anxiety

Do I Want Kids? Part 1: Mental Health

Kate Sloan

Am I too crazy to have kids?

This question haunts me. I’m embarrassed at how often it flits through my head. When I get sucked down into the whirlpool of depression or anxiety, those moods pose a question which only serves to perpetuate them: Are you too fucked-up to ever get the things you want? And of course, in the throes of sadness and fear, “yes” is the only answer I can fathom.

There are times when my mental health is so bad that I can barely take care of myself – food, sleep, hygiene – so it’s scary to imagine trying to take care of someone else at those times. How can you be responsible for another human being if you’re crying too hard to get up off the floor, or if the world beyond your bed feels too scary to contemplate?

I’ve heard many a horror story from people whose parents raised them in a maelstrom of mental illness. Children of the severely depressed can be neglected; children of the deeply anxious can absorb compulsive fears; children of people with personality disorders can grow up hurt and confused, unable to truly trust anyone. Of course, these stories aren’t universal, and I probably know just as many people whose parents struggled with mental illness and who nonetheless turned out fine, but it’s hard to tune out these narratives when you’re scared they could come true for you.

I’d like to think my co-parent would be a relatively sane, grounded person, to help balance me out. (As much as I admire folks who raise kids solo, that doesn’t seem emotionally or financially tenable for me.) But then you risk creating an off-kilter family dynamic where one person is over-relied upon to prop up everyone else, psychologically and logistically, and that’s not fair at all. Maybe this is an area where polyamory could be an advantage: a solid support network of de facto other parents could take some pressure off. They do say it takes a village to raise a child, after all. The results of a legal paternity test can tell you a lot, but they’re not the whole picture, and a parent or guardian obviously doesn’t have to be genetically or legally related to a kid to assist in raising that kid.

Even supposing that I could overcome my own craziness enough to take care of a child – and/or rely on the help of other, steadier humans – I would still worry about transmitting that craziness to my kid. Some varieties of DNA test can predict whether a person might develop certain mental illnesses, but even if I went the adoption route, I’d still be concerned my negative thought patterns and tendency to overreact to emotional stimuli would get passed on to my little one through sheer osmosis. I would have to be careful and deliberate in the ways I chose to behave around them, and the values and habits I let them pick up – though I suppose that’s true for any parent. You probably want to clean up your act around someone you’re raising, to some extent, whether by quitting smoking or cutting back on profane language or, yes, consciously dialling back your “crazy” behaviors if you can. Hell, doing this might even help me feel less crazy, too.

That said, I don’t think it’s all bad for a mentally ill person to raise a child. Hell, both my parents struggle with depression and anxiety, and if anything, it just made them more empathetic when I started to notice my own psychological symptoms. I’ve also learned about cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy while getting treated for my mental illnesses, and these are useful frameworks for anyone seeking to moderate and process their feelings. I could teach these systems to my kid(s), and maybe then they would have an easier time with childhood’s classically outsized emotions, like sadness, rage, and restlessness. Increased emotional literacy is one of the major silver linings I’ve found in my struggles with depression and anxiety, so I may as well try to impart it on my spawn.

It’s also worth noting that depression and anxiety don’t necessarily preclude you from being loving and supportive; you may just show your love and support in different ways than a neurotypical person, depending on how your symptoms manifest. I can still be there for loved ones when I’m having a rough time. It definitely looks different than my emotional support does when I’m feeling better – there’s fewer words of wisdom and more sitting in silence and solidarity – but it’s still a form of love. As the brilliant Carly Boyce pointed out in a suicide intervention workshop of hers that I attended, sometimes a person in distress doesn’t need you to pull them out of that distress – they just need you to keep them company until the feeling passes. As someone well-versed in distress, I could certainly do that for my kid.

So, am I too crazy to have kids? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s off the table entirely. I think, in order to feel comfortable taking that step, I would first have to feel stable in my medication regimen, brush up on my CBT and DBT skills, and have a relatively settled, dependable social support structure. But once those things were in place, I might just become a hyper-empathetic – if chronically frazzled – mom.

 

This 3-part series on parenthood was generously sponsored by the folks at TestMeDNA.com. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Confession: STI Testing Makes Me Anxious

Kate Sloan

It’s practically sex educators’ catchphrase: get tested!

