rachel's wrap up 2023. part i

survived 2023 alert

well i never did it

i never did write the 12 monthly essays i planned to this year.

i made it as far as june and then life got in the way. or so the song goes. 

i wrote notes each month. on all the things i would talk about. the brilliant and pithy statements i’d make about life and being young and alive. 

i also don’t know if i lived up to this newsletter’s billing of indeed being shitstorm proof. i feel like i aged about 50 years while also regressing to a ripe 16. 

i’ve heard it said about having kids that “the days are long but the years are short.” i don’t think you need to have kids for that logic to hold up. but to be honest? this year also felt kinda long.

i lived a lot of lives in 2023. there was january rachel that was a theatre actress. there was february rachel who doesn’t stick out in my mind at all although she was doing her best too. then march rachel who also tried to be theatre actress and also prove herself to be superwoman and manipulate time itself to be in two, sometimes three places at once. (and sometimes when one bus came early and the next one late, she could.) there was april rachel who launched an open mic that wouldn’t survive the year but it was all still worth it. there was may rachel who got a haircut that she will tell you changed her life but it probably didn’t. there was also may rachel who took an improv class and may rachel who ever-so-briefly dated a boy who june rachel would end things with over text because she thought she had strep and couldn’t talk on the phone. there was july rachel who began to fight for her gastrointestinal life. there was august rachel who housesat in gastown and thus began her 16-year-old chaos regression era in earnest. there was september rachel who made a bold choice that january 2024 rachel still can’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing. there was october rachel who got covid for the first time. there was november rachel whose best friend in the world visited her just when she needed her most. there was december rachel who bit off more than she could chew for the 12th consecutive month, proving not to learn from past mistakes. 

and i lived to tell the tale. 

so there’s those six missing monthly essays condensed into a paragraph. six months of my life lived in a hazy blur of books and busses and dive bars. it was a pretty fun year. but i’m also not one to let things lie, so here are The Lost Files of the scraps and bits and blurbs i wrote each month that were supposed to become a coherent and insightful reflection on my life every 30 or so days. 

july

july in mirror selfies, an incomplete account

i took myself to the movies in july. a midday monday film, a mostly empty theatre to drown out distractions before hosting five hours of open mic comedy. don’t get me wrong, i love hosting a mic and being a friendly face to people trying it for the first time. but sometimes after watching a lot of bad art, you start to forget what good art is. what it should look like. after watching good art i feel cleansed. i remember why i ever wanted to do any of this. why i write banal monthly essays complaining about taking the bus and being a woman in comedy. and sometimes, i even believe in myself again, that i can make art that makes other people feel that way too.

past lives is about two childhood friends who grew up in korea until nora immigrates to canada as a young girl with her family. she then ends up in new york in her adulthood working as a writer and married to a white man. the two friends reconnect first over skype, then lose touch again. they never cross a romantic barrier, at least not physically speaking, but their connection is undeniable and complex and vast. they then get back in touch in the present day of the film when Hae Sung makes a trip to New York, thrusting us into questions of soulmates and culture and identity and the eternal: what if. 

enter: jacob. i used to resent that jacob and i were no longer regular parts of each other’s lives. from seeing each other near daily in university to occasionally in the summer after graduating to just not at all. but now i don’t think we ever could have been series regulars in each others’ stories. i think what we are now: people who meant something to each other during an important and transitional time in both our lives and hold fondness and care and wishes of nothing but the best for one another all while not actively being part of the other’s life, is what we were destined to be. we will always have a history and a shared moment in time, but we were never going to be weekly lunch friends, because to be such would have only continued the mirage of platonic friendship and kept my 22-year-old ill-advised hopes alive. 

the july 2023 cross-over of a lifetime

"but i don't think peter would ever think of me as his "ex-wife's daughter,” because he doesn't think of my mom as his "ex-wife." at one point, when peter asked me what this essay was going to be about, i told him that i wanted to explore the ways that his marriage to my mom influenced the rest of both of their lives, as well as the ways their lives diverged after their relationship ended. he interrupted me mid sentence to say, 'the relationship never ended. i would never characterize it that way." 

i read those words in the essay anthology what my mother and i don’t talk about. 

i return to the same themes in my writing over and over because i am the person i am. these themes are the threads that make up my personal tapestry. the carole king record included. what ifs and alternate lives. the ex-best friends and the almost-lovers and the compatibilities that just weren’t. 

it feels insane then, that one random thursday in july i saw jacob again. a character from a past season of my life who felt so important for a moment in time, but in seeing him again, i felt at peace with where we are now. old friends. ships in the night. college buddies. who kissed a couple of times. it was art school! we were RAs! it was new york! sometimes closure just means releasing yourself from an orbit you created for yourself. because it felt good. it felt safe. but maybe, just maybe, it was also holding you back.

