Plateauing like a good girl

on getting stuck and staying there

You know those people who have everything? Straight white teeth, passive income, cute belly buttons. Those people with peaceful purse dogs and PhDs. Those people you hate. 

Don’t worry; I’m not one of them. 

It’s Halloween 2024, the US presidential election is looming, and it has felt like the end of the world since Y2K when I was on the uncertain brink of turning 10. Double digits were a big deal. Now, I’m 34, one year older and wiser than Jesus, and juggling my disparate costumes as Corporate Pick-Me and Poet Rank with Yearning. 

Before the high season at my day job, I wanted to be a full-time artist. I did. I swear I did. But before that, since the dawn of my personality, I’ve wanted to be good. 

No one likes a showoff, so I become paralyzed in my mediocrity—

I check my work phone every 2 minutes. 

Ruminate. 

Have nothing to watch/eat/wear.

Multitask like a fallen god bored by mortal whims. 

Do you do this too? Pay your dues? Swear off the altitude sickness of success? I don’t want to tiptoe upwards, but I think I can speculate that for many of us, plateaus are safe and pretty, and we crave that—a clear, unending view. 

Lately, at the moment of clocking out, I forget who I am with a gummy, surf the aftertaste of merlot, and write smut. I haven’t been sharing as much as usual (like a good girl) but this week, I’ll share a new poem over on Instagram (if you ask nicely). Take your pick. 

"Kink"
"They Just Don’t Make Melancholy Like They Used To"

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*The title of this (plateauing like a good girl) is from my poem, “Sellout”.