After 2020, I started to use Instagram more as a kind of public scrapbook. It wasn’t just about sharing photos—it was about writing the captions to contextualize them, using writing to process my thoughts like I always had. Sometimes I knew what I was working through. Sometimes I didn’t. It felt necessary, as a means to cut through noise and connect. In a way, it’s pushed me toward recognizing my creative self as multi-disciplinary.
This piece is made from 2021 to 2024 captions, which, upon reflection, has been a very hard and important growth period. Some posts are nearly intact, others trimmed or rearranged, but all are in my voice, from moments when I was just trying to make sense of what was happening. One thread pulled from a giant archive, and the recurring themes written within it like DNA.
I’m hoping that, in examining the separate threads over time, I’ll see they’re all woven together. (Of course they are—they’re mine.) I guess it’s a study in my life’s constants and how they’ve shaped my POV and creative work.
Grief
Grief doesn’t move in a straight line. It loops, folds, shows up unexpectedly. One moment I’m watching a show, the next I’m wondering what my mom would think of streaming platforms and Real Housewives. One minute I’m editing a photo, the next I’m thinking about how she never got to go gray.
After 25 years, I’ve learned that grief is a shape-shifter. It shows me who I’ve been and what I’ve lost. It reminds me that I’ve loved deeply. That I still do.
When my grandma died, I found myself sorting through decades of photos: glossy prints, pre-iPhone snapshots, thousands of digital images. I made mini-collages to help it make sense. I kept thinking, “The photos say so much, and not enough.”
I’ve realized that rituals matter. Marking time matters. We need ways to say: I remember. I’m still here. You mattered. I matter.
I’ve also learned that we grieve more than just people. We grieve lives we didn’t get to live. Places we left. Versions of ourselves we had to outgrow. Some losses happen in a flash. Others unfold quietly over time.
Grief is one way I stay connected. To my mom. To my pug. To the person I used to be. To the person I’m still becoming.
Body/Self
My body changed slowly but all at once I felt it. I was the biggest I’ve been, and I felt the world noticing my body in a different way (but a way I have lots of experience with). Lingering looks. Bad vibes. A loss of my humanity. Every chair can feel like a cruel test.
Amid this new-old cycle, I stopped trying to make my body into someone else’s. I realized it had been through a lot with me—grief, depression, joy, growth, transitions. It was holding everything I hadn’t processed. And maybe it didn’t need to be fixed. Maybe it just needed to be heard and respected. And accepted. Unfortunately I never had much control over that.
For most of my life, I’ve had a hard time looking at photos of myself (and this will probably always linger). But there was a moment a few years ago when I looked at a photo and saw myself clearly from the outside—not as someone to shrink or edit, but as someone full of life and beauty. There was a glitch in my brain. I’ve been chasing it since, letting it pull me forward.
I’ve lost weight since these captions I’m sorting through, and I’m still fat. Still moving through a world that would rather I disappear completely. Still feeling the shifts in how people treat me differently—often unconsciously—based on size. But the clarity I gained in that heaviest season stays with me.
My body will continue to change again and again because I’m not in transition—I’m in relationship. My body is not a before or after. It’s just everything before and right now. And right now. And right now… Until it quits.
Love
I’ve spent long stretches of time alone. Sometimes it’s felt like a choice, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s been lonely. Sometimes it’s been beautiful.
I’ve stood on cliffs, boats, and balconies with only my own thoughts. I’ve watched sunsets and a whole lot of TV, alone. I’ve driven thousands of miles by myself. From all that I’ve learned that I want deep, meaningful community—but that I also don’t have to accept less than I deserve. I’ve learned that I can find joy in my own company. I’ve learned to raise the bar.
Sometimes love has looked like friends who remind me who I am. Sometimes it’s a shared joint on the couch, or a loving pause when a friend realizes I’ve stopped to take a picture. Sometimes it’s a memory of my mom’s voice, like when I “woo” watching basketball, or a really good hug, or a kind worker helping me pick out jeans at a store. Sometimes it has been romantic. Mostly not. But all of it matters.
There were times when it felt like life was on pause, like I was waiting for the rest of it to begin. I started to ask:What am I even in a hurry for? Who am I waiting for? What would it look like to stop waiting altogether? It’s strange to notice how much time passed while I was waiting.
Last summer a new kind of love arrived—the whirlwind kind, something I haven’t experienced before. It’s not a resolution, but a continuation and a deepening of my understanding of love. I want a life of connection and meaning. I want to co-create something that feels solid and alive. I want to feel joy and softness and fun. I want to feel chosen. But I also know that I am already whole.
Being partnered has brought new questions, new experiences, and new things to hold. It wasn’t an ending. Just a different kind of beginning. And for the most part I just don’t know how to write about it yet.
Memory/Place/Time
I’m drawn to revisiting places with large gaps of time in between—old neighborhoods, museum galleries, parks where I used to wander. I imagine all the versions of myself layered in those same spaces, overlapping like they’re transparent. That feeling of remembering while still being right here has always meant something to me.
I’ve walked the Brooklyn Botanic Garden paths as so many different versions of myself, with so many different people as company, during every season, stopping at every type of featured bloom. I imagine all of them happening at once, including all my future trips yet to come, taking up every corner of the gardens with a different warm memory. For a moment, each version of me comes together, present and at peace.
Certain places—certain moments—hold every version of me at once. I think that’s why I take so many photos. It feels like I’m capturing a little bit of the joy I was feeling in that second so I can remember it easily. Even when I don’t look back at them, they’re like proof that the joy happened. That I happened.
I’ve thought before about where all those photos will go someday, when I no longer have a need for a digital cloud. It reminds me of old photos in vintage stores—beautiful, perfect, momentary, and ultimately discarded. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe taking the photo is the act of honoring the moment. Maybe it doesn’t need to be more than that.
A single image or street corner or color in the sky can bring everything back. Time folds in on itself. I’ve noticed how often memories sneak up on me—not just of people I’ve lost, but of the different selves I’ve been. I think about my old childhood houses and hangouts. The apartments I’ve lived in. The bodies I’ve lived in. I think about the puzzle of memory and how some pieces are gone, but the picture still comes together. It still shows us something.
So much of my life has been about remembering—not just what happened, but who I was when it did. I try so hard to hold it all.
Go Forth &
The internet has made it possible to store decades of myself in a chaotic feed—captions, photos, notes, drafts, drawings. I’ve documented so much. It wasn’t always intentional, but it was always honest (maybe oftentimes too honest, though that’s kind of my brand). I was trying to make sense of things as they were happening. All along I’ve been marking time.
Looking back, it’s overwhelming. Not just the volume, but the terrain. So many versions of me, reaching out: Here’s what I’m feeling. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I don’t. Where do I go next? Can someone help me?
This is just one pass through one stack. As for the rest—journals, early-2000s blog posts and poems, photos, stories, drawings. I don’t know yet what form they’ll take. But I’m sifting. I’m distilling. I’m starting somewhere, even if that place is “in the middle.”
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