You Get What You Pay For

The Public Self obfuscates the private self, because that's what audiences want. They want to watch me confess my vulnerabilities—theirs—without the responsibility of con-cem for how it might strain my body, my heart, for the woman leaving the stage. They want to watch Serena per-form, decontextualized from her anxieties about mother-hood, the blood clots she fears might harm her pregnancy. They don't want to acknowledge they've built the pressure chamber where she dreads the inevitably harsh criticism of her late thirties comeback.

Summer has always been my season since then. Gloom descends with winter like it does for everyone, but there's something about tank tops making their debuts and sweat beads crawling down my neck that lures the very worst of my depression. Something about the weight of the air, relentless sun bleeding through ozone, sets an idea in the recessed hallways of my mind. It's the idea of my death.

I've grown up from a lonely girl into an alone woman.