Category: Mindset

The Social Performance of “Natural”

I wear makeup quite a bit. Sometimes it’s full glam goth. Sometimes it’s subtle office makeup. The only time I’m usually barefaced is at the gym and even then, if I still have eyeliner on, it probably just means I came straight from work.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a very specific social interaction that seems to happen almost exclusively with other women. If I happen to be wearing makeup, there’s occasionally someone who will immediately announce, completely unprompted:

“I don’t wear makeup.”

The funny part is… before they even say it, I can usually tell.

Also, I don’t carry trophies or cookies in my bag.

What always fascinates me is that makeup was never the topic of conversation to begin with. We could be discussing the economy, jury duty, a parking ticket, or the collapse of civilization itself, and somehow we still arrive at:

“I only wear lip gloss.”

Wonderful. Ring the cathedral bells!

Sometimes the follow-up question is:

“What’s the special occasion?”

As though eyeliner automatically means I’m on my way to a gala, a séance, or the burial ceremony of a minor aristocrat. The interaction itself is what makes it strange. Nobody asked. The conversation was moving along perfectly fine before we suddenly took a detour into a press conference about concealer. What’s even more interesting is that these comments rarely happen in a vacuum. They usually appear in the presence of a woman who is visibly wearing makeup, which is why the interaction can sometimes feel less like casual conversation and more like subtle social positioning.

Because-ding ding ding– the statement is usually not about makeup at all.

It’s about identity.

For some people, “I don’t wear makeup” quietly translates into:
“I’m lower maintenance.”
“I’m more natural.”
“I’m not trying that hard.”
“I’m above all of this.”

None of those things is necessarily true, of course, but people often use appearance choices to communicate personality traits they want associated with themselves.

And sometimes, if we’re being honest, the comment functions as a kind of preemptive defense mechanism. If someone feels slightly insecure about how they present themselves, reframing it as a deliberate philosophy allows them to control the narrative before anyone else can interpret it for them.

That instinct, however, reveals something interesting.

People who are genuinely comfortable with their choices usually don’t feel the need to announce them to strangers.

Whether someone wears a full face of makeup, tinted moisturizer, or absolutely nothing at all, secure people usually just exist without making their appearance a personality trait. That’s what makes those random declarations feel so strange. Nobody was discussing makeup in the first place, yet somehow we’ve ended up holding a town hall meeting about concealer.

With men, the dynamic is usually different. Sometimes it’s clumsy curiosity.

Sometimes it’s the familiar:
“I prefer women without makeup.”An opinion often delivered from behind a meticulously sculpted beard and enough beard oil to lubricate industrial machinery.

Many men who claim to prefer “no makeup” are usually picturing a very specific kind of makeup they don’t recognize as makeup. What they often mean is: “I prefer makeup that looks effortless to me.” Which, ironically, usually requires effort.

Psychologically, comments like these often have very little to do with cosmetics themselves. In some instances, it’s subtle status signaling. Sometimes it’s an attempt to project authenticity. Occasionally, it’s mild negging disguised as honesty. And very often, it’s simply people attaching moral value to appearance choices that are ultimately neutral.

That’s the interesting shift we’ve watched happen culturally.

Women used to be judged for not wearing makeup because it supposedly meant they weren’t “put together.” Nowadays, women are sometimes judged for wearing makeup because it supposedly means they’re vain, insecure, artificial, or trying too hard.

The expectations changed, but the scrutiny never left.

Same courtroom. Different charges.

At the end of the day, makeup is not a moral issue.

Wear makeup. Don’t wear makeup. Smear yourself in bronzer like a rotisserie chicken. I genuinely do not care. But if nobody asked, maybe we can retire the strange little announcements.

We Need to Start Calling People Stupid Again

I find myself living in a strange moment in history where access to information has convinced many people that they possess expertise. A few searches here and there, a skim of a couple of articles—which I’m fairly certain most people don’t read properly anyway, because let’s be honest: people don’t read for comprehension anymore. They read for validation. Or maybe they watch a short video explanation that very few people actually make it to the end of. Suddenly, people with the attention span of a houseplant speak with the same confidence as those who have spent years studying a subject.

