All Are Welcome (No Men Allowed)

Issue 2: A Two Year Celibation

Esteemed members of the nunnery, you are cordially invited to Our Lady of Perpetual Peace for a Two Year Celibation, honoring our Reverend Mother, Her Singleness. We will eat, drink, and be merry in honor of this blessed day. Libations will abound: fruit, savory "eucharist" snacks, and of course the blood of our savior (wine or blood orange juice). If you feel so compelled to contribute to the altar, you are requested to say a simple prayer for girlhood and you may light a candle for your virtue. Please come in whatever nunnery attire means to you. All are welcome (no men allowed).

At the start of the year, I was joking with a friend that I hadn't had sex in so long, I might as well have joined (pledged?) a nunnery. She asked me how long, and I started tabulating, as the woman in STEM that I am. The beauty of having such a low body count for the last significant stretch of time makes the math is pretty simple. I pinpointed it down to the exact day, and started scheming.

Those who know me know there's not a bit I don't commit to. Back when I finished my first round of egg freezing, I wanted to throw an "egg shower," in an attempt to even the playing field of societal importance and celebratory opportunities for Single Women, for whom it is quite literally more expensive to live/exist, due to society hating both women and single people. I never followed through on that party due to my feelings of overwhelm and executive dysfunction (I'm just a girl), but mostly because I was still relatively new to NYC and in the nascent stages of building friendships, so I felt compelled to not reveal my full inner freak. Yet.

As fates or the Virgin Mary would have it, the anniversary date of my 2 years of celibacy fell on Easter Monday. It was too perfect. Joking about my lack of sex and general disdain for Men and unintentionally starting a convent led to a vision for my latest themed party: Get Thee to a Nunnery, A 2 Year Celibation.

Initial ideas ranged from wacky to zany, all vaguely religious. A Confessional booth for guests to record a little spicy video memory, field trips to an actual church, an Easter egg hunt in the park, but instead of chocolate inside, there'd be condoms. What could a condom cost these days, $10?

The final concept was simplified due to strategic priorities and time constraints: a tasteful altar with elements of earth, water, fire; a demure nun outfit (shoutout my Catholic connection Addy); all punctuated with The Sound of Music soundtrack.

My friend Ariana, without whom katie mag might never have been written or sent, brought me a couple gorgeous celibation offerings: a condom that expired in 2023 (do you know how long it actually takes for condoms to expire, it's a long fucking time) and a handcrafted chastity chip. Two years boy sober, baby! It takes a village. All I can say is: one day at a time.

She then asked me what my biggest takeaway was from two years of celibacy. "Men ain't shit," I joked.

Ever the incisive interrogator, she pushed: "Didn't we know that already?"

So true. I took a moment and looked across my sun drenched living room, in a Brooklyn brownstone I had always dreamed of, full of friendships new and old, friend groups I've both built and been welcomed into over my three years in NYC, radiating energy and mirth. Against the backdrop of all the girlies living, laughing, loving, I answered earnestly this time: "I think my biggest takeaway from two years of no men is that my life is just so full."

The weight of simple statement hung in the air, meeting the buzzing energy of conversations, colliding with waves of laughter echoing through the living room of my brownstone, merging with the flames of my altar candles.

"Awwww!" Ariana affirmed. "That's beautiful."

I don't take this fullness for granted, nor am I dismissive of its deceptively simple assertion. And I've never been dramatic in my life, so you can believe me when I say I experienced a death of self during the years 2019-2022. For those four years, I was trapped in emptiness, devoid of any feelings, dreams, or desires — and that was on a good day. The other days, I suffered soul-piercing flaming arrows through my body, my brain, my heart. Those arrows were self-inflicted, which is perhaps the saddest part of all.

I moved to New York in May 2022, desperate for the city to cure me. Devastating news to report: Even moving to the best city in the world is not a panacea for all of your woes and internal demons. Who knew.

I moved into a beautiful apartment mere blocks from Prospect Park, a physical embodiment of the "new city, new me" life I so desperately coveted. For the first time in our adult lives, my sister and I lived in the same city. We were going to have cute sisterly drop-ins and hang out all the time. I was finally going to become the person I always wanted to be: cultured, literary, fashionable. I was going to find my star-crossed soulmate (Timmy), I'd have an actual friend group for the first time since college. Maybe I'd even get to join a group chat. One that wasn't my family.

