When I walked into the bar, I saw her sitting at the end staring at her hands, everyone else inside transfixed on the football game playing on the televisions. I ordered a dirty martini, and when she told the bartender to put it on her tab, he stated that he had already done it. Conversation was easy, though nothing about it suggested the next five months.

I made the first move on her couch, kissing her lips with urgency. When she took my hand and led me to the bed, I did not view it as a beginning, but as another moment that I would present my body for validation. But it was good, maybe the best I had ever had. That hurt in a different way, knowing that I would yearn for the intimacy once again.

We spent the winter that way: curling onto each other’s chests, whispering love into necks, kissing collarbones, arching backs, curling toes, shaking in ecstasy. I crossed the river for her, a local joke that implied long-distance romance. The love I was feeling made anything feel manageable. I would never tell her this.

Once, while waiting for a table in a restaurant, we wandered into a Walgreens. She disappeared and surprised me with a bouquet of flowers. I was unsure why this humiliated me. I wanted to shove them into my coat on the way to dinner. The implication of the flowers, that I was cared for, felt private. I did not want anyone to know.

After a date that ended with a kiss I regretted, and dancing in the club with my friend, she picked me up. I told her about the kiss after we dropped her friends off, and I watched her knuckles turn white on the steering wheel, her jaw clenching. I was an instigative thing, and with the reaction I was seeking, I looked out the window to hide a private smile. I said I was sorry, that I did not Like it. She was quiet in response, a silence that hurt me deeply.

The wind whipped at our cheeks on our walk from the car to her building. In the wake of her silence, I listened to it howl and watched others scurry through the 3 a.m. streets of Chicago. It was torture. Any time she was quiet, I was afraid she hated me. To become a burden to her was my greatest fear. That was why I could never be completely hers emotionally.

In her home, I sat on the floor, the 3 a.m. exhaustion hitting me. I began to peel off my clothing layer by layer when she approached me while I was on my knees, lifting my chin up to look at her. After removing my slacks, I removed my top to reveal the matching cheetah print bra and panties set. She pushed me back against the floor gently, rolling her eyes and accusing me of wearing the set on purpose. I looked at her the way she always said would have any butch on their knees for me, and she leaned into my ear, smiling, to tell me to take everything off and meet her in the bedroom.

I was naked for her most of the time. Once, she left for a martial arts class, and I cleaned her apartment of the mess we had left behind during our week-long staycation. I sat on the couch waiting for her to come home. We were new then, but I had known her so many times before. I knew she would walk through the door, sweaty and exhausted beneath her winter layers, and still find her way to me.

Later, she wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water and thanked me for cleaning. I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying. I searched the room for something to wear, suddenly feeling exposed, seen, and understood. Her gratitude overwhelmed me.

One drunken version of myself always found its way back to her apartment after a night out with my friends. I woke up at 5 a.m. one morning with my head pounding. Like a sixth sense, she shot upright, pulling medications from the kitchen cabinet, filling a glass of water, and kissing my temples. After I swallowed the pills, she coaxed me to rest my head on her chest. I cursed myself for letting her care for a hangover that was entirely my own fault.

Later that same morning, I mentioned that I was hungry, and she began listing everything she had in the fridge. She knew, however, that I wanted to go out for breakfast without me having to say it. So, naturally, I argued. It was another push I could not recognize in the moment. I wanted to be with her all the time; I simply could not bear her knowing that. We went to breakfast anyway, but only because of her patience. I had none to spare, allowing fear to drive me further away from her.

It was the middle of April when I pushed for a final time. She shared that she sent a flirty message to an influencer and received a response. I surprised myself with the tears that began to fall from my eyes. She gently informed me that I had seen other people as well, and had even slept with them.

She wiped my tears, but I was silent and bit my tongue from saying that I was only protecting myself. Was it from feeling exactly this way?

I ended things on her new couch, identical to the one in my apartment—the one she bought after asking me to send her the link. I wanted to change my mind, but I knew it was the right thing to do. She did too. We slept together one last time, and when I began to sob, she paused to kiss my forehead, stifling a sob of her own.

After spending the night, a final time, and prolonging the following day spent in our underwear, I kissed her goodbye. We did not talk for a long time. She did, however, send me a letter the following week, and it knocked the wind out of me and brought me to my knees on a Wednesday afternoon. I contemplated my response for weeks.

Spring became summer before I saw her again. At a dyke event, she was the first person I spotted when I walked into the venue, her hair in spikes. I reflected on the time I shared with her that my friend had said she looked like a nineties’ punk, and I selfishly wondered if the spikes were for me. She seemed not to notice me, but I downed a shot at the bar anyway. I needed encouragement to stay in the same room as her that night.

She saw me hours later, outside in the smoking section. I looked over to find her beaming at me, a new woman by her side. I smiled back, and for a moment in time, I was hers again, everyone else falling away. Later, I watched her kiss the new woman and tried to ignore how it made my heart ache.

At the end of the night, my friend expressed a desire to say hello to her and walked up to give her a hug. Encouraged by her candidness, I followed suit. In my inebriated state, I whispered my love into her ear, and she laughed in response, but not at me. I cursed this decision for the entire weekend.

We met for dinner the following Monday and I pretended I was fine. She told me about the new person she was seeing, about how she was ready for a girlfriend. Though I knew why it could not have been me, I expressed hurt that my exes moved on from me so quickly. The way she was acting with me made me wonder if she wasn't finished with me either.

I followed her home that evening, something I promised myself I would not do. I played with the cat until I grew bored of it, and I crawled onto the couch next to her. I stared into her eyes and realized how much I had missed her face. Our breathing hitched and then I was back in December, kissing her urgently. This time, she pushed me down on the couch, pressing her body to mine. I took my shirt off and she told me that she could not sleep with me.

I was embarrassed as I sat on the floor and put my shirt back on. I refused to look at her when I asked if she always knew that I would hurt her and blushed when she confirmed my fear. She told me that I pushed so much, it was exhausting. It was quiet as she looked at me. I tilted my head in response, and she sighed before admitting that I was the most beautiful woman in the world. Somehow, I knew at this moment that she would not choose me.

Two weeks later, she made it official with the other woman.

I still catch her smiling at me in the smoking sections at lesbian events. Somehow, her face shines over everyone else’s, demanding my observation. I always return a smile of my own, but I never walk toward her anymore.

We may never belong to each other again, but I no longer mistake that for having never belonged to each other at all.

It took losing her to understand what I had been protecting myself from all winter. It was not abandonment, but being loved so completely that someone could see every frightened part of me and stay anyway.

Only in love’s absence did I finally understand what it meant to receive it.

I am paralyzed by the fear that I may be incapable of being a good partner. I told Lily yesterday that I might be the worst girlfriend. I know that I want to be loved, and despite loving them back, I feel that I can never show it the way I want. My words are always misconstrued. Maybe I have not yet met the right person, or I am just unable to be present with a partner. For someone who does not center romance, I sure do talk about it quite a lot. Why does it matter? I would be okay without a partner for the rest of my life, so long as I had my friends. The issue is that they will fall in love, and their time will be split between their friends and their partner. This is the part of relationships that I am terrible at; I cannot compromise in this way. I am troubled by having to sacrifice time with my friends. I do not feel capable of making sacrifices to save a love affair. It is rarely ever worth it.

06/05

There is something within this: a happy hour with friends, soft-serve ice cream, and a trip to Village Discount where your vision is shared aloud with friends and then executed by them as well. When I got home last night, my vision had changed; nothing looked the same. This happens sometimes when my perspective shifts, or I have a slightly different interaction. Last night, however, I think I felt full of love in a way that I had not ever felt, or at least not in a very long time.

06/16

Smoking my last cigarette of the evening, I watch the fireflies rise from the beds of clover on the block. I am fixated, engrossed in their movements and light. Last week, I teased Soph and Grace about their own fixation on the fireflies. I am remembering now, present in a moment that I had a hard time focusing on at the time, that our path to get ice cream was dark, a storm having rolled through earlier and knocked the power out. Every movement that the insects made produced light. They were whimsical, my friends even more so. Maybe this time in my life is supposed to be for them.

06/17

If today was the last day of my life, I think I could be okay with that. I no longer wish for answers, only to enjoy the questions and know that they will answer themselves in time.

06/25

The world did not end this week, but it did feel like it might a few times. I am unsure that I am doing well. I fell asleep at 6:45 pm last night and did not wake up until 5. I can feel that the depression has returned and with her, the intangible loneliness and exhaustion. I am a small, helpless creature. And I feel bad all the way through.

07/16

The bus moves down Kimball, the accordion in the middle squeaking as it does. I think about seeing you, actually seeing you. Not just watching you standing on the sidewalk to observe me from afar and then fleeing into the refuge of your cafe. I mean talking to each other. What would that be like? I have so much I want to say while simultaneously having nothing at all. I am so angry with you. I have famously always allowed myself to indulge in anger, but this is different. My chest is tight, and I can never relax. I do not even hate you; that’s why I am so angry. I wish I were not. I wish you could know that you confirmed all of my fears. It was you and me, baby. It was us. You were my best friend in the entire world. What the hell is wrong with you? If you asked for my forgiveness and righted your wrongs, I would give it. I can rarely say no to you. But Jesus Christ, never talk to me again. I will never be able to stomach the interaction. When I saw you on the sidewalk, I felt my organs fall to my feet. I can’t even visit you in my dreams without them turning into nightmares. You ruined everything. In a way, thank you for doing that. Makes it all a bit easier, anyway.

