Lost in the Blogosphere

"GirlBlogging", Brownstones, & Broken laptops

I had to write a line in class using a “song seed”, and in my large, loopy handwriting next to a blue star, the board read, “I could waste forever trying to find out what it feels like.”

I’ve had to give many first introductions/elevator pitches, and I started calling myself a writer, and then it was a Substack, and then it became a “glorified blog”, and I am your neighborhood GirlBlogger, selling my sadness and sex appeal, capturing the mundane of my life to put on a platter for internet people to follow. I am a GirlBlogger of constant sorrow, which is what Joan Baez should’ve sung about, and I am feeding you GirlBlogger slop weekly. I’m like a sadder Carrie Bradshaw, because of course I compare myself to Carrie Bradshaw, and my ex-boyfriend is my Mr. Big. You're welcome!

I couldn’t help but wonder, am I doomed?

It’s officially summer and everyone is love.

The famous “texts-I-can’t-send” notes app has been revived, except I started a new note for it because seeing me beg for love makes me sick to my stomach. Turns out quitting thinking about someone was harder than quitting cigarettes. My leg bounces up and down, like I’m physically reeling. I do five pushups every time I think of you.

I think I couldn’t admit until now that I likely went into that relationship believing if you loved me, then I’d love me, and maybe you did, too. Except that the more we loved each other, the more we seemed to pick apart ourselves. More nights I couldn’t sleep, worrying you’d find someone better. More girls I’d stalk online, wondering why you chose me over them. More medication. More fights we had about how you liked me as an idea, not a person.

Maybe I did feel that way, but maybe I turned you into my mirror. I made you in my image, one of extreme self-scrutiny.

I miss you a lot and I hope you are good and by that I mean that you miss me too

I place the photo strips I hid months ago in a Jeffrey Campbell shoe box and think of Chloë Sevingy’s photo book, where she covered her exes’ faces with stickers, and think one day, I’ll do something similar. It doesn’t pain me to see these anymore, but I started crying about being alone again, which both frustrates and confuses me.

When I was fifteen, I used to be really obsessed with horoscopes and subsequently gave seven websites with names like tarotreading.com or dailyhoroscope.com or something along those lines my email address. Five years later, I’m still too lazy to unsubscribe from those messaging services, but this morning I received an email with a headline boasting, “Your past lover’s mistake is NOT your fault, Maia,” and even though I know these websites are totally scams, the satisfaction of this message sits well in my chest. I think I did believe that, and I think I needed to hear that I was wrong.

My horoscope today said my love is “one for the books.”

I wonder if my art wasn’t directly tied to my feelings, if I would still live in my head all the time, capturing as much as I can to turn into something. Every moment is like a film scene, and I pause and start over to keep as much as I can.

My brand only works if you believe you know me. If I can sell you my face, my body, my mind. If you believe maybe you could touch me one day, but you can’t, so you can just look and pretend. Pretend that you know me, that you love me, that maybe one day, I’ll love you.

On Sunday, I saw a screening of Bongard’s Babystar, which follows a family of vloggers who have been filming their daughter since she was a child, and now want another child since she is aging out of the channel, and how she tries to break the cycle of exploitation she grew up in. Since then, I’ve been mentally fixated on the topic of exploitation. My family never forced me to do anything; I sang because I wanted to. I pushed myself in school because I wanted to. I created and subsequently rejected a TikTok brand based on looking cute and having a cute boyfriend because I wanted to. Now, I am making music because I want to. Instead, I pushed myself to be the product. To be palatable. To be sold.

On Monday afternoon, Ethe and I go on a spontaneous long walk, instantly falling in love with the South End. Every brownstone makes us “awe”, every fountain makes us gasp, and every street makes me fantasize living there. “Imagine calling your children to go to the school bus, and they walk down these beautiful steps, I can’t!” I laugh as Ethe shakes their head. “Your children would fall down those steps! Look at them!”

“My children would never fall down the steps. I’d hold their hands!”

I am so lucky to have friends who hold a mirror up to me, my good and bad and in between, who love me through it, who know me better than anyone else. I needed two people to describe my strengths and weaknesses for a class assignment, and I turned to two of my best friends, naturally, who know me in different settings and still see right down to my core. I nearly cry when Ethe and I shower each other with our favorite things about each other, and the weakness Aeriel shared with me is one I’ve always known. To care deeply is a blessing because I am then surrounded by people who inspire me to be better, but a curse; I care too much about perception, and I overthink every single sign that could indicate that I’m going to be left.

“I wasn’t the ‘cool girl’ growing up. I was awkward and weird and geeky and I wasn’t ‘cool’ until I was eighteen. Then I meet this person who picks me over other more beautiful women, cooler women, and it feels so good. And, like, I think I’m pretty cool, but the world doesn’t always see me that way.”

Ethe has a particular smile that is comforting and all knowing, giving it to me as I quirk my lip. “You still don’t see yourself that way.”

Ethe is usually right.

I say I’m restless because I’m waiting for something to happen, so instead of waiting patiently, I replay every single thing that has ever happened to me instead to pass the time and use it to torture myself.

It was only Tuesday and my laptop was fully busted, my cute dress doesn’t feel cute on, every single classmate seems to ask questions perfectly geared to grind my gears, my mom was too busy to answer my calls that consist of just complaints, and I can’t focus no matter how hard I try. I become a laptop-less freak, a bedridden lounger, and a professional whiner before the day ends.

