Cold shoulder with a side of shade.

I’m the type of person who has quite a lot of difficulty controlling her emotions. What I have even more trouble with is hiding them. Have you ever seen someone on a treadmill in full sob mode?

Actually, let me expand on that:

Have you ever seen someone on a treadmill in full sob mode because she just watched a Hallmark commercial, but she isn’t exactly running anymore—it’s more of a half-limp situation—because snot is filling her nose and it’s thrown off her breathing, so she’s clinging to the rails and being dragged every other step, and she’s so, so sadly trying to bring the pace down but the crying has sapped her energy, so it looks like she’s just kind of pawing at the controls—also there are tears so she can’t see anything—and a man with muscles so big his veins look strangled keeps looking over at her while he’s mid grunt, bajillion-pound weights lifted over his head, wondering if maybe he should do something? Because I have: my gym has mirrors. And all of this occurs because this girl, this girl who is me, saw some fake grandma get a card in the mail from her neighbor across the street, since her shit kids never send her any. *Takes a writing break to walk across the street to Duane Reade and buy Hallmark cards for grandparents.*

The same problem arises with any other emotion: happiness, frustration, anger, confusion, anxiousness, you name it. Did you see the Pokémon movie that came out in the late nineties? I did. In fact, I didn’t even wait for it to be released in the States. I found the original Japanese version and watched it with subtitles, and it was existential as SHIT. I don’t know if it was the husky Japanese dialogue, or the fact that I was in the throes of puberty and this one Pokémon called Mewtwo kept flying around all fucking moody and I could relate, but I ended the film being like, “Man, fuck Camus, that hack; this Pokémon asks all the real important questions.” Like the Pokémon that I am now actually, for real, discussing in a blog post as a way to exemplify my point, these moods I experience are all very . . . primal. I say that and it sounds bad, but realistically that’s what moods are. What allows us to civilize them is reining them in. As discussed above, I have difficulty with that, but I don’t feel bad about it. If anything, the freedom I allow my emotions to ebb and flow lends itself to genuineness, which I prize above all.

So if you ever catch me throwing death glares your way, take heart! It is most likely that I am earnestly trying to shoot lasers at you with my eyes, and not just your imagination.

Zara top, pants, and sandals; Vintage bracelets; Natural-born shade.