I didn’t plan to write something this long, but everything just sort of spilled out. If you’ve ever been single, confused, tired of dating apps, overdue for a medical appointment, or just clinging to a little soft magic to get through another week—this one’s for you.

Hey everyone,

Hope you made it through Tax Day. Turns out I owe the government quite a lot of money, so expect to see more newsletters and a lot fewer outings (unless you’re footing the bill!).

Fortunately, 4/20 was only a few days later, which I celebrated with a bite of an infused matcha latte caramel from Lagusta’s Luscious that I picked up at Mighty Lucky, followed by some gentle stretching—because apparently my new gains come with delayed-onset muscle spasms. It’s a hard life being this soft—but at least these chocolates are smooth as silk.

The good news is that I’ve been engaging in so much personal growth over the past year — mainly because I’m a completely free woman, unburdened from responsibility beyond myself and flush with time. All I can do is envision how I want to manifest a different future — for myself, specifically. How do I manifest my wildest dreams, and what exactly do I want?

I know what you’re all thinking: “But Carly, that’s so selfish. Shouldn’t you be using your voice to call for something noble like world peace, scientific advancement, an end to violence and bondage, gender and racial equality, regenerative agriculture, basic human respect and dignity, self-actualization, and pure enlightenment? Shouldn’t we all serve a higher purpose than ourselves?”

Yeah, well, I would like that, too. But apparently a lot of other people still don’t. So, all I can do is gently accept the reality of the situation and start figuring out what’s actually in my control as I reach the apex of My So-Called Midlife Crisis as a woman hungry for love, life and the pursuit of happiness on the fringe of an uncertain future.

Here are some things that are in my control: showing up to community events and making small talk even though I have chronic anxiety, making time to volunteer with children, seniors, and families in need, being accountable to my deadlines and commitments, taking care of myself in hopes of showing up with my best self even though every single fucking day challenges me and there is always someone guaranteed to piss me off. Some might call this female labor, others might call it performative. I always saw it as a very baseline mitzvah or call of duty (but not That One). None of these things are sexy, crazy, or cool, but they are in my control.

Meanwhile, what isn’t in my control: dating apps. This is the only way I’m supposed to meet someone that isn’t having someone jump in my DMs telling me how hot I look or being hit on at an inappropriate moment—given that I’ve already exhausted my friends for matchmaking (they don’t know any good guys either), and friends tend to drop off the deep end once they get partnered up because socializing is a numbers game and you’re always the odd one out. Normally I wouldn’t care, but I’ve been struggling with baby feelings as a perpetual womanchild who never had a bat mitzvah.

You see, the algorithm is hiding all the normal men. They’re trying to make us settle for their losers or pay extra just to believe we’re in the same league as the hot guy with a bad personality—a whole new kind of vapid punishment. And if you’re alone on a Friday night in New York City, 9 out of 10 restaurants are going to turn you away. How the hell am I supposed to find the love of my life in this current climate when I can’t even drop an entire purse filled with condoms on Fifth Avenue and let a guy waste my time and ruin my life for the next 20 years?

Have you even seen what these conservative incels are putting out on the internet?! Somehow people are still buying this bullshit! I thought moving to New York City would offer a shield of controlled anarchy, allowing me to turn a blind eye to the existence of all these completely unevolved people who can barely pass as human. But it has been brought to my attention that they now want to overturn the 19th Amendment under the usual excuse: “Well, the Bible made me do it” — because banning abortion and gender policing just wasn’t far enough. I swear to god, patriarchy is a mental illness.

White Christian nationalism just won’t give up the dream of limitless entitlement through the subjugation of others, as if the overarching moral lesson one could glean from these texts should have been about not contributing to the bondage of others. And yet, it is still the number one tool of oppression, including the crux of imagination and critical thinking. I understand that this has always been a thing—it’s just so embarrassing that we’re still here. How the hell am I supposed to be horny for this shit or even care?!

In a different era, I imagined that turning 40 would have been just another steppingstone into My So-Called Sex and the City Life. But the reality is far less interesting, and that’s why Michael Patrick King had to put Carrie Bradshaw’s depressingly toxic storyline on life support. We need more lived stories of women who are unbothered but still found love and themselves later in life—who aren’t already famous and dead to us. Mainly because we’re looking hotter than ever now that everyone traded Marlboro Lights for joints and Pilates mat classes.

Personally, I felt promised a Golden Girls senior living community aspirational dream where all our best friends were going to hang out all the time eating cheesecake in the middle of the night while ragging on each other and still never finding a love that lasts a lifetime because they’re ALL DEAD (most likely after refusing to go to the doctor for very obvious medical needs or take care of themselves ever). I haven’t even ticked that box because that’s how bleak the options have been.

So, let me get this straight: You’re asking me to do my own dishes and this?! What am I getting out of it?! (That’s what Samantha Jones would be asking and would make it worth watching, but she’s not on the show anymore).