Searching, it turns out, is not the same thing as understanding.

God forbid you tell them that real expertise has always required something more demanding than curiosity and a search engine. Historians spend years learning how to read primary sources, understand historical context, and interpret conflicting accounts. Physicians train for years before diagnosing even the most common conditions. Scientists spend decades learning the methods that allow them to distinguish correlation from causation. Writers spend years learning how to research, structure arguments, and communicate ideas clearly. Yet the internet has loudly encouraged a cultural shift where familiarity with information is mistaken for mastery of it.

I experienced a small version of this temerity recently. After my father passed away early last year, my body began reacting in ways I had never experienced before. Insomnia returned like an old acquaintance who never learned how to leave. Night sweats felt like waterboarding sessions conducted by my own paralysis demon. Crying outbursts appeared out of nowhere—sometimes in the middle of a Macy’s cosmetic department.

To be fair, some lipstick swatches are criminal.

I should also mention that I’m not normally a crier.

The loss of simple pleasures, the inability to function like the well-oiled Victorian steam train I had previously convinced myself I was—it all started to add up. Grief, as it turns out, doesn’t just live in the mind. It often manifests physically.

After running a few tests, my doctor concluded that I was dealing with anhedonic depression. The tests came back normal. Human, even. Once treatment began, the physical symptoms gradually disappeared. I can’t deny that my body and face changed during that time, but I’m almost back on track now.

Anyhoo.

During this period, one friend became absolutely convinced she knew what was happening. Her first diagnosis was perimenopause. When that theory didn’t quite stick, the diagnosis quickly pivoted to PCOS. Yes—PCOS, the magical word women have been using the last couple of years to explain every symptom and inconvenience under the sun. The interesting part is that I was already under medical care and had discussed everything with my doctor.

Now, before someone’s polyester panties twist themselves into a catastrophic knot, let me say this clearly: there is nothing wrong with caring about someone’s health or asking questions. Concern is human. But there is a difference between expressing concern and insisting on a diagnosis after someone has already told you they are comfortable with the care they are receiving. Eventually, I had to tell her to back off because subtle hints, polite deflection, and my most reserved and couth responses were apparently not getting through.

This is what the internet has produced: the confident amateur. Someone who has gathered enough fragments of information to feel authoritative, but not enough depth to understand the limits of their knowledge.

And frankly, I think this is where we’ve gone wrong culturally. Somewhere along the way, we decided it was impolite to tell people when they are simply out of their depth. Instead, we nod politely while someone with fifteen minutes of Google research explains medicine, history, economics, or whatever topic they discovered that afternoon. We replaced honesty with endless politeness.

But sometimes the problem isn’t a difference of opinion. Sometimes the problem is that someone is being stupid. Not cruelly stupid. Not maliciously stupid. Just confidently, aggressively uninformed. And occasionally that deserves to be called what it is.

Because there is a difference between curiosity and competence. The internet has made the first easier than ever and the second somehow rarer. Access to information is one of the greatest achievements of the modern world. We carry the sum of human knowledge in our pockets. Unfortunately, we also carry the illusion that skimming that knowledge somehow makes us experts.

The internet is a remarkable tool. It can help you find information in seconds and expose you to ideas you might never have encountered otherwise. What it cannot do is replace years of study, training, experience, and intellectual humility. Historians still study sources. Doctors still study medicine. Scientists still study data. Writers still study language and ideas. Google studies your search history so it can sell you magnesium supplements and hormone-balancing tea.

Curiosity is admirable. Asking questions is healthy. Suggesting possibilities out of concern is human. But when someone tells you they are already under professional care and comfortable with that care, the respectful response is not to double down on your internet diagnosis. The respectful response is to step back.

And occasionally—when someone refuses to step back and insists on lecturing others about subjects they clearly do not understand—it may be time to revive a lost social skill: telling people they are being stupid.

Politely, if possible. Directly, if necessary.

The Violence of Silence: An Autopsy of a Vanishing Friend

Coffee is more than caffeine. It’s a ritual, a gesture, and a litmus test for generosity in an age of ghosting, swipes, and emotional bankruptcy.

