'How to Die Alone', Autistic Burnout, and the Emergence of a New Body

Natasha Rothwells New Hulu series, my 2025 rebirth, and a world coming back to life after collective trauma.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, we did not have to ask ourselves 'How to Die Alone'. It felt like the only way people died. Alone in your hospital bed, alone in your nursing home, alone in your apartment. alone in your city. Then they told us all to stand up and live again for no reason other than “back to normal.” Convincing us that normal was accessible, began the malaise.

The Media: 'How to Die Alone' (2024)

Natasha Rothwell’s new series on Hulu, 'How to Die Alone' follows Melissa, Black, fat, and broke, as she adjusts to a new lease on life. An employee at JFK airport with few relationships, Melissa is starting to think the rut might just be her reality. She is unfulfilled in her job. Her familial relationships are all strained or distant. And she isn’t ready to let herself be loved. She’s even afraid to fly. Then she flatlines.

And when Mel woke up in a hospital bed, no one was there. She didn’t stay dead this time, but for fucks sake that just couldn’t be it— death by Ikea furniture? No fucking way. So things have to change.

Melissa was the leading lady I needed in TV right now. Every time she slipped into a fantasy dance number, I felt it with her. Every time she pushed herself to do more, I cheered. And when people refused to give her credit for trying, I stood to my feet. She might be a messy friend but she’s MY messy friend… even when she’s self-deprecating, catfishing, impulsively indecisive, self-sabotaging… messy.

Because it's only like her third day out here, man. ‘'How to Die Alone'’ says: Meet Mel. She’s trying. She JUST found out that her happiness is worth so much more than she ever imagined. She only knows how to play it small. Can you forgive her for what it looks like to change your life?

Melissa's journey to greater freedom is refreshing, funny, reflective, and honest. The whole time I watched it I kept saying “Isn’t this us? Isn’t this just about us?” As I ended 2024 with reflection, I realized why.

For Melissa, there is a clear death and resurrection. She has to return to a new person after that accident, freshly born into her life. So what if she stumbles when these are just her first steps?

Before I watched this series, I revisited Drop Dead Diva, a 2009-2014 dramedy about a ditzy model who dies but accidentally returns in the body of a fat lawyer named Jane after a heavenly mix-up. The show is watchable when you get to see Jane feel powerful in her fatness and womanhood but its messages are muddled by the skinny soul in a fat body. The premise implies that even if they weren’t fat, there’s a skinny mindset that lets someone walk in their power more. The fat body was a cage improved and decorated by the skinny soul that inhabits it. How fucking dehumanizing.

Black feminist scholar Barbara T. Christian analyzed rebirth in a Black narrative and wrote, “The body and spirit are one. Thus sensuality is essential to the process of healing and rebirth of the spirit.”

In 'How to Die Alone',” the body is never the problem. Mel dresses differently, makes friends who don’t think fat is a bad word, and lets herself flirt and be flirted with. She walks more strongly in her body because it is hers. The body and spirit are one. Both came back new. Both were always good. It just took new eyes for her to see it. We are worth embracing in the skin we’re in.

In Blackness, death happens at the same time as grief and loss because there is no end to any of it. It has to coexist in us with happiness, joy, and hope. When James Baldwin says “I can't be a pessimist because I am alive,” this is the tension. Melissa got the rare blessing of a clear ending when her heart stopped, and a clear beginning when she woke up.

The World: Stuck Before Rebirth

In 2020 we saw the world react to a global pandemic, we faced a mass trauma event. The isolation, worry, fear, and sudden shift in social norms layered on top of political upheaval was massive. Then you watch anti-masker protests in disgust and slowly antimask rhetoric becomes the norm (you should still be masking). You watch abolitionist efforts replaced with reformist reforms and somehow police budgets rise. You watch trans rights, reproductive rights, and equity initiatives under constant attack and the color of the president's tie never made a difference. You’re asleep, you feel like you’re falling, then you’re stuck in the jolt that's supposed to wake you. Every day is unprecedented, every day is bullshit, and some days are perfectly lovely despite the economy and the debt and the struggle meals. You watch the TikTok from the man in Gaza all the way to the end, like, copy link, repost, comment your 5 favorite emojis because you don’t have money.

The grieving never ended and you were told it should never have started. I don’t need to know who you are to know that 2020 marked a major shift in your life. Likely, there is you before and there is you after. Some version died and you haven’t been allowed to grieve and live again because someone said “Back to work.”

Something died. What lives in its place?

“Anything dead coming back to life hurts.”

— Amy Denver in ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison.

Well, Amy, shit hurts. It’s been hurting for a while.