…

sometimes, i gaslight myself into forgetting who i am. 

like, there was this one boy, and on our first date i remember remarking that from the restaurant table we were at, we couldn’t see the sunset. because i liked sunsets first. he shared my love of sunsets, it would turn out. it is not remarkable to enjoy a sunset. 

on our second date we went to the beach and watched the sunset. at my suggestion. because i have always liked sunsets. 

things didn’t work out as they often don’t. but for weeks and months after our brief tryst, whenever i would go to post a sunset on instagram, as i am wont to do, i would say to myself “am i posting this so he sees it?” 

i would then scroll through my phone’s camera roll as well as my own instagram feed to remind myself, nay, prove to myself, that i had been posting sunsets long before i was conscious that this guy even existed. he did not own sunsets. nor were they our thing. they were my thing. they were my thing before and they would continue to be long after. and after all, sunsets should be shared. 

…

my aunt was over the other day and asked if i was having a good summer. an inoffensive question. simple, even. but i immediately felt myself get vulnerable and defensive and my default cartoonish grin to combat the easy answer that’s hard to deliver when you’re a lifelong good-girl-gifted-kid-people-pleaser stretched across my face like the cheshire cat as i choked out the rare authentic answer: i don’t know that i am. 

somewhere in between working far too much and running around but never really accomplishing anything (which of course, in typical woman-in-comedy-but-also-just-in-the-world-fashion is me selling myself short) i have neglected to remember to enjoy myself. that’s not to say i’m existing in mere sweaty misery; i’m reading more, i’m returning to yoga, i’m remembering to put on my sunscreen, i’m taking my vitamins, i’m drinking more water, (editor’s note: october rachel who has yet to publish this essay would go on to overcompensate and have a little too much fun the rest of the summer, but such is life in your 20s)

but all these things do not happiness make. 

i, like so many others, am guilty of not always living in the present. i’m anticipating the next thing the moment the thing i had been anticipating comes to pass. i blame christmas and capitalism, of course. halloween displays in july have us counting down to one holiday, and before it’s even arrived santas and snowflakes have us counting down to another. 

by mid-summer i began to notice the days becoming shorter. nothing major but suddenly my 9:30 train ride that once used to be perfectly timed with the sunset’s climax is now in the dimmer twilight, with only faint whispers of orange and red on the far west side of the horizon. by mid-summer i’m already wistfully anticipating and regretting its end, rather than enjoying the fact that it’s only july. i’m only 26. i am in this moment with more in front of me. but it seems it is human instinct to look forward. and in many ways it’s a positive. “i look forward to seeing you,” “i’m looking forward to it,” “we are a forward-thinking group.” but on the micro, it feels detrimental, insidious even. 

so the summer is soldiering on. and i am measuring it in transit card taps and sunset commutes. walking tours given and eyeliner slept in. dollars spent on overpriced salads because i went to bed too late and got up too early to even consider “meal prep.” and let’s not kid ourselves, i’ve never really been a meal prep sort of girl. 

august

august in mirror selfies, a once again incomplete account

this year i made reading a priority again. this summer i made myself a priority again. this month, i made having fun a priority again.

…

sometimes i feel like i try to make magic happen rather than allowing it too. i’ll go on a walk and try to look for life’s proverbial roses so hard of course i’m gonna get stung by a bee instead. i’ll try so hard to be the girl i’m supposed to be rather than the one i am. maybe that’s why i started a comedy show called bee hive. 

…

i’m desperate to write everything down. i don’t want to forget my life. whether that’s due to the very real fear of my memories of my father fading or the string of dementia on my mom’s side that predominately affects women, i am determined (if not even a little compulsively desperate) to remember as much as i can. every banal day. silly bus observations. first kisses and last ones. the day i spent at that coffee shop and that one as well as that other one. outfit selfies posted to instagram that surely annoy my followers but feel like a lifeline of remembering. the way those denim shorts kept riding up that day. the way that t-shirt damply clung to my back against my backpack in the august heat. the way i had to hold that dress down all day for fear of a marilyn moment. the way that one shirt made me feel like myself. those jeans make me feel safe. those shoes made me feel grounded. that necklace made me feel special. those socks made me feel cool. like the cool girl i so long to be. 

and although forgetting is a curse, so is remembering. remembering so many details your head wants to explode. of noticing the way the boy you liked look at that other girl and you pretended not to notice but it told you everything. of your ex-best friend saying she couldn’t imagine life without you and now you have for three years. Of this of that of of of. 

it has occurred to me recently how i, have designed a Life around loneliness 

the thing about FOMO is it’s often self-inflicted, but often we don’t mean to self-inflict it. so desperately are we looking for someone to pull us out of it. to choose us.

we prematurely defend ourselves from rejection by calling ourselves independent. meanwhile our friends wonder why we never ask them to hang out first and they think it’s apathy when really it’s crippling fear that one day they’ll just forget you ever existed. or something. haha rachel that was soooo dramatic. 

