To the Nth Power

photo: Joshua Franzos

It all started in December 2018, when I had just a couple more months of being thirty-eight. Let's call it a soft-opening for the official kick-off of weirdness that I knew would eventually unfurl when my age year once again ended in a nine.

photo: Joshua Franzos

People usually use the beginning of a new year to start afresh, but I couldn't wait until January. I was a mess. A shell of a human. A burnt out wreck about to be picked over by carrion birds. After two and a half years of supplemental hormones, invasive procedures, setting daily, hourly, minutely fertility intentions, hemorrhaging massive amounts of scratch for a fallopian pipe dream, ending a twenty-nine year toxic relationship with someone who'd convinced me that my infertility was my fault because of A,B,C, D things or better yet, because I must not want it badly enough....I called it quits on trying for a family. Had I continued flailing, trying to sate the quack whims of non-medically trained "healer," had I continued being further and deeper dismayed each time my body let me down each month... ropes of saliva would've started pooling on my chest while I slipped into catatonic insanity. Dear reader, rest assured, my mental portcullis slammed down and "panic room procedures" ensued to protect myself from spiraling my way into a padded cell.

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

 

photo: Joshua Franzos

I needed to tuck all the female failure away into a mental oubliette, throw away the key, and find my way back to myself. Trouble was, I didn't know who that was anymore. I used to love Adderall, so I started up on that again. I used to love working out, so I started that again too. Medicated responsibility and a habit of physical activity were the bread crumbs I thought I'd dropped and could follow backwards. The path looked similar, but also different. For a fleeting moment, I thought I could be who I used to be, but that is impossible. Going backwards and chasing a previous version of yourself is like trying to catch your shadow. So I embraced the reptile evolving into a winged beast, rising out of the murky depths of a disgusting primordial stew. 

photo: Joshua Franzos

I started to lose weight, which was great because I'd been uncomfortable and perilously straining the fastenings of clothing for years. After a month of exercise, my clothes started fitting again without the threat of putting out someone's eye with a projectile button. Though I was still prone to random teary-eyed moments, I was also thrilled because I was regaining a semblance of autonomy over my own body again. Then one day in early February, I woke up and my back was shitty again. I moved around like a hunch-back centenarian. 

photo: Joshua Franzos

Operation Getting-my-groove-back came to a screeching halt and once again my body was back to betraying me. As pain often does when it is bad enough, it manifests itself spiritually, as well as physically and I was convinced God was on some tirade to prove to me that I was not in control of SHIT. God and I aren't really on speaking terms so I doubled down by waking up at 4:30-45am to go to the gym and very slowly plod on the treadmill to lessen my revert backwards into planet muffin top. If I couldn't go fast or hard, I had to make up for it bulk. Costco sized exercise, because I simply didn't have the bandwidth to lose all the ground I'd gained athletically. I committed to physical therapy. Doing physical therapy exercises and walking very gingerly on a treadmill doesn't account for much, calorically speaking, but it feels like it does when you're injured. The weight re-gain, slowed, but did not stop. I got back on a scale again and I could not bear to watch the needle go up. 

photo: Joshua Franzos

In the face of a caring for a dog with an auto immune disease, having to suddenly dye the roots of my hair every four weeks (because of the a fore mentioned stress of almost losing a sick dog), babysitting insurance and auto body shops after someone rear-ended me, after about six weeks of back and forth with the worst customer service ever, it turned out I was definitely getting screwed over for $190 for a lost ASOS package, my new work and writing schedule weren't co-existing any longer, I was still having bitter moments of mourning, my skin had became dull and wrinkled overnight... 

Thirty-nine flattened me into the pavement like an ACME anvil. 

I. Could. Not. 

2019 was supposed to be the year of me regaining control. I was in no mood for lessons from God. I think the rage I'm usually so good at keeping nice and tidy and contained like a bodily fluid, may have reached out of my nostril and yanked me up by the bootstraps. So on March 15, I squared my shoulders and began to watch what I ate. I started keeping a food diary with an phone app called Lose It! (Because that was what I was going to do if I hit rock bottom again.) Though it often pained me, it was also illuminating how many empty calories I consumed. Somewhere between the calorie restriction, walking on a treadmill for 2+ hours per day in addition to physical therapy and being completely BORED out of my gourd while doing so, my brain turned inward and began cannibalizing itself. It was like a post apocalyptic cage match in there, a battle to the death. I tried to read, but it was no use. My early morning gym walks became my ADHD bugout time, where I would frantically google the answers to the weaknesses and character flaws my brain kept pinpointing and pick-pick-picking at. 

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

photo: Joshua Franzos

Welcome to the Nth year.  "To the Nth Power" is a phrase used in mathematics to indicate that a number will be multiplied a certain amount of times by its own self. I just quoted math. GTFO. I'm not superstitious, but I have moments of superstition. Those years ending in a nine get me. They force my hand for all the make up #fomo of the decade I'm about to leave in the dust, and the setting myself up proper for the decade I'm about to burst into. At nineteen, I...don't remember. At 29, I'd only started to recognize the itch of shedding skin and most notably, ended my first marriage. Ten years later, I'm happily remarried, but feel the itch of loosened skin in regard to things outside my control, i.e. fertility. Instead of feeling sad, I'm choosing mad. Can't have a baby? FUCK IT. I'M GOING ON A ZIKA BENDER IN THE MOST ZIKA CONCENTRATED TROPICAL ISLAND ON THE PLANET. Instead of pale gummed optimism in the face of a never ending mind fuck, I'm choosing the exit. Can't stop getting your period? I'M NOT A FAILURE, I QUIT. Instead of powerless, I'm choosing powerful. Can't get pregnant? FUCK IT. IMA

via GIPHY


If you can't do anything to control the things you can't control, I feel like you should chip away at the things that you can. Idle hands do the devil's work as they say. This year I hope to document some things that are actively helping me move on, in case you have things, fertility or otherwise, you need to move on from and a distraction will help. They'll probably sound silly and little when set along side a big life decision, like an Archie Comic shelved next to Marcel Proust. But one of the best things about emerging on the other side of all this is my inability to care about what doesn't matter anymore. Especially what people think, though, I'd prefer you didn't see me as a broken, failure of a woman. Look! There goes Meryl, she couldn't have kids. Now she's a hunched over female version Ethan Fromme. (That would make me a little sad.) But of course when I say you, I really mean me, and my perception of myself. It still needs work. We're all works in progress though, aren't we? So in the spirit of the Nth power, keep at it. Because I will be. Everything begins and ends within yourself. Seek out your talents and what gives you joy. Embrace them. Embrace yourself. You are more than the sum of the thing you can't do. Multiply yourself by yourself until you can confidently paint yourself in the colors you want to be seen. Everything else will follow, and as one passerby said in the alley of our photo shoot, "Love your outfit, ya, disco queen sex bomb!" Yes, that series of words will do, for now. I'm that because I've painted myself that way. You saw what I wanted you to see.

photo: Joshua Franzos

What I Wore:
Jumpsuit: Dusty Daze, on sale now here.
PVC clutch: gifted BCBG.
Platforms: gifted past season Louis Vuitton.
Hoops: vintage.
Cuff: Vintage.
Sunnies: Amazon, here.

Your friend in Pittsburgh,

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