in vegas, the plane lands and it hits me that this is really happening, and it’s like all the anxiety i should have had for the preceding weeks hits me right in the heart, and i am shaking and my blood is pounding. i spend the afternoon on a patio meeting new people and amping myself up. when night falls, i have three glasses of red and some of tom’s bacon satay, and decide i should probably be done, but when berto offers me a drink, i’m not going to turn him down. THAT WOULD BE RUDE.

in vegas, i walk up and down the strip, hitting new york new york for a chat with megan while other friends ride the rollercoaster. and then me, tom, nick, tiff, casey, ed, and megan pop into holstein’s in the cosmopolitan for the most kick ass of burgers and adult milkshakes. GOD THOSE BURGERS, GUYS, AMIRITE? in vegas  i do braless brunch at bouchon for the second year in a row with anna, lauren, and jen.

in vegas i have day dresses and night dresses but i never wear pants. i hop into my assigned thursday dress and over to serendipity for our welcome mixer, where, god, everyone is just so pretty and REAL and right in front of me. i take smoke breaks with raoul, edwin, and nico. i snuggle up with my onyi as many times as i can. i sit and chat with sara and am astonished by her piercing insight. i migrate to margaritaville, where i intend to dance, but instead end up having a long heart to heart with bob. i drag ed to the cosmo with me to meet up with maxie in the fancy as fuck chandelier bar, where she buys me a drink that probably costs $20. girl, i owe you.

in vegas i don’t sleep, i wake up not far past the crack of dawn and have chai and breakfast with nick and ed. i toss on my bikini, slather myself with GLIMMER SUNSCREEN YES. in vegas, we stay at the swanky flamingo go rooms. we party by the go pool, where the dj is on point with THE BEST music. i danced and twirled through the waterfall (for the second year) with lauren and bob. and pretty much all i had to do to initiate that was look at lauren. i rapped out some missy, standing on a daybed with michelle. i paint my nails purple. i hoist tiff onto my shoulders and ed and tom still owe me $100 combined for this (no you don’t, guys, don’t worry).

in vegas my friends and i lay around on my bed talking about everything and nothing and everything some more. in vegas i put on my sequined dress with the tulle underneath and i do heavy eyes and red lips. i’m deep inside my head as we watch the cirque performers dive in and out and dance around. i can’t stop thinking about the conditioning they have to go through, the mechanics of the stage. in vegas, sometimes, i’m lonely. but i realize that a lot of people are actually on team go to sleep, and i laugh in the elevator, and the girl i call my sister tells me i can come cuddle her if i want, and i fall asleep ok.

in vegas i realize that you don’t actually become superhuman when you land at mccarren and i decide i should take a low key day. i wander the back halls of the wynn and the encore for close to an hour and we sit on all the fancy chairs and threaten to steal the statues. i decide that maybe one day i’ll get married under flower poms and fairy lights. we meet up with amber in front of the fountains at the venetian and when we realize she won’t be around for a cheese plate at otto the next day, we decide to do a cheese plate right then. we’ll call it cheese plate, the prequel. she is kind and funny and warm and answers so many questions for me.

in vegas we eat at buffets – le village in paris, this time. i sit at a big round table with larissa (my kickass roommate), marian, jessica, tiff, kendra, kate and other fantastic people. we talk about things that will stay off the internet, but i have another moment of wondering why we really hide anything, because when we crack open just a little and let the light shine out, the people we should be with, they flock right to us.

in vegas i slip into a white dress, i tuck a towel into the front of it to prevent stray makeup from getting in. i’m really happy my roommate was the only one to witness that towel solution. i finish glittering my nails down at the bar with a screwdriver next to me. i play a raucous game of “i never”. i take it to another level.

in vegas, between pure and the act, i dance all. fucking. night. long. maxie and i are the last ones left standing, and at four something we hobble (seriously) to get some food. i lose tic tac toe (who EVER loses tic tac toe) to kelly. i walk into my room and am thrilled to find people – “party room YES.” – but i fall asleep about ten minutes in anyway.