07/21
All of the change from the last few years, and that which lies ahead of me, is making me consider my relationship with Chicago. It has shifted so much from what it was when I moved here. Chicago is home, but it took a very long time to become such. All of my favorite places were once foreign, new. I think about the first time I walked into Cole’s Bar and then how I think about it now, with nostalgia and slight loathing. So many of my worst moments were on the sidewalk outside of it. Palmer Square was a place for me to read in the grass through my early twenties, and then Humboldt in my later twenties. I think about who I was when I was twenty, how I thought I understood everything perfectly. How I dated men 9 years my senior and slept with a new one each night. How my body could never relax, how I always felt embarrassed of them. Later, the memory is juxtaposed as I fall asleep in [redacted]’s bed, [redacted]’s bed, [redacted]’s bed, [redacted]’s bed, so many lesbian beds. So many lesbian beds. I think about NYC, the way I woke up to [redacted] holding me. I should have leaned into it. I am so bad at knowing when someone wants me back.

07/31

Celebrated G’s birthday last night, and for the first time in forever, I had genuine fun. Is that hope?

08/02

A weekend spent in the company of Chicago dykes and the people I love. I have fun again. I am going to be alright.

8/17

Yesterday, a friend commented on how their ex never proposed to them. Marriage, they had said, was less about the matrimony than it was about financial security. I found myself terrified while listening to a close friend share their desire for marriage. Of course, this is irrational.

I no longer wish for such a life for myself, and I am unsure if I ever did. I planned the artistic elopement and reception, making no room for anyone but myself within it. I still want such an experience, but I do not know if there has ever been anyone on the other side of it. There is no face smiling back at me, kissing my lips just so. When I was in relationships, I never even had my exes opposite me in the fantasy, and if I did, I was not entirely thrilled to see them there.

I want a life that belongs to me. I want my friends to come over for breakfast and Sunday cuddles. I want to never dress casually. I want to come home and shower, do my chores, make my dinner, and veg out on the couch. I want marijuana and martinis whenever I desire them. I do not want to have to fight and work hard at a relationship when I could really just be happy on my own.

I want a simple life; clean sheets, clothes drying on the backs of the dining room chairs, candle burning on the table, last minute lunch plans with friends, long days in the park, cellphone in a drawer, books piled high on my nightstand, swimming in cool bodies of water, extended periods of silence, cooking for my friends, sweet treats, laughter, desire, and to never have to answer to anyone ever again.

July is a lost month, slipping between the cracks of my exhaustion and depression. The weeks pass slowly to start, with a collective 12 hours of sleep scattered throughout each. I avoid attempting my hand at being a good friend to anyone, dodging calls and texts from acquaintances. My closest friends receive a shell of myself; a fear of abandonment powering my occasional reply and hang.

I close out the month rife with exhaustion and overextension. I sit with people I don’t know well and listen to their issues in an attempt to forget my own. It is a futile attempt to conjure favorable karmic retribution. The time passes with an unmatched speed compared to the beginning of the month’s slowness. It slips from my hands before I can attempt to close my fingers around it. Mostly, I choose sleep to avoid any of the feelings that are resurfacing.

I feel hopeless and desperate, chained to the walls of my own loneliness. I come clean to an ex over FaceTime, sobbing my way through my muddled explanation, offering no clarity behind the reasoning behind the profound sadness I am experiencing. She asks me if I have shared it with my friends, if they know the severity of my emotional state, and encourages me to talk to them as we end the call.

It comes to a head in the middle of the month; a jokey jab at me at a backyard barbecue. Already, I was in a haze, wondering why the party was so unenjoyable. For most of the year, I have been finding myself unable to derive joy from what usually invigorates my spirit. I feel myself fading out and losing steam to continue trying. When the jab comes, I feel the wind knocked out of me and quickly excuse myself to the bathroom, where I attempt to collect my emotions in my arms and calm them.

I know my friends do not intend to hurt me, just as I know the jab was a joke. My heightened sensitivity is severe, worse than my typical habit of taking things at face-value. I wish I could tell them that each month the weight of my emotions weighs down on me, heavier than the month prior. I feel myself sinking into the ground, below all that is happening above me. Instead, I inform them that I am luteal; not an excuse, but a warning.

I plug my phone into the wall of my best friend’s living room and lie on the floor, facing away from everyone. I try to remember that these people love me and do not intend to hurt me; they are only joking in the way that we always do. It is hard on my frail heart, and I search my phone for the next bus time. I leave quickly, without saying “I love you”, a move that haunts me until I can apologize for it. This is not how I leave things.

The following day, I wake from my extended slumber to find a text that reads, “You know we love you so much, right?” I cry, feeling guilty for leaving the way I did, for not telling them what is going on with me right now, and because I am so unbelievably grateful to have people in my life who communicate so openly. I reply that it is complicated, but that I love them and can explain it better in person. This buys me time to avoid a conversation that may leave me in the dust.

On a walk home from a party at The Whistler where I lost my cool and screamed at a man at the bar, I begin to explain to my best friend how absolutely broken my brain is. She laughs a little, explaining that my brain is not broken, but that she had been concerned about me. I curse myself for not hiding it better, something I have always found exceedingly hard. I do not ask for one, but when I finish explaining, she leans in for a hug, wrapping me into a safe embrace. She scolds me, gently, for not telling her I was having such a hard time and scolds me again when I express my fear of burdening her. “You are not a burden,” she tells me, “you are my friend.”

I spend the weeks of July in my bedroom, falling asleep as early as 5 pm. I avoid my journal and doom-scroll on my phone, breaking the promise of a phone-free home that I made to myself in March. When I can’t stand the blue glow of the screen any longer, I watch the candle on my dresser flicker in the dark and make wishes that will never come true. Except when they do.

The month ends, but not without celebration. It is on someone else’s birthday that I catch myself enjoying the moment, having genuine fun for the first time in the entire year. I test its existence with a night out the next day. I am dancing without inhibition, laughing with strangers, and present in a way that has felt impossible for months.

I am listening to hopeful and upbeat music, dancing in all of the rooms of my home with the windows open. My wounds are closing up, healing. I am smiling, even when I am alone.

My hands are open, no longer grasping at the impermanence of a moment.

I think this joy is here to stay. Let me believe it is.

July alt.

Over the Fourth of July, I returned home, and swam in my parents’ pool. I felt my skin wash of shame and irredeemability in the waters of my youth. I was a child again. I bathed in my childhood shower and made a futile attempt to scrub the effects of time from my body. I studied my face in the mirror, but, in a home that no longer belonged to me, I did not count the flaws. It was too private a practice. And they only have one bathroom anyway.

At the lake, my best friend tells me it is strange to see me there. I consider the complexity of the idea that good things require time, while it is simultaneously the thief of joy. How terribly we wanted to know who we might become, how desperate I am now to return. Do I like myself? Am I proud of the woman I am?

Time can be cruel and relentless in her nature. Still, she is a beacon; a reminder that things will change. Right now, I am desperate for her to speed up, wash over me, and transform everything. I reach for what comes next and cling to the idea that it must be romance, but life is throwing at me what I can only assume are pleas for me to stop believing this.

I wash off the effects of time in my childhood shower and I cleanse my soul outside, in the pool. Transported to a time I forgot about, I am hit with a wave of longing and nostalgia that I did not suspect coming. The sun feels like being twelve again, the way the wooden boards burn my bare feet and my skin is instantly warm to the touch. Skin coated in sweat and sunscreen, swimsuit drying in the sun, sweet scents of weed perfuming the air; I can conjure a hopeful return.

Journals

07/20

If life is made up of moments, why am I convinced that the romantic ones define me the most? On Friday, a new lover hovering over my body, thrusting into me, I wrap my arms around them, and think about the last time [redacted] and I made love; the way we both took turns to cry. I think about her new girlfriend and it makes me sick. I fall asleep on the new lover’s chest. I let them have me for as long as they want. I let them kiss me over and over in the entrance of my apartment as they exit. I want so desperately to fall in love with someone, but I know that I can not. So much of my life is this way, wanting to feel something and being completely unable to conjure it, leading me to a life full of singular nights with people I can never see again.

I want to be built from love, but I want to find security in knowing that it may just be in my friendships, my family. The moments I share with them are love, god, defining. When we jump in the lake or do ‘shrooms at the river, I am swimming in water placed on earth only for our bodies to submerge themselves within. In the kitchen, as we rotate around one another, I am in awe of how chaotic the moment is and how calm everyone remains, despite no dishes being ready when the dinner was scheduled for 2 hours prior. Our moves frantic, but beautiful. I step back to appreciate the choreography. It feels like they were put here for me.

