The first warm day of the year

I don’t like to lightly throw around mental illness words. I cringe when someone says they’re so OCD about cleaning their room. I am like this internally, as well. I told you last week I was in a bit of a funk. I don’t like using the word depression for this feeling because I have been depressed at various periods of my life, and they all happen as a result of certain hard/sad events.

My current symptoms line up in some ways, so instead of calling it depression, I want to call it a recession. I feel like an unreliable narrator of my own emotions, and some things that feel extremely true one moment can feel like something I made up the next. I realized I was in a recession when I kept forgetting what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. People would ask and I would not have answers despite being moderately busy. I enter and exit these recessions periodically for no reason in particular, even if I’m still doing things that make me happy.

It’s not even like I’m having a bunch of bad days. I had a subscriber friend text me checking in to make sure I was doing okay which was incredibly sweet but I don’t even feel bad enough that I yearn extra attention. It’s one of those things where in the moment I feel meh but I look back and see dullness. I’m not writing this part as a cry for help but as a way to let you into my mind the way you let me into your inbox. I know a lot of my other friends are in a similar lethargy, and I do think the winter and darkness make it extra hard.

I start off with this gloominess to tell you about my first day spent predominantly out in the sun, which was yesterday when the weather finally gave me 60 degrees of relief. Funks cannot usually be quenched by single days, but they can certainly be shrunk in the sun. I’m deeply indebted to Punxsutawney Phil.

Well, the day actually started horribly. I was at a birthday party the night before and had a rip-roaring good time dancing to music everyone knows with people I don’t always get to see. I had a few drinks, but none of them were water. No gatorade nor 2 a.m. Chinese food were enough to halt the oncoming hangover. I’ve tried being better about my drinking in part because my hangovers seem to be feeling worse. I’ve mostly been successful in avoiding these morning evils, but yesterday was decidedly a failure.

I naturally woke up hours before my alarm, which is characteristic of a crappy hangover. I usually wait in pain and try to drink something before nature calls and some discomfort subsequently subsides. Unfortunately, nature was not calling, and I was just laying around in the throws of hangxiety. I don’t think I was still drunk, but I genuinely do not remember all of the things I was worrying about. But I tossed and turned and worried.

I was focused on my breathing. The window was closed that night and I woke up with one of my nostrils clogged like every other time I fall asleep with no circulation in the room. I felt like I wasn’t taking in enough air but it hurt to breathe more. I did not feel dizzy but had intense nausea.

Eventually, I went to the bathroom and yakked. This was my first-ever morning-after puke, and I’m glad to have made it this far. I felt simultaneously very old by being this hungover and the youngest I’ve ever been. Even if I want it to happen, I’m always a bit afraid of throwing up just like I was as a flu-stricken kid. I was channeling my mom, i frew up and questioning my life decisions.

On a different day, this would keep me reclusive, but I made plans with Leah. My former roommate is very organized, and we planned a few weeks ago to spend this day together. Contrary to my hopes, throwing up did not provide the relief I craved. I needed to rally. I could barely look at my phone. Lying down felt worse than sitting up, but I was still tired. I did this sit/lay and stared at the wall for awhile.

Meera eventually woke up and was saddened to hear of my perils. The cure? We went into the other room and watched 30 Rock. I guess I can do the small screen, but not the phone’s small small screen. 30 Rock is truly my comfort show, especially since I haven’t seen every episode yet. Jenna Maroney’s antics mixed with the position I was sit/lying in on the couch slowly brought me out from the hangover underbelly.

It’s almost noon and time to see Leah. Armed with a leather jacket, water bottle, and teeny backpack, I’m already running late but proud to be running at all. As soon as I leave my house to what is the neighborhood embodiment of a hangover, I am inspired. The sun and its warmth surge through me, a battery powering my hop to the train station.

I am immediately happy and suddenly the main character in a coming of age movie. I’m staring out the train window at the darkness but still feeling the light. I get off the train in Greenpoint and sigh out loud as if I couldn’t get more obnoxious. From the morning’s valley to now be climbing up to its peak, I am grateful.

I’m back in the sun, and the entire world is outside. There is no chaos like this day. It feels primal, like the modern equivalent of the joy from getting soaked after performing a rain dance. It’s too hot for my jacket, and I find a way to stuff it in my backpack as I see Leah pop up from the sidewalk stream of people. I hug her multiple times.

