I Have Never "Just Known"

And if I had a third eye I would use it to wink

I call my therapist from a sun-dappled corner of Elizabeth Street Garden, cross-legged on a rusty stool. Tourists toting frozen yogurts eye my hunched back as my Facetime issues its frantic marimba, turning on their heels to find some other shaft of light in which to photograph how the pistachio butter on their vanilla swirl glistens. I keep my eyes trained on the mirror image of my baby face on my phone screen, waiting for the cutting angles of my therapist’s to overtake it, for her blond hair to replace my factory-issue brunette. I’d been seeing her for a few months and had trusted her instantly because she is beautiful and I find it very easy to take advice from people who are beautiful.

She starts the session abruptly, as she always does, asking simply “so what’s been going on?” (Devastatingly cool.) I’d had a plan for this today, unlike other sessions that start with “not a lot” and always somehow end with “because I felt ugly in high school.” Today I tell her that ever since dinner with Ivey and Isabel, I’ve been thinking I don’t think I’ve ever “just known.” Never “gotten this feeling” in my gut and trusted it as law. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had a problem with dairy, I tell her. Sometimes I think if I had a weaker stomach I’d have a better grasp on its encoded messages. But I can eat just about anything.

She dismisses this, waves it off with a CBK flip of her hair, and tells me to tug on both my earlobes. Tug them and rub them together and squish them between my thumbs and forefingers. My work will be to get in touch with my own intuition, to trust my body when it tells me the answer, she says. She tells me to close my eyes and repeat the questions she asks me in my head. “Are the leaves above me green,” “Do I live in New York City,” “Do I like chocolate,” and wait for a sensation to bloom where I’d tugged.

I don’t feel anything. We try again. I put my phone down, take my headphones out so I can really pummel my earlobes this time, kneading them like little dollops of Easy-Bake Oven dough. We ask the same questions and I feel something at the back of my throat, I think, maybe something at my clavicle. Something on my left ear when I repeat “Do I like chocolate.” I tell her so. She asks if I do. I say yes. “Oh,” she says. That should’ve been my right ear, then.

She wants to refer me to an energy healer who charges $500 a session or, if that’s too expensive, she knows a man in Williamsburg who will send me good energy for just $90 a month. I wish I could say I’m shocked at the cost. But what sum is too high for recalibrating one’s inner compass? For a woman who’ll get under the hood of my intuition and take a proverbial socket wrench to the divine knowledge lying dormant in my gut, tighten the screws, turn my earlobes into Magic 8 Balls that always get it right?

Ivey and Isabel get feelings all the time. Ivey and Isabel see ghosts. Ivey and Isabel are magic, both possessing Wiccan powers that I’ve been awestruck to witness at work, watch how the things that are “meant to be” around them, are. We’d had that dinner at the bar at Café Paulette just days before my afternoon in the garden. Ivey’s in the process of manifesting everything she’s ever wanted and she promises she’ll teach me how. Isabel insists that our powers to do so are astrophysical law. That somewhere, on another plane of reality running parallel to ours, is another version of us living exactly the life we’ve always dreamed of. All we have to do is to fall into step, and to know that we will.

I melt at the romance of this. At the idea that the universe is a high-rise building and that there’s a Kate with naturally blond hair and a husband and a book deal living just a few floors up, that I can climb the stairs and knock on her door. But I’m my mother’s daughter — a deliberate tactician with a lifetime love of logic. I take great pride in making the right decision, in doing the right thing, in setting myself up for success. But the best way I know how to do so leaves little room for divine intervention or universal sounds. Rather than waiting for sanction from my gut or my earlobes, I enact a process typified by in-depth research, economic deliberation and the consultation of no less than ten other people for their input and sign off.

It’s not because I don’t believe in a higher power. Far from it. It’s because I fear one, I think. I shudder at the hubris in “knowing.” I don’t claim to know anything. If I had a third eye I’d use it to wink, just so if it turned out I wasn’t really enlightened, I could say I’d been kidding all along.

There’s nothing I’ve “always known” I’d do or be, not even the things that feel as innate to who I am now as breathing, peanut butter. Not living in New York, not running marathons, not writing. There are things I’ve hoped to do, and I’ve done them, but I’ve felt like an agent in every step. Like my life is a Venn diagram with circles labeled “what I want” and “what will be,” and the work is to make those circles overlap as much as possible. Like Sisyphus, I push with all my might, forever.

I wonder how much “just knowing” is a game of averages, like how my friends and I come home from every good date saying “That’s my husband” so that, in the event we’re right one of these nights, we can use it in our wedding vows. I’ve gotten those “feelings,” but they’ve turned out to be wrong, the left earlobe buzzing when it ought to be the right. It makes me think I don’t know what the “feeling” is, and if it’s anything other than the aching hollow of desire. But I believe you when you say you have them. I just wish I could throw you on like an overcoat in the moment it happens, to feel what you feel so I can make sure I know what you’re talking about.