07/13

When you turn twenty-seven, the world begins to throw situations and complexities at you that you could not possibly have prepared for. So you drown in them. Your body washes up on foreign shores, you cough up the sea water, and you begin to find your way home only to be cast off again. Maybe this time your family has built a boat, but probably not. No amount of life vests can save you. You have to learn to swim. And all around you, there are others learning to do the same. It will break your heart that you cannot save them.

07/06

Beautiful weekend with people I love. Smells of sunscreen, sweet weed, a cigarette burning on the asphalt, iced coffee, chlorine, lake water, dirty martini, freezer jam, strawberry shortcake, sweat. Sweat everywhere, but in a way I am thankful for. A reminder that I can return home and it will not break my heart.

The month passes quickly, but not without its long pauses that stretch into the quiet evenings and reserve themselves for the sole purpose of reflection. While I should be welcoming the summer, I am cursing the sun and summoning forth feelings that I thought had long passed. The rain, despite my disdain for sunshine, is an unwelcome burden; the grass is too damp, the bugs are too plentiful. I am in a state of general discontent.

My friends joke about my hectic social habits, and I do not correct them by explaining my tendency to run to others when I am fearful of my feelings. I want to fall to the floor in a heap and sob, letting them pet my hair and rub my back. My vulnerability evades me, and I can never find the right moment for it, so we go dancing. When I do thank them for carrying me through the last few months, they only express how much they love me, that, of course, they can come to my house whenever. The shame that I felt for needing help with all of this evaporates. Of course they can help me, of course they can.

I save my tears for the evenings in my bedroom, my very own private cathedral. I bow towards the years I spent repenting for my un-goodness. I want to save her, to tell her that she is good and kind, but that being good is not objective. All of the terrible experiences she faces will no longer matter in a handful of years. She will find the world she longs for and discover that the work of becoming does not end.

Vulnerability visits me when I feel safe enough to allow it in. It is present when I share my fear of moving forward with someone new. I know that time will heal my broken heart, and even now, as I feel it begin to mend, the bonds of trust are rebuilding.

And here, in my writing, I am the most stripped-down version of myself. Despite knowing that my work will be read by people I do not know, there is a false security of ownership in its place on my own page. When I write, the work belongs to me, but when I publish it, I know that it is no longer mine. Knowing that something will be shared allows me control of the narrative, and I can withhold what I do not wish to share. In this practice, I fear I may have curated my own narrative for this life I am living.

Once, in bed, a lover laughed when I admitted that I felt she and I were strangers. She told me that I had to ask questions with depth, not about her favorite color or band. I told her that I was afraid she might ask some back, and I would have to answer. We cried together that night as I became braver and more vulnerable.

Now, when I am confronted with someone new, I watch the dancing eyes across from me, and though I feel like making a joke, I strip myself down instead. I am learning to disregard the shame and fear. There is power in owning my vulnerability. Despite it opening me up to heartbreak, it also allows me to form beautiful connections with others. I am still working on finding myself within my body so that the tears may come. I only fear they may never stop.

The last year has been so full of turbulence that I cannot remember a time when I felt completely stable. Though I acknowledge these years are for chaotic growth and change, I have a desire for it to be pain-free. How is this the life that I am living without all that has gone? What are my twenties for if not for becoming aware of the rapidity of time and mourning what will never be again? Moments are so good only upon recollection. There is never a voice to share that it will be over, that time is always leaving.

In a recurring dream, there is a house that belongs to a childhood friend. I am on some sort of rope swing, throwing my head back and laughing. I watch children eat blackberries straight from the bush and chase each other with the hose. No matter what I do, I cannot leave the rope swing to join in. I scream and call for help, but they do not see me. A childhood friend climbs onto the rope swing with me and tells me that I have returned, but none of this is here anymore. Here I was thinking that the ghost was me. I cannot haunt what has already gone.

I am welcoming my friends into my home. There are chips and dip, bottles of wine, cigarettes, weed, and craft projects that we will only pretend to touch. I do not tell them about the pain in my heart, about how terrible this living can be, but they already know because they carry their own.

They chatter about work and the people we know. They photograph the cats. When I smoke my cigarette on the sidewalk, I can hear laughter through the window; a sound so sweet, my heart swells.

What then, if not vulnerability, can open me up to this beautiful existence?

What else will remind me that surviving is only a starting point?

It is already leaving, anyway.

Journals

Each month, there is a section at the bottom of these that I try to think about creatively, while still being authentic to myself. Here are some carefully selected journal excerpts from June that best encapsulate the month.

06/16

Smoking my last cigarette of the evening, I watch the fireflies rise from the beds of clover on the block. I am fixated, engrossed in their movements and light. Last week, I teased Soph and Grace about their own fixation on the fireflies. I am remembering now, present in a moment that I had a hard time focusing on at the time, that our path to get ice cream was dark, a storm having rolled through earlier and knocked the power out. Every movement that the insects made produced light. They were whimsical, my friends even more so. Maybe this time in my life is supposed to be for them.

06/17

If today were the last day of my life, I think I could be okay with that. I no longer wish for answers, only to enjoy the questions and know that they will answer themselves in time.

06/24

I have experienced the end of the world so many times, and still, it spins. I know that feelings will pass and things will improve in time, but everything takes so much time. I am fearful that I will never feel better. I am afraid that if I do not begin taking better care of myself, I will die too young. I already feel like hopeful, kind, and optimistic parts of myself have died.

06/25

The world did not end this week, but it did feel like it might a few times. I am unsure that I am doing well. I fell asleep at 6:45 pm last night and did not wake up until 5. I can feel that the depression has returned and with her, the intangible loneliness and exhaustion. I am a small, helpless creature. And I feel bad all the way through.

06/28

Each moment offers, within it, finality. We will never be back here, just like this again. Things are always changing.

Let me reassure you that I am well supported. This does not make the feelings less real, but it does lighten the load to know just how many hands are helping me hold them.

My previous lovers have hoped for someone who could love me as I need to be loved. I find it curious that romance is always the immediate wish. To wish romance for me is to know me not at all. Why not, instead, wish for my interpersonal relationships to flourish? It is madness to expect that I desire something new while I am losing something else. I know that my coping mechanism, a situationship, will have an inevitable end that I inflict upon it. I always know it is a crutch, despite how much it challenges me and forces me to grow. Let me run from the pain.

I can only run so far until the heartbreak catches up to me. This time around, at a friend’s birthday party, it was my ex and their new lover standing in the corner, avoiding me. It hurt, but not nearly as much as I thought it would. I ended my fling the following day and deleted the dating apps from my phone. I spent April and part of May in mourning, finishing the grieving process I started in the autumn. The experience reminds me that there is no end to a feeling; I will only grow larger and larger around the anger, love, and pain. This lesson, no matter how many times I revisit it, perpetually confounds me.

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In a bar, I listen as a friend describes how my ex spoke of me when we were together and how they speak of me now that we are not. I blink back tears, trying to empathize with my ex’s perspective and experience, but I only feel my heart begin to ache. I feel cheated of a relationship that felt full of love and tenderness. Though I know it is likely untrue, our previous connection seems a farce. Nothing could hurt me so much as this: to feel like a body that was filling the space and not to have been someone they actually loved.

My friends have held me accountable. They have allowed me to rant, but they do not allow me to speak with malice toward my ex. I am always met with a knowing glance or a “You’re not going to like this, but…” They will not indulge my shit-talking, so I rarely bother. I share the facts as I know them, and I move on. It never feels as good as I desire it to anyway. I do not wish to allow any of my energy to the thoughts or rants anymore.

I wrote in a letter to a previous lover, “If the heartbreak of the last year was necessary for me to grow, I wonder who I can be outside of it.” What did not kill me decimated my emotional self. Though the soft part of me is still difficult to resurrect, I am persisting with my attempts. And this May, unlike the one that came before, I have rekindled my relationship with hope, and she keeps me warm.

I refuse to deny myself my softness. I shared with a friend that I think being a romantic is brave. In a world that is burning as society bears witness, my romanticism of daily life prevails. I spent years with anger as a driving force, using it to barrel through the emotional turmoil of my early and mid twenties. Now in the middle of my twenty-seventh year, I have come to terms with my sensitivity, my softness. Resting the blanket of compassion on my shoulders, I move gracefully through a world that threatens devastation each day.

Refusing myself access to various social media apps has been a cornerstone in my quest for peace. Being aware that something is happening does not change the fact that it is. Instead, I involve myself in community mutual aid organizations and volunteer for food distribution. I talk to my people in my neighborhood and learn their names, and I lend myself to the broader community in ways that feel natural and good. For the last year, I have felt the absence of a large part of myself. Moving back into a state of action is right; it is the way.

There is life everywhere now. The end of the month softens my rough edges and warms me from the outside in. Cold water shocks me back to life. I sit with friends, allowing gentle touches of affection to my shoulders, legs, and arms. I sing all weekend, and no one laughs; they only join in (however off-key they may be). No one thinks the friendship is a crusade of my personal strangeness; they hand me a cup of coffee in the morning, make me laugh, and fill the room with tenderness.

