A note about this newsletter:
We’ve moved from Tinyletter to Substack but it’s still the same. Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain! She’s learning simple code.
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How y’all feelin out there? When was the last time you pondered your own mortality? You cried lately? Check yes or no: did you watch Last Chance U and spiral into doubt about your own outrageous hopes and dreams?
Bobby Bruce! Malik Henry! They all just want to make it in this world. 。゚( ゚இ‸இ゚)゚。
This week is all about big feels. More specifically, these articles are about feelings we’re often told not to feel. Anger. Homesickness. The urge to cry in public. But these feelings are like the hormonal pimple forming on your chin: painful and unavoidable. (Oh that pimple part may just be me.)
If you’re at all feeling sensitive, angry, lost, come sit at my table. I’ll let you decide which child of destiny you are when we karaoke this song.
Good Reads
Ask Polly: Who Am I Without My Anger - Heather Havrilesky
I think I owe Heather Havrilskey some money for all the hours she’s acted as my therapist.
The Ask Polly column on The Cut is consistently the most thoughtful advice you can find on the internet. This week, Havrilskey fields a question about the role of anger in an asker’s life and goes off on our desire for control and the real reasons for feeling anger.
My therapist once told me that anger is a secondary emotion. It’s a domino that is knocked over by something else: fear, sadness, loneliness, etc. Havrilskey outlines the consequences of ignoring this truth and the benefits from accepting and standing in that secondary, uncomfortable feeling even when it hurts.
“What if you learned to let your anger soften into sadness, instead of commanding it to disappear into thin air?”
Just, like, read me for filth Polly.
Read this if you are a recovering anger addict like me.
Why We Cry on Planes - Elijah Wolfson
Jokes on you Elijah! I cry everywhere!
There’s a lot of pieces I love in this article but my favorite is Wolfson’s summarization of the scientific reasons for why we cry. Here a two, of many, gems:
There are many theories about why humans cry ranging from the biophysical to the evolutionary. One of the most compelling hypotheses is Jeffrey Kottler’s, discussed at length in his 1996 book The Language of Tears. Kottler believes that humans cry because, unlike every other animal, we take years and years to be able to fend for ourselves. Until that time, we need a behavior that can elicit the sympathetic consideration of our needs from those around us who are more capable (read: adults). We can’t just yell for help though—that would alert predators to helpless prey—so instead, we’ve developed a silent scream: we tear up.
A silent scream?!?! Never have I felt more seen.
We cry happily when we recognize, deep down, that every connection we make in life could end up severed.
That’s how he describes why we HAPPILY cry. By far the most METAL article of 2013. (Yeah, it’s pretty old. Sorry not sorry.)
Read this if you feel that when you cry you’re (at worst) silently screaming for help or (at best) simply happy not all of your connections have been severed.
At a Rest Stop Somewhere in Texas - Amy Bernhard
This was so close to being a Hate Read because I truly loathe Buckee’s for reasons that I can’t totally explain. (It just freaks me out!! Why do you need 100 gas pumps?!?! What the the fuck are corn nuggets?!?! No thanks. I’ll take my Pak-a-Saks and Toot-n-Totums until I fucking dieeeeeeee.) But Amy Bernhard nails the melancholy I’ve felt a million times while stopped on the side of a highway in Texas.
This essay makes me feel the same way I feel when I’m listening to Garth Brooks.It makes me feel like filling up my gas tank before headed out to see the football game. It makes me feel like I’m back in Amarillo pausing at the edge of my neighborhood to watch the cows move from one side of the pasture to another.
The essay is about change, disappointment, settling, but for me it was about a lot more. In short, it made me homesick.
Read this because what else are you gonna do while you’re waiting for the truck in front of you to vacate gas pump 97.
Hate Read
Teens are Debating the News on Instagram
First of all, the headline is a bit deceiving. They’re not on Instagram debating the news. According to the body of this article, teens are beginning to use Instagram like your step-mom uses Facebook. To say that Carol gets all her news from jpgs that have been turned mp4 for no reason is to minimize the fact that Carol isn’t looking to her newsfeed for news. Carol is on Facebook to make sure all her book club buddies are as racist as she is. (Excuse me. Carol’s on Facebook to also keep up with the Corgi Lovers’ community. My bad.)
These teens are doing the same thing. They’re logging on Instagram and sharing terrible memes and fails trying to figure out what the consensus is on feminism, immigrants, Beiber, etc.
I’m ready for articles to stop being shocked at youths doing exactly what adults are doing. Why don’t we talk about why all these ‘flop accounts’ post things Carol would share to her group “Women for Trump.”
Rec of the Week
Social Creature - Tara Isabella Burton
OMG you guys I finally read a book!!
This book is a whirlwind of emotions from start to finish. It begins like other novels: an insecure girl becomes friends with a privileged popular one (in this case a full blown NYC party gurl) and attempts to navigate a decidedly toxic friendship. But then someone dies. And then a body is stuffed into a trunk. And then…well things spiral.
It is really a masterful novel that first crystalizes and then contorts insecurity. The feeling that you quickly internalize in the beginning of the book becomes like a sharp object making its way through your insides with each turn of the page.
Read this if you want to be tense for the day and a half it will take you to read it.
Thank you all for reading through all these feelings.
To my boyfriend, there’s a book called “The Language of Tears” that I learned about in the article about crying and it will be in your mailbox in 2 Amazon Prime days. To my fans, tell your friend to subscribe. There’s a new link! https://copypaste.substack.com/ click it or ticket.
This is the best thing on the internet.