Identity Verification

Authentification Required

After suspicious activity concerns, I found myself on the phone with my bank attempting to verify my identity to unblock my account last week. Charles from the Fraud and Security team was nice enough but almost certainly convinced that I was not who I said I was. I don’t blame him. My inability to answer questions about myself was undoubtedly cause for concern. This was all basic, publicly available information, Charles told me. You are not to consult outside sources, he reminded, likely hearing the clacking of my keyboard as I frantically searched my laptop for my old lease to find the zip code of my last apartment. When asked for the third time if it was, in fact, Sarah that he was speaking to, I was beginning to even doubt myself.

You are just stretched thin right now, I told myself as I hung up the call—too much work, too little sleep. I had not chosen an opportune moment to call, whispering the last four digits of my social in the back hallway of my office between meetings.

How much life was lived in the last two weeks? Of course, the same amount in any fourteen days, but it felt like less as the groundhog effect started to kick in. I certainly did not feel most like myself as I spoke to Charles. I had just checked and checked again that it was actually only Tuesday. In my head, I was more than convinced it was Friday. So worn down over the weekend, I had to pull out the old gratitude list to snap myself out of it.

1. I managed to find the time to see Wuthering Heights (priorities!)

2. I snuck into the Frankenthaler show at MoMA during lunch—perks of a midtown office

3. I much prefer to be head down now than when spring finally arrives

4. My mailbox is full of fantastic mai

   

   “Helen Frankenthaler: A Grand Sweep,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York

I won’t get into point one, there is more than enough discourse about Emerald Fennel’s work on here already, but I will say that Charli xcx’s “House” has been playing in loop in my mind all week. I will touch briefly on point four to say that if I needed any confirmation of identity it came to me tenfold in my lockbox.

Before collapsing into bed to finish season six of the Crown last night, I sifted through the mail that had accumulated over the last two weeks. The stack was somehow a golden capsule: a save the date to my sister’s wedding, a postcard from London, a Valentine from my mom, a berry-striped hat from my friend Lila, a thank you note from a pasta-bar dinner, and a newspaper article about bunnies in children’s literature that my Nana clipped out to send me.

If I needed confirmation of identity, I found it in my stack of mail. Sometimes the boomerang comes back just when you need it. At the bottom of the stack, I discarded about a dozen crinkly envelopes from the bank thanking for me for being a valued customer.