I have indeed gotten tested, many times. I have requested panels from my GP, and sought out specialized clinics. I have kept on top of my sexual health all the years I’ve been sexually active (with the exception of the first few, when I didn’t know better). I’ve gotten tested between partners, and any time I think I may have put myself at risk.

But I would be lying if I said it was easy. Getting tested has felt hard every single time.

The thing about having an anxiety disorder is that sometimes you can’t tell the difference between real problems and imagined ones. Sometimes encountering a real problem once makes you fear that same problem coming up every time you run into that situation thereafter. Sometimes you manage to convince yourself the problem isn’t worth fearing, and then it comes up again, “proving” you were right to be scared.

That’s exactly what’s happened to me with STI testing: it’s become a locus of worry, because while testing me, doctors have erased my bisexuality, called me overzealous for getting tested more than once a year, and shamed me for being polyamorous and promiscuous (two separate identities that don’t necessarily overlap!). These things have only happened to me a few times but they’ve nonetheless made me dread getting tested.

I know I’m not alone in my medical anxieties. When I reported on an at-home HPV testing kit for Glamour in 2017, I spoke to people who’ve been unwilling or unable to get tested due to concerns around doctors’ and clinics’ slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and ableism, just to name a few. I have it easier than most, being a usually-able-bodied, white, cisgender, middle-class person living in a country that has publicly funded healthcare – and it’s still hard for me to go. That makes me worry for all the people less privileged than me who avoid getting tested for fear of how they might be treated – to say nothing of other barriers, like location and cost.

I thought about this a lot when STDCheck.com reached out to me wanting to sponsor a post and a giveaway. Crucially, you can order tests on their website and then just take a provided requisition form to the testing center of theirs that is closest to you. This presumably eliminates most or all of the “So why did you come in today?” conversation that is (for me, at least) the most intimidating part of the process. Their services are confidential, fast, and available in over 4,500 testing centers across the United States.

The internet is a huge blessing for me as an anxious person, letting me do things like scope out the layout of an unfamiliar café before I go there for the first time, or make restaurant reservations through a form so I don’t have to call and talk to a human. It might seem like these accommodations are impossible or unlikely in the medical field, but that doesn’t have to be the case, and I’m glad!

 

Here’s some exciting news: STDCheck.com is offering one reader of my site a $50 gift card you can use toward their services! You can enter below. The giveaway is only open to entrants who live in the United States, and it will run for one week. Best of luck, babes!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex Sells, Part 2: Camming

Kate Sloan

I log onto Skype. I send a quick “I’m ready when you are!” message to the stranger who paid me a few minutes ago. They call me up, and I put on my best Flirty Face. Maybe my clothes come off; maybe not. Maybe I have an orgasm; maybe not. By the end of the 15- or 30-minute show, my face is flushed – from nerves or pleasure or both – and I’m marginally richer than I was before.

When I partnered with Bubbles London Escorts to create this blog series on my experiences with sex work, I knew I’d have to touch on camming. And truth be told, I was reluctant. I don’t think of myself as a camgirl, not really; I don’t put in the hours upon hours of self-promotion and primping and flirting with silent time-wasters that people who cam for a living have to do. Folks occasionally ask me for advice on “getting into” camming, and I always bashfully tell them: I don’t use cam sites or seek out customers. They come to me, via DM or email, because they’ve enjoyed something I tweeted or read something I wrote or fixated on a selfie I Instagrammed, and they – inexplicably, to my mind – want to see me get lascivious just for them. I like money, and I like feeling desired, so when the opportunity arises, I often say yes.

I don’t cam very often – usually just a handful of times a year. It’s not something I seek out or advertise all that much, because honestly, it makes me anxious as hell. The process of scheduling a show, attiring myself appealingly, and then performing on camera directly conflicts with my insecurities and awkwardness and shyness. It requires a certain brassy confidence that I can convincingly fake for the duration of a show, maybe, on a good day. It’s for these reasons that I decided late last year to stop taking on new cam clients unless they seemed really great and made me feel really comfortable. The money I got from putting on these shows just wasn’t enough to justify how nervous and drained they made me feel.

But while I was doing it more actively, I had some regular customers I adored. There was the breezily confident guy who would tell me to “just do whatever feels good,” and would sit back in his chair, smoking a cigar and not jerking off at all, while I held a vibe on my clit and writhed. There was the sweet dork who only ever wanted to watch me give head to a realistic dildo, and then would chat with me about social justice in comic book universes once he’d come. There was the woman in her first queer relationship who wanted to learn more about how vulvas work from watching me touch mine. (Secretly, she was my fave.)