On today’s episode of “How can I use mental health to justify my terrible behavior?”

Oh — did that offend you?
Good. Sit down. Let the candlelight flicker while you clutch your amethyst and mutter affirmations about your “boundaries.”

The New Spiritual Practice of Disappearing

When did it become normal to vanish into the night the moment life becomes inconvenient?
When did disappearing become a spiritual practice?
When did silence become the new love language?

We now live in an era where ghosting is marketed as self-care and avoidance is advertised as emotional intelligence. You send a message to someone you consider a friend and it takes them three to seven business days just to open it.

Apparently that’s “healing.”
Apparently you expecting basic communication is “toxic.”

Meanwhile they’re posting online every hour like Victorian ghosts rattling chains for attention.

You start wondering:
What did I do? Why am I being punished? Why am I being exiled to the outer darkness like a biblical pariah?

Let me answer that for you:
Absolutely nothing.
No wait — I’m wrong.

You did do something.

You were too understanding the first time.
Too forgiving the second time.
Too patient the fifteenth time.

You kept giving grace to someone who didn’t deserve that much of your spirit. You wanted to be the compassionate friend because you knew they “shut down” during episodes of depression, anxiety, spiritual crises, lunar cycles, Mercury retrogrades, and whatever else they blamed it on.

But eventually it becomes a pattern.
And God forbid you say anything. Suddenly they have “boundaries.”

My dear children of the night, it’s not boundaries.
It’s guilt-dodging wrapped in therapeutic jargon.

Why They Can Post but Still Not Answer You

Here’s the part nobody talks about:

Avoidants can post online, repost TikToks, dance on Instagram, comment on memes, scroll for hours… and still “not have the capacity” to answer you.

Why?
  • Posting online gives them dopamine without vulnerability
  • Scrolling requires no accountability
  • Public engagement doesn’t force honesty
  • Responding to you requires facing guilt and connection

You represent real intimacy. Online, they can stay superficial and safe.
With you, they’d have to be human.

Compassion Isn’t a Coffin

Before the armchair therapists rise from their Instagram altars, let me make something clear:

I am not heartless.

I have held trembling hands at 2 a.m.
I have listened to friends unravel like cheap thread.
I have sat with people whose minds were dim corridors with one flickering lightbulb.

I know suffering.
I’ve lived adjacent to it.
I’ve carried it.

But compassion is not a coffin I’m going to lie down in.

Loving someone doesn’t require self-sacrifice.
I can understand your trauma without letting you use it to avoid accountability.
I can acknowledge your depression without applauding your disappearing act.

Your struggle is real, but so is the wound you left in me.

Suffering explains behavior. It does not sanctify it.

Live, Laugh, Lexapro

Before the whataboutists assemble:

Yes, trauma is real.
Yes, depression is real.
Yes, anxiety is real.

But for the love of Live, Laugh, Lexapro, stop diagnosing every inconvenience as a disorder.
Get evaluated. Get medicated. Get help.
Don’t turn your friends into unpaid therapists.

Not for Nothing — The Leash Remains

Not for nothing, I’ve watched friendship after friendship dissolve under someone’s “bad week that never ends.”

Each time I tried to be patient.
Each time I excused their silence.
Each time, my understanding became a leash.

And that leash dragged me through dark hallways filled with self-doubt, whispering that I was unworthy and disposable.

Suffering does not give anyone the right to carve hollow spaces into the people who love them.

The Culture of Detachment

Why does this keep happening?

I have a theory:

We now live in a culture that worships detachment.
We call it healing.
We call it boundaries.
We call it alignment.

But really, it’s cowardice disguised as enlightenment.

People say:

“I’m busy.”
“I don’t owe anyone anything.”
“If you were a real friend, you’d understand.”

Nobody is that busy. We all carry our phones like rosaries.
We refresh notifications the way monks check prayer hours.

And yes, someone will insist:
“I only use email and I check it once a day.”

They’re lying and ignoring you in advance.

We glamorize detachment because it photographs well on social media.
In real life, it’s just loneliness with a ring light.

