kate

Age 31

2024: In May I finally bought a car. I've lived in Boston for the last 7 years without one. It was a horrendous ordeal where we had a simple plan to go to a local dealer and buy a shitty 2007 Toyota but at the last minute my partner's uncle stepped in and told us to go to his guy in another state. We went there, met the mechanics, and ended up buying a salvaged car 10 years newer for the same price. Because it was out of state though, we had to pay and do the bill of sale and title and everything by mail, then figure out how to get it registered in Massachusetts, get car insurance, get the RMV form signed by an insurance agent, pick up the plates, pay taxes, etc etc. About a month after buying the darn thing we finally ubered down to the place and picked up the car. I took a picture and sent it to my family with the caption "MY CARRRRRRRR". I found out later that at that moment, my mom and dad had been in an accident while driving my old car back home in Texas. When they saw my text, they turned to each other and said "how did she know???"

2023: In 2023 my partner moved to a town further from the city for work. In September of that year I decided to move in with him. My apartment for the past couple years before that was my favorite one. It had been only a couple blocks from his mom's house (where he had lived), it was a cheap (for the location) little one bedroom with a fire escape we could sit outside on and nice sunny windows for growing plants. I loved it, it was "my" place. The fact that I had to leave was devastating, and especially because I was leaving it for a shitty little town with no gym or movie theater or good restaurants where nothing was happening and the apartment was bare and ugly with gross green carpet and a nasty bathroom, and not even a tub to soak in. To top it all off, for months I had been looking for a different apartment near the train station that we would both move into so he could move out of the shitty one and I could still get to work downtown. I was doing this essentially alone because he was too focused on work to help. He was too focused on work to help me pack or organize the move, and I had almost signed a lease for a place twice the price when he told me to back out of it because of the smoking/vaping clauses in the lease. It sounds terrible, I know. I'm not making him sound very good, and I was extremely angry at the time, but looking back it was the right thing. We would've been able to afford it but only just barely, and it would've been less space honestly.

2022: This was the second year I lived in that perfect apartment by myself. At work I had a lot of friends (who have since been laid off unfortunately) and a lot of them lived in the same area as me. We organized a couple "house crawls" between a few of our houses, one of which was mine and another of which was my neighbor who shared a fire escape. So everyone arrived at their house and then at a certain point stepped out of their bathroom window to walk across the fire escape to my kitchen, where I had made nachos for everyone. It felt amazing to have friends and be throwing a party. A similar crawl happened around Halloween and I get them mixed up in my head, but at one of these everyone ended up trying to solve the codes in this wooden puzzle book on my living room floor for hours. It was like my ideal social experience, I miss and crave it.

2021: I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for the first time in my life this year. I also finally worked up the courage to ask for a testosterone prescription. The endocrinologist was really uncomfortable to talk to. It was a televisit and she demanded my video be on. I was outside because it had been scheduled during work and I didn't want to be overheard, but it was also chilly out and I had my hood up, so it felt very illicit. She was asking me questions like she wanted to confirm I knew what T did and that it would be what I wanted. And I'll be honest, I didn't know if it would be (it wasn't), but that's why I was trying it out. All my answers felt deeply embarrassing. Anyways I got it prescribed and then the next soul crushing thing I had to do was go to the pharmacy and pick it up, and the thing is that it cost fucking $326 so I got a goodrx coupon to bring it down a little. Well obviously when you show up picking up a prescription with a girl name but the scrip is for testosterone their first thought is that it must be some kind of mistake. And then I'm there at the front of the line with everyone waiting behind me and they're like uhh are you sure?? and then I also have my little goodrx coupon for them to plug in so that's a whole deal they need to call over another pharmacist for help with, and that caused problems the next time I went to go pick up a different prescription and I had to tell them to switch it back to my regular insurance. But I got Androgel. And wrote the date I started it in the fog on my bathroom mirror. After a couple weeks I got scared that my voice was changing and my eyebrows were darker. I was also getting bad cramps. So I stopped taking it as regularly and heavily as prescribed, but I kept it around past its expiration date to use at times when the dysphoria started to hit hard again.

