Art and Anticrises

An artful and emotional Q1 review: on choosing and knowing

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Choosing. What an important word. 

I wrote those two sentences back in January shortly after my birthday, in a post celebrating the joy I felt on my special day and setting my intentions for my 23rd year on this wonderful planet we get to call home.

It’s funny because all the words in that post just came out naturally as I typed my heart out at 4 am on a sleepless night after not taking my melatonin at the right time. But today, looking back, it’s crystal clear to me that “choosing” has been the core theme of my past two months. And that every intention I set, from cherry lips to not ordering Pad Thai at Asian restaurants, has slowly but surely been weaving its way into my reality. And that is a beautiful realization.

Shortly after my birthday I wrote that fortuitous post and shortly after my birthday I also started watching The Bachelor with my girlfriends on Monday nights. I’m not a reality TV person, but what started as a one-night thing for the first episode of the season turned into a weekly beginning of the week ritual that we all excitedly looked forward to every Monday. Beyond the fun chit chat and the excuse to see my friends one extra time every week, I realized some things along the way. The show ended tonight, just as spring starts to bloom in the city, Q1 comes to a close, and we go through a lunar eclipse. It’s funny looking back to think of how much has changed since that first episode. Joey Graziadei is engaged, we have cherry blossoms instead of negative celsius temperatures, and after months of joking about (and struggling with) my strict melatonin routine to be able to stay asleep, I finally have a normal and aid-free sleep schedule. I’m the happiest I’ve been probably in years and everything seems to have aligned in exactly the way it was supposed to. I’m 22 art and culture visits into the year so far, out of the goal of 52 that I set myself for 2024, perhaps the most art productive year for me ever. Yo no soy Bad Bunny, pero I might be on my peak.

As I said before, choosing, as a word and as an action, has been extremely important for me these past couple of months.

Choosing to fill my free time with so much art my next-desk coworker might think I’m in my late 50s instead of early 20s. Choosing to move forward with my birth control removal, with no reinsertion for the near future. Choosing philanthropic relations over corporate sponsorship as a work focus because, duh, it’s Debbie we’re talking about. Choosing to say no despite temptation and desire because I know for certain that, if it’s not passionate and extraordinary, I don’t want it. Choosing to open the door out of my life to people that I love but disrespect me or undervalue me. Choosing to let go because it’s about damn time but also because I owe it to myself. Choosing to stay in my apartment. Choosing to prioritize pilates. And order in my room. And structure to my life. And a (too) busy schedule (again), but one that is okay to have so long as I’m letting life be and filling it exclusively with people and things that bring me joy.

A hell of a lot of choosing, you could say. But above all, choosing myself. Every day, despite everything. In a way I had never chosen myself before. And I’m so proud of myself for that.

I think, at times, The Bachelor was like exposure therapy for me to the point where it was hard to sit through certain parts of some episodes, but I made myself stay. Sometimes it was simply because it was so damn cringey or the protagonist was being stupid. Other times, frankly, it was because I felt triggered. The show is, after all, a show about wanting to be chosen–so desperately, so badly, and on national TV. It’s a show about thirty-two women on a screen all simply wanting to be chosen. To a certain extent and especially with Joey this season, even the bachelor is there just because he also wants to be chosen. I think that premise is ridiculous and in many ways anti-feminist, and I hated watching the show because of that. But that despise came simultaneously with the realization of how human and real that desire is. Don’t we all want to be chosen?

I realized that for the most part of my life I’ve centered this desire to be chosen without even realizing it. Even the past eighteen months that I’ve been very intentional and a lot more mature with my time and love, even if I haven’t been acting with the purpose of being chosen by others, I haven’t been actively choosing myself. And I think seeing all those women on the TV, and thinking how ridiculous it was, flipped a switch in me that I didn’t even know was there, just as I processed and finished healing and figuring out things in my personal life.

I want to spend my life loving, not seeking love.

Loving myself, loving my friends, loving my job, loving my family. Loving art, loving my apartment, loving my neighborhood. Loving my weekends but also my weekdays, loving what makes me feel light but also what’s heavy to carry. Loving hard and deeply and unapologetically. And it took me 23 years to realize it, but I know now that that love comes from within. And that it starts with choosing oneself.

Beyond choosing, I’ve also been thinking a lot about seasons. 

“What are we going to watch next?”

“When does the Bachelorette season start?”

“Should we do board games instead of TV next Monday?”

Getting into the habit of Bachelor Mondays and enjoying them so much came with the realization that the season was eventually going to end. It’s bittersweet to think of wonderful things having an expiration date–that’s something I’ve always struggled with. I tend to be an optimist but the pessimist in me comes out when everything is so great I can’t help but fear when it will be over. I felt that during my Monday nights with friends, but more generally I am so happy with my life these days that I am scared of this bliss ending. I love everything exactly as it is right now, but I know in a month or two things will start changing again. And most likely not in a bad way, but they will change. I just personally have never been able to come to terms with the idea that everything is temporary and that it’s okay. But life, just like reality TV, happens in seasons and, as much as I hate it, that’s just the way it is.

I don’t have conclusions about seasons like I do for choosing (at least not yet). But lots of feelings I certainly do. Somehow knowing things are inevitably going to change and that the Bachelor (and everything else) doesn’t last forever has made me cherish my time with my friends and the period of my life I’m in even more. Somehow getting through the miserably cold winter I cursed so much makes me more grateful for the still-cold-but-more-sunny spring days New York is blessing us with. The Bachelor ending, spring starting and me being at the height of whatever-this-happy-healed-phase-I’m-in is called all happening at the same time is one of those funny coincidences that in my mind aren’t coincidences but, rather, signs.

And I choose to believe in signs.

Yours truly y con mucho amor,

Debbie