A Letter to the Avoidants

To all avoidants:

It takes five seconds — not five hours, not five days — to write:

“I’m alive, but not in the right headspace.”

You can need space and still communicate.
You can be depressed and still apologize.
You can be overwhelmed and still send a sentence.

Healing isn’t a hall pass to abandon people.

Don’t complain about having no friends when we watched you loosen every leash yourself.

The Graveyard of Lost Connections

We cannot build a compassionate world on the corpses of connections we were too anxious to maintain.

When avoidance finally runs out of excuses, what remains isn’t peace. It’s isolation.

Deafening isolation.

The kind that echoes when you realize you pushed away the very people who would have walked through fire for you.

PSA

This piece reflects my opinion and lived experience.
It is not a diagnostic manual.
Mental health is real.
Trauma is real.
Avoidance is real.

So is basic accountability.

If this resonates with you — good.
If it offends you — ask yourself why.

Author’s Note

If you see yourself in these shadows, sit with it.
Light a candle.
Listen for the echo.

Not every disappearance is a mystery. Sometimes it’s a choice.
And sometimes the person you abandoned finally stops waiting at the door.

Cawffe and Complication

A dark, unflinching look at the violence of silence: avoidant friends, emotional withdrawal, and the hollow echoes they leave behind.

As we venture away from crueler times, also known as summer, I can’t help but yearn for that early morning cup of hot black coffee without breaking a sweat. Yes, I’m a psycho and drink hot coffee in 100-degree weather. I rarely drink iced coffee. It’s caffeinated optimism in a plastic cup. I prefer hot coffee because I like to be reminded that in pain and suffering, there’s always more where that comes from: steam, burn, bitterness, the complete suffering sampler.

Speaking of crueler times… Once upon a simpler, crueler time, people actually asked each other out for a cup of coffee. Imagine that: boiling water, burnt beans, and awkward eye contact. Now you’d think suggesting such a thing is akin to asking someone to sign over their soul. One must admit, though, that would at least be more efficient. And yes, I’m always very happy — sometimes even ashamedly smiling — at a cup of espresso. Don’t tell anyone.

     Regretfully, the world has managed to make one of the cheapest, most accessible drinks into a social Everest. Everyone’s a wise guy with hypothetical rock-climbing equipment and perpetually no funds. People swipe, scroll, ghost, and then post essays about “intentional dating” yet can’t stomach the horror of sitting across from another breathing human and holding a cup. A cursed chalice of caffeine, apparently too much to bear.

Don’t get me started on the phrase “intentional dating.” One dates with an intention, good or bad. Why the redundancy? It’s the same affliction that compels people to say, “ATM machine.”

And what if you’re not dating, you ask? What if you just want friends, acquaintances, accomplices, or an alibi? Here’s my metric: if you invite me into your home, I’ll know who you are by whether or not you offer me a cup of coffee. It’s tap water and grounds, but it’s also a litmus test. If you can’t extend even that, then congratulations- you’re not thrifty, you’re spiritually poor.

And yes, I can already hear the protests: “But what if we’re not a coffee-drinking house?” Congratulations, you’ve chosen asceticism. That’s your lifestyle, not my problem. Keep your herbal infusions. This is about coffee, the universal offering, the dark currency of basic human decency. If you don’t drink it yourself, fine. But a true host still keeps a jar of grounds in the pantry, the way one keeps candles for a blackout. Cue the classist police to scream into the void. Alas, I don’t need artisanal pour-overs or beans blessed by monks in Ethiopia. A mug, a gesture, and a little bitterness (in the cup, not just in your personality) will suffice.

But maybe that’s the real gothic tragedy. People would rather pretend they’re above coffee than admit they’re afraid of intimacy. The irony? Coffee is both the cheapest escape and the most honest confrontation. You sip, you talk, you risk the silence. Nothing glamorous about it. Just heat, liquid, and the subtle realization that the person across from you may not even deserve your caffeine.

So yes, in this age of emotional bankruptcy, the measure of generosity is a cup. And if you can’t manage that, then maybe the darkness you carry isn’t romantic or friendly – it’s just empty.