You are not an overcoat, I cannot wear you, but I asked you to tell me about the times you’ve “just known” so I can get closer to knowing what you mean. Here’s what you told me:

Times You “Just Knew”

The summer my boyfriend and I started dating, I began having nightmares. I’d be flailing, trapped in some terrible situation, crying and panicking and frantically looking around trying to find a way out. Suddenly, I’d remember he existed. The clouds would part (sometimes literally), and my subconscious mind would flood with relief as he stepped into frame. It was like that even when awake, this constant state of relief that he was there. Every conversation with him in those early days felt like finding my keys after tearing apart the whole apartment in search of them. It was as easy as “oh! there you are,” and I realized all the cloying cliches were ubiquitous not because no one could come up with anything better but because they were actually just true. And in his words — because I told him I was writing this and asked how he knew about me — he said: “So much of life feels like trying to swim against a current, and being with you is like floating downstream.”

— MacKinley Jade

I walked to the kitchen sink and was looking out of the window and said “I feel like this would be the perfect spot for a wedding.” Later that year my husband proposed to me in the backyard and the year after we had our wedding there — the exact same spot I pictured it when we toured the house for the first time

— Chelsee Leigh

When I was little, I wanted to be Atticus Finch, crusader for justice. This idea survived contact with law school, which was essentially just 3 years of philosopher-king nerd camp (positive). But maybe three days into working at the white shoe law firm where I was hired, I knew I’d made a huge mistake. The modern practice of law (at least as I experienced it) is sitting all by yourself, trawling the internet for quotes from sufficiently old, preferably dead white men who agree that your client (who is usually doing something heinous) is right. I didn’t want to do this tedious, unhelpful work, and it showed up somatically: I started getting needle point headaches, feeling inexplicably tired the moment I walked into my office. Every day was heavy. I couldn’t get excited about anything anymore. I knew it was time to leave when I started fantasizing about getting lightly hit by a bus or sustaining some other injury where I’d have a few weeks away from That Place. It took me about 14 months to pull the trigger (crushing debt will do that) but there was no internal wavering. This all happened 12 years ago, but I still remember the elevator ride down after I told the managing partner I was quitting. I was falling, but I’d never felt so buoyant in my life.

— Julie Schechter

it sounds so silly and cliche but the second i saw him in real life i was like… i love him. OBVIOUSLY his good looks makes it easy to say that but i just FELT it in my gut. anyway turns out i was right because 6 years later we are ENGAGED and he is stuck with me forever

– Louisiana Mei Gelpi

I feel a very strong sense of everything being right even when it feels super wrong (because either there's a lesson there or another turn to be made). I don't think there are any coincidences, I think everything is pushing us towards the exact path we're supposed to be on. With love and relationships for example, when I met Gustavo, I was sure he was the type of person I wanted to be with— it was like pattern matching and recognition but of a pattern I had never seen. I had this deep feeling that he was coming into my life for a very important reason — whether that was to be my life partner or to show me what I wanted in a life partner. When we first met I was suspicious only because I thought it was too good to be true. And the longer we were together, I realized it was real and meant for me and better than anything I had ever had because it was what was always waiting for me. So from that moment, I never had any doubt. I was like, this is my person and path and we will do whatever we need to to make that work. We can withstand anything, together

— Sarah Wood González

One of the girls invited us to her family’s home in Santa Barbara and we were all sitting at dinner at this outside restaurant. We each took a moment to talk about our dreams and aspirations, scribbling them into a shared notes app. In some way, that moment affirmed that we were each other’s keepers.

– Abena Anim-Somuah

The most vivid time I just knew was definitely when my 5th grade crush, turned high school boyfriend, turned biggest heartbreak, reconnected 4 years after parting ways. We sat in my tiny blue car, parked in our hometown looking at Lake Michigan (though it was too dark to see the waves anyway). As we talked, something in the air felt different. My initial nervousness, completely settled. It felt like time both sped up and slowed down. That our story was back on the same page. That a door was opening that we must walk through.

Gosh it is hard to describe, but it feels like this future feeling. Not a knowing of what will come next, but a feeling that the path is right if you keep moving in that direction. That more doors will open up. That more good will arrive. And just that happened. A follow up text the next day, “it was so good to see you,” led to another visit, and another visit. Led to more communication, that led to love across distance, that led to an artist residency, that led to a big move, that led to a big love party, that led to a sweet sweet baby girl.

Of course there was some doubt along the way, I mean I am only human, but I returned to the trust that my whole body felt on that day in the car. That my cells felt curious and excited about what was to come. That the air both stayed still and rushed around me. The feeling that was was too big to not notice.