2020: I finally graduated with my Master's in engineering and got a job, at a company I still work at, though things have evolved. I had actually applied to the company pre-pandemic for a different role, but they were hiring people for a team formed specifically in response to the pandemic, so in a way I have covid to thank for the last 4 years of my employment. I don't remember my first day as much as the interview and little I knew about how to interact with the recruiter vs the hiring manager or how many stages there would be, and how awkward it felt when they revealed it was actually for a "more junior" role for a contractor instead of being a full time employee. Like I hadn't qualified to be a "real" engineer but I did qualify to be a meat shield between them and covid. But the joke was on them because the contracting company actually miscalculated how much they wanted us to be paid and the hourly rate came out to about $104k/yr. It was wild to get out of college and immediately be making 6 figures doing a job that did not feel like it should be 6 figures, in the middle of a pandemic to boot. Anyways now I'm a real employee and making essentially the same lol.

2019: I did acid for the second time in my life on the 4th of July as part of my partner's friend's tradition. It started off nice, out in a park by a lake, but then everyone decided to go to Wegman's for some reason RIGHT as we were all peaking. Let me tell you, do NOT go into a Wegman's on acid. It was so overstimulating. I remember needing to go to the bathroom and passing a rack of magazines and the repeating faces freaking me out. And just telling myself "I'm not gonna freak out, I'm not gonna freak out" while I did my business and got out. Then everyone wanted to ORDER FOOD for SOME FUCKING REASON which required TALKING TO PEOPLE and REMEMBERING WHAT TO SAY and I was like man I cannot do this. I tried to calm down outside and my partner ended up walking me back to the friend's house to chill out. (I learned later that the other two guys were also freaking out at this time but trying not to show it. lmao) When I closed my eyes I was seeing like a hyperrealistic hyperbolic burger bulging towards me and folding back in on itself. At a certain point though I looked at my partner's eyes glowing in the light coming through a dingy window and realized how gorgeous he would look in a brown suit. I told him this repeatedly and I stan by it. He needs a brown suit. He would totally rock a brown suit.

2018: My phone reminds me of this often because for some reason it's the only thing I ever put into iCloud and it got copied onto my new phone while everything else I ever took pictures of I've manually moved onto my computer. But anyways my partner and I went to Cape Verde to visit an old couple he's friends with who are kind of like his surrogate parents. I tried learning Portuguese, and some of the Portuguese creole they speak there but didn't get very far and ended up never using it. We stayed on Mindelo, and in my mind the whole time I was fantasizing that I was in the Abarat, a book series I liked as a kid that centers on an archipelago where each island represents an hour of the day. I remember being most struck by the buildings there, which are old and colorful and gorgeous. Stray dogs roam everywhere, and there was a gas station down the road where you could get a coffee (espresso) and a ham toasty for a dollar each. Truly ideal. Also everyone drinks grog. We visited the top of a mountain, and there was a grog stand up there. And we had shots of grog. At 10am. On top of a mountain.

2017: This is when I moved to Boston, and I have a lot of memories from this year, a lot of goodbyes and a lot of hellos. But I think the one I mainly associate with it is walking in my old neighborhood one night after a rain, and listening to Darkest Dreaming by David Sylvian, and wondering what was next for me. I had orchestrated this massive life change entirely by myself and had absolutely no clue where it would lead. I was kind of mourning what I was leaving behind, which wasn't much, but I had worked very hard to make myself comfortable living at my parents' house, finding old friends who still lived nearby, finding hobbies and making art to keep myself sane.

2016: The day after Trump was elected I went to the gym even though I was a little scared to. And yeah there was a guy in a MAGA shirt there. Probably more people as well who were Trump supporters, considering it was Texas. But nothing really happened. I had started working out during a summer internship where everyone I was rooming with would go to the gym together after work, and kept up the habit after I finished it. I was thinking, my body is the only thing I really have any control over. And I bet it's capable of things I've never really even tried. So I would work out just to feel in control of something when it seemed like the whole world had gone insane.