…

i miss the girl i was in New York. but maybe i just miss being 22. it’s hard to separate those two things: who i was in New York and just missing my youth. 

but when i think in essay fragments and cacophonous sentences that feel like poetry. i feel like home. 

looking back on my life a year ago at first glance i think, what’s changed, really? i still live at home. i still have the same job, though i’ve now collected another. my dreams still haven’t come true. i still haven’t fallen in love. but then at closer look, everything has. last summer i was just dipping my toes in the vancouver stand up scene, now i run a mic. used to run a mic. last summer i went on a date with a boy in yaletown, a neighbourhood with which i was unfamiliar and a boy with whom i thought it would work out (a common refrain in my life the past year). now i can navigate yaletown without google maps and haven’t heard from that boy in about a year. last year i was lost and lonely. this year i’m lost and lonely. okay some things have stayed the same. but at least i have people to be lost and lonely with. (2024 rachel to august 2023 rachel: my dear so much is going to change you have no idea!)

…

i’ve been reflecting recently on how ludicrous are our every day interactions. here i am nose jammed into strange armpit  on the canada line as i cling to a rubber loop that is almost out of reach of my 5’4” frame, not so much as a hello. it has occurred to me how when someone sits down next to me, it would be useful in a practical sense to ask this person sitting immediately next to me what stop they are getting off at so to possibly rearrange ourselves or simply be prepared when they have to disembark. but alas such would violate the social contract and so we are left scanning in our periphery for signs of this temporary seatmate shuffling and packing their belongings, slinging their bag back onto their shoulder as a silent code for “i'm the next stop.”

…

august makes me sad. the sunsets in august are prettier but the month is forever inescapable from being the one in which my dad died. and this one marked the inflection point at which i will begin to live more life without my dad than i did with. which is probably dumb and insignificant but it feels like i’ve subconsciously spent the last 13 years counting down to this moment. not counting down like dick clark’s new year’s rockin’ eve, more counting down like the doomsday clock in union square. 

august feels like you’re running out of time, school is on the horizon, and with it colder days and darker mornings and fall rains that feel as though they’ll last forever. though they won’t. They never do. 

…

i think i like walking everywhere so much because it makes me feel independent, powerful, in control. and for so long and in so many parts of my life i wasn’t. i never got my driver’s license because there was no one there to teach me. asking for rides means asking for help and that means showing vulnerability, so that’s out. the bus is a main character in my life, but buses are late. skytrains are crowded. my two legs? now that’s power. anywhere i want to go baby. in university i would sometimes walk back from shows in midtown to my Greenwich village dorm. 30-some odd minutes but it felt like freedom. on nights when i get called off work in gastown, sometimes i’ll walk to english bay to catch the sunset. i usually don’t make it in time. but it wasn’t about that. it was about agency. having it. making a choice. 

i think that’s why i like cities. you can walk everywhere. you don’t have to rely on anyone. it’s easy to be a lone wolf in a city and not really feel alone. you can almost convince yourself you’re not lonely, even when you are. with every fibre of your being. 

when i walk places with my backpack and my emotional support novel and notebooks and pencil case in my backpack. i am free. 

but i’m still alone. 

even with stand up, i got into it because it’s something i can control. i mean also because making people laugh and telling stories is my favourite thing in the world, but the control thing factored in. in acting there’s politics and looks and breakdowns and types and networks and studio execs. i mean there’s all of that in comedy too, as i am learning more and more, but there’s no i mean you were perfect for the role it’s just that the male lead is a name and you’re too short for the height difference to work and we’re not gonna recast him soooo better luck next time! there’s no funding (though there should be ;’)) or red tape (well…) or shot list. there’s just you and a microphone and your stories.

…

it’s funny, well not really, but it’s crazy reading about how lonely i was in august. i don’t remember any of it. but i wrote that so i had to have felt it. i don’t feel lonely anymore. well i do, but in markedly different ways. it was also the beginning of my debaucherous era. more on that in rachel’s wrap up 2023, part ii. 

anyway on a logistical note i’m gonna break the year’s wrap up into parts because this behemoth is already 3000 words. i’m gonna end on my annual favourites list from the year and my big oceanic 2023 takeaways. (here’s 2022). so stay tuned for my official review of 2023. this maybe doesn’t matter to anyone but me. but she’s enough. gonna care more about her in 2024. sincere alert!

…

see u soon (but actually this time)

love u, 

xoxo, 

rach