– Emma Marlar

I stepped out and I knew it my bones it was the dress, a feeling people talk about but I didn’t really think existed? I thought I would just make a decision and have to sit with it but, it almost made the decision for me. The more I looked at myself the more confident I was and then when she gave me the fake bouquet and veil it was a done deal. Looking back at the photos of myself, I was SO happy and my posture was so much better than in all of the other dresses.

— Meighan Grady

This sounds cheesy, but it was when I met Matt 12 years ago. He’s my husband now. We’ve been married for over two years. Honestly, no part of me ever doubted it and I still don’t! It’s like I’ve always known him, and I think that is the best feeling in the world. I saw him for the first time, wearing a stripe t-shirt, not unlike one I’d wear, and the rest is history.

— Madeline Sensibile-Yazzetta

It’s easy to say we “just knew” in retrospect — that the job or guy wasn’t for us (or was!). There have definitely been times where I’ve slogged through a brutal interview and known with every fiber of my being I would *hate* the job on the other end, but I don’t know if I think that kind of “knowing” (in other words, common sense) is the same as the kind of knowing that raises the hair on your arms.

I “just knew” when I decided I had to have my husband. It wasn’t when I first met him, it wasn’t within a year or two of dating, and it wasn’t even soon after we broke up. We somehow managed to stay friends after two years of dating and a pandemic that put geographic distance between us. It was when we were close friends — maybe even best friends? — and hanging out all the time post pandemic that I realized. It wasn’t that we’d made a mistake by dating and breaking up, or that I didn’t like being his friend and was jealous of whoever else he was seeing... but I remember going to see Batman in theaters together and I could SMELL him (not in a B.O. way) from the next seat over and I knew physically in that moment. I was horrifically in love with my best friend, he was it, and I wanted to sit next to him and smell him forever.

It didn’t work out right away, it was horribly embarrassing to put myself out there, and it was not a fairytale like all those “just knew” love at first sight stories... but here I am, married to the best person ever. How right I was.

— Azora Zoe Paknad

I had a premonition that I’d run into Olivia Rodrigo in Mexico City. I knew it in my heart. I was going to her concert, but I knew I would see her somewhere in the streets. And I did, at the Frida Kahlo museum. And she told me she loved my dress. That had not been part of my premonition, but it rocked.

— Sarah Isenberg

I immediately asked for the run-down on him (I had never felt inclined to do this in any other situation in my entire life but it felt right) and learned that we had all the same interests. We got coffee the next morning (at a place called Heart, which feels like relevant info). Not to be dramatic but upon first hellos I knew everything was different with him and I couldn’t imagine not knowing him. We got married a couple years later and have been together for nine

– Sam Livingston

He was a serial monogamist who had taken a year off from dating, I was a serial flirt who slipped away before things became serious. He lived in Oklahoma, I was in school in Ohio. We had known each other seven days and without intervention we might never be in the same place again. It made no sense. But I wrote in my journal that first week, texted my best friend, “He’s the one, I just know it. I’m going to marry this guy.”

I felt peace, he felt like home to me. There couldn’t have been more friction — the different places we were going back to, the college semesters we had to finish — but any obstacle felt like a fun and interesting challenge, like plot points to give our story some interest. We were married two years, almost to the day, from when we met, and we’ve been married now for nine years.

— Victoria Storm

Thank yourself for reading those. Weren’t they beautiful? Do you have one to add?

Pony Recommends:

1. July was my most productive reading month yet and my batting average for books I loved was whatever would be a good batting average. 100? or something. Here are my favorites, and five words each on why I liked them:

   • Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky: I could be much crazier

   • Luster by Raven Leilani: I could be much crazier

   • The Correspondent by Virginia Evans: “Are you loving it yet?”

   • Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte: Let’s all get off phone

   • The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Vol 1-4 by Beth Brower: Attic bedroom, love story, limp

2. For Ivey’s birthday she took us to Marie’s Crisis Cafe in the West Village. It is the most fun I’ve had on a Tuesday night in my young life. There is nothing like confirming you still know all the words to “Good Morning Baltimore” while a singing waitress named Jennifer is doing splits on the piano.

3. The angels at On sent me my new favorite running shorts in the uncontested shade of the season ask any mermaid. I love the featherweight, the un-smocked waistband and most most most especially the built in shorts (!). I am considering wearing them dirty because I miss them.

4. I did my First Reading Ever of a piece that I wrote for The Bowery Review’s latest issue. It is New York’s only humor magazine and people laughed at what I wrote so everything is aligning perfectly. You can pick up a copy almost anywhere magazine are sold in the event you limit your search to Casa and Iconic and McNally Jackson and Soho News.

5. When’s the last time you had a tuna salad sandwich, simple as that? God those are so awesome.