For the last year, on and off, (but mostly on) I’ve followed Caroline Calloway. Online, let’s clear that up. I have not started stalking someone in the time I’ve been off this blog. But I don’t follow her the way you follow a brand; open to the sales, and interested in the first looks. It isn’t the way you follow a friend; caring and intrigued at their life, happy to find out what they’re up to and where they’re going. No, I follow her the way people follow Phish around the country, with a deep hunger in my soul that for some reason cannot be satiated any other way.

A routine formed around Caroline that becomes a comfort in 2019: The Year of Extreme Change. Wake up, check on whatever nonsense Caroline posted while I slept, go about my day, check in again mid-afternoon, text my friend Kate to confirm the absurdity I’m seeing, continue on with my day, lather, rinse, repeat. Until recently I did not stop to think about why I followed her so obsessively.

Truly it’s a short story on how I started this addiction to Caroline. A twitter thread by the writer Kayleigh Donaldson on Caroline’s first creativity workshop went viral within a sub-culture on twitter (mostly between female reporters and researchers of the internet age). I found it as it was happening last January and started following the thread, enamored by this girl who ordered a pallet of mason jars to her West Village studio apartment.

Let me back up a little and provide some context for those of you who won’t read the article linked above. Basically she became very popular with white women of a certain class because Caroline went to Cambridge and wrote about her life as though it were a Nicholas Sparks book. She dropped off social media for a while, and when she returned she started telling long stories through Instagram Stories (so they would disappear after 24 hours). Sometime after that she broke up with her boyfriend and moved back to New York, and shortly after that she started organizing a creativity workshop tour. The twitter thread (and article linked above) followed that drama as it unfolded.

When taking a step back her “drama” is more just a late 20something who was not prepared to plan an entire tour by herself because, well, until that point she had planned exactly 1 previous event and it went…weird. She didn’t book venues until the weeks before the event (even though she sold tickets well before that), she misjudged how much effort and time it would take to make grilled vegetable salads for everyone coming to the events. She didn’t realize how much orchids actually cost so she ended up using the same flower in everyone’s hair (which, LICE!) and not giving anyone crowns as promised originally. It was messy, but the true fans who attended seemed happy with how things played out. It certainly wasn’t another Tanacon.

But it was enough to get me very, very, invested. What would she do after these creativity workshops? Would she really write that book she talked about? How on earth does she pay her rent? Why drink so much celery juice? Just, question, after question, pouring into my mind. So I gave her a follow, and I learned A LOT about Caroline. But at the same time I learned a lot about myself too.

See, Caroline has this way of holding a mirror up to me in a way that no one else could. It helped that I was already in a headspace of “What the fuck am I doing, where am I going, and how did I get here?” so I was ripe for a mirror to myself that didn’t come with the baggage and expectation of friends or family talking to you about your life. It also definitely helps that Caroline and I share a few key similarities.

We’re both highly privileged white women – She went to the fancy, aristocratic, old money, boarding school in the town my mom grew up in. She went to NYU for a year (or maybe two?) before transferring to Cambridge and living the white-anglophile-female dream. I went to a ridiculously progressive day-care run by Tufts University. I went to Emerson College without student loans (a HUGE privilege these days), and studied abroad twice. Once in a castle. We both still receive financial support from people close (and more financially stable) to us. Also, we’re both white women which affords us a great amount of social privilege. Especially since I cut my hair and stopped dying it I’ve become basically invisible in public. We could definitely get away with stealing from a department store. We both live in top 10 USA cities – So, this one is a bit weird since she lives in New York City and I live in Los Angeles, which, society tries to tell you are total opposites. If you look closer these cities are basically the same except for weather and physical spread. While New York grew UP Los Angeles grew O U T while still maintaining the non-existent boundaries of a major metropolitan city. Yes, there’s technically more space in Los Angeles, but even if you buy a house your space doesn’t really get any bigger. You can still spit onto your neighbors house from your own. They’re also both cities that people flock to to achieve their dreams, which are usually pretty lofty. Sometimes they do achieve them, and you get this electric energy running through the city on a good day. Sometimes they don’t, and you feel crushed by the energy and drive of the millions of people all around you. Both are difficult places for highly sensitive or empath types, because that’s a lot of energy that’s not yours to intake on the daily. We both struggle to find a tribe – Ouch, right in the feels. But it’s true. Caroline multiple times, has talked about how she didn’t have true close friends for a very long time. Lots of acquaintances and school friends, but no one to really sink her teeth into until college. Since becoming popular online she’s rotated through friends, never showing the same person for more than 6 months at a stretch. When her father died by suicide there were almost no people who showed up to support her. Similarly, I have struggled to find a group of friends I feel truly connected to. Yes, I have friends, but in no way is it a cohesive group. There have been a lot of people I believed would be a great friend, who turn out to not be the right fit. It’s exhausting, it’s saddening, and ultimately it’s isolating. We both create things with our hands – Caroline definitely creates content for her Instagram (and now Twitter). She also makes watercolor paintings and copies of a Matisse paper cut. They are all of questionable quality, but, they certainly are made. I write (sometimes? maybe? I definitely think about it), and crochet, and draw with pen and ink, and embroider, and several other various hobbies. Both of us need something to do with our hands, because otherwise we’ll go bananas.

The more I go, the further away the similarities get. But, y’know, that’s what happens with most people. Those are the ones that jump out the most, that also impact me the most.

She’s a fanfic character, she reminds me of the girls I would write when I was in middle school. But at the same time she’s nothing like those characters because Caroline continues to willfully play the victim. She has not stopped talking about “going viral as a scam” since it happened a full year and change ago. I understand, some things in life just stick with you and you can’t shake them. I’ve been suddenly fired, lost friends, lost family, all reasonable things to shake a person. What I haven’t done is let that become the defining point in my narrative.

So looking at Caroline when she buys 5 new plants, or when she goes to spin, sauna, and pilates every day of the week and comparing myself to that isn’t fair*. We are very similar, and because of that I project myself onto her and her actions. So watching her get upset and fight back with internet trolls makes me go “Well shit, what bullshit can I start letting go of? I do not want to turn into her.”

It’s not the desired way to be viewed as an influencer or Instagrammer**, as someone people don’t want to turn into. But it certainly helps me step back and try to evaluate my actions and my interactions with people. And she got me to write this, which is the first thing I’ll have published in years. So, thanks Caroline.

*Yes, yes, I know comparing myself to anyone is going to end badly, but our brains still DO IT

**Her job is Instagram. I cannot explain beyond that because none of her posts are sponsored or anything so I’m really not sure where or how she gets money…