2015: I graduated from college and was still clinging to this lab job I had on campus while I tried to figure things out. My boyfriend at the time's parents had offered to let me live at his house (with them) since I could no longer live on campus, until I could find an apartment or a job back in my hometown. But uh... I didn't really. His mom was really judgemental and controlling, even though she would be outwardly nice to me, and I could tell my presence was annoying her but my ex kept insisting it was ok. There were a couple times when she cracked and threw a big tantrum. Once was on his dad's birthday. She would say the most targeted yet indirect things to get under his and my skin, and it would escalate over the course of the evening to full on screaming at him later. I didn't know what to do except to walk out to the curb and cry and think about throwing myself in front of a car. It was traumatizing. But she had her own trauma going on, and abusive exes and even crazier sisters, and there was this whole drama while I lived there and his grandfather was dying that was just awful for everyone involved. Anyways in November everything came to a head and she threw a massive fit that culminated in kicking him and me (his "liberal-ass girlfriend") out. I remember packing and feeling weirdly calm, like the fear had pushed past some limit and saturated and become nothing. I stayed at a labmate's apartment that night and for the next couple days, quit my job and moved home. I tried to pay his mom $600 for letting me stay as long as she did but she didn't accept it. I accidentally left a box of my dad's records there in my hurry to get out. And he broke up with me a week after my birthday in 2016. So it goes.

2014: My mid-college years are kind of a blur. I was on tumblr a lot during this time so most of my memories are online ones. I have to go through my blog archive... oh! here's one: around Christmas I decided to dye my hair powder blue, something I'd wanted to try since I was 14. I have pictures from Christmas 2014 of my hair when it was bleached blonde, so it might have actually been in the new year that I dyed it. But it was a whole affair where my friend Alyssa, who I have known since we met in Sunday school as children, and reconnected with post-highschool, volunteered to help me bleach, tone and dye it since she'd been dyeing hers teal for a couple years I think. She came over and we started with a little strip by my ear and went to Whataburger late at night while it was developing. It felt like such an adventure.

2013: In my head this is the "best year of my life" though I don't know if it has been surpassed. In these years I had a habit of writing to myself every new year with an accounting of what had passed--which classes I took, friends I made online, things I did with my ex--and I remember looking back at 2013 and thinking it was particularly good. In the winter there was a freak ice storm and we took lots of pictures and slid around on the iced-over street at night. I emailed a professor asking about meeting to discuss something and then he didn't respond and I figured it was my fault so I sent another a month later like "Hi, did you get my email? or did it not warrant a response?" not meaning any disrespect but he got really offended and said he didn't like my tone, which was incredibly embarrassing

2012: I moved into an apartment with new roommates and I guess I had put that I was really introverted in the roommate matching survey, because they were all kind of... strange. One was a chess master who didn't speak much English, stayed in her room, and had a sleep schedule more aligned with her home country. One was literally never there. I would only hear her shower in our shared bathroom but I don't think I ever saw her face. I just know she had a couch in her room which was funny because we had NO furniture in the main room, just a camp chair and a TV on the fucking floor. And the third roommate was a real character. I liked her, and I think she was autistic. She definitely was. While we were moving in she spent the whole time telling me about her drawings of pokemon and creatures of her own creation, to the point that my parents ended up doing most of the furniture assembly while I just listened. She was very Christian and wrote Naruto/Harry Potter fanfiction and read gay transformers smut (even though she disapproved of being gay). She couldn't cook at all but also didn't seem to care how things tasted, and would eat things like beans on a plate or chicken breaded with wheat germ. One time the police came to our apartment because her dad hadn't heard from her in weeks and wanted to check she was ok. She was very sweet, but I think on some level deeply sad. One time she found a praying mantis and we both got really excited about it. I think about her sometimes and hope she's ok, and that she got over the Christian homophobia thing.