in vegas i’m up way too early. i watch everyone having all of their feelings at brunch and i can’t summon mine, and i think how i’ve existed behind a veil for a year, i think how everything lives so deep, how i wish i could pull it out towards the surface, but i’ve forgotten how. i think, also, how i’m not all that sad because we all live on the internet, and although i love this time, i love this fun, online is where our day to day plays out and i don’t really have to miss anyone. because i know what it is to make a bond across the cables.

in vegas i crash hard. i wander over for cheese plate volume 2, and i talk to the bouncer and realize just how much i miss him, how my sleep isn’t right when he’s not next to me (vomit, i know, i’m sorry). we have a smaller group and i’m grateful for fewer people, i’m grateful to be able to tone myself down but still be seen. i’m grateful that raoul, tiff, and nick stay to take a gondola ride with me, even though i’m pretty sure none of them want to.

in vegas i do all my favorite things twice, which means i get yet another breakfast at bouchon, and another amazing holstein’s burger. i spend most of my day being bob’s good luck charm on some slot machines. and then i realize just how sick i am, larissa loads me up with benadryl, and i hop onto my plane with ed, and pass out pretty much mid-sentence.

after vegas, i realize just how lucky i am, in so, so, many ways.

there’s a lot that i could or should be doing right now. the bouncer really tried with the housecleaning while i was gone, but there’s things i could touch up. i have barely any food in the fridge (but 15% off seamless today, so what up sushi!). i have work i’m lagging on. and really, i just want to stalk the shit out of the people i’ve just come back from. even if i knew them already. and i thought to myself, your thoughts on this are so disorganized, dominique, you shouldn’t write anything until they come together. forgetting that writing is how i organize my thoughts.

many people went up on the last day and talked about what bisc meant to them. through so many of their speeches, i nodded along. yes. yes. yes. me too. and afterwards i was sitting in a small group of people and someone else said how much they were nodding along as well, and i said, “it’s so funny when you think of how much we are all the same.” and we are, guys. we think we are special snowflakes, but we are humans, we are fallible, we are prone to insecurity, anxiety, depression. i think to myself all of the time, when i am in the valleys, i think, “you can’t tell anyone about this because they will hate you. they will judge you and they will scorn you.” and, just, no. the answer to that is no, they won’t. and when i think that again, because i inevitably will, i will remember watching everyone speak, and how much the same we really are.

i didn’t share my story out loud. i didn’t, to be honest, feel like i would contribute anything of value – it follows the same plot points that most other people laid out. but this is my space, so, here. i think i actually did hear rumblings of the 2009 or 2010 bisc – i was nobody on the internet at that point, and i’d designed it that way. i saw that people were forming a community and they seemed really amazing, but i was a hardcore lurker, and convinced i didn’t have anything to contribute (are you seeing a theme here?). besides, they all seemed to be friends already and i had no place joining them. when it rolled around again in 2011, i wrestled with it. i hated my job at that point, i was desperate to break free of something, but i gave myself the excuse of money. with a plane ticket and spending money, i couldn’t justify almost $1000 for a four day vacation.

by 2012 i was here, in brooklyn with the bouncer and sophie, and i told him about it. he’s not an internet person, really, and he doesn’t fully grasp how so many of my close relationships have come from this place and still exist mostly here. i told him all about it, and told him how much i wanted to go and how i’d met a potential roommate. and how much it costs. and after a day or so of vacillating, i gave myself the money excuse again. laying in bed late on friday night after registration opened, he was talking about something and i was obviously distracted and he asked why. i apologized, and i told him that there were very few spots left and i was really sad to miss it. “so go,” he said. “if it’s the money that’s really stopping you, i’ll pay for it. but it sounds like this is something you really want, and that’s worth it. take a chance.” so i whipped out my computer and my card and i signed up.