Though I am moving on and over my breakup in so many ways, I find it important to acknowledge that grief is not linear and that despair still finds its way back to me. Here are the moments when grief shot through my gut this month:

• Accidentally shutting the fridge too hard, I knocked off some papers that were sticking to the door. Picking them up, I recognized them as love letters that I had written to my ex. Knowing that they had been stacked up and placed there with the intention of my finding them felt needlessly cruel. I threw them away without hesitation or the desire to revisit the content. I cried about it for only a moment, felt angry just after, and then felt absolutely nothing at all.

• A breakup letter from a former lover.

• An old text from a friend that I no longer have a connection with.

• Running into an old friend’s partner in a bar. We made eye contact for a moment, during which we decided that saying nothing was the right thing to do. How absolutely strange to have known a stranger so well before they became one.

• A date that I should not have gone on and the ensuing hookup I fled from that prompted a sleepless night in my own bed.

I am opting out of my melancholic disposition this summer. Spring was an absolute whirlwind, and May provided so many joyful and peaceful moments for me to recollect on.

• A trip to Wisconsin with my best friends, where tenderness was centered, and laughter was the only way. I am so lucky to have these people, this life.

  • Watching Brenna dig for rocks in the Wisconsin River.

  • Smoking a cigarette with Audrey each morning and having coffee on the porch with everyone.

• Community dinner and hearing about all of the connections that people have

  made.

• Visiting the beach for the first time this year, and eating cold green grapes with Soph.

• Dancing with my friends. Every single time.

• Drinks on the patio, the stoop, in the backyard.

• Long bike rides with Grace, who channels my desire for adventure and spontaneity.

• Biking to my friend’s places, biking to work, biking to the bar. Biking.

• Celebrating my friend’s birthday!

• Celebrating my growth as I navigate slow burns and take my time with it all.

I leave you with this poem that captures what May meant to me.

I heard someone yell “dyke” and the laughter that followed it as something struck me square in the forehead. Confused, I looked toward the parking lot to my right and saw a can of Yerba Madre rolling down the slope of the asphalt. I was in disbelief that someone might have thrown that at me.

Humiliated, I desperately searched through the bystanders on the sidewalk for another visibly queer person: someone to find comfort in, someone to relate to. The only people around me were seemingly straight. Of the fifty that undoubtedly witnessed the incident, only one couple came up to ask me if I was okay. A family in a car told me they heard the perpetrator yell ‘something’ and the make and model of the Jeep that the can had come from. I blinked back tears, muttered a few words to express my frustration, and asked the couple if I had a mark on my forehead, to which they assured me it looked okay. Then, I walked the mile home, fighting tears the entire way.

As I walked home, I considered why I seemed to be the only one who clearly heard someone yell “dyke” at me and concluded that it likely made the bystanders feel uncomfortable. As a queer woman, it is not my first time on the receiving end of a verbal assault. However, I have never been physically assaulted for existing in my identity. It made me feel powerless and fearful. If his anger at my lesbian existence caused him to throw a full, unopened canned beverage at my head, who knows what he is capable of?

My identity as a high femme places me in a position of privilege. Visibly, I can fit into heterosexual environments, despite how uncomfortable I may feel within them. As someone who loves many butch and masc lesbians, being femme emboldens me to protect them in dangerous situations, to get loud and draw attention to the perpetrator. It took me the entire day to process the events of my assault because I could not believe that a straight person might perceive me as queer. I must have misheard them. There are decidedly not many words that one might shout that could easily be mistaken for “dyke.”

Many people, unaware of the queer experience, or gay people struggling with internalized homophobia, get upset when “gay people make being gay their entire personality.”

In that moment, it was a choice being made for me.

That man boiled me down to a singular part of myself.

I am proud to be a lesbian; it is one of the largest parts of my identity. It affects my worldview and impacts the decisions that I make every single day. It would be counterintuitive for me not to feel defined by it. Someone who does not understand the complexities of my lesbian identity, however, does not decide who I am.

After it had happened, I first wanted to call someone, but was concerned about recounting the events in a public space and risking someone overhearing. Instead, I texted one of my best friends whom I had just parted with, omitting what was yelled at me. I knew that it would make her angry enough to turn around and find me, and she would be late for work. All day, I grasped desperately to try to find the humor in the situation, but could not identify any. Instead, as the day progressed, I grew more aware of the gravity of the experience and began to feel very small and sad.

Incidents like this remind me that homophobia is very much alive in 2026. I am no fool; I acknowledge its existence, as do other queer people. Allies, protect the people you love and those you do not know at all. Do not fall victim to the bystander effect. Get angry, hold people accountable, and know that it is likely that a queer person you know has had a similar experience. This was not an isolated incident, even in a major city like Chicago.

These experiences are what tie queer people to one another. Our communities are the backbone of our society. In the hours after the incident, I shared the experience with my friends, who all had their own stories to exchange. In the group chat with my closest friends, love is woven into the messages that offer a ride to the doctor, after-work treat, or an evening couch hang.

I am proud to be a dyke, to love other dykes, and that my experience has given me the perspective I have. My experience is sacred and shared with all the lesbians in my life. I am the safest in their company, anyway. Ironically, being a lesbian is the only way that I will come out of this experience stronger, for it is other queer people that lend a shoulder, an understanding ear, and kindness in the darkest moments of our experience. And we all know this will not be the last time any of us experience such an atrocity, so strength is at the center of everything we do.

There is no other choice. It has to be this way.

It always begins with the same surprises: budding trees, blossoming flowers, and warmer days. The changes seemingly come out of nowhere, yet while I was thawing out and crawling through the last cold days on my hands and knees, the earth was working hard to do what she always does. Spring is a renewal, a second chance. The birds sing for one another, the sun shines upon the land, and the world wakes up.

As I thaw out, I am struck by the harsh reality I am faced with. I am screening my calls and turning off my notifications, deleting apps, and ordering a landline. My screen-avoidance is an attempt to confront my flaws and begin the efforts to improve. Space from the pressures of an internet presence will save me. I always think this, but then again, I always return. Not this time. I have to be better to myself. I deserve to keep the promises I make to myself; I always forget about those.

In keeping with what I pledge to myself, I am looking toward a summer of transformation. Without the dating apps downloaded onto my phone, I find ways to validate myself. Unable to give anything of myself over to anyone else right now, I know that I mustn’t think too terribly about my large stomach, the bags under my eyes, or the little pimples on my cheek. I am the sole provider of any intimacy I experience.

A great divide lies between love and my ability to accept care in any form. Even in platonic scenarios, I have historically assumed the role of the caretaker. In a book I am reading, the narrator argues that the most common kind of love is that which exists between the lover and the beloved. Reflecting on my romantic endeavors, I would argue that I have been the lover most of the time. I stand on the ledge of love, pouring my heart into letters, cups of coffee, pancakes, and soft forehead kisses. Across the divide, I can sense that someone is building a bridge; they want to be closer. Rationally, I start a fire to prevent any connection from being made. “It was fun,” I say. “But I can no longer feel seen by someone like this. How embarrassing.” My desperation to be the beloved is conceded by my inability to accept love as anything other than cringe. Most of the time.

With my ex, it was different. Though I felt emotionally vulnerable in their gaze, I also felt incredibly loved. Ending a recent situationship, I discovered that distraction provided an ample opportunity to avoid feeling the extraordinary loss. Even so, I was not exempt from the emotional response. In the evenings, another body sleeping beside me, I remembered how it was. And I cried. Inside our life together, I rarely felt the melancholic anticipation for a moment’s passing. I was present and laughing. I was going to marry them. There was no possible way for me to prepare for the harshness of this loss.

At the end of March, I stood in our shared hallway and counted the ways in which this home would no longer be ours but mine alone. I hugged them tightly, mustering what little strength I had to avoid white-knuckling the moment, their body. I asked for space, for time. I told them I loved them so completely, and it was true. I did not count this moment as a goodbye; there was an absence of the feeling of closure that I so desperately desired.

The following day, April 1st, they had completely moved out when I returned home from work. Their keys were on the credenza, their presence wiped from the home we once loved each other in. I was incapable of bearing a walk-through, of making sure they took everything. If they left something, it might have meant there was still love. Not enough for us to work it out, but enough to remind me that there once was.

What hit me hardest about their leaving was the toiletries. Gone was their toothbrush, shampoo, and conditioner. The final things to leave. Never again would they become clean in the blue bathroom. Though it had been months since we had laughed in the shower, soap falling off our shoulders and bare stomachs, or since we shared a bedtime routine, toothpaste foam around our mouths, I found accepting that we never would again a difficulty I did not consider.

There was never closure, never an exchange of communication that felt final. Life rarely extends these moments to us. In the space between our Christmas breakup and now, so much hurt has happened that our relationship feels irreparable. I consider whether finality would have helped me. Leaving this open-ended allows us to move forward with the knowledge that the door for friendship may once again open. Personally, I hope it does. They were my absolute best friend in the entire world. Still, I move forward.

