31 and scared shitless

a non-comprehensive list of what i am dwelling on at 3 am, related and unrelated to the horrors facing many of our neighbors

Hi. When this hits your inbox, I will be 31 years old and very afraid. I will also be very lots of other things - grateful, hungry, curious, obsessed with my cat, a tiny bit embarrassed about writing things and sharing them online, a tiny bit embarrassed about not writing things and sharing them online as often as I’d hoped when I set out to make this newsletter, hopefully eating carrot cake. But I will be 31 and I will be scared. My granddaddy butt-dialed me on Monday (serendipity, perhaps?) and mentioned that when he turned 30, he was unbothered, but when he turned 31, he was scared of looking down the barrel of the rest of his life. I am not scared of looking down that barrel from an age standpoint; I am terrified from a “context of the present” standpoint.

I have been waking up in pools of my own sweat a lot lately.¹ There are several clear reasons for this if you are a person with basic concern for the wellbeing of others. I have started to repeat a small mantra “I cannot dwell on it at 3 am if I cannot control it. Fear of what’s out of my control are for daylight hours only.” I know, instead of being fearful, I should try to channel another emotion entirely. But fear is a part of life and feels less entrapping than, say, despair, which is a tempting alternative. My commitment to not ruminating on existential dread is possible so long as I displace my fears related to, say, tariffs as a means to justify domestic labor camps, the mass slaughter of Palestinians, or the end to clean drinking water as we know it, with something that is also a semi-viable fear. Here is a non-comprehensive list of what I’ve decided to be scared of when I wake up at 3 am and need to avoid thoughts of true atrocities:

A carefully curated list of my own horrors!

I am scared that when I go to the dentist next week, for the first time² in 13 years,³ they will tell me that my teeth are all rotten and I will be forced to get veneers and everyone will think I got them to look like an instagram baddie but really it will just be because I didn’t go to the dentist for 13 years.

I am scared that Harvey, who is always asleep on my legs when I have this thought, does not know how much I love him. I am scared that if he does know, he will think that I don’t love him anymore if I bring home the cat that was living in our backyard whenever said cat gets off the bite hold at County Animal Services.

I am scared that backyard cat had a better name than Bruno Mars the Cat⁴ before he found our yard.

I am scared that in 2015, I offended the best therapist I will ever have by asking her too much about Dragon Con. I am scared that I came off as mocking when I was genuinely interested.

I am scared of eating shit at F45 in front of my parents. I am scared that they will be truly worried about me and every time we go to our morning class, they will bring up the time I ate shit trying a box jump or whatever it is that takes me out.

I am scared that one day all of the loogies I hack up in the shower each morning will eventually clog the drain and that will be Taylor’s final straw. I am scared that my mom will represent him in this hypothetical divorce.

I am scared that one of the roosters at the Museum will try to fight me (again). I am scared that I will slip in their feces and I will have to ride home in chicken-shit covered clothing, battered and bruised from being on the losing end of a cock fight.

I am scared of nail files. I am scared that the infrequent times I go to the nail salon, that the technician thinks I don’t like them because I am actively grimacing from how unpleasant I find nail filing to be.

I am scared that my obsession with collecting small natural objects is its own displaced materialism. I am scared that one of my nieces or nephews will break or choke on or get hurt while playing with one of my small natural objects and I will have a disproportionate reaction to it (both parts of this fear feel unlikely but alas, I still fear).

I am scared that everyone I love doesn’t know how much I love them. I am scared that by telling them more often, I will breed skepticism of my love.

I am scared that I won’t ever run a marathon now that my first one was sabotaged by my broken foot. I am scared that if I run a marathon, I will be insufferable. I am scared that if I don’t run a marathon, I will be insufferable.

I am scared that I am a terrible cook and everyone I’ve ever subjected to a meal I made is too fearful of my response to tell me that it deserves to go in the French file⁵.

I am scared of saying out loud that I want to be a writer. I am scared that I won’t ever actually write anything good. I am scared that when I write, I take up too much space. I am scared that if I don’t write, I will regret it on my deathbed. I am scared that I think too much about what I will regret on my deathbed.

I am scared that I am not using any of my possessions enough. I am scared that every new thing I acquire will one day end up in a landfill. I am scared that anything I make with these possessions so too will end up in a landfill.

I am scared of e.coli, which I am bound to be afflicted with when you consider how often I eat weeks-old leftovers. I am scared that my next run-in with food-borne illness will be at an extremely inopportune time and it will be because of something that Taylor told me not to eat and I will have to apologize to him for ruining our plans because I refused to throw away week-old pasta.

I am particularly scared of getting a food borne illness in a work setting. Worse than that, I am scared of said illness being the reason I miss a flight home and what requires me to remain pitifully in the work setting even longer.