Camming wasn’t all smooth ‘n’ sexy; there were hijinks and misadventures, too. A client once requested a show while I was staying in a hotel in Italy with my mom, so I had to stake out a corner of our marble bathroom during a lull in the day and center my laptop between my splayed legs. Another client once reached out to schedule an impromptu show just as I was stumbling home drunk from a night out with friends, so the show he eventually got was probably more raucous than mine typically are. Adorably, someone once bought a camshow from me as a gift for her boyfriend, who she said would’ve been too shy to set one up himself.

My favorite cam clients were always the ones who treated me respectfully and gently, knowing I’m a human, not an object. They’d politely inquire mid-show, “Is it okay if I…?” or “Would you mind showing me…?” and I’d usually be happy to oblige. Sometimes I’d even get a reverent thank-you message from them the next day. “I learned so much from talking with you and watching you,” one such message read. “It opened up something in me.” I cried a little, finding it hard to wrap my mind around the idea that someone found the sight of me jerking off to be not only sexy but revelatory.

I haven’t cammed in quite a while. These days, I’d mostly rather lie in bed in my pajamas, talking to my partner on the phone or reading a book or watching Netflix, not caring what I look like. But I’m still grateful to the clients I had, and those I might have in the future. Though camming makes me incredibly nervous, it also – like many other daunting activities – leaves me flushed and grinning with the knowledge that I “felt the fear and did it anyway.”

 

Thanks to Bubbles London Escorts for sponsoring this post! The owner of this agency is very friendly and makes sure all client requests are dealt with promptly.

Intimate Intercourse: Hypnokink (Part 2)

Kate Sloan

Hi again! Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. This week we’re discussing hypnokink! This is part 2 of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here. In this instalment, we discuss the difficulties of disclosing a hypnosis kink, our first hypno scene together, what makes someone a good hypnotic subject, trance triggers, hypnotherapy, and some of the sexy things we like to do with hypnosis. Enjoy! Content notes for this post: hypnosis (obviously), anxiety, consensually “drugging” someone’s drink, bondage, face-slapping, addiction, bullying, medical play, and doing kink in public.

Kate Sloan: Were you nervous to tell me that this was a kink of yours when we started dating?

Super Sleepy: I am always nervous to tell people that, yeah.

KS: Why?

SS: I’m always nervous about it because there’s a lot of misconceptions, and the first time I told a partner about it, they didn’t react very well, so I think, because of that, I’m extra cautious. But even if that hadn’t happened, I know about the misconceptions, and I know that a lot of people, especially people that aren’t that experienced with kink, might not know how to take it.

KS: Yeah. You told me pretty casually. I think I said something about how you were staring into my soul on our first date, and you were like, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about my hypnosis kink.” And I thought you were joking, ‘cause you said it so casually. I was like, “Wait, really?”

SS: [laughing] Why did you think that was a joke? Like, why would that be funny?

KS: ‘Cause, I dunno, we were just casually talking about how you were staring me down, and we had been texting about our kinks and stuff already, so… I also don’t think I had met anyone before that who was into it, to my knowledge, so I wasn’t sure whether or not to take you seriously.

SS: Yeah, that makes sense.

KS: And then we did our first trance scene over the phone, by accident. How did that make you feel?

SS: Uhh, a lot of ways. So, what happened was, you have a winking kink – I think people that read your blog probably know that, if they’re paying attention! – and I had been practicing winking at you and sending you lots of videos of that, because I was very into you. Still am. And for some reason, you decided to open those all in QuickTime Player and have them all open at once, in little video player windows, and then one night you were experimenting with turning the loop mode on and playing them all at once, and we were talking about how that could potentially be hypnotic, or we could do a scene with that. And I guess I dropped a little bit into a hypno-toppy kind of voice while I was describing what I would do if we were doing that, hypothetically. And then… what happened from your end?

KS: I got really trancey, but I didn’t really have any experience with that, so I knew what it was, but I was like, “Ahh! What do I do? Is this okay?”

