Episode Details

The basic answer? I don’t want to.

If someone wheeled a beautifully decorated tree into my house, I wouldn’t turn them away.

If I woke up to a perfectly decorated Hallmark movie-style house in Vermont, I’d be delighted (and also a little terrified that I’d been robbed/kidnapped.)

But because life is not a holiday movie, the job of decorator/mover/organizer falls to me. And this year, I’m putting in my notice.

I really do historically love the holidays. I love cheesy Christmas movies, gorgeous, elaborate light displays, and sugar cookies. I love Mariah Carey, tinsel, and coquito.

Up until recently, I loved putting up a 7-foot tree with a collection of ornaments that could fill a row or two at Home Goods.

Yes, that’s right; 7 feet. I followed in my family’s tradition and bought a synthetic tree for my big girl apartment during the pandemic in 2020. Ever since then, I’ve looked forward to putting it up every year. One year, I even got a bedroom tree for double the Christmas spirit.

In addition to the tree(s), I’ve also collected a variety of signs, door hangers, figurines and the like. One of the signs proudly reads ‘This girl loves Christmas.’

The thing is, I also love lying horizontal on my couch.

I find reality pretty difficult.

I find the business of getting out of bed and getting on with the day really hard. I find picking up my phone to be a mammoth fucking struggle. The number on my inbox. The friends who won’t see me anymore. The food pictures and porn videos, the bombings, and beheadings, the moral ambivalence you have to have to just be able to carry on with your day. I find the knowledge that we’re all just atoms and one day we’ll stop and be dirt in the ground, I find that overwhelmingly

disappointing.

-People, Places & Things by Duncan Macmillan (A Play)

I, too, find reality pretty difficult.

When I first saw this play at 21, I never would have admitted that, even though that’s been true since I took frequently naps in the nurse’s office in high school, and secretly got excited when the kids in my elementary school tennis camp got us all in trouble (because it meant that we would have a time out aka quiet time to sit and do nothing in an air conditioned gymnasium in New York in July.)

The monologue is delivered by the play’s protagonist, Emma, who is in and out of rehab for drug and alcohol addiction throughout the play.

At 21, I don’t think I was consciously afraid of developing an addiction — but I also certainly never thought that it could happen to me. And perhaps that unconscious thought kept me from relating to this monologue and character as strongly as I do now. There’s a human temptation to mentally distance ourselves from those with different life circumstances than ours. If we tell ourselves we can’t relate to someone, then we can rationalize that we won’t end up in their shoes.

At 30, I’m no longer trying to distance myself from people who are “different” than me — because I am acutely aware that my life could have ended up a million different ways if just the slightest thing had gone a different way, throughout the course of my life, or anyone else’s in my family. I absolutely understand the lure of self-medicating with drugs and alcohol.

I absolutely understand that most of us find reality pretty difficult, and that we are all exhausted.

Like, ‘I have to hype myself up to stand in the shower,’ exhausted.

And, ‘How long have those dishes been in the sink?’ exhausted.

And, ‘Did I always sweat this much huffing and puffing down subway steps when I’m late?’ exhausted.

Why is she making us read about how tired she is? I’m tired too. We’re all tired.

Maybe that’s what you’re thinking right now.

How tired can she be? Isn’t she like, 30?