested many hundreds of dollars in shoes that are fitted by people who cock their heads as I saunter awkwardly across a store, to and fro. These feel good! I say and slam my card down knowing next time I lace these babies up, I’ll be bitching. Apparently, I need to shut up about my walking phobia and strut through the pain. My therapist made me make her a deal: three walks a week. A lady on TikTok says you have to walk three times a week, 45 minutes per walk, at a brisk pace to avoid an early death or something else tragic. I’ve employed a friend to join me — I need a standing date, I told her, as if I have just been prescribed something Herculean.

Another thing to add to the list: walking myself back to life.

On my last walk, I grumbled around the neighbourhood at sunset, in a rare break from the March rain. I made it fun by sending my friends unhinged, and long-winded voice notes. I noticed many women on their little walks. I wondered if their feet hurt too, or if they like this kind of business.

I voluntarily do a lot of other painful things. Every 10 days I skip over to my eyebrow place, where a lovely woman I’ve seen for the better part of a decade threads my eyebrows as tears stream down my face. I tint my blonde brows dark brown until my skin burns, emerging like Groucho Marx. Every five weeks, like clockwork, I return to this location and the same woman — or sometimes her sister — waxes my nether regions. I do not skip a wax if I can help it. Once a young person told me she won’t get a wax until she has a man worth waxing for. I’ve never really thought about my husband, or anyone else I’ve had sex with, when it comes to waxing. Last year, at my Christmas wax, as my aesthetician moved my labia around, stretching the folds to apply a warm layer of hot pink goo, she told me about how her dad had passed away a few weeks prior from old age. It would be her family’s Christmas without him. I nodded in sympathy, letting her know that our family was on a similar boat. I don’t think straight cis men could understand that experience if they tried — a women, asking you to tuck your legs to your chest, as they wax your butt crack and ask you about how work is going. I think that’s beautiful. Women have so many secrets!

Earlier this month, I got micro-needling done for the first time. I laid on a bed for 90 minutes, slathered in numbing cream, as a pen with a million little needles did something slightly painful, but mostly annoying, to my skin. They told me how it works, but I will be honest, it was hard to pay attention. Something about collagen! I just know that my best friend does a lot of this kind of stuff, and her skin looks like it’s never seen a shred of trauma. I looked like a slab of hamburger meat when I left. But two weeks later, and my skin is as supple and smooth as it’s been in months.

A couple of times a year I get shot up with Botox on my forehead — right in the centre on what I call my Harry Potter wrinkle. People act like getting Botox is akin to a facelift. It’s a 30-second procedure that removes one more thing from my running list of criticisms. I love my Botox! You’re supposed to downplay cosmetic procedures, otherwise, you’re giving into the patriarchy. I do not have energy for such reductive thinking. Beauty is pain, and life is painful, and so who am I to deny myself expensive procedures to hang onto my inner ElisaSue for a little while longer? I am doing my best to respect the balance.

I’ve started taking classes at the hot yoga spot across the street from me. It’s cramped and smelly but does the job. I haven’t done hot yoga in over a decade. At the end of the classes, the instructors often get us to repeat the mantra: I love my life, I love my body. We all say it in unison, like good little pupils. As soon as it’s over, the women around me tap their Apple watches for a stronger hit of dopamine. Nothing hits like stats on a screen, baby!

What’s on a loop for you right now? I am totally immersed in the world of the three white women on vacation together in The White Lotus. We have all been there — hanging onto a thread of what was, desperate to feel comfort in the longevity of a relationship but ultimately, and excruciatingly, lonely and misunderstood. Those women have endured a lot of pain in the name of vanity. Their time together is painful too — try as they might to white wine it away. I’m grateful I am in a season of friendship so pure and wonderful, the thought of it makes me weep. But I know these women, and this experience — I wonder what Mike White has in store for them this season.

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I’ve been wobbling on the balance beam this month. Unsure, insecure, tense, and out of flow. Overwhelmed by the never-ending list. It’s impossible to be a person, like I said. Everyone I talk to is riding a similar hiccup.

So, here is my wish for the week: may we all find our footing, may we all find pants that fit, may we all walk out the scaries, with minimal pain. This weekend I made homemade granola, that feels like a good start in the right direction.

Talk soon xox

Brit