SS: Yeah. So I felt a little weird about that, because we hadn’t specifically negotiated it, and I didn’t want to be unsafe and I didn’t want you to go to a place that you didn’t want to go to, but at the same time, I felt like, I don’t want to make your first experience of this thing a scary thing. So I felt like the right thing to do would be – ‘cause we’d talked about it a little bit – to guide you into it, and out of it, calmly and safely, without panicking. So that’s what I did, and didn’t do any suggestions or anything, just really in and out of it, and then we talked about how it felt.

KS: Were you surprised at how easily I went into trance?

SS: Yes, very.

KS: Is that uncommon?

SS: I don’t know. I’ve only done trance in person with 4 partners. That’s not a very large sample size, so I don’t really know how common it is. Especially when you’re playing with another person’s kink and looping video, like, it was the first time I’d done any of that, so I don’t know. But I was definitely surprised that you got trancey so fast, and without a lot of pre-talk and without a lot of the other setup that I would normally do.

KS: Yeah. I wonder… I have been in flow state a lot of times, because I’m a musician and a writer, and that’s a large part of how I do that, so I wonder if that played into it at all.

SS: Yeah. From what I know about it, people who are more imaginative, creative, intelligent, capable of flow state, are easier subjects in general, because their brains are practiced at going there.

KS: And I’m also just… I go into subspace really easily, and I go into little space really easily, so maybe that’s just a thing about me. I don’t know why.

SS: Right.

KS: I feel like, when you wanted to give me a trance trigger, it was almost like when you wanted to give me a collar. It was equivalent in some ways. So tell me about that. Why and how did you want to do that?

SS: I gave you a trance trigger that I can use to make you trancey whenever I want, and it was a similar decision to collaring you or deciding on honorifics or stuff like that. Putting something in someone’s brain, semi-permanently, that will let you control them is a pretty big decision. It’s a pretty big mutual decision, ideally. And I wanted it, not because I didn’t want to do inductions anymore – most of the time, we still do inductions, even though it’s not technically necessary. I wanted it because I wanted the ability to drop you whenever I wanted to. I wanted that comfortable level of control over you. As a dominant-leaning person, and a very hypnokinky person, it means a lot to me.

KS: Yeah, I like it. I like that it feels like it proves our trust in each other.

SS: Yeah. How did you feel about it when we discussed it?

KS: I remember being surprised that you hadn’t brought it up earlier. But I think that I didn’t know enough about hypnokink to know that that’s kind of a big deal, at least for some people, so to me it was just like, “Why didn’t you do this before?” but I mean, it makes sense that you waited.

SS: How long did I wait? I don’t remember.

KS: I don’t know. I don’t think I have any journal entries about that.

SS: I think a couple months?

KS: Yeah, two or three months. So, you mentioned being dominant-leaning, and you’re switchy, and you’re switchy in this kink as well. Do you prefer trancing people, or being in trance?

SS: Uhh, they’re both great. Such a fuckin’ switch! They’re both really good. When I started exploring this kink, I read primarily male-submissive fantasy stuff. That is because I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it, so, as a fantasy, being controlled and having my mind be taken away, or my thoughts be taken away, was very attractive to me, because I think a lot, and I’m very in my head, very cerebral. But once I started exploring real-life kink communities and online kink communities with real people instead of just fantasies, I was almost immediately on the other side of the slash. The nights that I would try to be a subject [on Omegle] never went very well, and the nights that I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna study up and try to be a top tonight” were much more satisfying, sexually and in terms of what I actually got to talk to people about and experience. I don’t know; it’s very good either way, but in terms of my real-life experience, I’ve been a top far more.

KS: You mentioned being cerebral, and that, I think, is a large part of why I enjoy hypnosis, now, too. I have anxiety and depression and stuff, so a lot of times, I have thoughts that I don’t want to be having.

SS: Yeah.

KS: And I find it really helpful in that way. So I guess I want to know how you view it as a tool, not just for sexy kink stuff but for the more lifestyle-kink side of our relationship.

