Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: An Open Letter to My Favorite Murder

Dear Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark,

On this day two years ago, I moved my entire life to Chicago. I knew nobody, less the sorority sister who helped me land my first post-grad job, and was walking into a sublet apartment sight-unseen that I discovered on Craigslist. The building was old, hot, and filled with festering cockroaches. It was in a shady part of town that I'd Uber home to after 10pm versus taking public transportation, but the best part? It was all mine; a one-bedroom unit on the 7th floor that overheard the rumbling of the red line, was illuminated by the Wrigley Field lights during home games, and is a nostalgic smell I can still conjure in the deep recesses of my brain every once in a while. It was a shit hole but I find myself missing it every now and again, or at least just missing the independence and complete terror I felt all at once.

My first nine-to-five came with a flashy title disguising the reality that I was being berated with insults from women twice my age and thrice my tax bracket. The office was stocked with the bells and whistles designed to distract from the long hours and mental turmoil. But don't you get it? I had the opportunity to flex my new resume builder and I could drink beer after work on our rooftop; I was living the dream!

During one particularly long string of work on a Thursday afternoon where I was busting my ass to earn my boss praise, I recalled a conversation with my extended family a few months prior. My cousins and I were reclining on a lake-front patio during our annual family reunion when I asked what the new podcast fad was all about. I remember being told that the true crime genre was where I should begin. Cue the recommendations for Serial, S-Town, My Favorite Murder, Up and Vanished, Sword and Scale. Wait, what was that? My Favorite Murder? Ha, that's a good name.

So here I am, pulling my hair out because women are blaming me for their UPS delays and my to-do list is incessantly piling higher. The chatter from my coworkers about their new Gucci gear, brunch on another expensive rooftop, and plans to leave early were the worst soundtrack to my draining profession. Listen, look. I don't care if those are your "things," because I enjoy them too. But the entire energy in that office reinforced that I was too broke to run with the tenured employees and not good enough at my job to reach the next rung of the ladder to maybe someday also afford brunch on an expensive rooftop. It was a vicious cycle that I couldn't seem to break out of.

I whipped out my headphones, searched for My Favorite Murder on Apple Podcasts, and started the first episode. I was immediately able to shut my brain off for an hour, power through my growing list, and let my eyes fog over while muscle memory took the reigns. The episode finished and I'd realized I'd cracked the code to getting in, getting my shit done, and getting out. I refused to listen on my commute in order to save what precious access I had to unheard content for the long eight hours I'd spend in my desk chair, or at home working a late shift, or during one of my many, many overtime hours.

Fast forward a few months, and I was leaving Chicago less than a year from my arrival. Many reasons played into my departure, but My Favorite Murder always soundtracked my long drives to and from the Windy City when I needed to just get away.

Georgia really hit the nail right on the head in their joint memoir Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered; heartache is physical pain, I swear. And in the late summer of 2018, their voices were the only thing I could stand to listen to when I mustered up just enough strength to stop crying for eight hours to sit at my administrative job in Des Moines. Stories about murder, the absolute worst outlier of humanity, was better company than the depression spiral and pure salt-in-wound pain that I was experiencing day in and day out. Every once in a while, I'd actually crack half a smile when Karen gave her signature, old-timey "25 years" riff.

Don't get me wrong, my relationship with Karen and Georgia isn't all toxic workplaces and heartbreak. When I moved back home to Des Moines in March of 2018, months before the suffering I mentioned above, I purchased a blank doormat from Target to give my new apartment a lively touch. I was torn between inscribing the mat "welcome to the upside down" and, you guessed it, "stay sexy and don't get murdered."

Twelve hours later, I had created a beautifully painted SSDGM doormat that I was halfway too nervous to display in fear of it being stolen. I posted a snap to Instagram, thinking the ladies would maybe see it and say it's cool, and threw it outside my front door. A few hours later, it was posted to the official MFM Instagram account and was gaining traction like wildfire. From 10,000 to 15,000 to over 25,000 likes, my doormat was blowing the hell up and I had hundreds of people in my messages, tagging me in the photo, and commenting on the original asking to purchase a replica. I panicked and did the only logical thing I could think of, which was to begin sobbing over the validation and praise. Once my eyes cleared, I picked up as many blank doormats as I could find. I ended up gathering 11, and I slaved over them. I created makeshift stencils out of poster boards to speed up my painting process and I went down the conveyor belt of tough, brown fiber that scraped up my forearms and gave me permanent back pain. (I just like working on the floor, okay?)

I sold these for $75 per piece. That's it!! Looking back, I want to scold myself, but my artistic confidence wasn't yet high enough to feel I deserved anything more. The local shipping guys would actually groan when I walked in with four or five more shipments because it meant creating four or five boxes from old scraps, since the mats couldn't be rolled and stuffed into a long container. I actually forged one of my most wholesome, supportive, healthy friendships from this endeavor, which I now understand was my first brush with the Murderino community.

I ended up moving back to Chicago after the great heartbreak of 2018, and I was so confident I'd make it work this time. I've touched on this journey in other articles but, spoiler alert, I didn't make it work this time. I was so high on partying and being back in my favorite city that the crash came out of nowhere. I fell and scraped my knees so hard, and it was confusing as hell. In the midst of this inner conflict, an old friend and I met in Des Moines to finally (FINALLY!) see Karen and Georgia live. It was the first time in my life I splurged on meals, agreed to order another $14 cocktail, and wasn't worried about my painful desk job, the state of my apartment, or how unhappy I was. I was supposed to catch a bus from Chicago at 11am at the beginning of the weekend, but missed it by four minutes. I attempted to rent a car, find a new bus to take, or borrow transportation from a friend. By the end of the day, I was on a $400 one-way flight. And it's one of my favorite stories.

This live show was after my crushing heartbreak and prior to my next chapter. I was in a weird phase of "I made it out alive!" and "I'm not quite out of the woods yet." But my friend Taylor and I cried when the signature acoustic strumming echoed through the Civic Center of Des Moines, and I'll still get choked up thinking back on it to this day. These ladies saw me through some tough shit, yet here I was, a little bruised and beaten, but drinking vodka lemonades with one of my greatest friends and listening to Karen and Georgia recite the exact local stories I'd obsess over in high school.

I took a solo vacation at the end of April, about a month later, and brought my copy of I'll Be Gone In The Dark to keep me company during the insanely vulnerable and thrilling adventure I was taking myself on in the Pacific Northwest. I took this trip during the valley of my quarter-life crisis and came back from this trip with stars in my eyes for the environment I had once called home as a child.

I used my friend's Audible account to listen to Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered as a soundtrack to my 12-hour drive to my new life in Colorado. And I cried. I cried because I started listening to Karen and Georgia's voices when I was scared, vulnerable, skydiving without a parachute, making $14 per hour at a corporate job, (yikes) and in my lowest of lows. And here I am: driving to an environment in which I feel so fulfilled and happy, right where I'm supposed to be, and I'm listening to Karen and Georgia's dang memoir that they began writing when they too were met with the success and overwhelming joy that they were where they're supposed to be. In this moment, I felt connected to them. I felt like I'd grown with them and though my endeavors aren't bringing me wealth and fame or creating an entire feminist movement, I feel like they're celebrating with me too. And that's what it is to be a Murderino.

xx,

H

#myfavoritemurder #mfm #ssdgm