“Stress in America 2023: A Nation Recovering from Collective Trauma” is a study that uncovered the immense stress of U.S. Americans with post-pandemic trauma. The results show that more adults feel like Mel than we’re ready to admit.

In the pilot, Mel feels unimportant, stuck, powerless, and uncomfortable in her complacency. Here are a few stats from Stress in America 2023:

• Unimportant: 67% of adults don’t feel entitled to acknowledge their stress because it’s not “bad enough”

• Stuck: A third of adults feel too stressed to plan for the future.

• Powerless: People are more stressed about money, family responsibilities, the economy, health problems affecting their families, housing costs, and personal safety.

• Uncomfortable complacency: While Black adults were most interested in getting involved in their community, 46% of all adults feel too distracted by their stress to take action.

All of these effects are more pronounced in 35-44 year olds, women, and Black people. So when we meet Mel, her life isn’t a distant hypothetical. It's so many of us right now. I love television that sits close to the viewer without stepping on their toes. To me, these shows understand their viewer so well they can grow alongside the audience year by year. 'How to Die Alone' does exactly that as it lets us into Mel’s rebirth.

This new year invites us to grieve and end the process of death. We’re asked not to see the cold winter as a new start, but as a time to give burial to the things that have long since gone. The people we were. The life we had. The way things were. We’ve been stuck in limbo but we can be reborn into the spring. It may sound ethereal but being reborn is just about returning different. Meeting the morning as a new person. There has been so much death, we are allowed the life on the other side.

Meet this spring different. And when you do, be willing to make mistakes. I’ve been careful to avoid spoilers because I really think you should watch this show but Mel’s mistakes are some of the moments I love the most.

As I accepted her, I felt accepted the imperfection of my own first steps. With compassion for Mel’s awkward growth, I found new empathy for myself. As she navigates losses to make way for a changed life, I remember that all growing has growing pains.

Take the winter to let things die all the way, I’ll see you in the spring, whoever you are then.

(Let’s hope we can watch season 2 of 'How to Die Alone' by that point.)

The Anansi Son: My 2025 Rebirth

2025 feels like the year of getting unstuck and using the potential energy that’s been building. In 2020, like many people, TikTok helped me to realize I’m autistic and have ADHD. It was freeing to finally understand myself but I’ve been grieving the person I was before I dropped the mask. The dreaded skill regression has forced me to shed the performance-based pillars of my identity. Now there’s just me here, and I can’t do what I used to.

Completing my Master’s degree in Scotland was one of the most draining times of my life. The isolation of that country was nothing I’d ever experienced in New York City. I felt my mind and body screeching to a halt. I had pushed myself to and through autistic burnout without nearly enough grace. I begged myself to make it to the end of the program, but time didn’t wait for me when I got my degree. The UK’s cost of living meant that nothing ended. I was a janitor, a curtain salesperson, a merchandiser, a national media employee, tired, depressed, sinking. The autistic burnout had been there for a while but it wouldn’t be ignored anymore. I left Scotland and have been traveling the world ever since. 2024 saw me risking it all for my happiness in Thailand, Cambodia, Colombia, and the USA. And guys… I think I’m coming out of autistic burnout.

It feels a bit like waking up in a new body. I knew that I’d wake up somewhere different, but I had no way of telling how it would feel. The dream I’d been dreaming is shifting into memory. I’m here again. I can still feel the hands that woke me up. The lovers' palms (lovers, lovers, lovers! in all flavors of the word love! Those precious resurrectors!).

I know I will keep stumbling because honestly, my feet don’t feel quite my own yet.

I know I’ll cry, a lot. In many ways, I’d been sleeping in a coffin and I’ll have to confront that every time I get out of it. Some days that’s bound to take more from me.

I know I’ll mess up and hurt people because I’ve learned that that’s easier than you’d think. But god here’s something so human about making amends, I’ll do it as often as I can. When I can’t, I’ll take responsibility anyway. It’s easier not to hide from oneself.

I’m okay with being scared. It means that I see the waking world as it is. It means I’m taking risks I deserve. It means I’m not numb, not like I once was.

I’m going to make so many mistakes but I will do them for me! I’ll do them for now! I’ll be alive.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t give myself credit for stumbling in a body I just got!

Thank You for Reading.

NOTES:

• Read Natasha Rothwell’s original Pilot script here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/63e008094b92520cb2b5a920/t/670969e75fdbdd5154124bb7/1728670183544/How_to_Die_Alone_1x01_-_Pilot.pdf

• Expect an annotated version of this script on my paid substack soon!

• The study refers to the current time as “post-pandemic” I want to be clear that the pandemic has factually never ended, only government acknowledgment of it has.