SS: That’s an area that I’m still not 100% comfortable with, because a lot of people in the erotic hypnosis/hypnokink community – like a lot of kink communities – are like, “This can be therapeutic, but it’s not therapy.” And hypnotherapy is an entire field. There’s a lot of training involved in it, and it’s very complicated. There have been some books written by people that have seemed to take concepts from hypnotherapy and try to apply them to sexy things, which included age regression and other stuff that a lot of people consider far too risky to do in kink contexts, and I consider a lot of things that would be used by hypnotherapists to be far too risky to do in kink contexts. If you’re manipulating and playing with somebody’s body, you can see what you’re doing, in a lot of ways. You can see and feel and sense what you’re doing. If you are messing around inside of somebody’s brain that is not your brain, you really don’t know what you’re doing, and so there’s a lot of psychological risks in this kind of play if you don’t limit the kinds of suggestions that you’re doing and the kinds of places that you’re taking somebody when they’re in a suggestible state. So, for me, I think I’ve kept the lifestyle, non-sexy suggestions to very simple, positive, affirmation-style stuff, like, not anything involving re-experiencing or regressing into specific memories, because I know that there are risks to that, or behavior modification and addiction are kinks for some people, and I’m nervous about those… I’m nervous about any permanent personality changes… All of that stuff, I don’t know enough to mess around with it.

KS: Yeah. I was thinking of stuff like, when I’m having a bad anxiety day and you tell me I’m safe, which, in some ways, is like foreplay for me, because my anxiety is a huge part of what Emily Nagoski would call my “sexual brakes,” so I find that helpful for both sexy and non-sexy reasons – which is true of most of my kinks.

SS: Yeah. I think that’s pretty low-risk. I think hypnotizing someone and telling them that they’re safe, or that they’re okay, or that it’s okay for them to be happy, or that they’re comfortable, is pretty low-risk. I think modifying somebody’s personality, or telling them in trance that they’re getting more and more addicted to you as a person, or even the feeling of you being together, is a lot riskier.

KS: I always appreciate how conscientious you are about this stuff. It makes me feel much safer doing it.

SS: Thanks!

KS: Okay. What are your favorite things to do with me that are sexy in hypnosis?

SS: Hmm. Okay. I like making you really blank, like your brain is just this total empty blank slate that I can fuck, because I also have a sleepy kink, and I also just like when you’re compliant and useable for me. So if your brain is blank, and your body is splayed out, and I can use it however I want, that is very good. I like the times that we’ve done anything involving hypnotic drug play stuff – so like, a couple of times, I’ve tied a food item of yours, or water or something, to some kind of post-hypnotic response, like having your water turn you on more the more of it you drink, because it’s been drugged. That’s very good. I like the few times that we’ve played with amnesia a lot. It’s not overtly sexy to have somebody forget something, but there’s a lot of sexy things you can do with it, like making somebody forget that they’re naked, or forget that they’re wearing clothes, or make somebody forget their name, or your name, and then tease them about that in a D/s way… Arousal triggers are incredibly useful; that’s probably the most common thing we do, is having some word or phrase or set of numbers turn you on more and more, and then less. Like, occasionally I’ve used a 1-to-10 scale to turn you on, and then I’ve teased you by turning it down when you really wanted to be turned on more. It’s frustrating and useful. One of the things that we also do a lot, because we’re long-distance, is what is often called I guess like a guided-meditation style of trance, or a guided-roleplay style of trance, where you’re in trance and, because you’re in trance, your brain interprets words in a different way and can create sensations from that, so you can do sensation play where, because we’re far apart, I can tell you that I’m touching parts of you, or that you’re feeling certain touches on your body that you’re not physically feeling, but you can feel them in a more real way than normally if we were just having phone sex. So I like that a lot.

KS: Yup. Hypnosis is very good for long-distance. It’s a handy kink to have.

SS: Yeah. What are some ones I didn’t mention that you’ve really enjoyed?

KS: Bondage.

SS: Oh, yeah. Fuck yes.

KS: Yeah. It took me a really long time to realize that I have a bondage kink, because it just seemed so basic and obvious, and also I was often pairing it with other things that I also enjoyed, so I didn’t know where the arousal was coming from, but it’s become increasingly clear that I’m turned on by even just the sensation of being restrained, even if nothing else is happening. So it’s been fun to play with that. It makes me feel really submissive, which is nice.

SS: Hypnotic bondage is sort of like, telling somebody in trance that parts of their body are immobile, or feel like they’re tied down or restrained, and a brain that’s in trance is usually very cooperative with that. So if you tell somebody in trance that their arms are tied down and they can’t move them, and you ask them to try, it’s very likely that they won’t be able to move those limbs.