2011: I graduated from high school. I also made my tumblr account. A few of my friends had them, but I think the deciding factor was my friend Chris. I don't even remember how we started being friends or why he shared his tumblr with me but we're still bros to this day. It was full of personal writing, and he was (and still is) very depressed and thoughtful. I would tease him about his sad posts about his crush, who I had deduced was the first chair violinist in our high school orchestra (and valedictorian). This is jumping ahead a bit but I feel like I can't talk about her without mentioning that she was brilliant, incredibly kind, and died suddenly and somewhat mysteriously in 2017, and it shocked everyone but I think hit him particularly hard. Anyways. That's how it all started. 13 years of a website becoming an indelible part of my brain.

2010: Pokemon Black and White were released and all of my friends were going to buy it and play together since there was a feature where you could visit a town in someone else's game. It was the first Pokemon game I had bought since Crystal. We played it in the orchestra room before school and I have a picture somewhere of everyone lined up on their gameboys on the band bleachers.

2009: In 2009 I was 16 and caved to the pressure to make a Facebook account. I remember being at a friend's house and her showing me everyone's posts and that you could poke people and make a status and "become a fan" of things. I didn't like pictures of myself, so I think my profile pic was just a random abstract picture or a character or something for a while until one of my friends took a random picture of me on the bus from a high enough angle with lighting that made my skin look bone white that I deemed artistic enough to be acceptable.

2008: Either seeing The Dark Knight in theaters and the ensuing cultural obsession, or the Romney/Obama election. I was unfortunately a Republican-by-virtue-of-my-parents at that time and distinctly remember sitting with my friend (same one who took the Facebook picture actually) on the bus home and her trying to convince me Obama was a better choice. And she started chanting "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!" and I chanted "Mitt Rom-ney! Mitt Rom-ney!" back. Extreme cringe. That entire year was cringe for me tbh.

2007: I had a really close friend group at this time, and my internal life revolved around Kingdom Hearts, Eragon, and the Neopets RP boards. My best friend was a girl named Lori. Between me, her, and our friend Nicole, we had all these silly schemes and plans and inside jokes and fictions. My mom worked in the front office, and one day when I had been home sick she brought me back a big piece of sketchbook paper in a ziploc bag, and it was a get well soon card they had drawn for me and had everyone we usually sat with at lunch sign, with things like my favorite characters telling me to eat soup but not with a fork. She said they had really missed me that day. I still have it. Between 8th and 9th grade Lori's dad kicked her mom and siblings out. They came and picked her up from a sleepover we were having at Nicole's house and I never saw her again.

2006: This year sucked. Being 13 sucks the most, of all ages. I was a star student and my grades were dipping and I could tell my dad was disappointed. He was also embarrassing me by doing things like emailing my science teacher to say I found the classes understimulating, something I had never said, and certainly didn't want my science teacher to think I had said. I got an 81 on a report card and was crying in the car about it and my mom told me, I forget what spurred it, that my dad had said (about me) "maybe she's not as smart as I thought she was." I was really mad at him for years for that and kind of still am. But I'm also mad at her for telling me.

2005: This would've been 6th grade so probably sitting in the computer labs waiting for my mom to get off work (secretary for the science department) and drive me home. This is where I would absorb internet culture. I learned of weebls-stuff via the popularity of badgerbadgerbadger.com and would watch a lot of those videos, I watched the Numa Numa kid for the first time here, the Emo song, the Llama song, and there was this geography game everyone in my social studies class had become obsessed with that also had a chatroom feature. I would go on there and pretend to be a girl from Ireland for some reason. The same usernames would be there often and I would be different people each time and collect information about them for fun. It turned out one person went to a nearby highschool and one day I DM'd her with everything I'd collected and she said "what the hell" to which I responded by telling her I had pretended to be all these people and finished by saying "be careful what you say on the internet" or something and then never logged onto that site again. I felt edgy and hackery at the time but in retrospect it was all really silly superficial info so maybe her response was less one of shock and horror and more like "wtf yeah and? why are you telling me this"

2004: Bush/Gore. Again I was like compulsory Republican as an 11 year old so I was all for Bush getting re-elected and couldn't have articulated why. It was everywhere, I remember seeing the news reporting on stupid internet animations people had made making fun of the candidates. I had one friend whose parents were Democrats who would disagree with me and made me think even just the slightest bit about why I believed what I believed. She was also an atheist, and I remember thinking "that's craaaazy I didn't even know that was an option" and thinking she was wrong but also incredibly brave for having the guts to go against the grain.