"New city, new me" unfortunately devolved into "that's that me depresso." While everyone told me I moved just in time for NYC summer, which was allegedly the best thing anyone could experience, instead, I was sweaty, sticky, and sad. I'd see people when I could muster the energy, I tried to make friends and reach out to old acquaintances. The first coffees were easy. "hey, i just moved to nyc, would love to catch up!" But I found it nearly impossible to turn those first coffees into any semblance of routine or deepened friendships. I felt more alone than ever. Totally a unique and singular experience in a city of 8 million people, right? Not even Golden State winning their fourth championship could make me feel better.

Friendship, hobbies, creativity

A "full life" has meant different things to me at various times, ebbing and flowing and changing course like a river, initially hurtling towards corporate ambition before an abrupt avulsion to creative pursuits, other times gradually meandering in search of the ever elusive "meaning" or more often, simply what feels good in the moment. I don't take it for granted, this richness of the textured life I've built in New York, resting on three pillars: friendship, hobbies, and creativity.

Friendship

There's something very precious about female friendship, particularly in your 30s. I've found platonic dating to be both easier and harder than romantic dating, and a lot of that has to do with how we're taught to value the role of friendship in society. It requires a lot of effort to reach out, follow up, and most importantly, show up for friends. While in friendships it can be a blessing to not have the weight or obligations associated with being someone's partner, there's also the curse that comes with not being anyone's default person when you identify as "unattached." I spent most of my 20s in a [redacted] relationship, and while I had friends, I'd describe myself as reactive at best in how I showed up for these connections at that time in my life. After that ended, I had never felt so alone. Part of that was heartbreak, but I think more of it was regret for not investing in stronger, authentic friendships. I had only really lived life with my ex — the boring, mundane, routines of the everyday, the chores, the errands, the laughs, the tears, the jokes, the references. Afterwards, I was in the unfortunate position of having to catch my friends up on the life I had built with him, the life that was no more, so they could understand my grief for a future that was no longer mine.

But having friends is not the same as having a community. I know that word is played out, but there is a difference, and for me, a huge part of it comes back to different types of friendship networks: yarn, bowtie, and daisy.

Professor Janice McCabe, an associate professor of sociology at Dartmouth, conducted a social network analysis of college students and their friendships in 2016. The thesis of her research is the importance of friendships, as they can either help or hinder students academically and socially, but her friendship network models apply far beyond a college campus.

The research analyzes and visually maps the friendship networks of 67 students at a Midwestern university that is predominantly white, by looking at the role that friendship groups play in a student’s life and the density of ties that he/she shares with friends.

Yarn, or tight-knitters, have one dense group of friends, where everyone basically knows each other, and their network resembles a ball of yarn. In McCabe's research, she found most of the tight-knitters were students of color (Black or Latino), referring to their friends as family. These networks had a stronger sense of belonging, but also the potential to pull each other down and for negative influences to permeate more easily.

Bowtie, or compartmentalizers, have two to four clusters of friends, who do not know each other, and their network resembles a bow tie. These separate clusters of friends represent different functions and interests (i.e. movie friends vs. soccer friends, or studying friends vs. partying friends).

Daisy, or samplers, have one-on-one friendships rather than groups of friends, and their network resembles a daisy. Daisy networks typically were for more independent people who didn't rely on their friends for their sense of belonging. While one-on-one friendships provide a level of depth that can be harder to find in yarn networks, the tradeoff is the amount of work and feelings of isolation when you are the sole connector and person responsible for maintaining all of your individual friendships.

I have been a daisy girl for most of my life. I find one-on-one connection deeply rewarding and more intentional. In my move to NYC, I was very deliberate about prioritizing not just individual friends, but DSFG: desperately seeking a friend group. Now in year three, I do finally feel rooted here, a proud, card carrying member of multiple, overlapping friend groups, some of which I've had more of a hand in connecting, others I've been lucky enough to be adopted into.

