I have three wonderful roommates and we live in a beautiful home in Bed Stuy together. I have my own room and it is very spacious. I have nice windows, I can see fall happening outside my window. I buy myself flowers, write poems on my typewriter, and listen to Hayley Williams on repeat on my speaker with rose scented candles burning. Before moving here August 1, I hadn’t been in my own apartment since April. I’d been hopping from friend’s couches in LA then to a couple month long sublet stints in various locations in NY. To truly have my own home is… triggering!

I am the second of four kids and we were the type of house where everyone was always hanging out at. I lived in the attic and I shared a room with either of my sisters until I was 15. I lived above our garage which was also my dad’s “studio” so I would listen to him rock out on his guitar to the same Rolling Stones and U2 songs for my entire childhood. I would jump up and down on the floor to make him shut up. I would hear his car growl into the garage after work, I’d listen to my brother bounce his basketball outside my window shooting into the hoop weighed down by the sand-filled base, my sister is a singer and very vocal in general, so there was a lot of that going on as well.

I learned to differentiate all the footsteps of my family members, which coughs were theirs, even their scents would drift up the stairs and I’d know who was walking past. When I shared a room with my older sister I would often get dressed in the dark so as to not disturb the growling teenage beast. I learned how to be very quiet and very small. When I shared a room with my little sister after my older sister moved into the nursery-turned-teen-pad I put a physical line in neon pink duct tape between our sides of the room so she couldn’t cross over, attempting to assert my dominance. I would sneak boys over to the house (sorry mom and dad) when I was babysitting her and try desperately to enjoy getting fingered in a hoodie (I had one boob) while my sister was banging on the door, begging to be let into her own room.

Even when my mom suggested we “remodel” my room, all of the stylistic choices ended up being deferred to her friend dabbling in interior design. My vision of course, was pink walls and green carpet which my mom quickly vetoed. She told me it would look like watermelon. I said “exactly”. To be honest, I still love the pink and green combo and wear it often. Sometimes you do know who you are as a child, then people beat it out of you. Then you have to move to Brooklyn, take a clown class and do intense inner child work to discover yourself again.

The only good thing about the weird purple/silver room remodel was that not only did the dark purple walls cloak my teenage depression in a comforting, cozy way, but I also came to have a long-standing sexual relationship with one of the purple Home Goods pillows that I still think of sometimes when I look out the bus window.

I remember doing family dinners growing up in our house. We would make our favorite meal to eat as kids (brace yourself) grilled chicken, white rice, peas, all mixed together with ketchup <3 oh we loved this meal… almost as much as we loved our grandma’s chicken pot pie. We did this thing called “high low funny bunny” which was a high from your day, a low, and something funny that happened. Something my entire family and I have in common, if not the only thing, is we are all hilarious. Any of us could be comedians, I’m just the one who happens to be doing it. We would drink cow’s milk out of glasses that had a cow saying “moo” a pig saying “oink” and a duck saying “quack”. We’d eat in the backyard when it was summer and the bees would swarm the corn. On Tuesday’s we’d do “cat and dog night” where we would eat without utensils. We had to do this one outside, for obvious reasons.

My entire life, my parents talked about the great remodel. We’d had blueprints stuffed in cabinets for as long as I can remember, with circles displaying trees, and I’d always ask them to point out where my room would be, my own room. This was all I wanted. The first time we got close, a little thing called the 2008 housing crisis happened and we almost went bankrupt due to an “exciting business opportunity” my dad came up with which was selling RVs. The actual plan didn’t start to happen until 2015, the beginning of my senior year of high school. As we began to break ground, my parents marriage was secretly crumbling.

We moved into a rental home and tore down the house I’d spent the majority of my childhood in. I had my own room for the first time, and I hated it. We lived in a dingy house that had almost no natural light. My room felt like a damp cave and I swear there was a metal decorative chair outside my window that would move itself around.

My parents, in an attempt to save their marriage, were consistently out of town trying to bring the romance back. Oh the places they went! (besides therapy) My sister was in college and I was the big sibling now. My brother got stuck in the bathroom one time and had to punch his way through the door to get out. I missed waking up next to my little sister. I found my dad’s weed stash in the easter baskets in the garage. We stopped having dinners at home. I would go to the Indian place next to my high school and get myself chicken tikka masala and sit in the parking lot in my car, my phone propped up in the steering wheel watching Grey’s Anatomy. I eventually had to stop watching this show because I slipped into a deep depression.

