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Blending In

by DAYNA EVANS

A friend once told me to “Do you” when I was having a crisis at a coffee shop. That friend, despite my sincerest intentions, is still alive today.

When I didn’t know who the rapper A$AP Rocky was, a friend ridiculed me on gchat by using italics and sideways frown faces.

I wrote this five-page entry in my journal one night and I wrote it with a pink felt-tip pen under the covers like I was hiding something from my parents. I wrote about how depressed and alone I feel sometimes.

My laptop fell from my bed one morning when I was downstairs and my parents both asked, “Did something just break in your room?” I don’t know, I shrugged, I guess. When I came upstairs and saw that it was my laptop on the ground, my left arm twitched and I picked it up, cradling it like it was a crying infant.

I frequently block people on gchat. There is truth in the sentiment that some friends are closer when they are farther away.

I was on OkCupid for a while. This guy told me I looked like a hard-partying Rashida Jones. I was shallow enough to take that as a compliment so I went out with him.

I still order hardcover books from Amazon. I know that gives a few people some laughs.

I didn’t spend last Christmas at home because I was in Thailand with three women that I’m very close with. On Christmas Eve, we made homemade raviolis and banana pudding and ate mirthfully around a fancy, solid, wooden table. I called my family, even my dad, and was full up with warmth and only a mild hint of uncertainty about what I was doing. Next year it’ll be the same again, I thought.

Another friend told me the one essential quality of being a writer is always talking about how you should be writing.

I try to keep below 10 e-mails in my e-mail inbox.

When I quit my job to move back to my parents house in New Jersey, I decided that I’d catch up on the all the stuff that I’d missed out on while being a full-time person. I took up Mad Men after I’d finished reading all the books I got for Christmas. But then I remembered what I meant by catching up was I was supposed to catch up on writing, music, decency, contentment. So I watched more Mad Men. I’m more than halfway through season three.

I have imperceptible nervous habits. I had this weird scab on my scalp for two months and I’d pick at it at work when I was writing all day and hope that no one noticed. It probably wasn’t imperceptible. In fact, I think it was highly perceptible.

I get frequent headaches from looking at my screen too much. But then I’ll spend several hours away from my screen reading a book or The New Yorker and the headaches come back.

I’ve e-mailed every single person I’ve met since I quit my job. I also wrote hundreds of letters and mailed them. I mailed my best friend, Maria, a pair of sweatpants that I own that she’s always really loved. She had just broken up with her boyfriend. I thought she probably needed them more than me. But then again, is it wrong to assume that anyone, ever, needs sweatpants?

I wear sweatpants with increasing frequency. So, I guess, I kind of do. 

I haven’t been writing at all.

This Thanksgiving, it wasn’t yet the same again. I was still far away, just in a different faraway place, but it was getting closer to what was real as I spent the holiday with Maria and her family. I made Italian doughnuts and we drank wine. It was a small affair with only me, another friend, three sisters, and two parents, but it need not have been any bigger. Maria tried on a pair of my jeans and noted, “Your hips are bigger than mine.” I learned later that her dad appreciated my sense of humor at the dinner table, and I felt like I was really a part of their family.

I go running a lot. I run on a treadmill because it’s cold outside. I run on a treadmill because I can watch Netflix on my stepdad’s iPad and that keeps me going the extra 5 minutes that listening to shitty trap music through my headphones wouldn’t. When I lived in L.A., I ran outside, which, like, whatever.

I went to 7 art museums in a month. I didn’t cry in any of them. I saw a cast of The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin that I hadn’t seen since I was a senior in high school and I tried to remember what it was like to be a senior in high school looking at The Gates of Hell. I know that I was definitely smarter then and I was wearing a sweater I bought at Retrospect, a thrift store that used to be on South Street in Philly. It had small rows of colorful flowers all around it. Retrospect is closed now, which I guess in a lot of ways is ironic or obvious or sad.

I am reading a book that I hate. I can’t stop reading it, though, because I’m really stubborn.

My friend told me I was good at blending in, which made me a better writer. I went to a party with very accomplished people and felt very noticeable, but not in the way that Joan is on Mad Men. The way that is like, “Who is that and who invited her? Is she a substitute teacher at an elementary school?”

I have a Moleskine daily calendar that I write in with felt-tip pens. So do you. (I’m just guessing.) (But I’m right.)

Someone wrote an entire blog post about why iTunes 11.0.1 sucks. I didn’t even read it, I just skimmed the funny memes they’d used to color the story.

Last week, I went through my inbox and printed out every .doc that my friends had sent me over the past few months — screenplays, short stories, memoirs. I printed them out and got in bed in my sweatpants and read through them with my laptop shut down. I couldn’t pay attention, though, my parents were watching Downton Abbey quite loudly.

But then when my parents weren’t home, I tried again. I sent back some very sincere feedback.

Everything you do, ever, is an indictment against yourself. That’s why I mailed Maria those sweatpants. I thought that was the closest I’d get to authenticity. It’s one of those things that you do because you are feeling like a good person, but I think I blew it because the whole point is to not tell anyone you did it. No good deed is truly selfless and all that.

I am supposed to move back to New York soon. I’m very concerned.

This year, when I finally made it home, my aunt made fried calamari for our Christmas Eve dinner. It was salty and soft. My mom, her sisters, her mother, and me all stood around the kitchen island at the end of the night picking at it with our fingers from an aluminum cooking tray, which made our hands greasy and made it hard to keep track of how much we were eating. We were all wearing a variant on a red tone and laughing with our mouths full, unwieldy. I think that’s what it is to feel something.

I follow, like, a hundred art blogs on Tumblr.

I just checked. I follow 8.

Dayna Evans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in New Jersey. She last wrote in these pages about the Illiad. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She tumbls here.

Images by Aaron Morse.

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