…and then I woke up
why I'm starting a substack instead of going back to weekly therapy
(actual photo from my hospital bed, post-op 5/11/24)
Hello, and welcome to my interior psychic landscape.
It’s going to get strange here, but I promise you’ll like it.
I’ve been wanting to become a Substack baddie for two years now, and never really knew when the “right” time would be. I procrastinated (hello, newly diagnosed ADHD), probably due to a deep, lurking fear of what the hell I’d actually say. But the more I put it off, the more I started to feel something—both disturbing and clarifying. A kind of liminal ache.
A collective psychosis simmering just beneath the surface.
This feeling that we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop…
Like there’s a secret we’re all trying to ask each other, but we forgot the question.
And then, exactly one year ago this week, I got appendicitis.
I had my appendix removed in an emergency surgery.
It was the second emergency operation of my life. The first was when I was 3 — I lodged a pen in my eye while my mom wasn’t looking as she shopped at Pay Less Shoes. I guess even then I thought I could see more clearly through the power of the pen.
Anyway.
I woke up from surgery—appendix-less and high on morphine—at 5:55 a.m. on the cusp of my birthday.
And a portal opened.
This Substack is an extension of that portal.
…and then I woke up
The title is about dreams — but mostly, it’s about waking up from them.
It’s about the clumsy choreography of making sense of destabilizing fragments: dream dreams, waking dreams, the illusions I buy into to survive, and the ways I try (and fail, and try again) to wake up from the stories that no longer fit.
This is a place where I’ll explore all my writing that isn’t screenplays (and baby, there’s a lot).
A place where I’ll let myself be unfinished. Nonlinear.
Where I’ll say the things I probably shouldn’t — but will anyway. (With style.)
What to expect:
Poems, musings, short stories, visions, downloads
Reflections on the little deaths and rebirths that happen every day
Dispatches from the space between dreaming and waking
A memoir of the soft apocalypse we are witnessing in real time
Deep dives into pop culture hauntings
What kind of space is this?
This isn’t a newsletter — it’s a container for softness, instability, obsessions, irreverence, ritual, and love.
There will be a lot in here about gender, film, breakups, transcendence, grief, spiritual delusion, art-making, and many jokes about LA’s “healing” culture.
I like to think of this space as that moment when your best friend is analyzing a dream with you and she says:
“So I eloped with my toxic ex.
The wedding was in our high school auditorium.
Mimi from The Drew Carey Show officiated.
The only guests were my divorced moms — who were arm-wrestling —
and dolphins in individually sized pools that filled the whole theater.
And then I woke up.”
More or less, that’s the vibe in here.
This is a space for trans and queer kin, artists, weirdos, witches, seekers, David Lynch enthusiasts, anyone trying to make sense of the senseless, anyone who values Snoopy memes.
The logistics:
I’ll aim to post 2–3x a month — sometimes more, depending on astrological forecasts and the spirits that move me.
Free Subscribers:
Access to most essays, mini-rants, poetic nonsense, stories, and experimental thoughts.
Paid Subscribers:
Bonus content: early creative peeks, voice notes, private Q&As, and rituals I may regret sharing.
Also, you’ll be supporting my writing practice and my body — both of which are in ongoing transformation.
I’m starting this because I need a space to tell the truth about what it means to build a life — as a trans artist, as a seeker, as someone who’s died a few metaphorical deaths and come back more haunted (and hotter).
If that resonates, stay. Subscribe. Let’s see what opens.
welcome :-)
I think you are wonderful. I can’t wait to read what you write. I’ve been writing on Substack for a couple of years now, and it has really helped me. Move forward as an artist. ❤️
River supremacy Lets gooo