i didn’t consider not getting on the plane – i’m too neurotic about plans (and money) for that. i did obsess over every single detail (how many coats of glitter polish before people think i’m crazy? i have to wear a bathing suit in front of people i actually want to like me? i don’t have any sequins and no one likes the girl without sequins. i can’t find anything perfect for the theme party and everyone will hate me.) and then i realized that none of it mattered as much as i thought it did. so this year, i honey badgered. i wore my bikini because i love the way my skin feels crisping in the skin, and because i wanted to. i talked to people i’ve wanted to meet for years, people who intimidated the crap out of me. i went on the activities i wanted to, i slept when i had to, i took down time when i needed it.

neither of my bisc trips were perfect. nothing is perfect.  but i met incredible people. i danced my legs off. i felt fancy and beautiful. i made real, actual friends. i met people who give a fuck.  and i am so, so grateful.

i consider my life to be fairly small, and i don’t consider this a bad thing. it’s mine – and i mean, not to get too woo-woo on you but we are all really only tiny little specks in the vastness of the planet, let alone the universe, and i try to stay conscious that my own existence is nearly nothing, even if it feels all consuming to me. but sometimes i have big revelations that overturn my brain and really make me gasp for a second, and obviously my first instinct is to write about them on the internet, because i’ve been doing that for twelve years.

you may or may not know that i just finished my first month of doing some freelance work on top of my day job. you can learn more about that over at my professional site, complete with it’s own blog. and if you’re so inclined, you can check out and like/follow the associated facebook page and twitter account and you’ll make my little heart happy. in any case, i’ve finished this up and while i am both doing this work and putting energy into growing my business i have had a truckload of thoughts.

• putting yourself out there is really fucking hard: no, it’s not professional to drop the f-bomb on the internet but i don’t particularly care because this situation warrants it. i have been terrified every step of the way that the lot of you are out there laughing to yourself that i’m even trying to do this. of course i’ve received nothing but great and helpful feedback and support from my people, but still. still. every little drop of kindness, from facebook comments to an email from my boss at my old job praising my efforts to my boyfriend’s unexpected compliments on a client letter, every bit is appreciated and i squeeze it until it’s wrung dry. shit is terrifying, yo.
• having a part time job and a full time job is stressy: and i expect to do it for over a year to come, so let’s hope my fragile little neurons survive, huh?
• little building blocks every day lead to big things: NONE OF THIS HAPPENS OVERNIGHT. none of it happens in a day, or a week, or a month, or even a year. i am the most impatient, foot stamping, give-it-to-me now kind of person and i am learning so much about how i cannot be that way. there are so many tiny tasks to be done to build up to the bigger picture. i’ve tried really hard to adapt the advice of doing at least one small thing every day to work on this, even if it’s as tiny as sending an email or signing up for a networking group. because when these tiny actions pile up they become accomplished goals. and if something is scary, i breathe deeply and try to headbutt it like the badass ram that i am. spoiler: it is all scary.
• organization and brain dumps are very important: guys, there is a lot of stuff happening. during the month of march i did my first month of work for a client on retainer, i had my regular full time gig to attend to, i had scintilla to run, and i had you know, life and feeding myself and bathing. i keep a wide variety of to do lists and task managers on hand and i’m still finding the perfect balance for me, though i am loving trello for project management and any.do for personal to-do items. relatedly, i love freshbooks for time tracking and billing.
• find support and hold onto it for dear life: i am so fortunate because i have a coworker, friend, and mentor who is also embarking on this journey, and we have been able to serve as resources for each other. i have had SO MANY questions and because he’s a little bit further along in the process, he’s been infinitely helpful and reassuring. because things like quarterly taxes are made to destroy your sanity, and contracts can be super confusing, and marketing oneself sometimes looks like a big wide field of landmines, and these are all thing i have to worry about now.
• it is really important to have an eye on the prize, and have the other one on the path in front of you: you lose motivation quick if you don’t realize the big reasons why you’re doing this. i eventually want to own my own time and have more flexibility with it, and i want the challenge and excitement of working on new projects on a consistent basis. i have done extensive research into the downsides (lack of health insurance, no paid vacations, pressure to work always, never seeing the outside world, I KNOW), and i’ve decided to try it anyway. in the same vein, it’s important to have the Big Goal broken down into steps that have associated timelines. i have measurable goals that i’ve calendarized to make sure i’m making progress towards the end goal (or, i mean, sort of. i have them in my head. next to do item: put them on an actual thing, digital or analog).

so this is my latest adventure and i am positive i will continue to have Many Thoughts and Feelings about it, and as always, i adore you all for listening. do you have any tips or tricks for me? or any business you want to refer my way *wink, nudge*?