Part of this was luck and timing — both on an personal connection level but also on the larger level of being in similar life stages. It's no coincidence that the critical mass of my constructed Brooklyn friend groups are (or, in some cases now, were) single women as dedicated to the friendship cause as I was. The rest of it came down to perseverance and discipline. Like any other meaningful endeavor, you get out of it what you put in. You have to reach out, you have to put yourself out there — time and time again — in a way that is borderline pathological. You have to follow up and follow through, you have to be down and show up. Much like romantic dating, it is a numbers game. Both in friendship success rate but also in terms of the hours required to feel close to someone (50 hours for a casual friend, 90 hours for a "friend" no qualifiers, and 200 hours for a close friend). I remember feeling really embarrassed trying to make friends, because wow, why is putting yourself out there is so embarrassing for no reason? But then I remembered A$AP Rocky's words of wisdom: "Since when has it become cool to not try? Fucking loser."

So thank you to all my friends. Thank you for being my friend. I love my friends.

Hobbies

My sister likes to say that my hobby is finding new hobbies. God forbid a woman has hobbies! Turns out, when you don't entertain men in your life, you actually have so much time to expand your horizons.

So why hobbies? For me, it's a nice reminder that it's okay to be bad at things. Pursuing new hobbies and interests is a forcing function for me to remove any expectations of greatness, which is good medication for my alleged perfectionism. (As I've told my therapist, I simply can't be a perfectionist because I've never done anything perfect in my life.)

But quite simply, I find nurturing hobbies and trying new things to be fun. It's the joy that comes with learning something new, which Nicole Lazzaro calls "easy fun" in her "4 Keys 2 Fun" framework:

Easy fun is about novelty, it comes from exploration, and satisfying curiosity and creativity through playful interactions.

Hard fun is about a challenge, the earned personal triumph when you overcome adversity, complete difficult tasks, or achieve challenging goals.

People fun is about friendship, often found through social interactions and competition.

Serious fun is about meaning, such as when you do things that have a positive impact for yourself or on the world around you.

My hobbies give me easy fun, satisfying the part of my broken brain that craves endless novelty and exploration.

10 things my many hobbies have taught me

1. AMC A-List has shown me the true meaning of "heartbreak feels good in a place like this," and also has saved me $996.69 in movie tickets (2023-2024).
2. Challengers made me a tennis girl, teaching me the importance of a split step and footwork, staying ready both on and off the court.
3. Acting class was something I was so scared and nervous to try, but have been surprised by how much I love it. I've learned so much from the Barrow Group that it needs its own issue (shoutout Alice for putting me on), but my biggest takeaways are: the power and value of living in the circumstances, "practicing living," and letting go of ideas or planned behavior.
4. Skateboarding taught me I'm a bad bitch with a very high pain tolerance. Also showed me what the inside of my left ankle and left shin look like, though I really didn't need to know.
5. Shooting film gave me a new appreciation for light, color and framing, and the many "happy accidents" that can happen in this medium. I also finally learned what the fuck Kodak Portra 400 means.
6. I learned about the many different kinds of self through "auditing" my friend Elaine's MFA writing class. My favorite was the ordinary self, and finding meaning in the everyday.
7. Soccer league reminded me of the pure fun and enjoyment that comes from running around like a kid, trying (badly) to put a ball in a net.
8. Soft Shapes stained glass workshop (ty Amy ♥) gave me an amazing overview of this beautiful art form, from cutting to grinding to soldering. What stuck with me was various cutting techniques for glass, and the scores needed to be able to apply the right pressure to control each break. Very metaphorical.
9. Leaning into more play in my art practice has made me more comfortable experimenting with different mediums. Wax pastels are a recent fave.
10. I love hobbies. I love having hobbies.

Creativity

When I got depressed, I was convinced I'd finally, finally make great art — because you have to suffer to make great art, right?

Well, no. Not for me. I turned into a blob, unable to string more than two sentences together verbally, let alone draw, paint, write, or whatever. It wasn't just the voice in my head telling me I was shit. I couldn't shake this specific belief that I had peaked in my 20s, that I had already gotten my one chance to "be creative," and I had squandered it. Whenever I sat down to draw, I carried the weight of my past expectations and could not find a way to do anything without comparison to my past self. I wasted years obsessed with this idea of getting back — back to who I was before, back to the activities I used to enjoy, to my old creative self. But this framing was inherently backwards, when I instead needed to be looking ahead. This time, that came in the form of reconnecting with writing as my form of expression, an outlet for processing and working through my horrors and trowma.

"I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being."

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Thank you for reading katie mag. One of these days, I'll write an issue that's not thousands of words, but today is not that day.

xoxo,

✿ katie4real ✿