Gmornin' from Last Night

It is 12:25am instead of sleeping I’m writing this- one reason to heed the advice of my domain name. If I’m being honest I have the insane idea in my head that this will be the launching point of my career and online presence and blah blah blah. When in reality it’ll just barely keep me sane and some of my friends will read it for the first few weeks until they get bored of my bullshit.

I had been thinking about this for a while, wondering if it was too much of an early-2000s vibe or just a modern Carrie Bradshaw. I’ve decided that since I walked home from the subway contemplating this, with Mace at the ready, at its core it’s absolutely neither of those things. I am not a pre-teen girl with frosted hair in her poster splattered bedroom and I’m certainly not a paid journalist who can afford brunch everyday and a closet of designer clothes and Monolos. I’m a not even five foot girl who has barely come of age going to school for Acting, living in the wrong part of Brooklyn to be on the paleo diet. If Carrie Bradshaw owned Vans, then maybe we would be on the same page.

This is basically gonna be a place for me to talk about anything the fuck I want. I need to give the people who know me a break from my everything, so instead I’ve decided to share it with the world. I have just a million thoughts running through my head at all times. Sometimes they’re really important things about how society treats certain people or how life even came to be or theatre and art. And sometimes they’re about my roommate who flushes food down the toilet or my math teacher who doesn’t teach or the security guard that forgets I live in my building every single day. And sometimes they’re about what other people are thinking about. And sometimes (a lot of times) they’re about mozzarella cheese.

People often refer to certain things as “a slice of life,” and this will be exactly that, a slice of my life. Today I walked in to have lunch with my friends and I sat down and said nothing. My friend almost immediately asked me, “Where’s the story?” I was confused, because at first I thought I forgot something important and I was like “Oh Lia you fucking idiot.” But then he went on, “You always come in talking about your crazy day, every time I see you I wait for the story. Where is it?” Well I’m sure Nick will be pleased to know that those stories will start to cumulate here, for him and everyone else to see, even on the days you don’t see me.

I am always the girl with a story and since I’m too all over the place to minor in journalism we’ll just write some stories here and see how it goes. So, here we go:

Tonight I met Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jonny Sun. Two men that I look up to immensely. It is partially their work that pushed me to do this, there is something so specifically beautiful about creating something entirely your own. Both of them did that in their own awesome ways and on the subway home I just couldn’t stop thinking about this concept of creation. Other avenues of creation went through my mind, but being a person that is horrible with following rules this seemed to be the easiest way for me to put myself out there and make something out of nothing.

Of course the website building tool I chose is offline at the moment, which is in typical Lia fashion, and is one of the small details in the anecdotes I will recount at lunch with my friend Nick.

Anyway, it was cold and bitter tonight but I waited outside for about two hours. I made a new friend which was super cool for me because I’m horrible at that. She’s in her 20s so in a different place in life but was so chill and it was nice to find a real connection with someone who is an absolute stranger. We just happened to stand on line together and make small talk. Then small talk turned to big talk, to laughing, to sitting in Starbucks together for forty minutes afterwards. I proceeded to walk 5 long blocks in the cold to a different subway station than the one right outside the warmth of the coffee chain, just to find that my train wasn’t running and I should’ve just listened to the Maps app on my phone and gone to the Astor Place station. Listen to things that know better than you, like the Maps app. Don’t listen to Lia.

I spent the subway ride reading little poems in the book I’d just gotten and letting them sink into my brain and my heart. Because honestly Lin and Jonny both melt my heart in their own ways. Once I transferred to the Flatbush Ave. bound 2 train, I put my book away. The girl across from me had a giant bouquet and I kept trying to figure out if she received it, or was giving it. Because of her exhausted eyes, as we left the train I changed my mind to receive. I watch a couple fight and then reconcile, but walk home separately. I was very invested, the end was a big twist. Besides the inevitable people watching which ensues on the subway, I held my bags to my chest and thought about how great it was to finally be unapologetic.

I had a Q&A recently with the playwright Kate Benson to discuss her play [Porto]- which is a brilliant feminist piece by the way. And afterwards I thanked her for coming and sharing her wisdom with us blah blah blah and my self-deprecating instinct just had me blurt out an apology for all the questions I’d asked. She looked me in the eye and said “Please. Do not apologize for that or anything. And especially after discussing that play. Don’t.”

And she’s right. Of course we could go into the logistics of why women are always apologizing for just being who they are, which is likely due to the constant suppression of any/all of their opinions and beliefs by men. Or we could not go there and pretend that its just something I do. And even if that were it, why should there be a need to be sorry for being who I am? So I ask long winded questions and share what I believe, so what? I wish I could firmly believe this applied to things like, “So I’m always late because I use sleep as a way to escape my problems,” because it would make life way easier, but it shouldn’t. There’s always room to change the ugly parts of you- and then again there’s always time for a few more minutes of sleep. Don’t listen to Lia.

But there is room for you to grow and flourish into the beautiful parts of you. I like to think and talk, I like to examine art, I like to create my own. Good. I need to be that person. Embrace that person. And that goes for anything you may be interested in, if its math or anime (why I don’t know, but no judgement) just do that thing to death and make it yours. Or if its just a personality trait like being quiet or being incredibly loud- just own the fuck out of it. In high school I wasn’t okay with who I was, as most teenagers are not. I shied away from what I wanted to be, because I didn’t want people to notice me or look at me or judge me. My final year of high school changed this a little, I broke out of my shell and started to say, “This is who I am.” Now that I’m living completely on my own away from anyone I’ve ever known, I say “This is who I am and you can suck my dick if you don’t like it.”

And that feels really fucking good.

And that’s why this blog exists, because who cares?

Being unapologetic is a freedom that you need to grow into. It’s the reason that the show about the insane Gallagher family doing anything to get by is called “Shameless.” Without shame you’re free to be whatever you decide. And you’re free to start a blog. And you’re free to go to sleep when you don’t see this article going anywhere else. So in the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda “Gnight.”