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with the beautiful and talented Kim and Onyi. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

prompt: talk about a time when you lost control.

there was a period of time where i was trying very hard to be the kind of girl who went to happy hour.

never mind that i’m not a big drinker, never mind that i know i need a lot of sleep, never mind that i am kind of a homebody. no. i am a young professional in the Big City and goddamnit, i will take advantage of two-for-one specials. so, i would ask the bouncer to come with me and i would feel mildly cosmopolitan. there was one bar around the corner from my job, right near port authority (which tells you something about the quality of the establishment), with the nicest bartenders, a pool table, and very cheap well drinks. so this was my place of choice.

i mean, we’ve all been drunk on a thursday, because most of us have been to college and all of us have made mistakes. before we left the bar we got into a fight about something and i cannot for my life remember what, which probably tells you that the results weren’t worth it. we get back to his apartment and we are yelling and a thing about me, i am kind of violent. i have a propensity for throwing things and i find crashes and shatters very satisfying. mostly, i had tamed these urges but i guess all bets were off.

i decided to try to take my anger out on something that i cannot possibly break, so i grab the sides of his bathroom sink and i pull with all of my might and guys, the SINK DISLODGED FROM THE WALL IN MY HANDS. my face immediately went from clenched and ragey to oh shit. it did not come off the wall entirely, but it definitely was no longer firmly attached. and some of the pipe joints came apart too. as a bonus, we could no longer fight because i needed to tell him that i just took his sink off the wall. to his credit, he was not even mad at me. to my credit, i was very sorry.

all of his friends called me she-hulk for months.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with the beautiful and talented Kim and Onyi. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

prompt: the saying goes What you don’t know won’t hurt you, but sometimes the opposite is true. talk about a time when you were hurt by something you didn’t know.

we developed a habit of laying in bed and talking. i suppose this isn’t uncommon, when you’ve been together a while. our conversation drifted to the past, and i asked, in one of those sappy ways that they do in rom-coms that i should know never translates well to real life, i asked when he knew he loved me.

what’s sad is that i can’t remember what is answer was. i can’t remember the thing, the thing that should be so important. he mentioned something i’d done that happened in the fall of the year we got together. except he first said the words in june. there are many months, between june and autumn.

and i should tell you, that the subject of those three little words between us was always fraught with awful, because i said them first and i said them at the wrong time and he could not say them back, not for a month. and i don’t think i have ever been more vulnerable in the most terrible way or splayed open than i was that night, where all i can remember is staring at his pre-war wall with cracks, and they blurred over and over as i sat in shame.

but now,we’d come a few years past that and it’s astounding how quickly i went from normal to disaster. it’s a talent i have, i think. it took me less than a minute to put the timeline together, and from my first “so, wait…” to hysterics, it didn’t take long.

he was shocked, to say the least.

“so you lied to me? how do you lie, about something like that? how do you…how do you let me think i am safe when i am not? how do you leave me alone in this?”

he said he was confused. he said he did not know how to identify what he was feeling. he said he wasn’t trying to do anything wrong. i believed it all, i still do, but still. still.

this is a lie you just don’t fucking tell.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with the beautiful and talented Kim and Onyi. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

prompt: write about the event horizons of your life – the moments from which there is no turning back.

a note: this post is the inspiration for this prompt. as i am wont to do, those specific horizons focus on a break, a turning away from. getting rid of something. i want to keep these in the vein of moving towards. let’s see how i do.

