Really Good, Actually(83)

Amy dabbed her face, then threw her towel in a designated bin. “I didn’t hate it,” she said, leaning down to unstrap her shoes and put them in a different bin. “Like it was definitely thoughtful. Plus, top half of the leaderboard is impressive.”

I told her it felt like every ligament in my legs had melted.

“Blake is the devil,” she said, laughing. “But in a way, they are also my Jesus. Whenever I have an event coming up, I’ll do, like, all five of their classes in a week and get shredded.”

Amy leaned against the wall and grabbed her left ankle to stretch her quad.

“Also, can I just say, the hair looks amazing,” she said. “You’re gonna love being blond. It’s cliché, but we literally do have more fun.”

Her easy warmth made me panic. I needed to know she forgave me; had to confirm that we were good; wanted a promise, in writing, that she saw I was a ridiculous, needy, petty, cranky, genuinely very odd person and still liked me, still thought going for drinks or dinner and texting sometimes would be nice. I did not like being a person who needed this much, but that was the situation.

Amy pulled me into a clammy hug. “I missed you,” she said. “I was going to call you eventually, but I’m glad you came to me first. Also, at the end of class the girl next to me fully farted . . . out her front. Want to get froyo?”





Journaling Exercise: Self-Knowledge




Sit somewhere quiet with a blank notebook or sheet of paper. Without editing or judging yourself, write freely for 10 or 15 minutes. Try to answer (or at least think about) the following question: What do I want? If this is difficult, consider the opposite: What don’t I want?



I want better posture. I want a good life. I want to want to spend less time on my phone.

I want it to matter that I stopped going to Whole Foods. I don’t want, particularly, to wrinkle. I want a kitchen with a lot of natural light and a little rack to hang pots and pans on. I want to know if vitamins do anything. I want better-fitting pants. I want to be taken exactly the right amount of seriously. I don’t want to know so much about the lives of people I met one time in 2008. I want a closer relationship with my sister.

I want my friends to know I care about them. I want to accept that they care about me. I want to have faith in even one politician and/or human man. I want to feel like I understand the news. I don’t want to know anything else about what’s at the bottom of the ocean. I want a fulfilling job that pays a living wage. I want to have sex in a fancy hotel. I want to know how much protein I actually need and whether or not I’m getting it. I don’t ever want to eat chia pudding. I want another person to look at me with love. I want all of this to happen in a non-corny way.

I want to feel calm. I want a signature scent. I want to be the kind of woman who whips up a galette. I want to enjoy stretching. I want to mean it when I tell someone, “no worries.” I want to be good at sports or at least a good sport. I want a partner who thinks my best qualities are the Real Me and my worst qualities are manageable. I don’t want to date someone who thinks I’m only okay. I want to love easily. I want to be gentler. I don’t want to drink so much. I want to be open and nonjudgmental and warm. I want to look pretty with my hair wet.

I want to do more than sign petitions and go to protests where I feel shy so I mouth the chants. I want to provide help where help is wanted. I want to be a vegetarian, not someone who talks a lot about the day or two a week she doesn’t eat meat. I want to delete Facebook. I want to delete Instagram, which I understand is basically Facebook as well. I want to make things that feel useful. I want to be useful. I want to retire one day. I don’t want to write any more bad essays about Hamlet.

I want to make a positive first impression. I don’t want to “sweat the small stuff.” I don’t want to habitually look at the social media profiles of people who have hurt my feelings, or who make me feel bad about myself, or who I think I am better than. I want to have literally any idea what I look like. I don’t want to spend all my time telling myself and everyone else that I am “enough.” I want to know how doomed we actually are, as a species. I don’t want to look at my face every day. I guess I want to do something about the earth? I want to know what that something is.

I want to think about anything other than the shape of my stomach, or if I’m a good person, or who wants to fuck me, or if anyone will ever really love me for me. I don’t want to celebrate the pimples on my ass or honor my spider veins. I want to know that I am an alright person trying very hard, who deserves love and has spider veins, sure, they just don’t occupy a lot of her time.

I want to know what kind of stuff to want. I want to not be completely embarrassed by this activity and most other things I do in a day. I want my tortellini to cook faster.





Chapter 20




Classes finished, and I had even fewer reasons to visit Toronto. I made a few trips out of picking up exams and helping out at Merris’s place, but I no longer stayed overnight, so coming to the city meant driving six hours in the same day or taking the very unpleasant bus or very expensive train. It was nice to have somewhere to be, even if I was finding my work uninspiring and certainly not worth the train ride—over two hours and eighty-five dollars each way.

I went down to clear out my office for the summer and let myself fall into familiar routine: a cup of weak coffee from the machine in the kitchen, an hour or so of clicking around online, a few minutes of desk-friendly stretches, some filing and organizing. I found a crumpled receipt in a copy of Utopia and rolled my eyes at the eager marginalia I’d left in it a few years earlier. I closed the never-ending Word doc with my dissertation on it and browsed a few resumes.