I replace my toothbrush with one that never knew theirs, never touched its bristles. After fifteen minutes in the oral healthcare aisle, I chose the same one I had before. It would be unfair to myself to change it all at once.

April has historically been a difficult month for me. I thrash and scream and cry, but she carries on, as if her thunder and turmoil are exactly how things are supposed to be. I am making peace with the inner turmoil, and I am accepting new growth as an outcome.

And genuinely, when I am with my friends, it is never that bad. Not even close.

The month offers me vibrance and small joys that keep it in balance…

• My co-teacher, Lily, and I have a bit where we tell our Pete the Cat-loving students that Kurt Vile is Pete the Cat. Just because we will not be listening to that damn cat.

• The way community dinner has grown, and now regular attendees have their own inside jokes.

• I am capable of anything difficult, so long as my friends are at my side.

Ask your friends about what their pleasures are. Here are some answers I have collected:

• How texting with a friend increases immediately after seeing them

• Canned peaches

• When burping or farting causes instant relief

• Playing a video game on the couch

• Being engulfed in something, like floating in a body of water or getting into a hot car

• The feeling when you know you are about to fall asleep

• Warmth on your face after spending time in the sun

• Being completely consumed by a project, electrified by it

• Driving along Lake Michigan on a warm summer day when there aren’t any other cars on the road

• Ears popping after a long flight

• When your favorite coffee cup is clean—makes it taste better

• Waking up refreshed after a good dream

• Cat greeting you and purring in your lap after a tough day

• When people remember your favorite flowers and get them for you

• Warm sand on your toes

• Coffee on a porch

• Sitting on the floor to use a coffee table

• Putting beads on a string

• Coke Zero after running

• Using Q-Tips

• Annie’s Mac and Cheese—Shells and Cheddar

• Watching movies in bed

• Drinking coffee in bed

• Sauna

• Sleeping

• Eating until your stomach hurts

• Breathing deeply enough to ease anxiety

• Removing an ingrown hair with minimal trauma

• Meeting someone new and vibing so hard, you can tell you’ll be friends

• Picking your nose

• Listening to your upstairs neighbor play saxophone—or any instrument, really

• Taking your socks off and scratching the itch of the lines on your skin

I will leave you with a poem that I have been thinking of this month:

It’s Ghost by Bay Ledges and not a lot, just forever by Adrianne Lenker. It’s everything in boxes surrounding you. It’s change itself and the formal end of something. It’s the way you’ve cried in redacted’s bed about the status of your situation, but really, you are not processing that X is moving out. It’s that you need someone to tell you that you are still lovable. It is watching someone you are still not over fall in love with someone else. It’s a nicotine addiction that comes knocking on the door, and too tired to fight it, you let it right back in. It is all so painful, all of it. It’s not about redacted, it’s about X. It always was. Acknowledging that pain will allow you to heal.

——

I am waiting for this feeling to shrink, to know that it will not be forever. It always takes me so long to process a breakup. Longer, if I still live with them. When it hits, I am always too far deep into a complex situationship that is hurting me in other ways. I am unfair when I judge X for moving on too quickly, but am I not doing the same? In many ways, I am as guilty but in others, I am only fooling around in comparison. X is in love and in a relationship. I am in hell. Having to live with the person you used to love—and still do—and watch them fall in love with someone else is its own torture. Maybe I deserve this. But their funeral is Wednesday, anyway. I wish I didn’t believe in ghosts because of all the love I’ve lost, but I am too haunted not to.

——

It will never feel okay, I will never feel okay again. I am doomed to this terrible feeling forever. But in a way, I am relieved it has finally arrived. God, let me mourn them, us, our forever. Let me mourn the absent future and go on dates that leave a distaste in my mouth. Let me fall apart when anyone asks me how it’s going. Let the tears be so uncontrollable. Let me sleep with strangers I do not want. Let me lose my mind over and over and over again. Let my friends tell me that heartbreak is no longer a viable excuse. Let it ache. Let it ache. Let it ache. Pain is not the only reminder that I am alive, but it is a pretty good reminder that I am human. So let me feel all of the feelings I have been putting off.

——

In a year or two, we will run into each other, and it won’t hurt. It will be a concert at the Empty Bottle, and I will see you across the room. You’ll be with friends I have never met, and I’ll approach you with a smile. You’ll reach in for a hug, and I will be a joyful recipient. I’ll remind you that you introduced me to this band, and you’ll laugh and tell me that you remember. There will be a moment, though incredibly fleeting, when we share a look that is apologetic and forgiving all at once. I know I messed up, I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed. And we will both know the other feels the same. It will not hurt, but heal our tender hearts. And we will dance to a few songs before I return to my own friends. And all of the anger I was holding onto will no longer belong to me. And I’ll realize it never did.

Like that DIY show in the upper level of a hair studio. Where the woman lived. White powder up your friends’ noses, you sat hunched over your phone screen. That musician and the words, they flowed. On the sidewalk, you sulked. Smoked through half a pack. Lu kissing a man. Man offering you the small bottle of Malort. You chugging. No wince.

Essay finished. You devoured your heart within it. You will do it again. 23, 27. They are the same, really. You are finding your way back, but first, you must not know where you are going. Sadness is not alone in the central holding cell of your emotional walls. An improvement, some argue. An abandonment of self, others might say. An acceptance, maybe. The focal point of the world is skewed by believing pain to be a central focal point.

——

New perfume, she drinks you in. Offers $350 for the bottle. Downstairs, the outside air is cold, the basement a warm refuge. Quarters in. It’s a wash. Remember wringing your heart out under the shower, think about trying it again in the deep sink basin. No one will find you here; the world is forgiving of the most vulnerable moments. Forget it, hang what must be hung. Forget yourself.

——

Wake up, set out new slippers. Make breakfast, make the bus. Miss the second and walk. Let the cold push against your cheeks, let it avoid the knocking and make an entrance. The skin shrivels beneath it; the instant reaction to the cold wind offers nothing but heartbreak. Let it break. And then let nothing else. Let nothing else. Let nothing.

——

Imagine the steps. Imagine her. Jump in, let her follow. Gasp for air, laughing too hard to swim. The black bikini, the mascara down her face. The memory aches. The water is cool, the weather hot. It doesn’t hurt the entire walk home. It never hurts. You never let it hurt again after that.

If April is the sweet little lamb they promise, then March is a ravenous lion. This year, I dream of throwing myself at her. She approaches, but when she looks into my eyes, she knows there is nothing for her to eat. Tearing into my torso with her sharp teeth, she is disappointed to be proven correct. When she tosses me aside for something more filling, I feel validated in my own emptiness. The horizon of the Sahara is hazy, with heat rising from the ground and distorting the view. Without knowing what will happen if I do, I crawl toward it. There is no other choice.

March began, and I was suddenly 27. The first birthday I cried on was my 24th, but those tears were never about age so much as they were about surviving the difficult years before it. This year, I was in the middle of devastation: gutted, stripped to my core. In my living room, I hosted a talent show put on by my closest friends. All night, I laughed at the absurdity of their performances and thought about how incredibly lucky I was to be loved like this. As the final act, I sat in a chair and read about everything 27 felt like to me. It was a vulnerable act. It was a gift to myself.

I tell my friends that irredeemability feels like the theme of the year. I want to dissect that thought as it relates to me. How irredeemable I fear I have become is a feeling, not a fact. There is still a chance to change, to learn, to grow. Somehow, being self-aware and self-effacing while making no active effort to change does not bode well. When I was 23, this behavior was silly and charming. That is no longer true. Now it only makes the feeling harder to bear.

I recently read an online thread arguing that Van Gogh did not create because he suffered, but because he was loved. Despite turning 27 in turmoil, the love in my life has never been lost on me. Around a wooden dining table, my found family makes wishes for me and sings “Happy Birthday,” and I am spared from my hurt, if only for the evening. This continues throughout the week—moments with friends that lighten my load by carrying pieces of it with me. Perhaps I am not hiding this depression as well as I thought. The right people know my humor is a performance; they know the grief is becoming too heavy.

I am roping suitcases together and dragging them through the streets of Chicago—into apartments and bars, down alleyways. There is a tension between my desire to unpack and my fear of what change would require. If I open them, I will have to admit the pain no longer belongs to me. I will have to let it go. I know myself well enough to understand what would follow: months later, I would go searching for it, convinced I had lost something essential, forgetting that I was the one who gave it away. Better, then, to keep it zipped shut. Let me carry it everywhere it hurts most. Let me remember.

I carry my heart pinned to the outside of my chest, which is why the lion was after me in the first place. She smells the blood dripping down my front and licks her chops, desperate to find the source. When I feel her hunting me, I can do nothing but stand before her. I want her fed; she wants to eat me. Let her. She is an affair, a fling, a romance. She is everything I wish to stop giving myself over to, but somehow cannot. My heart is beating fast. I know this will hurt, and yet it will also feel very, very good.