The T is packed on the way home from the Apple Store, middle aged Red Sox fans in comically large gold chains and caps lining each seat, and I was myself smushed in the reflection of the window, my arm tired of holding the bar and the novel I’m about to finish, and I can’t help but wonder why even this insignificant moment makes me squirm. I wonder if I look sad, if I wear it on my Polly Pocket lime green polka dot dress. Or if they all can tell I’m a Yankees fan, which won’t end well for me.

We have to use a metaphor to describe our lives and my professor wrote “house” but if looks like it says “horse”, so I run with it, and I say my life is like in those movies when there is one horse that is untamable named Starlight or Crystal or something similar and the girl who is “not like other girls” tries to tame it even though everyone else tells her it’s impossible. I’m sure I sound brain dead but in the moment I think maybe I’m also entertaining, and I end my metaphor with, “of course, I can fix anything”, and though I appreciated the laughs, it is pretty laughable for me to believe I can tame the wild horse.

I’ve been trying ever since I was thirteen and my father was diagnosed with cancer, and I thought I had finally grabbed the reins until I was chucked off after his death two years ago. Between bad breakups, worse friends, and enough hours in therapy to perhaps mean I’ve mastered it, I’m still trying to tighten my grip. I have not quite tamed Starlight or Charcoal or whatever name I choose for my horse.

Another class requires that we share our reasoning for picking music as a career. I go first, launching into how my immigrant father and NYU Tisch graduate mother taught me to take risks, how music is the only way I feel like I can take control of my feelings, and how I’d be happy just being able to do it forever, even if I work another job. He doesn’t take even a second before he gets real with me. “See, you got it, but you’re missing a key aspect. People who grow up amongst humbleness, like your parents who work so hard to make a life for you, who are humble, forget to let themselves want more. You’re realistic, but you need to ask for more. You need to be comfortable asking for too much.”

He wasn’t wrong at all. I don’t want to ask for too much, to be seen as ungrateful, but I want to be famous and successful and to follow my dreams. I want to make a home and feel satisfied that I seized every chance I’ve been given. I don’t have a scarcity mindset when it comes to success and our own metrics of it, but I do believe life is not infinite, and that in this one, I’d rather fail at my dream than fail at settling.

This week I feel particularly wicked, and I decide wicked is what I’d rather use than “batshit”, because my brain pulling away from logic and into pure emotion can’t be anything but evil. What I want is no longer rational. I am reminded constantly that these people taunting me through memories are nothing but figments of my own imagination, my insecurities lashing out at me through the guise of my memory of you. “You both are big feelers, and it makes sense that you take it out each other,” I am reminded.

I’d consider “big feeler” an understatement for me particularly. When I was a kid, I couldn’t leave stuffed animals at the store without getting emotional about how they’d think no one wanted them. When I’d fight with my dad, I’d hide everything that reminded me of him so I wouldn’t remember how much I loved him. I cried when I was told I’d miss a week of school in the third grade because I was really excited about the unit on Brazil. I started therapy at thirteen, and in my first semester of college, I barely left my room for a month because I was too angry to hang out with my friends. It seems like feeling the mundane is the only stable part of my life besides my mother and my flair for the dramatics. I’m worried I wouldn’t know me without a deep seated sadness.

“You’re very empathic, and that’s a really beautiful thing,” my therapist starts, “but it means these ‘big feelings’ take over your whole life. You’re going through it.” We both can’t help but laugh.

That night I go to a wine bar in Cambridge for girls night, and we also happen to accidentally attend Trivia night. Between each story of bad friends and exes and what’s on our TBR, we also answer questions about Anne With An E, Weezer’s Pinkerton, and a coffee chain in Oakland. One glass and a plate of fries make the night a success, and walking to the bus, we burst into laughter. “We’re so coming back,” I giggled, “we’re cracked!”

Because my laptop is broken, I spend a lot of time rating restaurants on Beli and reading.

I say I’m at a standstill, but I don’t know if that’s true; I don’t like to sit in discomfort. When I don’t know something, I let my brain fill in the blanks, and those blanks are more like bullets. I don’t know if it is quite a standstill, but more a disillusionment with the idea of taking what I want.

I can’t and I won’t.

When we ran into each other yesterday I did cry after, and not because I think we were perfect together, but because I want to prove that we meant something to you, because I’m only sad because I love you. I still do and I hate it.

Q&A with Joscha Bongard at Coolidge Corner Theater

Me by Ethe on our spontaneous walk to South End

Things that inspired me this week:

• Babystar (2025, dir. Joscha Bongard)

• ADÉLA on In Your Dreams with Owen Thiele

• Big Trick by Sabrina Song

• Iced Saigonese from Phinista in Fenway, Boston

• Rewatching Mike’s Mic video essays except on my phone because my laptop is still being fixed

• Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

• Ethe and I found this father-son Ramen rating duo after we tried Buldak Swicy noodles and I just love them

Mural we found in the South End

Favorite mug waiting for meeee

Hi friends! This has been a pretty long & challenging week but we all must power through! I hope you all had a much better week & I’d love to hear about it. My love to you all always #postedoniPhone

xoxo, Maia