The truth is, I have no idea what the “normal” guys are doing. I assume they’re doing what I’m doing — sitting home on a Friday night, scrolling their phones and watching TV. But I actually have no idea what they’re doing — the “normal” guys. You know, the ones who aren’t like complete pieces of shit or totally useless. I even decided that I’m fine with not having that much in common with them, too, because the only thing worse than having someone cramp your style is competing for creative validation.

All the normal ones I know are married or guys I don’t want to have sex with, so I’m currently suspended between everyone I’ve dated before and whoever the next one is—which mostly just means having infinite time to yourself. The good news is that as a woman, this means you can usually still pass the Bechdel Test just by being the main character of your own life, where anything is possible. And is that not freedom? According to every woman I know who just wants one fucking afternoon to herself—completely unbothered—the answer is yes. May every woman have this choice as long as we live.

(And yes, there’s more. Because of course there is—this is a saga, not a soundbite.)

At the same time, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes vacillate. One moment I feel lucky to have all this time to myself; the next, it feels like it’s slipping away. A beautiful gift of time and the nagging feeling that it’s running out, when all I want is just to experience a taste of the infinite. (Are we not mortals?).

Everyone thinks bisexual women are indecisive and chaotic, but really it’s so much deeper than that. For me, I simply can’t envision my life with another person, so I keep trying on different people for size. I kind of hate gender identity conversations for that reason—they’re so tedious, mostly because my own orientation is already so neurotic I can’t stand thinking about it, let alone someone else’s.

Being with no one means that you don’t have to think about it at all, until someone just eventually comfortably integrates themselves into your life one day and you don’t feel so strained or compromised trying to integrate yourself into theirs. Some of us are just better at dunking than others, and some of us just don’t want to play the game. How am I supposed to explain this when people ask me about my dating life and what I’m looking for?

The thing is, the alternative doesn’t mean you won’t get burned. I’ve been burned by so many women that I feel like I need at least 10 years to find a good man. There’s gotta be at least one in the next decade. It’s really all I can stand—and honestly, I’m trying so hard. A lot of lesbians don’t like or trust bisexual women—which is totally fair. Even so, the assumption that everything should be rooted in sex makes me question my own priorities. It would be so cool if there were more bisexual-specific mixers, but instead it’s just community “Queer Night”—a space that might be more appealing if it wasn’t so totally antisemitic all the time.

This is how I know I’m not straight, but also not gay. Not asexual. Maybe just a sexually ambivalent, anxious-avoidant existentialist on the spectrum with a firm, high-functioning grasp on reality and that’s why I limit the amount of emotional and mental energy I give anyone or else I’d never get anything done. What that person looks like is a very relative thing because honestly, being a psychic Pisces weed witch just isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea (unless they’re into high-quality and complex ethereal tea blends that are so weird they just work). Why does society need me to fit it into a label?

So, of course, I’m not going out nor trying to be a scene queen. Why would I, when I already have the best seat in the most exclusive West Village studio in New York City where the service is always top-notch, the food and beverage is exactly what I want, and no one cares that I’m not wearing pants while I catch up with the latest week-long free trial subscription of Paramount+? I don’t even have to take a cab. The next day, I do my hair and makeup, put on my finest outfit and start writing, staring out my window as if New York Magazine is going to show up and I have to illustrate that I don’t live in a complete shithole and could even count as aspirational (a pretty fine DIY job, too!).

Here’s the thing: a lot of New York women my age live like this. This is the accurate picture of a late 30s, early 40s single New York woman. We love to spend money on ourselves for the money that is not being spent on us. We give ourselves love rather than waiting until death for it. And there is nothing more threatening to society than an independent, self-actualized woman (except other independent, self-actualized women who somehow always struggle to work together even when they want to).

Best of all, you can do it, too! Maybe not from my apartment though, but whatever that little slice of heaven looks like for you.

So, how exactly do you make space for a soulmate when you’re so busy working on yourself all the time through self-care and clinical self-examination while realizing that maybe you’re putting a little more work than you really need to? It’s about working smarter, not harder.

The problem is we’re all socially fucked up and everyone is using apps. But the apps are rigged, because they want you to pay money to find the normal guys. And when you find them, it’s just so unsatisfying because the conversations are so scripted:

“Oh, what do you do?”

“Um, I have kind of a hybrid career right now? It’s kind of a long story, but I’ve done a lot of stuff.”

I have the worst elevator pitch. What do I “do”? Which part of how I make my money are you most interested in, and how will you view me accordingly? It’s hard to articulate being bisexual and neurodivergent because they’re both on spectrums — and I never know what color I am.

How is it that even in a city as large as New York City, filled with so many clinically neurotic people, I can’t find a single person tempting me with a better life than the one I already have?