KS: Yeah. I also really like fractionation, which is not really a sexy suggestion, like what we’re talking about, but being pulled in and out of trance really fast makes me feel like you’re literally fucking my brain.

SS: Yup.

KS: It’s really disorienting, in much the same way that getting slapped across the face can be, which is nice, ‘cause I really like being in subspace, and you really like when I’m in subspace.

SS: Yeah. The sounds you make when I fractionate you are as good as the sounds you make when I fuck you.

KS: [giggling] It’s always the same sounds, too.

SS: Mmhmm!

KS: I can’t even change them. We’ve also occasionally enjoyed mixing hypnosis with roleplay – like, hysteria stuff and other types of roleplay.

SS: Yeah, there are certain roleplay scenarios where it’s even more exciting if the person roleplaying the dominant or toppy role also knows how to hypnotize you. So like, a school bully that pushes you into a closet, that also can hypnotize you to give him your homework, or a doctor that is trying to get you to come because it’s part of your treatment plan, but also can hypnotize you to make you feel a little more comfortable spreading your legs. You know?

KS: [giggling subbily] Yeah. I know.

SS: Aww.

KS: We also, in the past few months, have been playing with doing hypno stuff in public – which is really interesting, because I think there are very few kinks that you could do in public and be reasonably confident that no one’s gonna know what you’re doing, and you’re not gonna rope anyone into it without their consent. ‘Cause it can really just look like two people having a conversation, or one person taking a nap in the other person’s lap. It looks very innocuous. And I know you really enjoy doing that. What do you like about those public scenes?

SS: Yeah. I don’t really think I have an exhibitionism kink at all. I just like the totality of the control of that. I like that I can be out with you and I can use your trigger, or I can induce you quietly by looking at you or touching your shoulder or your hair, and make you fall asleep on me. Once, we played with hypnosis in addition to a remote-controlled vibe in your cunt, and that’s just a very discreet, very hot fucking thing, to be able to whisper in someone’s ear about how they’re feeling like you’re fucking them, and also have something on their clit. I mean, I don’t know. If people don’t get why that’s hot, I don’t know, I don’t get it.

KS: [laughing] Yeah, that’s fun. We should do that more.

SS: Yeah.

KS: It’s getting cold now, though. We’re gonna have to go to, like, a mall or something.

SS: Okay.

Check back on Friday for the last instalment of this interview, in which we’ll be talking about combining hypnosis with other kinks, how to ensure ongoing consent in a hypno scene, hypno aftercare, resources we recommend, how to cultivate a hypnotic voice, and the role intoxication plays in our hypno play!

A Year of Independent Living

Kate Sloan

A year ago today, I moved into the little west-Toronto nook that’s now my home. A terse duo of Russian men packed all my worldly possessions into a truck outside my parents’ house, and then my mom, brother, and I hopped in a car and followed them across town to my new place. We watched as they hauled my mattress upstairs, my dresser, my desk. And then, all of a sudden, I lived in a new location. My first move since my parents vacated our little Degrassi Street house when I was a baby.

Depressed people like me often move through life more slowly than our neurotypical peers. When just staying afloat and staying alive takes massive energy, it can be difficult to put additional energy into propelling yourself forward – so you can feel “stuck” as you watch your more emotionally balanced friends chase after new homes, new careers, new relationships. This is largely why it took me until age 25 to move out of my parents’ home and into my own: the financial and emotional stability necessary for this move were hard-won for me, and I wanted to make sure both were firmly in place before I took the leap. (The immense privilege of my parents’ support until that time is one I don’t overlook and can never really repay them for. What a gift. I was, and am, so lucky.)

A couple months after landing my current dayjob, I spotted a post on Facebook about a room availability in an apartment. It was within my budget, located in a neighborhood I loved, and my potential roommate would be a cool sex-positive and 420-friendly friend-of-a-friend. I reached out to her to ask if I could come see the place, and on one Friday afternoon that August, I did. She showed me the room, and I was instantly enamored: it was huge (for a downtown Toronto bedroom), had ample natural light (important for combating my seasonal depression), and had two closets (oh, the sex toy storage possibilities!). We discussed details, and I told her I’d have to run it by my parents, but I knew in my heart that my answer was already yes. I wanted this big, bright apartment to be my new home.

