Guess who's back. Back again.

Here's what you've missed since 2012:

- I moved to New York City and spent a delightful three years living with my long-time best friend, Eileen, in a converted two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. Very Broad-City. Too many stories to choose from. Good thing I have your attention for a few more months LOLLoloLOLOL.

- I went to grad school from 2012-2014 at The New School and assistant-managed (sort of; I was in what we call a KEY HOLDER position in the retail biz 💅) the Upper West Side Paper Source location. This is, of course, lolz for two reasons: 

1.) I spent many a shenanigan-filled year working at the Georgetown location in college and again after I was controversially fired by Boss #1 and #2 in the aughts for BLOGGING. AT WORK. Though, now less of a source of paper and more of a source of tacky desk tchotchkes owned by a questionable Saudi oil conglomerate, old P. Source has always been there for me in tight financial spots, and I thank them for that.

2.) It gave me a free pass to live out my Kathleen Kelly You've Got Mail Upper West Side retail cosplay fantasies in a very real, very other-people's-money-involved kind of way. 

- Grad school was a laborious process, but at least I didn't make any friends. I actually do owe the New School creative nonfiction writing MFA program a debt of gratitude (and tens of thousands of actual paper dollars) for helping me open up and write four chapters of a dark humor memoir I would still greatly like to finish one day about my life as a lady with vulvodynia. 

Vulvodynia, if you don't know, means that VAGINAL INSERTION during SEX is very extremely painful for MY VUVLA. This pain has been on my radar well before my (delayed) SEXUAL blossoming; TAMPONS were/are painful, too. A pencil. A toothpick. Or less sharp and more appropriate things like fingers and dildos—any touch is painful. It makes SEXUAL INTIMACY tricky. Because then you do that classic thing where you think no guys will be interested in you if they can't easily bang you out, so you either don't date at all, OR you do date, but, for reasons you're still trying to work out in therapy, you don't tell your partner that it hurts when you have sex, and eventually you start resenting them because they want to do something that hurts you all the time, and you start dreading seeing them at all because now you're in a full-blown relationship with someone who wants to marry you and stick his shovy dick inside your tender puss for the rest of your life and—Ack! Cathy! You've done it this time! And you never learn!

Because now you're 34 and still single, and everyone wonders why, because there has to be A Reason, and you want to be like, I COULD BE MARRIED IF I WANTED TO, I JUST HAVE A BROKEN COOTER AND I CAN'T GET ANY DOCTORS TO TAKE ME SERIOUSLY BECAUSE THEY ALL THINK MY "WOMAN PROBLEMS" MUST BE FROM REPRESSED MEMORIES OF BEING MOLESTED, EVEN THOUGH I'VE NEVER BEEN MOLESTED. WHICH I KNOW, BECAUSE I CALLED MY MOTHER ON THE TELEPHONE IN 2012 AND ASKED HER.

So, yeah. It's like a whole thing. 

- In 2015, my literary ambitions slowly derailed when work took over, and I've been working full-time in the fashion/e-commerce/branding/writing/marketing game ever since. I've been meaning to start a new blog for years and years and years, and yeaaaaaaaars, and years and years and years, but it never felt right. The timing was off. I was too busy with work. I wasn't inspired. Nobody would read it anyway. I'd have to design and market it all over again, and now I'm a branding and writing professional, so it has to be bigger and better than before, and goddamn do I hate a high bar. There were multiple efforts to start this bigger, better, more professional blog, but they never came to fruition because, ultimately, I was paralyzed with fear.

But now it's 2020 and I know what actual fear feels like. Until 11 days ago, I still lived in New York in the cutest, smallest, baby studio on the top floor of a walk-up on the Upper West Side you ever did see. (One block away from Eileen!) Now I'm back home in the DMV, living in the guest room of my sister's house in Virginia with her and her family until question mark. (BTW - I acquired two nieces since I saw you last.) 

And the thing is; it's fine. I work, I get high, I play with my nieces, I chill with Becca and Geoff, I eat way better than I would ever have at home. I take long meditative walks and listen to podcasts. If this extremely privileged experience is the totality of my coronavirus experience, I'm fine with that. But I also know that this is just the beginning, and I'm anxious about what comes next. So, I've landed on three ways in which I can be helpful during this awful experience:

1.) Do the grocery shopping for my elderly-as-fuck-so-stop-going-to-the-bagel-store-every-morning-Richard-Rowland parents

2.) Help Becca and Geoff with the kids AND provide stoned commentary on true crime docu-series, nightly

3.) Blog. Because I sure as shit know this helps me, and I hope it helps you cope with this ridiculously inconvenient, scary, awful bullshit, too.

I have no idea what I'm going to write about. I'm rusty. Everything is still going to riddled with dumb-dumb spelling and grammar errors and it's going to look dated, but I don't care. Because while I am scared, it's not about this anymore.

Welcome back. See you tomorrow.

Meg
@meg4lyfe