two years ago: i am walking to the train in the middle of the day and my heart is beating so so fast. i am practicing deep breaths to slow it down, because i’m convinced they’ll be able to hear it. i didn’t lie to be here; i told the owner of the place i’m temping that i had an interview, maybe in hopes that he’ll stop trying to make me take a shitty job that I don’t want. the job i’m going to interview for is a dream. when i walk into the office, i say, i could be here. yes, i could.

four years ago: it’s mid january and i have a bitch of a sickness. i stopped talking to the boy i could see myself with* because i liked him too much, and i started carrying on with someone else in an only slightly more defined way. when his friend introduces me to someone and says, “this is colin’s girlfr…wait, ARE you colin’s girlfriend?” and i have to truthfully respond that i don’t know, it stings. but i’m sick now, and i’m taking it as a cue to ignore the shabby state of my romantic affairs. a coughing fit wakes me up at 4am, and i lie there for a moment, willing the nyquil haze to set me back asleep. my phone buzzes, and it is the boy i like too much. “if i had ever told you that i really liked you, do you think that would have changed our path?” my heart drops and my chest flushes and it spreads to my brain, down to my fingers. i take a while to answer, “yes.”

a year and a half ago: it’s been a far rougher transition than i imagined. we’re not doing particularly well, living together. it’s a weeknight and we’ve fought again and i’ve put myself on the couch because i just need some distance, and sleep. i am likely questioning the whole arrangement. i notice someone leaving comments on my blog posts – she is in the habit of doing a bunch at once, and the emails are pinging through accordingly. i am not good, usually, at talking to people i admire but i am just in enough of a space that i send a message. eventually, we end up chatting, and she keeps me company until two am. she won’t know for a long time how many tears she saved me that night.

*you know him as the bouncer.

I’m a cofounder of The Scintilla Project, along with the beautiful and talented Kim and Onyi. We believe that your stories make you who you are and we’re asking you to share yours. Interested? Learn more at scintillaproject.com and find us on twitter @ScintillaHQ.

prompt: write about a chance meeting that has stayed with you ever since.

i really had no business at a narcotics anonymous meeting.

by this point, “used up” was the only term that could be used to describe me. i was shaky and lost. i thought i’d abandoned my original ideas saving him (god, how trite) and yet, here i was, again.

it’s very hard to keep track of the twists and turns of the particulars. explaining how i got there is a longer, more private endeavor, and not all mine to tell. but i think, if my memory hasn’t fuzzed this one out, i think we were supposed to be separated. i think he called me and told me he needed help and i think by this point i knew there was only so much i could do, that help needed to be something far larger and more empathetic. i still thought it was my job to deliver it.

if you’re not familiar with twelve step program meetings, there are some that are open and some that are closed. this wasn’t the first i’d been to; we always searched for open meetings, meaning that non-addicts could sit in. the only one we could find this time was closed. i walked in anyway, he asked around a little, and a woman said she’d keep me company outside. that wasn’t the goal of the asking around, but it was what came of it.

she was older, somewhere in her fifties. long gray hair and a weathered face and most importantly, one of those glowy souls. you know the kind – the radiant people.

“what are you doing here?” she inquired, not unkindly.

“he called. he said he needed help. i’m the only one…”

“could he not get himself here?”

that, i had no answer for.

for the first time in three years it was ok to talk about how this affected me. for the first time, someone told me flat out that there was nothing i could do, and if i kept trying it would be me, in a meeting room someday. this fight would destroy me, if i let it.

someone finally told me i was worth more. that there was a lot of life left in front of me. i’d mostly forgotten that, at twenty years old.

i don’t have the right words to explain what it is to love an addict – there are years now between me and this, and that distance has dulled it all a little. thank god for that, really. so i can’t tell you how empty and hopeless it is, and how quickly you lose all sense of light. how the fight seems eternal and unscalable. but more than anything, how soon you completely forget that it’s not your fight. people told me, sometimes, but those people loved me and did not love him, and i loved him, so their opinions weren’t to be trusted. the word of a neutral party was far more powerful.

i never saw her again and i doubt she knows that she reset the course of my life a few degrees. which was just enough to change things, eventually.