I had a long distance boyfriend who lived in LA while I was in the Bay Area and I’d stay in most nights to facetime him. Our relationship was not doing well, he hated college and I hated that we weren’t together, despite him being pretty controlling and manipulative. I got braces that October right after I turned 17 and a half and began wearing fleece little mermaid pajama pants to school every day. I’d constantly sleep, watch Grey’s Anatomy, and cry on a loop like a wind up depression doll. I started seeing a therapist called Sheryl and she’d tell me bible verses and say my depression seemed situational, and would get better once I left for college. I’d wear my pajama pants to therapy every week. No one ever suggested anti-depressants. I know my dad went on them after his mom died, but I thought that was for extreme circumstances. I didn’t think being lonely, feeling weird and ugly and constantly angry at my choir director constituted anything worth a prescription.

Eventually Spring came, I broke up with my boyfriend, began a romantic fling with a new student who was from Tokyo who I connected with on our choir tour to Chicago, and I started wearing my pastel pink American Apparel skirt with little floral tops again. I stopped watching Grey’s Anatomy even though they will never stop making new episodes, and my mom threw away my pajama pants when I wasn’t looking. I was clinically addicted to God, and our spring break trip to Mexico gave me a sense of purpose, I was a leader on the trip and got to connect with my “seafoam babies” who called me mom and I felt like I was really doing something.

I was so ready to go to college and leave everything behind. Freshman year was famously a flop, I went to San Diego State University and the only good thing that happened to me, if you can believe it, was get into the co-ed a cappella group and begin to discover I was gay (which was NOT fun at the time, but thank God it happened).

My parents got divorced two years later when I came home from my first year at USC, my sophomore year which I enjoyed so much, I truly knew the other shoe had to drop.

After that everything became very weird. People stopped referring to my parents as “Barbie and Ken” and I started lying to my elementary school friends’ families when I ran into them over Thanksgiving break.

“Yeah my parents are great! Same house, same everything.”

We sold the “dream house” almost immediately after we moved into it. I was in college so I barely spent any time there. I was not sad when we sold it. It felt like a burden and a massive life-long failure.

On Wednesday my roommates and I had our first dinner all together. The first one didn’t work out since I had COVID, so I sat in my room crying as I listened to them laughing and talking downstairs without me. They left a bowl of food outside my door like I was a prisoner. It was so good and nourishing, it made me even sadder. I felt so bad for myself. One time I had a therapist tell me I love to play the victim. Harsh but true.

But Wednesday was perfect. Maggie made arrabiata pasta with those big tube pasta noodles, shaved fresh parmesan, cut up fresh basil from their basil plant sitting on the kitchen windowsill. Romy made a salad with cucumbers and tomatoes. I made pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and after some red wine we debated the flavor palette of the concord grape pie Maggie baked for us.

“At first it’s like okay.. this is a pie. then— WOW GRAPE. then sort of,… okay, it’s a pie.”

We went around and did “high low funny bunny” and I almost teared up just hearing them say the name of the game. We discussed the low to funny bunny pipeline. the famous comedic equation:

low + time = funny bunny

We “aired grievances” which I was terrified for. I always live in fear everyone is mad at me, and to my surprise it was very pleasant and easy. The only thing I did wrong was recycle paper towels. but to be fair, why can you not put paper towels in the “paper” bin?! we all agreed this was ludicrous. After dinner, we cleaned out the condiments, I organized the spice rack, we discussed the vision for the art we hung up in the living room. I felt so much love, so much safety, security. after dinner I went to my own room with my own things and slept so soundly.

In the morning I woke up and began crying and did not stop for about three hours. I went to work and had to leave because I couldn’t stop crying. For what felt like the first time maybe ever, I began to mourn the family I had as a child. I woke up to texts from my siblings trying to plan our holiday plans with poor communication from both of our parents. Things are different now that I’m not in California where they all are. The holidays give me a lot of anxiety. Everything used to be easy, but my co-worker Ricky told me as I sobbed over my avocado toast:

“Easy isn’t a word adults get to use a lot”

I dont think my life is the most tragic. It is hard to explain everything that happened in this email, in one therapy session, one one first date where the person across the table is terrified. I have so much gratitude for everything I have been given. But yesterday I felt a wave of grief. My friend Jinni told me:

“the worst grief is your own”

This was really helpful to me trying to sort through my own emotions, especially living in the world of Twitter and comparative suffering. Sometimes being a comedian is all about having the shittiest, most fucked up horrible life.

There’s a lot more that could be wrong, but sometimes being a new adult is just about mourning the loss of a stability and safety you once had.

Sometimes something beautiful and new can remind you of the sadness and loss instead.

Sometimes all you can do is sleep and try again tomorrow.