When it is over, she has missed my heart completely, going straight for the gut. Somehow, this is always where I feel heartbreak most, and the bite only intensifies it. Now the piece she bit and spat out burns under the Sahara sun, freezing again in the evening. Unable to let go, I still feel the temperature shifts. I am grateful to be reminded of my ability to feel. Maybe that is why it is so difficult to loosen my grip on the pain.

Though I am aware of the love surrounding me, I struggle to acknowledge positive feelings. To laugh with friends is the closest to heaven I will ever be, and yet I cannot hold onto it as proof of my humanity. If I am not doubled over, tears streaming down my face, I forget that feeling itself holds power. Pain is a memory, a place, a person. It is raw and unrelenting. I can always recall and anticipate how miserable it is. Perhaps that is the issue.

When I am laughing with a friend, I am surprised by my own lightness. Happiness never feels like a place I can return to. It is fleeting. I am always anticipating what is to come, always mourning what is still happening. I struggle with presence, living in melancholic anticipation of memory. Everything feels like it will end soon. Lovers and friends ask me to cease my timelines and expiration dates. They remind me to let myself have good things, too.

Perhaps it is the romantic in me that thinks in terms of endings. If I want to fully enjoy something, I must remember that it will not be forever. I often find myself outside my body, sitting in the corner and watching the scene like a memory. It will hold meaning later if I find the ache, plant it deeply within myself, and nurture it on my worst days. To remember is to have lived. I know I have been happy before, but those memories are always overshadowed by the inability to be present. Even in recall, they are clouded by my melancholic disposition.

Nostalgia helps guide me through my memories. She picks only the very best, and she makes me cry when they play in my mind’s eye. As my former lover packs their life into boxes around me, I recollect on a time when our separation seemed an impossible reality. Gifted by the love I felt, I was so entirely present in our time together that I hardly wrote or journaled. I had no chance to anticipate the end, thus no time to prepare for it. Now, as I watch the apartment empty of their belongings, of them, I feel like I am watching a part of me leave as well.

So it is over, and change has knocked on my door. The lion has gnashed into me with her strong jaw and teeth. I am different now, but no less, despite what I have lost. I will be okay. I will persevere and rebuild like I have countless times before. For now, let me crawl toward the horizon. Let the antelope run beside me, and the birds fly above. Let me rest my head on a rock and watch them without measuring the moment or its inevitable end. Let what was taken rot where it was left. There is no use in keeping alive what I must release.

Pain is not the only reminder that I am still living.

Tomorrow I am turning 27. Somehow, even as someone who has taken life into her own hands, experiencing so much of it, I feel not a day over 17. When I was 21, 25 felt lightyears away. Turning 27 now, I have no idea where the years went. They flew by—especially the last two. Full of difficult lessons and challenges that forced me to grow out of my comfort zone, I am grateful for them. I want this next year to feel like a rebirth. I want a second chance, hell, maybe even a third or fourth chance. I want to be myself but better. I want to always be growing and accepting feedback and willing to communicate. I want to be communicated with.

If I could talk to my 17 year old self, I would tell her these things.

- Communication is at the root of every solution and every problem.

- Love is NOT always obvious, especially if not shown in ways you recognize. Be patient, look at actions and words from different angles.

- Saying “I love you” is meaningless without actions to back it up. You are going to learn this over and over about yourself and other people.

- You do not owe your body to anyone. Not even the people who go out of their way for a date with you.

- You will find the people that “fit” you. This will take so much trial and error. It will break your heart over and over. Keep going.

- Figuring out you are a lesbian will change your entire life. It will give you chosen family and explain your affinity for communion.

- Relationships require space for mistakes and repair.

- You are going to feel irredeemable most of the time. You are not.

- Everything feels better with time. And as your beloved ex would tell you, intentional time.

- Do not move in with a partner until you spend 2-3 years getting to know them. Go through the big stuff.

- Make time and space for yourself and your hobbies.

- Your friendships should be at the center of your life. These are the greatest love affairs you will have, however long or short-lived.

- Put your phone away.

- Keep your heart open. If you build tall walls, no one can get it. Build doors. Be intentional and apprehensive. The right people will knock. And they will let themselves in.

- Nothing on social media is accurate.

- Authenticity is everything. Do not let people make you feel bad about your boldness or strangeness. It is absolutely the best thing about you.

- Give yourself grace. In addition to the chances you wish for from others, you must also grant them to yourself.

26 was an incredibly difficult year for me. In total, I went through 12 different breakups, none any less painful than the others, but each taught me something. My wish, on this birthday, is that if you have gone through anything challenging this year, that you release it right now. Close your eyes and ball it up with your fists and throw it at the wall. Let it shatter, and fear not of the shards slicing your fingers. That pain is powerful but it is not forever. None of this is forever. I wish you repair, I wish you communication and space to heal. I wish you understanding. I wish that the love in this room only continues to grow so that no room is large enough to contain it. I wish that we will have to rent out concert halls and arenas to fit even a portion of the love you give and receive.And I wish, most of all, that even if life doesn’t feel like you think it should, that you are wealthy in dinners with friends, hands reaching out to hold your own, kisses on cheeks, and “I love yous” shouted loudly and whispered in the dark.

Dead bugs littered my path at the beginning of the month. Armed with a Google search bar, I spent too much time digging for the meaning of the scenes: butterflies, moths, cicadas, and June bugs on the sidewalk. I thought about carrying a mason jar to collect the wings for a friend in Michigan who uses them to make jewelry; I thought about displaying them somewhere in my bedroom. Instead, I side-stepped and hopped over them in a habitual respect for the dead.

What I could never have anticipated knowing; Sometimes, death just means death. August was and will always be a mourning period. This past, excruciatingly so.

Many deaths in this world do come with a warning, though somehow never enough time. When the vet informed me of my 3 month-old kitten’s terminal illness, I was faced with a decision that will haunt me for a very long time, if not until the end of my life. The options were bleak. The only drug that had a possibility of saving him was $2,500 and she told me he was too small to take it. It took him two months to gain a single pound, she was saying. He will suffer immensely and ultimately, he will die in excruciating pain. There is nothing you could have done. My tears were hot, I couldn’t swallow, and the information felt like someone was trying to talk to me while I sank to the bottom of a pool.

That night, I looked over the information about his disease in an email from my vet and the pamphlet about emergency vet care. Just in case, the tech had said as she sympathetically smiled at me. I looked to Seymour, my perfect cat whom I wished to grow old with, whom I was supposed to. I apologized to him, I sobbed into his fur. He ate the meat off of my nachos as anxiety staved off my own appetite. My friends came directly from the happy hour I missed for the appointment, sat in my living room, and made me laugh so as to distract me from the grief.

I called what must have been 10-15 vets across the midwest, looking for the drugs at a cheaper price. They all told me the same things; this will cause him extreme pain, you cannot start them until he gains a ½ pound, and they are not FDA approved/technically still in trial so the price, $2,500 is set. I called shelters and asked them if they would help him if I surrendered him. The very concise, disheartening, and direct answer continuously rang out over the phone: No.

After calling my vet once again and looking on the internet for medication alternatives, I knew in my heart that the only option was letting him rest peacefully. I scheduled it for the end of the week, worried about any more damage occurring and causing him tremendous pain. I did not eat, I hardly slept. My friends called everyday and sat with me in the evenings as I pet him to sleep.

Seymour spent his very last day surrounded by the people who loved him most. While we enjoyed brunch, the small kitten enjoyed gravy treats, irish butter, pancakes, ice cream, and more things he was always feening for but prohibited from having. He rested on my chest as we each took time to talk about how much we loved him, about our favorite things he did. I swallowed the tears then, only knowing how many would come later. But in that moment, I was able to acknowledge how absolutely special my friends are. To show up for a small cat, to show up for me so last minute was a genuine act of love.

My darling friend, A, sat on the couch and laid in my bed with me for the rest of the day. She let me sob for hours, taking breaks with me to watch TikTok when I felt overwhelmed. Just before another friend arrived to bring me to the appointment, A began to cry. Sorry, she said, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry, that I would be strong for you. Her tears were validating. This cat was important and special and significant. He was loved. And so was I.

I cried through the entire appointment, holding him and loving him. My friend held my hand and took in the information I had a hard time processing. Afterwards, she drove me to Millenium Station so that I could catch a train home. And I spent one full day with my best friend and I slept but I did not cry. I do now though, very much.

A loss of control feels like a punch to the gut. In his final days, I was forced to confront the uncontrollable and I would still be forced to confront it without him. Who then tries to eat the buttered toast out of my hands? Who then will get his own plate of meat and cheese after trying to eat my nachos? I will never be annoyed with him again. I love him and if I love him enough, maybe I can cure him and he won’t die. Please.

I spent the first two weeks of August crying on my bedroom floor and the final two buried in intense grief. I am unsure, each August, of how I have survived those before it. It is notoriously one of the hardest times of my year. This year, everyone I know seems to be having a hard time and decidedly, hiding out in isolation. Which gives me no alternative option.

