Lena Dunham Instagram – I didn’t leave bed most of 2018. At 32, I wasn’t sure I ever would. Everything hurt, and even though I wasn’t a child I was too young to know that pain (physical & emotional) doesn’t last forever.
Life changed. One chapter was over and I hadn’t figured out what the next would look like, or how to meet it in a way that didn’t cause me harm. That’s when Ingrid was thrust into my arms. She was (and remains) the only creature I know who likes bed as much as I do.
Together, we watched all of Bachelor in Paradise (she loves Joe the grocer) and tried to plot our shared dreams as two girls whose health hasn’t always handed us the best deal. In the time we spent healing, we realized that as much as we enjoyed being cozy one on one, we wanted to be a part of the world. Since then we’ve limped around America, lived in a trailer in Malibu and a stone turret in Wales, moved across the ocean, expanded our family, been on a dozen film/TV sets, spent countless hours writing & shotlisting, painting & reading, splitting snacks and whispering sweet nothings. Sometimes I look at her and think that the day she walked into my apartment was the day my real life began.
When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend- it was combo bat-cat with a dog’s nose, and it flew around the room checking for trouble. So she’s always been with me. My familiar. Even if instead of flying, she drags her butt a bit. Every little thing she does is magic, and she helped me refind that in myself.
@mattpwolf took this pic on one of the hardest days (you can see the heating pad, but not the scars under the sweatshirt or the tailbone that Ingrid was born without. Not just tail- tail *bone.*) I wish I could’ve told those girls that someday we’d remember that summer differently- as the start to a new way of living, one in which we accepted our limitations but also decided to defy them.
Ingrid is on top of me as I type, 25 pounds heavier (but then again, so am I- if she’s gonna grow then I wanna try it too!) I hope that whatever your summer holds- whether indoors or out, carefree or heavy- you have someone or something you love to remind you of where you’re heading, and to fly alongside you all the way there. | Posted on 19/Aug/2024 17:51:40