We decide on Bagel Point, which is across the street from our meeting point. I order an egg and cheese on an everything bagel with chipotle cream cheese. Leah and I stand around and discuss our initial experiences with the day. I see someone who was in the actually funny improv show I saw a few days prior. Neighborhoods like this always have the people I know.

The bagel employee handing out orders always screams the name of each readied order, which is both alarming and amusing. My favorite was when he suddenly screams JESUS! and a random hipster goes up to him and quietly states It’s actually pronounced Jesús. Leah and I chuckled after. The weather is so good, even Jesus is risen. Lent be d*mned!

We saunter over to McCarren Park, the true park to see and be seen in Brooklyn. We sit on a bench with our bagels and listen to someone play xylophone well and sing fine. The whole world walks past us. Babies dressed as liberal arts school students, liberal arts school students dressed as blue collar workers, blue collar workers dressed as Legos, hipsters dressed as themselves. Billions of dogs. My bagel is missing egg, so it’s just chipotle cream cheese and a cold slice of American cheese. It’s still not bad.

Leah and I schemed in the days prior about walking over the Pulaski Bridge, which connects Brooklyn to Queens. I have crossed this bridge a few times, the easiest in the city to journey by foot, but Leah somehow has not despite living here longer than me. One of my first visits to New York involved making this same walk from McCarren  Park to Queens and stopping at this particularly breathtaking park I haven’t been to since. We decided that would be our route. I was excited to relive it.

Greenpoint is bursting with people, from diner walk-in loiterers to eager window shoppers. We ran into my friend Maura who lives here, and I nearly pounded her into the nearby building to give her a hug. Running into friends in the wild is one of the greatest parts of social interaction. The surface small talk but deep, intimate joy of connection are rarely replicated, a stroke of serendipity best shared.

We walk through industrial blocks to a bridge of runners, bikers, and wanderers like ourselves. My hangover feels like a distant memory, and I feel like I can walk for ages. Leah is such an easy friend to talk and listen to. The bridge itself is moderately ugly, but there is a charm in the sleepy canal below. How do people park their little boats there?

After crossing some of Long Island City’s many quiet blocks, we hit Hunter’s Point South Park, which I can now confidently say is my favorite park in New York. It stretches along the water, with various means of lounging and staring out at Manhattan. People of all ages are soaking in the sun like kittens below a window. We pick some points to stop and stare.

My shoes are starting to feel too small for my feet, and we walk into a few cafes that we reject in search of a refreshing, non-coffee beverage. I got a kind catcall, or really just an out-of-the-car comment from a woman about my vest: Shoulders are OUT! I LOVE it! and you know what? They are! And I do too! Especially proud because after two years of working on this one shoulder machine on the lowest weight possible I’ve finally progressed to ten pounds heavier. Leah gets a special lemonade and I choose an iced matcha. We decide to forgo the train and walk across the bridge again.

My feet are tired but I feel no reason to stop. This is one of the best feelings in the human experience and part of why I love New York so much. The exploration is endless and makes me feel alive. We eventually split for the day, and I decide to walk home from Greenpoint anyway. I’m listening to some of my new winter songs for the first time in the sun, which gives them new life. Hot, hot, sunny Brooklyn is its best, even the parked cars and body shops are somehow sweating.

Meera meets me semi-halfway, and we grab more beverages (a kombucha for me) to go sit in Bushwick’s town square, Maria Hernandez Park. Again, the whole world is here. It’s interesting to see how even the park is segregated, Hispanic immigrants/neighborhood natives surrounding the volleyball court and playground with the 20-something gentrifiers all on blankets spread about the semi-green corners. Meera and I put our blanket down and just hang out. It’s perfect.

We stop in the grocery store on the way home and pay way too much for a bag of chips and coffee creamer. I have a moment alone before a gaggle appears: my camp friend Hannah who’s in town, my college roommates Ria and Anaïs who literally just moved here, and eventually my friend Nat. We order Nene’s, and I wow Ria with what will soon be a standby taco refuge for her. Our cohort watches and reacts to multiple episodes Love is Blind, which I wrote about in the next section of this newsletter. Everyone gets along!

I originally planned to go to the gym today but stayed up too late watching the show. I am so happy from such a social day, filled with activity and calm, sun and shade. It was so great to feel instantly so, so excited and keep the euphoria going for the whole day. What a treat to have this day. I’m ready for more spring. I hope you’ve had a day like this recently or that it’s coming to you soon.