She's Back! (In POG Form?)

It's been a minute a.k.a. like, two years

HELLO! I’m alive! Isn’t that something? Is that a big deal to you? Did you forget you subscribed to this newsletter back in 2019 and now you’re being confronted with the ghost of your lacklustre decisions? Are you psyched? Are you indifferent? Are you there, God? It’s me, Anne T. Donahue

It’s been a long two/three years. There was a pandemic. (Still is!) A car accident. (You knew about that already, right?) Deaths. An ADHD diagnosis. (Turns out being misdiagnosed as bipolar (or borderline) if you’re a woman presenting with ADHD symptoms that differ from the ones that show up in men is a real thing! Who knew?) School! Leggings! (I’m a convert.) The realization that I don’t particularly care for coffee. Growth! Emotions! Potential gentlemen callers! The absolute dread that came with the idea of writing, particularly anything personal (or anything like this)! Life’s a mess! I’ll take it!

The thing about being confronted by and surrounded with the reminder that we are all mortal and the end comes for us all is that you will emerge from the death cloud as a different person. Not necessarily better, hopefully not any worse, but certainly updated. In my case, I used that time to pause everything. I didn’t really write, I certainly didn’t perform or do anything public-centric, and most days it was a miracle if I put on makeup and participated in the world. I ate, I slept, I watched a shit-ton of Food Network (which I recommend to anybody for any occasion — tonight is Bobby Flay night, and reader, HELL YEAH), and I eventually started hanging out with my friends again because I quickly learned that a life without the people you like and love is an empty one. (Even if it took me like, a year to get around to making dates.) I felt listless and angry and sad and sometimes fine, and there never seemed to be a constant outside of the “!!!” feeling that comes with a series of massive life changes. Until there was: comfort and calm. The idea that I could prep, plan, and make contingent plans for any worst case scenario had been finally refuted, and I’d learned that chaos was a constant. Which, ironically, is very calming. Over the last couple months especially, I’ve taken a lot of solace in accepting that while we can control ourselves to an extent (read: we can choose not to be dicks and we can choose to (try and) be good people), that’s about all we can control. As a kid, I used to make my mom promise me every night before bed that there wouldn’t be any “burglars or fires,” and I wouldn’t sleep until she assured me of such. It took until 2022 to realize that her promise didn’t actually ward anything off because what-if planning and defence schemes don’t really do much. All I needed was reassurance that I wouldn’t have to face that shit alone. (Plus: anti-anxiety medication in my adult years)

So with chaos in mind, I’ve abandoned all hope for mapping out my future. I know I like writing because I missed it (and now I’m here, baby!), which is a relief because book #2 comes out in spring 2025, and I actually feel ready to start broaching it. I know going back to school (part-time) has morphed me into a beaming, grinning idiot because I missed learning so much, and I love being surrounded by nerds who also come to class with the enthusiasm of Martin Prince selecting “tell me more” on that weird video game. I know that the hustle I had a few years ago has been transitioned into a feeling of “I’ll do my best, and that’s enough!” (or “It’ll be ready when it’s ready” spoken like the owner of the Chippy in Derry Girls) because the race I was running in my mind wasn’t real and I was actually the only participant. And I know that somehow, in the midst of the shit-storm of 2020-2022, I learned that while messy and awful and painful and shocking and incredibly cruel, life is still something I want and something I value. I want to be alive. I want to be here, experiencing things. And I want to be happy with myself and the TBD path I’ve found myself on. This week, I had a meeting with one of my history professors who asked me what I wanted to do after I graduated (in like, eight years). I told her I had no idea. Which, oh my lord, felt so freeing. Life can change in a second — why would I want to ruin the surprise by trying to map out completely unchartered territory? Why waste my energy white knuckling when it won’t save me? I’ve said for a long time that everything is consistently in a state of flux. But over the last year or so is the first time I really believe it.

So here we are. I missed this newsie, and I missed hearing from you guys when you dropped me a line. I don’t have plan to monetize this bad-boy for the foreseeable because I don’t want the pressure of having to deliver something every week or more (even though I might end up writing every week, anyway) and I am basically an adult teen who likes to fuck off to the mall when I have cabin fever. I also don’t have the energy to make this look particularly pretty, so you get what you get, which is just words on a page. (For now. Maybe I’ll get really into web design?) (Probably not.) Where I was once very hardcore with my schedule and kept a running tally of my productivity (I was insufferable?), I now take great joy in not doing any of that at all. I’d like this space to be one where we can celebrate the magic of figuring it all out while commiserating over how shitty figuring it all out can really be. I’m also far from the only person who’s endured bananas-levels of grief over the past little while, and I know that. We’ve all lost a lot under a huge umbrella of circumstances, and if that doesn’t act as a gorgeous means of unification, I’m not sure what does. Grief and life and loss and growth are all incredibly painful. But they become less so when you accept that they’re also part of *gestures* this whole thing, and we need each other if we’re going to get through it. And we will, because that’s how it all works. With hopefully no burglars or fires in tow.

That said, if you forgot about this newsletter and have no idea why I just said all this, I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m figuring it out, but also: hi!

Talk soon!
- A.