A few months ago, I was walking in the West Village in Manhattan and approached the window of a psychic. It was a really lovely spring day; everyone seemed to be out enjoying the sun, and I was just happy to be in New York. I’d flown in weeks earlier from LA for a workshop and a general reprieve from the chaos Los Angeles has been wreaking on my spirit and nervous system for six years. I dodged bicycles and strollers and miniature dachshunds as I crossed the street to inspect a folded sign on the sidewalk out front that advertised a $10 tarot reading. I hoped the universe would decide on my behalf that I should pay for a reading by having the psychic come outside to invite me in.
As I got closer, I noticed an orange and white cat asleep in the corner of the window, tucked underneath a purple, velvet chair. Her face was pressed against the window and her little exhales fogged up the glass in small puffs. Her breathing seemed somewhat labored, like she was having a stress dream, and I thought gosh, I know what that feels like.
The storefront was elevated off of the ground by a few feet, so the cat and I were at eye level with each other when she opened her sleepy, uninterested eyes and met mine. Inside, there was a marble-topped table with metal legs at the window with mostly clear-colored or pink crystals of varying sizes arranged neatly, a large crystal orb hanging above them all from a chain fastened to a suction plug on the top of the window. The entire space was maybe twenty-five square feet, the floor covered in lavender shag carpeting wall to wall, with two velvet tufted lavender chairs against the back wall, facing each other with a mirrored coffee table between them and a small, warm lamp atop the table. I thought about my childhood bedroom, which also had shag carpeting a similar shade of lavender and lavender walls. I read a price list printed on a sign fastened to the wall between the chairs: TAROT READING - $60, PALM READING - $60, FACE, PALM, TAROT AND LOVE READING - $120. What on earth is a face reading?
As I was about to leave and move on with my day, a woman who looked nothing like a psychic walked out of a back door that I think materialized in the time I was standing outside. She was short, with plain brown hair pulled into a low ponytail, dressed in denim capris and a – would you believe – lavender rhinestone top with the number “34” on the front.
She reached the front door, opened it and did not say hello or greet me in any way, but instead said, in a soft, timid voice, “Will you come inside? I sense that there are many things you must know.”
I hesitated and said no, that I was actually just saying hi to the cat, and that I needed to get on my way.
“Are you sure? I am being told there are things you really must know.” She had a vague, maybe eastern European accent.
I followed her inside and chose what she said was her most popular reading, a “half-deck” tarot reading for $60 (not $10…) and sat down while she shuffled a tarot deck, split it in half and instructed me to choose one pile. I pointed to the pile closest to me, and wondered if it was a choice guided by the universe or if everyone else who’s done this reading also chose the one closest to them.
She pulled each card one at a time and somehow managed to narrate the last three years of my life. When she got to the end of the deck, she said, “You’re contemplating something but you’re having trouble making the decision. And you’re having trouble making decisions because you’re not writing your dreams down when you know you should be.” She was right about both things.
I used to start my mornings by journaling about the previous night’s dreams and then whatever else was on my mind. It is the most annoying routine that I know I’m supposed to do for the sake of my mental health but I hate it so much. Since my dog died earlier this year, I just hate doing anything at all. Maybe because she was the anchor of my daily routine and since she died my routine just solely involves me and I guess I find that boring. It’s boring to take care of yourself. I know it’s rewarding because I’ve done it before but, like every other thing you have to do to take care of your health, it is so boring.
When I abandon one piece of my routine, it’s easy to throw out the rest, too. I have another habit where if I have soggy vegetables, I have to resist the urge to throw out all of the produce from my fridge and replace everything so that it’s all the same amount of fresh. I did this in April and thought, well, actually, if I’m throwing away my produce I might as well not get any more produce and clean out my fridge and leave town for three months, because I think I’m not happy here, so I should see if being somewhere else makes me happy? Maybe if I make everything difficult and uncomfortable myself I can stop the universe from sending me more difficult and uncomfortable situations.
Earlier this year I learned I have OCD from my psychiatrist. She did test me for it but before that she kind of just said, “Hey, I think you might have OCD, have you been tested for it?” I would venture to say, since learning about OCD, that most people I know have some form of it. Most of what triggers my symptoms are situations that are out of my control.
I went to Europe for a month this summer and in Amsterdam, I was sitting on the canal and eating plain white rice (I was having a tummy episode) with a fork in one hand and on the phone with my friend in the other when a boat of people enjoying their evening slowly floated by and watched a gust of wind push the plastic bag that the rice came in into the canal. I tried to catch it and then fish it out with my foot but I’m too short and couldn't reach it. I screamed, still on the phone, and upon my failure to retrieve the bag, the Dutch people on the boat let out a collective, disapproving groan.1 I have the kind of OCD where I think, “If I do X then Y will happen,” so dropping a plastic bag into an Amsterdam canal and contributing to the pollution of the city as a tourist seemed like an action that would bring me punishment.
A lot of things have gone (what I would describe as) wrong in my life. I was fired from what I thought was my dream job in 2022 and dumped by a bunch of my friends around the same time and I still look back at that period and wonder if there was a celestial plan I’m oblivious to that caused a massive breakdown in my professional and personal life, or if it was all my own doing.
I used to look at everything that led up to my lowest moments and go over what I could have done differently to change the outcome of events. When I was fired I had to ask my parents for help with my rent until I found another full-time job, which I never really did, because Hollywood collapsed in on itself a few months later. I look at the industry from the outside now and the further away I get from it, the more it looks like a snake eating its own tail and then wondering aloud where the rest of its body went.
Every day I look up at my own fig tree and I understand why Sylvia Plath left us. This is all just too much. There are too many things that I want to do but I have no idea what the right decision is and I feel like I’m at a point in my life where I can’t really afford to choose the wrong path again.
As it turns out, if you are unhappy in Los Angeles, you will probably not fix anything by moving to New York, or anywhere. I have public transit and five coffee shops within a block of me but I still wake up each morning with the weight of every worry I had in LA on my chest, plus a few extra ones from how hasty my move was.
At the end of the session with the psychic in the West Village, she said she wanted to spiritually coach me and remove a curse that was put in my mother’s womb by my father’s ex-girlfriend. I said no, thanked her, and sent her a Venmo for the $60 reading. Of everything she said to me I think she was right about making decisions without weighing them extensively. We do have to just choose, and oftentimes do it scared. Everything in my life right now is a product of me making a choice amidst immense doubt and fear, and I’m just fine. I’m afraid of the future and I think we are at the beginning stages of a civil war that is being fought digitally and through policy, so traditional means of combat will probably not suffice to end it. I’m questioning every decision I’ve ever made and wondering what to do next on a personal level and a sociopolitical one. But, I really am fine.
This really happened and I have a witness to prove it. In fact, everything in this essay happened, I don’t lie! I wish my life was boring enough to justify lying in my writing. But this in particular does sound the most like a lie.
But really she’s fine!!!
Thank you for sharing this Risha; I resonate with the feeling of not being able to afford choosing the “wrong” path
Risha this is so beautiful and you are so talented. Love you <3