Bisexual men are great except a lot of sexually enlightened individuals want to be poly relationship anarchists and I just don’t want to do it. I don’t care about their drama or listening to the philosophy that got them there — I just want as little drama as possible (unless I’m the one bringing it, but I usually feel pretty bad about it). I mean, why start off with a threesome when you could just test how strong your relationship is 7 years in by using whatever temporary solution or test subject human being will help fill the void that you haven’t filled in yourself?

Even though I’ve been in therapy my whole life, I’ve never been formally diagnosed with anything. I’m pretty sure I’m neurodivergent—a clinical-based personality term that was never used for most of my life or upbringing. That’s also why I’m currently in the middle of getting a diagnosis on everything wrong with me from every doctor under the sun: a general practitioner, a dermatologist, a dentist, an OBGYN, a psychiatrist. (Plus, a lymphatic drainage massage from a Groupon I treated myself to for my birthday — the kind of gift one gives themselves as a reminder they’re worth taking care of.) It’s like speed dating—if speed dating included insurance networks, health portals, and the looming awareness of your own mortality. But hey, at least someone’s invested in my long-term viability.

Who needs hobbies when you have insurance? What a revelation for someone like me who has rarely had insurance in her whole life. I didn’t even understand how insurance worked when I first had it in college and assumed you went to a hospital it was going to cost $1 million and why, like many Americans who are at least modestly interested in self-preservation, I aggressively committed myself to holistic self-care as preventative health. Maybe that’s why I have such chronic existential despair: what exactly am I worth, and why do I have zero guarantees about my future?

In the past three months since getting coverage, I’ve been making the rounds. It’s shocking how nice these offices are — and I know it’s not even the crème de la crème of medtech buildings. But this is a special occasion: I now have a GP for the first time in…I don’t even know how long? Thank god: someone knows I’m alive!

I almost never went to the doctor unless I was sick—which, if you’re healthy, should honestly be enough. But since turning 40, it felt like time to look under the hood: “I am making an investment in my health.”

The office is enormous and mostly empty. The nurses don’t seem stressed, even if they are. We talk about The Pitt. She’s not really into that show and prefers reality television. Another nurse walks in and gives me a hepatitis B shot — something I thought I’d already been vaccinated for, but I guess not. I figured better safe than sorry. The alternative sounds expensive.

Getting paired with each medical service feels like online dating — especially the rejection part and the fallibility of the algorithms. For each one, I find myself trying to match with someone aligned with my insurance, my schedule, my personality, and my dignity. It’s a process. Some of them are liars and don’t take the insurance. With all of them, it’s a matter of trust. And I know I’m eventually going to settle for “good enough.” (At least for now…).

I tell my psychiatrist this over Zoom as we meet for the first time, trying to sum up my entire mental and medical history in exactly one hour to a complete stranger poking around my subconscious while taking notes. We’re being explicit about the trauma, because mine is both clinical and conditional. I hate it.

“Carly, I’m not going to lie. You go on a lot of tangents and are a bit of a fast talker. Some people just talk fast naturally, but it could also be mania. Have you ever been diagnosed with A.D.D.?”

“I mean, honestly I thought neuroses were just a very Jewish thing and a personality fit for New York City. No one ever accused artists and writers of being the most mentally stable people, you know?”

Tinkering with my brain is a lot. Especially when I have to define what’s “functional” or “normal,” even though I have three jobs, a book, my own studio apartment, and plenty of things that should count as respectable — if not exceptional. Who am I, and why is that still not enough?

“Do you have delusions of grandeur?”

“I mean, it’s kind of hard to say when I’ve stayed in the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria for free and got sent to France to blind taste hundreds of wines in a medieval castle to write about it somewhere. I would say that’s technically based while also pretty grand — and yeah, I guess I did have the delusion that I could keep the shtick up. But I really do lead a much more structured life now. I’m trying.”

Maybe it’s the weather or all the other things that make it hard to sleep through the night. He writes me a script for a drug I feel indifferent about and asks to see me again next week.

Every day, I get fitter, healthier, stronger, more productive. A dental hygienist scrapes a few layers of buildup from my teeth, pinches my cheek, and tells me what a good girl I’ve been. “See me in three months. And then six.”

My dermatologist is ageless, and not just because of the fillers — which are so natural-looking I consider messing around with them. She has kindness in her eyes that are always smiling, and I can never tell if she’s just humoring me when she guesses my age wrong. I used last year’s insurance to have two moles removed. This year’s got me two more under the guise of “biopsies.” It’s cosmetic, but it makes me feel prosperous. There is always a problem with the front desk, but the office was outfitted from a former sauna, so I’m only mildly pressed.

I fear the OBGYN the most, mainly for the conversation. What to do about that? To have children, or not? And why? Why does this question tug at me in the saddest way? What else did I think was going to happen?

I redownload the apps. I delete them again. Not sure, but still hopeful.

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking around. If it resonated, I’d love to know—or feel free to just lurk in silence. That’s a vibe too. I’m told that engagement matters, but ghosting is also extremely on brand for this narrative.

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