I am scared that I have outgrown many of my clothes and I am scared of my impulse to buy more. I am scared that my resistance to buying more clothes is rooted in some sort of body negativity. I am scared that paying more attention to the size of my waistline will come at the expense of paying attention to more interesting things about myself (my ability to critically think, my concern for others, my curiosity). I am scared that if I buy more clothes, the ones I get rid of, by way of a thrift store or otherwise, are going to float out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and clog a shark’s intestines and create an Under Paris situation. I am scared that my body is changing and I am scared of being scared of such a vapid change.

I am scared of the way I use social media. I am scared of the way social media uses me. I am scared every time I merely think about something and I am advertised a product for it minutes later. I am scared that our outsized relationships with social media are taking up too much space in our real personal lives. I am scared that we are displacing our closest relationships for the parasocial. I am scared that we are choosing to pursue intimate details of strangers at the expense of pursuing intimate details of those we love.

I am scared that my parents will team up with my in-laws and finally start asking for a grandchild.

I am scared that their grandchild at this time, Harvey, will walk across the table when we host Easter for Taylor’s entire extended family this weekend. I am scared that they will yell at him and that I will look like a pushover and there will be cat fur in their food, which we have established I am scared will be bad, and everyone will talk about how bad of a cat owner and cook I am.

I am scared that my house plants have a bad life and wish they were back where they’re supposed to be (mostly Colombia, I think).

I am scared that I will never get to visit the Everglades again. I am scared that I will get to visit the Everglades again and it will be totally different. I am scared that rangers in the Everglades won’t be able to contain the Burmese pythons and they will eat every mammal on the east coast and Harvey won’t ever be allowed to go outside again.

I am scared of the chat bots that Meta has installed for lonely people to engage with in whatever way. Breaking my rhythm here to say that I am genuinely terrified of AI romance. I am so sorry to be such a hater but alas, I am scared.

I am scared that the bird egg I brought into my house to incubate in second grade really would have hatched if I hadn’t touched it.

I am a little bit scared that I will get attacked by an alligator after committing much of my personal life to being their uncompensated PR manager. I am only scared of this because it will ruin all of your perceptions of alligators and because I don’t think my parents or partner would be able to make the funeral as funny as it should be if that is the way I get taken out.

I am scared that I don’t have the courage for a time like this. I am so, so, so, so scared that I will betray what I know to be true, that all beings are innately valuable and worthy of being protected. ⁶

I need to give myself deadlines so I use this space to its full potential

I won’t be offended if you unsubscribe with this announcement but here’s what I’m thinking: I want to start writing a short something to come out on Fridays about, you guessed it, savoring the day to day. It will be a snippet of my week related to the natural wonder of being alive.⁷ I *think* I will call it something like “savor it friday” (WORKING TITLE, SOLICITING FEEDBACK) and I will share with you the thing that brought a tear to my eye this week, in hopes that over the weekend you can find your own things to savor, too. I would love to share the things you are savoring (a really good home cooked meal! A walk through your neighborhood! An art class you took! Your baby’s first social smile!) with others here, too. Maybe we can do that with guest submissions? Or maybe just the notes feature on substack? Let me know your thoughts.

In addition to Savor It Friday, I will be sharing longer form essays when the spirit takes hold or whatever. I have a lot of drafts but am often stuck on the see-saw of “is it inconsiderate to take up any space at all in light of the horrors around us” and “there is something cosmic and divine happening around us all the time and we could miss out on learning about it.” People need to know how mollusks, made of goo, somehow calcify their bodies and make a hard shell. Please. Wonder abounds even as the sycophants try to obliterate our sense of it.

Each year, in lieu of new year’s resolutions on January 1, I employ them on my birthday. In addition to WRITING MORE, this year’s resolution is called Analog Sunday. Analog Sunday is a day that I am focusing on things that feel a little truer to form than staring into the vortex that is endless scroll and, you guessed it, trying to be fully off devices (weaning myself like a toddler and a pacifier). I piloted this project 3 weeks ago and have tried it twice now (missing this most recent Sunday and boy did I Feel Worse!!!). I share this to let you know that if you reach out to me on Sunday, I HOPE I do not reply until Monday. Please I am trying to liberate my brain from the chokehold that is checking my work email, checking instagram, watching 20 TikToks, checking my personal email, repeating this cycle into oblivion. I want to feel GOOD about being alive on Sundays.

Unsolicited recommendations

I want you all to know about this episode of Radiolab. It is so good. I am on my knees begging you to listen so that you may experience the joy I did while driving to and from the chickens Monday. I also listened to an episode of Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway’s Home Cooking on my way to and from the gym this morning and may I just say what a true gem it is. I usually am opposed to podcasts that are just two people talking to each other without real structure but this one? A treasure.

I am reading Rot by Padraic Scanlan about the apocalyptic conditions of the human-created catastrophe that was the Irish potato blight. It’s almost as though imperialism, dehumanization, and greed are the root causes of all crisis and pain. Huh. I am also reading an ARC of Robert McFarlane’s Is a River Alive? wherein the author explores the titular question. It is making me question everything I have been taught about terrains, waterways, places generally. When I say I love it, that is an understatement.