Reading through my notebooks, my instagram monthly recaps, and my old newsletters has provided insight on my inclination to write about August in a melancholic undertone. Endings are difficult and the ending of summer and long days is a change I can hardly ever bear.

Instead of wondering why I must be so sad, I allow myself the space to grieve this August. I will eat in September when the grief has subsided just enough. My friends will be waiting on the other side. There is a space in time somewhere after all of this where I am laughing in their apartment and we are sharing wine. We are together again and we realize that it’s all we really needed anyway.

Love has carried me through this grief. It is where I end and where I begin; somewhere in the quiet, melancholic heartbeats that fill the silence of an apartment in mourning.

June

Control has been the driving force behind my every action. For as long as I can remember, I have carefully chosen which things to care about by measuring how much I could control them. Even my past relationships were a careful calculation of this equation. So, it came as a huge shock to be dumped in my living room, four hours before I was to throw a party.

Tears came that day but never again. Instead, anxiety replaced them. It sat deep in my stomach and settled in for a week. I was grasping at straws, relaying the situation, in detail, to strangers, friends, and exes. Was I in the wrong? Was I in love or limerence?

Besides myself, no one could answer these questions, and even I needed to figure out that the truth was somewhere in the gray. Nuance, as I always remind myself in times of contemplative melancholia or, in this case, anxiety. Nuance and incompatibility, anyway.

In my uncertainty, I drive the 230-mile journey to my hometown.  I sit in the coffee shop, writing and visiting with locals who have known me all my life.  I go to Home Depot with my dad, cry about finances, and celebrate another hour of sweet living with ice cream.  I ride in the car with my mother to pick up dinner and feel comforted by the gossip she shares.  We eat family dinners on the back deck and watch the dogs jump in the pool.  My little brother finds me, wherever I am, and we sit together.  He and I walk the dogs around the school district, sharing our respective memories from those days.  I see my best friend and she is a woman now. Over a game of UNO and a canned cocktail, I feel the change like a palpable tension in the air only wondering if she feels it too.  We watch the sunset, I hold back tears about shifting, and despite it all, I feel closer to her now than I ever have before.  

It is a Friday night, and The Chicago Theater is buzzing with anxious anticipation for Adrianne Lenker to take the stage. Meanwhile, I yammer uncontrollably at my friend who has invited me. Terrified of the tears that will come, I distract myself by trying to make her laugh. I talk about the people I see and how young college students feel to me now, about 'merch' tables, and how many gay people are in attendance.

Then, the opener takes center stage, and I enter my head. The room around me is full of sound—creaking chairs, conversations, concessions clerks—ambiance to accompany a moving performance. I drown it out, lost in the unfamiliarity of the songs played for me. There are no moments to connect with, no past to confront.  The novelty is refreshing, and I savor it.

When the house lights turn up between sets, my friend and I sit still as the chattering continues around us. We resign ourselves to silence, save the occasional comment about the dynamics of the five people sitting in front of us. I glance around the room at the blue glow of cellphone screens, noting its absence between our two seats. I listen to conversations about weekend plans and life updates, forgetting all about my own. I imagine a world in which my history does not haunt me and my future does not make me feel so ill.

The world seems to come to a halt when Adrianne begins to play. I grip my armrests, and without permitting it, I am transported. The tears come slowly and then all at once, and I feel completely alone in the room. Confronting the past is not a skill I typically possess. I am in impossible anticipation of the future version of myself who is no longer in the present moment. I mourn everything before it’s over. And yet, I sit here drenched in its emotions, the past.

I remember the summer sunsets at Charles Mears State Park, where I desperately wished to escape. Moving to Chicago taught me that you have to elbow your way into what you want. I remember sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of a small room in my ex’s grandparents’ house, not speaking to my best friend for three months, and feeling sick with dread. I escaped a tumultuous relationship, tears streaking my cheeks in the dark of my classroom during rest time, realizing that change will always be hard. I spent a summer in strangers’ beds, looking at ceilings while men entered me, and later repented for letting them. I discovered who I am as an adult, facing fears head-on. I built a community, moved to the mountains in France, and felt intensely lonely. I moved to Paris, laid my hands on sticky bar tables, and laughed with new friends. I fell in love, singing “anything” to a woman in bed, and she cried. I lost my job and moved away again. She visited me; I visited her. Heartbreak consumed me, and slowly over a long period—longer than I care to admit or took in my attempts to move on—I let go.

Without my realizing it, Adrianne Lenker snuck her way into being the soundtrack of my adult life. Each album’s release has been perfectly timed, almost spiritually, with the events of my life. It is cathartic to finally look history in the eyes and shake its hand—a truce, an acceptance, and a deep, deep release.

July

I find myself going out with friends when I should stay home, struggling with social boundaries. The distraction is usually welcome—I’d rather be with the people I love than alone with my thoughts. But I know that if I never learn to confront those thoughts, I’ll be left exhausted and unhappy when the distractions inevitably fade.

One evening, in the back of an Uber, I reach my limit. Everything feels like a slight, and much like my mother, I bite my cheek to keep from crying. The next day, I carry my heavy body to the beach, hoping to find peace, but quickly realize I’m in no position to be there. I refuse a ride home and instead take two buses and a train, sitting with myself for the entire 90-minute journey.

I spend the week ghost-walking through life, haunted by the fear that I’ll spend my whole existence picking fights and pushing away those I care for most. I overthink every action, lying on my messy bedroom floor, feeling both justified and ashamed. The clarity I once relied on to justify my actions is gone, leaving me adrift in uncertainty.

Resolution comes in the form of a text message, despite the togetherness we shared at the beach. It follows with a phone call until the problem, once overwhelming, shrinks in my memory. “I love you! That’s the foundation of everything between us” grounds me, much like holding the hand of a past lover. That gentle reminder brings me back to earth. I have changed.

The month has become a waiting period—a time when I anticipate the passing of anxiety and the arrival of tears. It’s almost a tradition for me now, to inhabit a tearless desert in July; this one is no different from those before. Last summer, my anxiety stood apart from my despair, each existing as a separate entity. But this year, they’ve become entangled, twisting and weaving together, struggling helplessly to break free from one another.

If only August would come sooner, bringing with it the end of a summer that has slipped away without my enjoyment. Despite my efforts, this season has been one of enduring hardship. At work, in my mind, and my relationships, I’ve been chewing on the bitter consequences of memory—a summer of swallowing down everything that has come my way. It’s easy to avoid the hard pills of reality when I’ve convinced myself they could not possibly help me. Perspective is painful.

This July, I take them by the handful. In a desperate attempt to feel anything about my most recent breakup besides relief, I dive deeply into memory. I read old texts and emails, letters, and postcards. I look at photographs from different times and dine with friends I’ve been avoiding. Once again, I’m reminded that I cannot go back. Nostalgia paints everything differently, and as I immerse myself in the personal media of times past, I see that nothing is ever as great as memory remembers.

And yet, I never feel anything besides relief about the breakup–which too fades. Memory can hardly recall it anymore, and my attempts to dredge up emotions from the past only deepen the sense of futility. The more I reach into the past, the more I realize that it’s impossible to recreate what once was or to find meaning in something that no longer holds significance.

In the end, I’m left with the understanding that some things are meant to be left behind, no matter how hard I try to hold on to them.  It becomes so heavy in my hands.  The relief that once seemed so elusive now becomes a quiet acceptance, a soft whisper reminding me that I’ve moved on, even if I wasn’t ready to admit it.

What lingers instead is a quiet emptiness, the kind that comes when you’ve exhausted every effort to feel something, anything. The relationship and subsequent breakup, once a source of anxiety and overthinking, have now settled into the background, almost forgotten, like a distant noise you no longer notice. The texts, the photos, the memories—they’ve all lost their power, reduced to remnants of a time that no longer feels real.

I find myself sitting in the silence that follows, where even the echoes of the past have grown faint. The relief I once sought so desperately has dissolved into indifference, leaving me with nothing but the hollow understanding that some things simply fade away, leaving behind a void that neither memory nor time can fill.

What I am reading

Big Swiss - Jen Beagin   I devoured this one.  Albeit in my nature to candidly discuss my love for unlikable characters, I must admit the certain tenderness that I felt for Greta whom I related to above all else.  Sometimes it is hard to know the right thing… Especially when you’re gay and in limerence–or love.  I laughed, cried, and felt very seen throughout the entirety of it.  

Sex and Rage - Eve Babitz  Defined deeply by the characters in my own life and almost refusing to believe so, I related to Jacaranda.  What does not last is never truly left behind me but carried like a souvenir padlock on my heart.

Situations Parties, breakups, phone calls–which room can I enter and be safe from the emotional tension in the air?  Can I stop being the root cause?  Can I stop believing I must be?

Reader recommendations

Happy Go Lucky - David Sedaris (*Dare I say, one of the best contemporary humorists)

Kink

Biography of X - Catherine Lacey

The Omnivores Dilemma - Michael Pollan

Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Martyr - Kaveh Akbar

Banal Nightmare - Halle Butler

The Official Manual for the ASA Basic Keelboat Sailing Course

The American Sailing Association’s Sailing Made Easy

The Paris Apartment - Lucy Foley

Sirens and Muses - Antonia Angress

Clarice Lispector

Black Swans - Eve Babitz (Eve Babitz Summer, baby!)

