Your hero, aged 20, Williamsburg Brooklyn.
What’s up ya frigfaces? Cool that’s great I don’t care. Listen. My friend Jamie sent a huge file of photos I sent him years ago when I was having a meltdown. I wanted him to have my legacy in case I died. He said I thought I was going to die and I probably was from living on the edge, guy. Anyway, I finally downloaded the transfer and was met with images of my young ass self and you just gotta see it too because now I’m an adult (more or less) and can somewhat bravely voice a few things that were going on at the time in my life, until Jared gets here and then it’s boylord time.
I visited Jamie in NYC during a pretty depressed period in my life. I did get better of course, not too far after this visit but I do remember the things going on in my miserable head at the time and feeling hopeless and no way in hell could I picture the future, my future.
Nothing made me happy. That drink? Maybe it kind of worked because we went for Raymaoke after this. I had to get Jamie a chocolate bar because his blood sugar was low, that was a little exciting. He has diabetes.
I didn’t like my body at all, I felt like a blob. Now I would kill to look that young in the face again. I marvel at these pictures because I am such a clueless dumbass. My groove was slowly coming back to me.
We took so many pictures with his digital camera we really Raymi’d out and I was thinking at this point no one really did that with digi cameras how insane and annoying were we to that woman and any other people in this old man bedford ave bar?
Cigarette machine. These are old old pics.
My pupils are majorly dilated. Was not smoking weed. I couldn’t, it made me paranoid. I think I was kind of on meds here but I was secretly not taking them. When you have dysthymia and a huge intelligence base like I, you know deep down that medicine will not help your mind and that the depression is just something etched in your brain. Exercise and being proactive about your life is how you combat the blues. I went to New York City and I barely left the loft. I was a creature trapped in my own misery. What did I even do all day there was no tumblr or youtube parties of 1. I read. I looked out the window. I hated how I looked so I barely took selfies. Jamie is a good guy for tolerating me, he’s kind of sad like me too and gets it.
That Queen shirt was like my uniform too, anything to hide how out of shape I was. At that time I am ten pounds lighter than I am today and look at how body proud I am these days plus eleven years older. This series of pics are such a treasure to me for so many reasons. There are so many more secrets I can’t but want to tell you about them but people like my mom’s voice in my head scare me from being a blabbermouth like I actually hugely want to be about it. I think the story is too powerful for a blog perhaps. It’s more for a book and I am pretty sure it could help some people.
I actually thought that my life was over here. I could not envision a future, I just thought I was destined to fade out, walking around a livingroom all day everyday like a shut-in and the thought really depressed me. Tumblr wasn’t around then. I couldn’t blog much because all of my experiences revolved around my recent past which I wasn’t supposed to at all be thinking about or revisitting and all those characters, I felt a lot of eyes on me and so I just clammed up. I would blog like once a month and it would be a one sentence paragraph about seeing a movie, and it was a kind of boring movie. Bahahha how wrist slitty fucking fuck.
I tried though. I tried to fake it or make the old me happen, the spark. Years and years later one of my friends from that crowd of people who surrounded me as I was losing my mind and my blog was blowing up, he said I was no longer special anymore or exceptional (I was 24 when we had this conversation) like the magic and power of me that first hit was because I was so young. People took advantage of me and I let them. I thought I was a big star and we were a movement. I feel like if I was surrounded by healthier folk and more nurtured that things back then could have gone a lot better but part of the appeal of me was the trainwreck. I put my family through hell and back. I think there are people in this world sometimes who are born to be big and all of the resulting energies surrounding them get sucked into the eye of the tornado of that person’s everything. Look at Warhol for example, you know what I mean. It’s exhausting, this constant need to achieve to go for it go towards it. It can make you crazy. It does make you crazy.
Like right now tbh I feel a little crazy. But I feel okay too. I feel like the next moves in my Raymi world are going to be game changing and risky and that I have to be really brave and strong right now, block out the haters and all the voices in my head psyching me out. I think my thinking drives me nuts. Being gifted is a blessing, you get so many ideas and hilarious concepts but you over-analyze like an idiot.
Each picture of me is boringly the same and yet different. I would not take pictures of my face like this today that’s for sure.
I wonder what songs I played. In Canada we don’t have to put bars in front of our jukebox machines.
Bangs had always been a huge part of my life. Bangs always bangs. So much time on bangs. Making them look good. If it was a bad bangs day it was not a good day and there were lots of bad bangs days. Why so glum chum oh I dunno because a broom is resting on my fucking face.
Everytime I dyed my hair black it meant I was back in business. Like I had made some mental war declaration on owning my shit because after this I got really skinny and conceited which will be written about in my SIX MONTHS IN MANSIONS tell-all someday. Live an insane life then write separate books for each period. Like maybe I’ll write children’s books based on my childhood lonerisms, pretending to be a teacher to my stuffed animals and even stamping my books because I also ran a library. Pretty sure loner girls would love the fuck out of that! And did I brag about the time I made a little booklet for a little German girl while I was in Mexico during a thunderstorm, all the guests were playing games and drinking waiting out the storm. Her father emailed me a week or so later and said she brings that little book everywhere with her, adores it, adores me, am I a mother or a babysitter teacher something or other because I am so great with kids. Remind me to look into freezing my eggs, I’m serious.
So, the moral of this story is, be sad but be glad because eventually you will be rad.
Just sing your best song and force at least one stranger to congratulate you because you sang it so good. Don’t be a hero just sing what you know you can sing. Like house of the rising sun, any man or woman can sound good singing it that is totally definitely what I was singing here. I probably sang 4 more times too.
Then I had some goldfish from my journey to the store to save Jamie’s life and picked at my teenage acne face in the karaoke darkness. Do what you gotta do to get through.
Jamie and Deb are happily married now and he still kinda blogs. I would say writes. He still writes. I’ll do another series soon because I only looked in one folder he sent.
Sadness can be pretty. Do you know how many people thought I was slavic, polish, russian, something all the time with that hairstyle? I think I somewhat encouraged it. I don’t think I ever wanted to be myself. Wow what is this cognitive therapy I am sharing so much.
Yes I eventually threw those shoes out, so gross. But then I tried to look for them again and was upset.
Bonus picture! Those bangs! This is my hair growing out from how short it was. Do not make bangs when you are in this stage you will look like an alien turd.
Before all that I was an online model. I’m afraid to tell you what my name was because I fear people can go digging and find things I wanna keep buried.
I smoked a j with Olivia Chow this night. I got in a circle of passage right after her. Cool woman. We all knew she was coming, this was an older U of T crowd. I was all, who the fuck is Olivia Chow? Sounds important I better stick around! Also my tropical drink name won a prize, I have no recollection what it was. I also wiped out on my bike on Dundas we were off to go dancing. Toronto girls are tough mang.
This is the shortest my hair got. I blame Milla Jovovich and Charlize Theron my two female cinematic heroes at the time plus people said I kinda looked like Milla. Welp guess what NOPE! More like Rod Stewart and a bird.
17, South Kensington London UK. What my hair first looked like when I cut it. I think every kid at some point has to destroy their hair you just have to know what it’s like to have really short spiked hair I guess.
Oh and my Queen shirt is taking up residence now with good ol Stephy.
Jared’s here bye!