Everything I Didn’t Want to See

I didn’t expect a museum mirror to speak louder than most people in my life.

Framed in mahogany, engraved in gold, Adrian Piper’s Everything #4 waited quietly until I stood in front of it.

I took a photo. But it didn’t feel like a selfie. It felt like a warning.

It’s easy to forget how much we perform when we look into mirrors. Adjust. Pose. Smile. Hide. But this one? This one didn’t play along. It didn’t ask for aesthetics. It demanded honesty. The kind that forces you to see not who you want to be, but who you’ve been avoiding.

As I took a hard look at the phrase “Everything will be taken away”, I can’t help but wonder what conversation this piece of art is trying to strike with me. What was it igniting? Was it mocking me?

Last year, I watched a “golden opportunity” rot in real time because I wouldn’t script someone else’s redemption arc with my pen. They called it a project. I call it a performance, and I wasn’t about to play supporting ghost for someone’s hero complex. The money? Irrelevant. The contract? Blessedly airtight, like a saint’s relic under lock and stained glass.

Or was it the fact that, before one surgery could even happen, I had to make sure a mysterious mass wasn’t something dramatic. It wasn’t. Just two surgeries in three months. My body didn’t get a break. Neither did my spirit.

Speaking of spirit, you know who decided to become one? My best friend and gossip bitch. He left this plane with a kind of audacity I still haven’t forgiven. I now keep a list of songs and bands I can’t play unless I’m ready to fall apart.

Oh, Maureen. It could be worse. You have your health, your family, and a roof over your head.

That’s what I always tell myself. Not today though. I don’t want to think about silver linings. I don’t want to think about glasses half full. How could I when I am left with lead linings and empty glasses?

Shall I be grateful my world only half-collapsed instead of imploding entirely? It’s not comfort. It’s dismissal dressed as wisdom.

How egotistical of me?! As I look in the mirror, I realize it’s a cheap way to dodge my own pain while sitting in the discomfort of it.

I tell no one.

I say nothing.

Everything will be taken away.
When, though?

My Cross, Your Burden

It was a normal day when I decided to upload a picture with an excerpt from my book on one of my social media platforms. It pertained to my protagonist’s footwear and an excerpt from one of Twice The Demise’s chapters. I quoted the following: “What I considered a career, you considered a fault.” This statement was uttered by Polly, the protagonist, to a former beau. They ran into each other (like we all do with our exes) and, terse but not unkind, words were exchanged. He could not accept the fact that she was working with the dead. The unconventional job of an undertaker was one of the major reasons for their fall-out.

Not giving it a second thought, I posted and went on my merry way. The post received likes and maybe a comment. Lo and behold, my inbox had over twenty messages. Followers, from readers to friends, were in my DMs telling me stories relating to this statement. I wondered, if one related so much to this, why not comment publicly? It was a fair question. I was no relationship expert. The common answer they all had was -they didn’t want to openly share their experiences on Instagram. Most of these people had public accounts with their exes always lurking with a ‘finsta’. I learned that a Finsta is a fake Instagram account mostly used by people who no longer are in your life but still want to know what is going on with you…. complicated much? Followers did not want these people to know how much it still hurt. Social mores kind of dictates that with airing out one’s dirty laundry. I get it.

You may love the idea of dating a doctor, but can you handle their hours? How about a ballroom dancer who has to be in close proximity to the opposite sex all the time? How about an artist who paints naked portraits? An undertaker who reeks of death? I gave a few extreme examples due to their social allure. These career paths exude some type of charm and whimsicalness but become repulsive to our significant other. The realization of the work and dedication these careers entail may be a rude wakening. The significant other begins to view our lifestyle as a burden to their insecurities. Alas, the curse of romanticizing everything!

This is no different than wanting a wedding but not a marriage. Wanting to beat Joey Chestnut without a commitment to gastritis. Wanting to bear children but not parent them. Wanting to have a house but not being able to keep up with the mortgage. The list is endless. In a nutshell, we want what we can’t have and sometimes have what we can’t handle; or what we thought we could handle.

To all the exes….

No, my career is not your cross to bear.

Don’t go laying your insecurities on my cross.