Loft Life Residency Week #9
The final one, running it up, and eating it burnt.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I woke up crying. I finished my dream crying and woke up crying in real life. The crying like this I knew would be inevitable. I have been sleeping on his side of the bed. I’m back in the room we shared since 2022. I am getting used to being alone in many ways, again. I called Johncarlo the night before so I had a witness as I burned sage for a new piece of antique furniture I bought off Facebook Marketplace that I kept finding random notes in, which were written in differing letters and numbers that spooked me. I stayed up until 1am.
The real haunting is being here again: moving back to the same apartment I shared with him. Every act of domesticity feels devastating and freeing equally. I started cooking for myself again for the first time since living in the closet I sublet for 2 months, when I used to consult Bon Appétit and New York Times Cooking a few times a week to make dinner for us. I lined the drawers of my antique dresser with vinyl covering, knowing this is something he would’ve done gladly for me. I don’t own a drill to hang up any of my frames, since it was his. Moving through these acts of care for myself is the key to getting through to the other side of all this. I just wish it could hurry up.
I’ve told my friends recently that I’m entering my nun era because I have no drugs, no alcohol, no partner, no roster, nothing: just me and my devotion to my missions, projects, work, and insanity. Every day I am so emptied out, so lessened of myself every day. Sometimes I can’t tell if it’s for better or for worse. Something I’ve resorted to saying to myself is: this is going to feel hard because you did the hard thing.
Rarely do I have days like this, but they still come. When they do, they are a 40,000 ton elephant that sits on me until I give in and acknowledge that there is a 40,000 ton elephant sitting on me. Tomorrow will be better but, my God, I will be different for it.
Ins for 2026:
Devotion
Running towards it
Running it up
Discipline
Outs for 2026:
Cowardice
Big talk, no action
A Quiet Life
I get a sick joy from eating food that is almost burnt. Not burned, burnt. Like, crispy and then crispt. I love when food borders on being so blackened it almost feels dangerous, like what I’m eating has been so chemically and physically altered in a science experiment gone awry but has perfectly reached its prime and realized manner. This is the correct way to eat it. I love biting into something so solid and firm, followed by an intense crunch that might break my teeth in half. I love when food borders on too much salt, too, making me salivate while feeling my blood sugar become electrocuted. Someone told me this might be a byproduct of smoking, that my tastebuds are fried, but I’m too noncommittal of a smoker to have that affect me like this. I just love trying to gross myself out and failing. What’s fun is my desire to always get as close as I can to disgust while finding even more pleasure in it through the altered state. It’s like in Napoleon’s letter to Josephine when he writes, “Home in three days. Don’t bathe.” To some, this would be grotesque but to me it shows the true devotion: to overextend what is natural, and to want something so much you want it as steeped in its essence as possible, so you may savor it and know it more intimately beyond what is expected of it.
When I am wallowing in self-pity I worry that I am in a cross between acting like the lead characters in The Worst Person in the World and Frances Ha. Both are movies I love for different reasons, but feel like easy ways for me to bully myself into feeling childish or trying to guilt myself into feeling selfish. However, I do feel like both endings are relevant to me currently: Julie attending to her own passion and what she can make for herself, and Frances moving into her own corner of the world (and literally her own apartment). The same thing is happening to me. My passions are requiring a lot of me at the moment, and my landlord is letting me have the apartment entirely in my name. I also run through the street like Frances a lot, both out of running late and sometimes just to do it because it feels fun and to feel your own humanity coursing through your veins. If I had a mailbox like Frances does, mine would say Grayce To.
I have a great feeling about this year ahead. For New Years 2025 I was asleep by 10pm. This year I was up, in a coat check line, with my friends, some new and some old. My feet hurt and I stayed up until 4am. I came home to no one and carried in nothing but my purse and confetti glued to my heels. I am thankful to every part of me that died, lived, survived, and flourished this past year. I am so grateful to be here in this minimally decorated apartment, sitting on my floor with my yoga mat as my chair. I had no idea this is what my life would look like at 28; one of the surprises when you didn’t think you’d live this long is every year is its own surprise. I’m going to do everything I said I will do, and more.
I just got back some film I took of my closet-room, and I will not miss it. Maybe in 20 years from now, as I look around and think of how wild and crazy this period of my life was, I’ll romanticize it and realize it as the turning point it was: how I started over and leaned on everyone I know to do it. I hit 10 years in New York last year and now this feels like my hometown; I can’t go a day without running into someone I know. This closet room residency I made could’ve only happened here, through randomly saying yes to this situation with a mutual on Instagram.
Something that is essential now in this new space, and post residency, is my ongoing promise to myself. In said promise, I bought a desk: my own dedicated space to work. I bought it from a younger woman who lived in a luxury building in Midtown and went through an extra borough during my trek to get it. I carried it on the subway, watching everyone watch me pick it up and carry it on my shoulder back to Brooklyn. I have a calendar I received as a free gift from Azaela’s that I have on it currently. It has one drawer which now contains the following: my tarot deck, two highlighters, two sharpies, a book of stamps, a stack of Post-It notes, two pens, letter envelopes, and a modest stack of printer paper. I did not have the room in this apartment before for my own desk. May I continue to make room for myself, however and wherever I can.
Before wrapping up I have to be explicit: this would have never worked or happened if my friends did not consistently step up every day to help me. None of the things in my life would be happening right now without any of my friends, locally and afar. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all and I love you all very much. This is for y’all. <3
Y’all - it’s the last one of the residency. I don’t know when I’ll write here again or what it will consist of, but this has been such a beautiful exercise in getting to know my mind, my writing, and my tastes more than I did. Some weeks were harder than others and some had essays flow that were in my body for half a decade.
I got two playlists this week. One is the residency playlist for this week, and the other is my playlist I use to pump myself up when I don’t feel 100% like the boss I am (I’m literally a business owner wtf). Feel free to enjoy both. Let’s run this year up.
And for my final act of love - stay cooking.