Not to brag but I accidentally subscribed to the New Yorker’s paper magazine and can I just say what a thrill it is to read a magazine? Cover to cover? There have been so many articles I never would have made time to read in full if it was presented to me on a screen that I cannot wait to share with others. I look forward to seeing which poems and cartoons will be featured all week. This is an endorsement of the publication, but also paper media. I’m telling you, Analog Sunday is IN for my 32nd lap around the sun.

I leave you with this photo of the sand on the beach Tuesday morning. You may find this unremarkable and you might be right for that. But I was mesmerized with the way the tide carved the sand to mimic a river. I know it’s cliche but how amazing that these veins form in so many things in nature - waterways, tree roots, our own flesh. For whatever reason, it harkened Wendy Cope’s poem The Orange. I love you. I’m glad I exist.

see ya later,

emilgator

1. One of these times was on a lot of NyQuil (I was sick, okay??) and a few days later, a copy of Nora Krug’s beautifully illustrated version of Timothy' Snyder’s On Tyranny showed up in the mail. A constructive purchase, at least.

2. This is not because I am scared of the dentist. This is because dental insurance is a scam and though I finally got some (shout out to marriage! and also to health insurance being tied to employment! cool!). This is also because of other types of privilege called good dental genes and good dental hygiene that has allowed me to go without dental catastrophe for the past 13 years (and good friends - Carson and Chris bought me an electric toothbrush for my 24th birthday after I lamented about not going to the dentist). Taylor made me this upcoming appointment (I repeat, shoutout to marriage) in November when he called to make his own (for JUNE!!!!! He gave me the first one because he is a good man who worries my teeth will fall out, probably). I am so excited about getting my teeth cleaned but also TERRIFIED that they will tell me that, actually, my gums are rotting out of my mouth.

3. The last time I went to the dentist, I was 18 years old and about to move to Uganda. The night before my appointment, Carson and I played cards at her parents’ kitchen table, the evening’s main event being mango Burnetts (this was strategic - I needed to get drunk for the first time in a safe place and not in a country where I was yet to make friends). We played rummy 500 over bastardized vodka mai thais until 2 am and she barfed in the bath tub. I felt great until 9:45 am when I realized I certainly could not drive to my 10 o’clock dentist appointment and she would need to chauffeur me. She did me the courtesy of driving donuts in the dentist’s parking lot so I could pull trig before a kind woman’s gloved fingers were inspecting the inner sanctum of my mouth. Obviously, I told her I had food poisoning. Obviously, I reeked of bile and cheap flavored vodka. An additional detail of this story is that I went to the only dentist’s office I could remember at the time. I paid nearly $400 of my hard earned babysitting, hostessing, and generally hustling money for the trauma and shame of being violently hungover for the first time whilst having plaque scraped from my molars days before moving across the world by myself. My mom had made the appointment and put our family’s dental insurance on file at the dentist. This dentist did not have my insurance. Actually, I was at the wrong dentist. Upon handing over my debit card, I realized I walked into this dentist’s office stinking of vomit and they just cleaned my teeth??? It took me 1.5 years to get a dentist’s appointment in this town in 2025 and in 2012 they simply took a walk in??? Is that how inflation works??? Anyways, really excited to overshare to the hygienist about this experience at my upcoming dentist appointment!

4. My mom called him this the first time I mentioned him. I refuse to call him anything else.

5. This is a clever name my dad gave to the gar-báge when I was a child. Notably, one time I sewed him a small teddy bear (aptly named Madey because I made it) and he said “this is great, it’s going in the French file!” and obviously, I cried. I have a great relationship with my dad despite this.

6. And a few things I am not scared of:

I am not scared of getting older - aging is a gift promised to no one. I am not scared of the onslaught of grey hairs that have grown alongside me for nearly a decade now. I am not scared of their quantity or seeming acceleration. I am not scared of my crows feet or the bags under my eyes, mostly because I have had them since Kayla Schauss told me about their existence in second grade. I am a little scared that one day Kayla might read this so if that happens, I love you and am always cheering you on from afar, girl.

I am not scared of my carefully curated list of friends rejecting me when I send out my Spider League invitations later today. Their loss!!!!

I am not scared of saying and doing hard things. I am not scared of starting over. I am not scared of not being good when I try something new.

I am not scared of using leftover plastic over and over again, though perhaps I should be. Without my consent, my body has become an estuary of tiny petroleum beads. Reusing my takeout containers just doesn’t strike fear in me.

7. At the risk of sounding like Victoria Ratliff , I do still believe that we have a duty to savor our lives. Obviously my direction with this is more “watching a dragonfly land on a lilypad”than “luxuriate at a five star resort in another country” at the moment, but it needs to be said - it is a privilege to have much to savor in our days right now. It is a privilege to get sun on my face in the morning and watch the moon change phases night after night. And it is a joy that I will relish despite and because of the horrors of this time.