Chapter 4
Here’s the thing: in my own head, I am a baby even though I’m twenty-six. But people don’t truly age until they complete the trifecta: get a “real” job, get married, have a kid.
Since I don’t see myself doing any of those things, I guess I’ll be forever young. Or, at least caught between “wise-beyond-her-years child” and “nascent adult.”
I blame my parents.
My dad liked to show me off as his little wunderkind, while my mom pushed me to be more independent. Given my current “failed to launch” status, I guess neither of them got their way.
I suspect that’s why I don’t talk to my dad very often.
I’m not the talented young artist tagging along at comic book conventions.
We’d stand in line for hours waiting to get the most valuable books signed.
When I was nine, I stood next to my dad as he opened up my sketchbook to show Chris Claremont—the writer of the most quintessential X-Men books—my drawings of Magneto.
I experienced this intense jolt of pride—a physical, almost shimmering sensation.
And it wasn’t because a famous writer briefly laid eyes on my drawings.
In that moment, my dad was my biggest fan.
I didn’t particularly enjoy drawing Magneto, but I never told my dad that.
Magneto was his favorite character, so I practiced sketching an angry man in a cape and helmet and tights with the body of an aged professional wrestler.
I gave him so many Magneto drawings over the years.
Some parents mark their kid’s height on a door frame, like a timeline.
You could trace my adolescence by the progression of how I handled dynamic poses and facial expressions for this one character.
Dad would call me a “prodigy,” which was, to put it mildly, an exaggeration. He was a master at stretching the truth and I was happy to believe him.
I ate up that attention. I made it my mission to prove I deserved it.
Each perfect grade, first place, high honors, felt like evidence of my innate talent.
I obsessed over hobbies and extracurriculars where I excelled (art, reading, volleyball, Tumblr) and quit the ones that didn’t come as easily (music, chess, cross-country, socializing).
When my dad moved to Florida, I stopped drawing Magneto.
Something about it seemed juvenile, and I was overdue for my moody teenager phase.
I began sketching my own comics—albeit with the cheat code of borrowing existing characters I’d already practiced.
I cast myself as Lydia Deetz from Beetlejuice.
My various love interests were portrayed by Daredevil, Storm, or Punisher because I already knew how to draw them in a variety of poses.
I studied the most visually striking panels from my favorite issues, learning how to construct a story through visuals alone, boiling down scenes to the most vital moments.
I created a DeviantArt profile and posted my comic-style works there, getting a little dopamine hit every time someone left a nice comment.
I took line drawing classes, watercolors, landscapes, mixed media—anything to build up my portfolio. At high school graduation, I won an art award.
From the moment I moved into my dorm, I knew I wanted to be a studio art major. While my friends bounced around poli-sci, psych, and sociology, I felt lucky that I had such a specific calling at a young age. I loved drawing. I loved that I was good at drawing.
Then, in the middle of sophomore year, I got a B-minus in Drawing II and changed majors out of embarrassment.
Somehow, the positive comments on my DeviantArt profile failed to translate to critique sessions in my studio art courses.
None of my pieces were selected for the spring gallery show.
My professor explained that I hadn’t developed my own style—I was simply imitating other artists. He called me “a competent draftsman.”
I cried in the bathroom. Then I walked back to my dorm and cried in the bathroom there.
Being an artist felt less like my calling when I struggled. I couldn’t bear to fail at something so important to me.
The achievements I craved came much more easily in art history. Turns out I excel at sitting in dark lecture halls and writing analytical papers about obscure Belgian surrealists. I couldn’t argue with my new grade point average.
I moved to New York for a very expensive master’s program, intending to continue for my doctorate. During the last year of my master’s, my adviser suggested that research experience would make me a more attractive candidate for PhD programs.
I was set to spend ten months in Verona, on a fellowship studying a huge archive of paintings done by the little-known, self-taught artist Giuseppe Baggio.
My adviser said he could be the Henry Darger of Italy—an “outsider” artist who toiled in obscurity when he was alive, but whose work is now sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at Christie’s.
I would have full access to Baggio’s papers and effects, none of which had ever been properly cataloged—the perfect project for someone who’d grown up assisting her dad with reselling people’s personal belongings at estate sales.
Baggio had the kind of life story made for an insightful PBS documentary: after a traumatic adolescence, he spent over ten years in a psychiatric hospital where he declined to speak to anyone.
Eventually, a therapist provided him with paints.
He was compelled to paint for hours each day, producing thousands of canvases that apparently communicated with the world in a way he could not.
He left thousands of paintings—bold works featuring bright colors, repetitive patterns, and silhouetted figures—to be cataloged and analyzed.
Some art historians have argued that his output was simply a form of art therapy.
Others believe there’s genius in his artistic vision.
And I—a twenty-two-year-old student—stood to be the authority on his works.
I booked a plane ticket for May 21, 2020, the day after graduation.
A few days after I purchased the ticket, the world shut down.
Columbia held a virtual graduation ceremony and offered us Instagram filter mortarboard caps. My mom picked me up from my tiny apartment in Morningside Heights and drove me back to Columbus. The fellowship was, obviously, postponed.
I waited.
In 2021, it was postponed again.
I waited.
In 2022, the foundation that had agreed to sponsor me closed its doors.
I wrote new grant applications, only to discover that Baggio’s nephew—the man who had arranged for me to work on the estate—had passed away.
The remaining family members were not interested in the project and sold his work to a private collector.
Flailing, I latched on to the only feasible path for someone with esoteric academic interests and little job experience: I applied to four doctoral programs and got rejected from all of them.
Last year, I applied again and had two very promising interviews with a professor who really wanted to work with me but didn’t have funding for another student.
I came just close enough to an acceptance that I couldn’t bear to give up and “find something else to do.”
I’ve coauthored papers with some of the world’s foremost experts in outsider art.
I completed a summer internship at one of the world’s top auction houses.
I’ve handled drawings from the hands of Michelangelo.
Yes, Michel-fucking-angelo. We basically touched hands across time, like old-bearded-white-man-God touches Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I even got a tattoo to commemorate it.
I can’t crumple up my expensive education into a ball and throw it into the trash. I owe too much in student loan debt for all that work to add up to nothing.
And yet, every morning, as I shut off my alarms and continue sleeping, I feel further away from that person who communed with Michelangelo. She had a purpose. Without a purpose, I’m nothing. I’m inconsequential.
I’m a loner who lives in my mom’s apartment and spends my productive daytime hours doomscrolling and zoning out to audiobooks. By night, I wear a coconut shell bra and set fire to mai tais for tips.