2003: In 4th grade they got rid of the GT program at my school and the GT teacher became one of the regular 4th grade teachers. I had been in GT and loved her but I wasn't in her class, and I was jealous of the people that were. I felt like I "hadn't made the cut" somehow. Anyways my actual singular strongest memory from this time is a day when we had swapped classrooms so I was finally in her class and I was trying to see how far I could lean back in my chair without falling. I managed to get my entire legs cross-legged up on the desk before I started to fall. I do not remember what we were learning, I think it was grammar stuff I already knew.

2002: This would've been 3rd grade. I was old enough to enter the spelling bee alongside the 4th and 5th graders and managed to win 2nd place. The word I lost on was "barracks", which I had never encountered before, and the announcer's accent made it sound like "berx" to me. I still have the trophy, it's shaped like a bee holding a banner that says "spelling". When anyone asks me what achievement I'm most proud of I'm always tempted to say this.

2001: I mean, 9/11 I guess. We were at recess and they brought us in and sent us home, and the rumor was that someone had robbed the bank across the street again since that was the reason we got pulled in from recess once before. But also, I think this was the year my dad made us a family website. He put some artistic flair into it and had it so the main page was a picture of our front door that you clicked to go inside. One page was a picture of him with his head turned upside down so his beard was his hair and his bald head was his chin. One was a picture of the bricks on the side of our house and he wanted to make it so you could click each one and they'd fly away. I found it on the wayback machine once and only one picture still survives, of my mom and sister and I standing in the kitchen all wearing the same old navy shirt with an American flag on it. I think that's why I think it must have been 2001.

2000: The first thing that comes to mind is getting the new Backstreet Boys album, Black and Blue, in my Christmas stocking. I don't know why I loved them so much, my music taste has changed drastically since then but I was obsessed to the point of arguing with my cousin over whether Backstreet Boys or NSYNC was the better boy band. I don't remember if I was mildly disappointed with Black and Blue as compared to Millenium, or if it was just the name/cover that disappointed me. I think the latter, because I recall thinking the actual songs were slightly better.

1999: Obligatorily, I want to say staying up to watch the y2k fireworks on New Year's Eve. But honestly it's probably everyone I knew at school getting hyped up about the new Backstreet Boys album Millenium. They would sing Larger Than Life at lunch and I'd be like WHAT ARE Y'ALL SINGING and they'd tell me I wasn't allowed to know or sing it unless I had the album. Ok now the brief Backstreet Boys obsession is starting to make sense to me, maybe it was a social status thing. But also Larger Than Life was a good song, I think it holds up but maybe that's just nostalgia speaking. They played it a lot at the roller rink I remember.

1998: It's a pity this doesn't go back a year earlier or I'd say the birth of my sister. I was 5 years old in 1998 and if I can summon up a single memory from that time, I think it's that I either started Tae Kwon Do or quit it after having done it for a year. I remember being a year too young, so probably the former, 4 seems way too young to be starting Tae Kwon Do. So yes, this is the year I started. I was so excited for it but I think I remember there had been a fire on the same street as the studio (maybe in the studio itself?) the day I was supposed to start, so it was delayed. I remember having a dream about it, that was like an aerial view of the streets we'd take to drive there, and the smoke billowing up from an unseen fire. Either on the day I started, or some other day when my mom was dropping me off, we found a little figurine on the ground in the parking spaces out front: a dog made of straw wound around sticks and colored with little black polka dots. I still have it and it's one of my most prized possessions. I always wonder who made it.

1997:

Additional comments: thank you, this felt good to get out