Weirdly, the day of that viewing was also the day my last boyfriend broke up with me. He’d been cold and distant for a couple days, and wanted me to come over so we could talk – which, naturally, spiked my anxiety like whoa. His apartment was walking distance from the one I’d just been to see, so I ambled in his direction after the viewing. “It’s weird to have looked at the new place right before doing this,” I texted my best friend. “I’m all jazzed and energetic on my way to the guillotine.”

Indeed, when I got there, he broke up with me on the spot, and sent me home with an armful of items I’d been keeping at his house: a vape, a paddle, a vibrator. I cried behind my sunglasses on the seemingly endless streetcar ride, all the way across town, thinking about how I was alone, and I had so much to do before the move, and I was alone, and I was alone, and I was so so so alone.

But the truth was, I wasn’t alone. A friend invited me over to her place, made me a gin and tonic (which I sobbed into), and sat with me quietly reading a book while I finished some dayjob work. When I had steadied myself enough to form complete sentences, I told her about the apartment – how perfect it was, how excited I was to move there, even though the brick blanket of breakup depression had already settled on my bones.

My pal vowed to help me with my packing over the coming weeks, because she – a fellow depression-sufferer – knew how grief and malaise can weigh on you in a very real way, making it feel impossible to even move through the motions of your day. Over the 3 weeks that remained before moving day, she came over to my parents’ house a few times, and spent hours with me in my hot attic bedroom, deciding which clothes, books, and sex toys to take with me and which to leave behind. She listened to me cry and rant about my ex as we picked through the detritus of my entire life. It was a catharsis, an excavation, a salvaging.

And so everything got packed, and the Russian men came to take my stuff away, and I became – by at least this one measure – an independent adult. My mom, an ever-hovering maternal firecracker, wanted to make my bed for me with the sheets and shams we’d hauled over from my old room – but I told her no, I wanted to do it myself. I appreciated her love and care, on levels so deep I couldn’t even verbalize my feelings, but I wanted this new place to be mine. I felt invigorated by the knowledge that depression could not defeat me, not even when I’d been faced with a task as dauntingly huge as moving across the city in the wake of a breakup.

That first night, my friend Brent happened to be playing a show at a bar downtown, and I went. A random dude in the audience recognized me from Instagram, bought me shots of whiskey, and made out with me in front of the stage. I cheered and clapped and cried as Brent performed his set. At the end of the night, drunk on attention and booze, I left the bar in my little leather jacket and wandered back to my new home-that-didn’t-yet-feel-like-home. On the way, I stopped off for some tipsy McDonald’s. This would become a tradition of mine on mellow, merry nights.

The first few months in my new place were resolutely lonely. There were days when I felt paralyzed by anxiety, unsure where in the neighborhood to get food or coffee, so I just stayed in bed writing and crying. There were nights when I desperately wanted to go to a comedy show, but feared going alone, so I’d get high and go out or stay sober and stay in. I texted my family whenever the loneliness felt overwhelming, and visited them at least once a week, sleeping on the den couch because the centerpiece of my old bedroom was now just a bare boxspring. I defied my introverted nature to make plans with friends as often as I could, aching to fill the void left by my old home and my dissolved relationship. It frequently didn’t feel like enough, and I spent many nights numbing out with weed and Netflix, wondering if I’d made a massive mistake – or perhaps a series of them.

But, over time, it got easier. On days when I felt strong enough to confront my anxieties, I marched into heretofore-unexplored cafés, diners, grocery stores, and bookshops, laying claim to happy new haunts. I refamiliarized myself with the reality that no one actually thinks it’s that weird if you go see an improv show by yourself. I blasted jazz through my speakers while sipping wine and writing, imbuing my new home with my old rhythms. I wrote in my journal that my ex felt “like a dark spectre looming over my life, a half-imagined ghost of what could have been, hazy at the edges and fading day by day.” I made out with a cute boy from OkCupid in a dark alley after a couple of beers. I flirted with Twitter crushes and Facebook friends-of-friends. I kept on visiting my family once a week, less because I needed them and more because I loved them.

It’s been a year now since I moved in here, and I have rituals and routines in my neighborhood now that make me feel grounded and safe. I’m not lonely anymore, most of the time: I have good friends, and a boyfriend who I get to see about once a month. Waking up beside him in my bed, in this bright and spacious bedroom, always makes me reflect on how wonderful it is to have found places – and people – that feel, at last, like home.