Episode 2: Can a Tiger Rug (or Big Boobs) Save Me?

The answer is no.

Sometimes I wake up convinced that the tiger rug from Nordic Knots will fix me. Other days I daydream about getting gigantic boobs and think, yeah, that’ll do it.

Do you ever feel like if you just had that one thing, then your life would finally be in order? That’s how I feel about this damn tiger rug and big boobs. Both are slightly ridiculous and also very, very specific, which I think means I’m emotionally allergic to ambiguity.

We are always searching for the external validator: the rug, the body, the job, the lover, the thing that whispers: you are real now.

I was terrified to post last week’s essay. Putting your guts online is a different kind of public performance. More like standing on a street corner yelling, “Hey, it’s me, I’m still alive” to every man I’ve dated, every investor, every friend who quietly unfollowed.

And then, out of nowhere, a friend’s husband texted me a Terence McKenna quote:

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up, by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”

Suddenly, things started moving. A project I started eight years ago fell back into my lap, a huge step for BODY, and more consulting work appeared. Fourteen months of therapy, walking in circles, trying to out-think my own head, and forward movement finally felt possible.

It reminded me of one of my saved TikTok videos from a finance guy in a Patagonia vest: “Progress compounds over time. If you can keep showing up and doing a little each day, it will compound into something meaningful.”

And that’s exactly what I have been doing. Progress doesn’t look like billions compounding in the background. What it looks like is the faint math of my last ten years: showing up to work even when I didn’t know how to continue, the therapy, reading, meditating starting to click in my mind. It looks like essays piling up until, somehow, people are actually reading. Being so painfully honest that no one can look away, while my nervous system slowly unclenches.

Progress isn’t only professional.

Trying new restaurants has always been my favorite pleasure. I had dinner at the newly opened Bartolo, Spanish food, a martini, my best friend across the table, and I didn’t feel like I should hide. That, too, is compounding. The kind of happiness that doesn’t look like a milestone but feels like one.

My therapist (a paid subscriber and avid reader of HTF!) read my essay last week (here) about the fateful oyster moment and said, “You know that’s you dissociating, right?” She didn’t find the story as charming as I did and told me, “We really need to work on that.” Dissociation might actually be my biggest problem in life: the blacking out, the retreating when someone’s upset, the blank space where communication should be. Maybe this is the unlock.

Dating, however, is another story.

I redownloaded Hinge and immediately deleted it. A polo player messaged me on Raya. He was hot, and I was flattered, and that was the end of it.

I want to fall in love, but the logistics repel me. Three dates a week with strangers asking me what I “do” feels like punishment, not romance. A friend once labeled me demisexual. I don’t want sex unless I actually want you. Yes, I want intimacy, but not at the cost of my sanity. I believe you absorb someone’s energy when you sleep with them, and I have no interest in carrying around the residue of a 40-year-old who is “figuring out what they want in life.”

I crave the real thing: someone looking me in the eye and saying, “Here’s the worst thing I have ever done,” before the martini even hits the table.

And look, I know I spend entire essays here begging for intimacy. But now I see the antagonist clearly. It’s not the apps, or men who don’t know what they want. It’s dissociation. How will I ever recognize intimacy if I keep leaving the room the moment things get real? The thing I long for the most is the thing I don’t even know I’m capable of.

Last week, a reader named Jennifer commented: “These essays always resonate and remind me that maybe there isn’t a finish line and maybe that’s ok?”

Jennifer, you triggered me, but in a way I’m into.

As you know, I’ve always believed in the finish line. Now I’m wondering: if there isn’t one, what exactly have I been sprinting toward?

So yes, I still want the rug. I still want the boobs.

But I’m self-aware enough to know these are shortcuts to a feeling I’ll probably only get by actually going out and being present. Maybe on a date. Maybe in Copenhagen. Maybe once I learn how to stop dissociating.

What is the dumb thing you think will save you from yourself? A rug? Boobs? A reservation at Polo Bar? Confess.

Somehow, functioning,
Jilly