the opposite of RBF

reflections from a sick bed

I am the type of sick where it feels like my whole head and face are an open wound. I am the type of sick where I am reminded that I, too, am a human in a physical body. A body that needs to rest. It sounds silly, really, perhaps concerning to the mentally healthy in the room—but I enjoy being sick, every now and again. It is grounding. I imagine that people whose nervous systems allow them, naturally, to rest probably don’t understand what I mean. People who don’t feel like they have to be everywhere doing everything all the time. People who fall asleep easily. I am not one of these lucky few, but sickness forces me to be.

I’ve been meditating every day. It sucks. I’ve been doing it for months, and it hasn’t really gotten much easier. But I’m also bad about recognizing my own progress, so I don’t know, maybe it has. You know how before a certain age, babies don’t have object permanence? Like, if they see a ball but then mom hides the ball behind her back, the ball ceases to exist for them? I used to say I was that way but with emotions. I lack emotional permanence. When I’m happy, I forget that sadness exists. When I’m sad, I forget that it’s possible for me to be light. I guess that’s why I started meditating.

Anyway. I do know that for the first few months that I meditated, I felt a big heaviness, a crushing weight, permeating from the left side of my body and dragging me down. It was accompanied by a feeling that, when translated to words, sounded something like: there is something deeply wrong with me. I am inherently, incurably flawed. I talked to my therapist about this feeling, and she speculated about where it could have come from—the usual suspects: childhood, parents, society. None of this felt really helpful. I continued to meditate and feel this left side heaviness, though, and eventually it passed. It doesn’t weigh me down anymore. I stopped seeing my therapist, too. Actually, it was the first time I broke up with a therapist instead of ghosting, so I guess that’s tangible growth. I told her, face to face: I don't really feel like I’m benefiting from this right now. She told me: I’ve seen a lot of growth in you in the past year, I agree that you don’t really need me anymore. I think we can pause our sessions for now. It felt strange, because I don’t know if I ever really needed her, you know? Maybe I just needed to say stuff out loud. But there’s that emotional permanence again.

I was walking around the West Village yesterday after my yoga class, a neighborhood I have been avoiding like the Instagram of an ex boyfriend since I moved out 1 year ago, when an emaciated older woman stepped into my path, eyes concerned and bulging under a black beanie. She looked something like Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter, and sounded like her, too, if Professor Trelawney was from the Bronx. “Listen to the left side of your mind, listen to what it’s saying to you!” she wailed. “The left side is your feminine side! It’s trying to speak to you! You have to listen to it!” This was right after my yoga class, and I feel it important to mention this as I always feel somewhat high after these classes. Very spiritually open, and all. I stopped, in shock. She proceeded to tell me that she was highly intuitive, and that she could tell that I was, too. She asked me to sit with her, and I did, hoping that no one who knew me would walk by and see me sitting on the curb with this little old woman who had, at this point, thrust three crystals into the palm of my hand. She asked me who exactly in my family had a thyroid condition, and I shuddered. My mom. She nodded. She told me, “your last name will go global within the next year,” and I felt tears rising. She gave me 5 rose petals and told me to bathe in them in order to ward off the spiritual disease I had inherited, that would manifest as either intestinal or cervical cancer. She said that if I took the bath, the disease would leave my body. And that ultimately, she saw me living to my 90s, a long and healthy life. She told me to make three wishes, I did. Then she asked me for $85 for the reading. I ended up sending her $25 because, psychic or not, she seemed like she could do with an extra $25. I took the bath last night.

i wish my bathtub was more aesthetic and less mold, but what is one to do in a building from 1900

I have this thing, I guess, this look about me, that encourages strangers to approach me on the street. It’s been happening ever since high school. One of my friends called it the opposite of RBF (resting bitch face). I reflected on this while walking back home from my street psychic encounter. Do I have the kind of trusting, gullible face that encourages people to try and con me? Or is it the kind of open face that a psychic would recognize as being responsive to a reading in the middle of the street?

Either way, I don’t think I should listen to the left side of my mind. I’m glad it shut up, actually. But Professor Trelawney did bring something else to my attention; my deepest, darkest dream. To write, and to be acknowledged for my writing. To inspire others through my words. I don’t know if my last name will ever go global, like she said, but I know that I want it to. And maybe that’s enough.

I once saw a note on here with thousands of likes that said, essentially, not to make Substack your diary. And that’s a lot like what this sounds like, right? But what can I say, I love an unreliable female narrator with a confessional tone. I read

Girl Insides

and feel baptized. I feel clean, I feel seen. And maybe reading this will inspire someone else to write, who knows. What I do know is that I don’t appreciate negativity, and I don’t appreciate prescriptions for How To Write. If you want to make your Substack into one long unhinged journal entry, please, be my guest. If you want to make it a polished think piece, all the power to you. We listen and we don’t judge, and we read the things that call to us.

All I know is that good writing, like all good art, feels the same to me in that it reveals truth. The truth of the human soul. The best, most delicious words come together when a writer’s soul successfully peeks out from under the letters. You can only convey so much in words, and truth is the magic that turns them into art.

What are we to deduce from this? That the human soul is, of course, inherently, incurably, beautiful. Even when flawed. Especially when flawed. Maybe that’s what she meant about listening to my left side.