What I am listening to

Charm - Clairo - To be completely candid, Clairo was flying way under my radar. I remember the moment “Bags” had and listened to some of the songs off of her debut album on repeat but I wouldn’t have named her as a favorite artist of mine. Charm, however, plays softly in my kitchen as I cook dinner. I have been singing Juna for a couple of weeks under my breath. It is beautiful from the first note to the last.

Ellur - To transition from girlhood to womanhood is to master the art of realizing things. Through her music, Ellur perfectly conveys such a concept.

Vampire Weekend - A concert last month transported me back to my thirteenth summer and I have been living there ever since.

The Greeting Committee - Again, a concert prompted the revisitation. Truly a fabulous concert and one I did not wish to end. Addie is completely captivating.

Edie McKenna - Hail Mary - I wish I was a music writer so I could convey the way this song made me feel. To be fair, I wish that about everything I am listening to.

Reader recommendations

Mavis Staples

Nina Simone

Charm - Clairo

Yacht Rock

Massive Attack

brat

SUN RA and his ARKESTRA

Perfume Genius

Rubblebucket

Judgment Day (Theme songs from WWE)

Men I Trust

Knocked Loose

Ariana Grande

You can find my playlist with these songs, albums, your recommendations, and more here: what is going on right now?

What I am watching

Sex and the City - Finally finished my long rewatch of the show.  I hate the final season so much but mostly, I think I loathe change.  It took me many days to finish the last episode because I was avoiding it, knowing that finishing it meant, for me, opening myself up to something new after.

Fantasmas - Watched the first episode as my friend made me french toast and was instantly hooked.  I have a deep appreciation for Julio Torres and how unbelievably funny he is.   

Old Lesbians: Reclaiming Old Age and Queerness Through Storytelling - The Guardian (YouTube) - Seeing this made me cry. It is so special.

Reader Recommendations

Soul Train Lines on Youtube

Season 3 of Glee

Criminal Record

Heartbreak High

It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia

Bridgerton

Season 2 of Community 

Fantasmas

The Boys

Atlanta

Essence of Self

Olympics

Derry Girls

VEEP

Artists to watch

Reader Recommendations

@blushycheeks - Necklaces

Anastasia Tasou

Hail the Sun

Jordan Ward

J.M.W Turner

August will be hard, the tides of change sweeping me along with them. Then autumn will come, and I’ll accept once more that I will always be the woman I am, no matter the season. Those moments surrounded by love, so beautiful and fleeting, will make life feel magical. And despite my melancholic disposition, I’ll savor how sweet they truly are.

I don’t know that I can truly articulate the month.  Should I weigh the complexities against one another?  So tender, so warm yet so turbulent, so consuming.  I wrapped myself in childhood comforts–wearing mud on my feet as an added layer under my socks, walking through barns of horses and cats, swatting away flies.  The manure, a kind of sweet smell, transported me back to those days of summers past.  My friends in their farm boots, leading their horses in circles;  Me in my tennis shoes, raking up shit and patiently waiting for their lessons to end so we could ride bareback in the countryside.  That part of me feels lifetimes ago now–I fear I am always lingering too far from who I once was.  It was a pleasant surprise for the reconnection to feel so electric, though I feel I hid it from my friends quite well.  I dreaded the trip worrying about the dirt that would slip under my nails and on the sides of my callused feet, about my friends and I having no knowledge of camping.  It was a pleasant surprise that we could each bring our strengths—camping and farm life providing welcome relief. 

I catapulted through the month, its highly anticipated warm days becoming unfamiliarly long.  I walked six, stress-fueled miles altogether between dawn and dusk to smoke cigarettes–probably canceling out the effects of either endeavor–and drifted off, most nights, clutching tightly to the woman I love.  Then I slept—hard.  

In secret, I have hoped for someone to hold onto through the night without tiring, aching to be on my side of the bed.  She falls asleep on my chest and then sleeps in the center of the bed the entire night.  Somehow, my body willingly contorts around her shape, slingshotting me into a new physical realm.  I am notorious for needing space, my avoidance a reality I can hardly hide from, this newfound comfort feels almost like a dream.  Not needing to have my usual conversation about needing physical separation in bed, I feel lighter but unusual.  My comfort lies in what I can control; my desire for her is so far from my realm of it.  It has never pulsed through me this way, poetry suddenly makes all the sense in the world. 

When the heartache from my most recent breakup subsided, I found my heart was cracked wide open in a way that it had never been before.  Though I had no plans of jumping into anything, there she was.  I couldn’t have jumped if I wanted to, I was too conscious of myself, too afraid to get hurt but I could not have planned to fall.  And free falling is an unexpected thrill when she is beside me, holding my hand.

List

Things I have done this week instead of writing as I probably should…

• Recognize my weight change 

• Try on old clothing after said realization 

• Try on old bathing suits 

• Read three books

• Look for missing ring (unsuccessful)

• Call my best friends

• Call my mom

• Watch Pearl

• Watch Sex and the City

• Have sex

• Make lists of innocuous things 

• Sleepover at my girlfriend’s

• Eat leftover pasta

• Walk

• Feel like I’m on a movie set of my own life 

• Feel like nothing is real

• Buy more books

• Finally confront the bookstore where a girl I ghosted works (she was not in)

• Open up three bottles of wine

• Cigarette breaks

• Farmers market

• Walk with my friends

• Feel

• Experience

• Breathe (kind of) 

• Spiral

• Read old emails and letters

• Come back to life

• Shower

• Sweat

• Stress 

• Figure it probably doesn’t matter anyway

• Realize that love is different every time

• Figure it out once again 

Why does nothing feel real?  Like everyone else is changing and I’m trudging through mud to catch up? 

What I am reading

The Guest - Emma Cline  - Alex is completely unlikeable, truly awful.  I am so tender to unlikable characters–maybe because I feel like one myself.  When characters repeatedly make the most self-destructive decision it humanizes them.  I liked the cutting style of writing and the way Cline describes scenes.  Maybe, or especially, because a cynical 22-year-old feels so real to me.  The entire novel, Cline left me on the edge of my seat, wanting to know more.  Spare no want for the ending.  I was both surprised and unsurprised when the sentences ended and the next page had none. 

Beach Read - Emily Henry - A revisitation of the romance novel proved everything I needed to break out of my schlump. 

Reader recommendations

All About Love - Bell Hooks

Seven Days in June - Tia Williams

Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Geek Love - Katherine Dunn

Martyr - Kaveh Akbar

Things people said that I could not find an author for online…

Yes Ma’am

In Malibu

What I am listening to

Parquet Courts - Revisiting them has been full of nostalgia.  Back then, the lyrics meant something akin to angst to me.  Now, I feel sweet tenderness for the girl who listened to them on repeat while I do the same, just over 10 years later. 

Dreams - Carol Ades - She said she fully realized her queerness when she was crushing on her girlfriend and wrote this song about it.  And it gets stuck in my head so I obviously like it. 

Two Star & The Dream Police - Mk.gee - I was consumed from start to finish.  It is such a beautiful album.  Of course, my ego loves Rylee & I but Candy will be listened to all summer. 

The Death of Summer & Other Promises - Etta Marcus - Beautifully crafted.  I have been revisiting it since my last listen closer to its release in January after playing a track for my friends while camping and sharing our quiet attention to it.  And I will yearn always. 

Reader recommendations

2:00 A.M. Paradise Cafè - Barry Manilow

The xx

The Strokes

SHELLAC

Biig Piig

You can find my playlist with these songs, albums, your recommendations, and more here: what is going on right now?

What I am watching

Sex and the City - Aged terribly, still rewatch it every spring.  And yes, it has been a slow rewatch as I am not watching much but I still love it very much so. 

Am I OK? - What the fuck?  What did I watch?  I thought she was going to hook up with her best friend and then nothing happened.  Listen, I know the coming-out process is lonely and difficult to navigate but give me SOMETHING. 

Reader Recommendations

Insecure

Severance

Bones

Baseball (haha)

The Bear

GIRLS 

Sex and the City 

Artists to watch

Athenaeum Studios - Despite the artist being my best friend, I can certainly attest to the level of detail and care that goes into each of her pieces.  Specializing in jewelry and her famous “joint holders” she is a growing business in the Chicago craft circuit.  I wear a pair of her earrings almost every day. 

Reader Recommendations

Ronny Bass - Up-cycled clothing

On my twenty-fifth birthday, my cousin told me that the years flew by him after his.  Time never seems to slow but already, 3 months into this new year of life, I can confirm the rapidity of it.  So, I am trying to do the kind of things that adults will tell you to do, the kinds of things that require personal experience like extending myself grace and going to bed earlier. 

Last month, I wrote that I would soon wake up and realize the pain I was feeling to be unnoticeable and while it did not happen exactly so, in April, the pain disappeared.  Now, behind me, the experience feels valuable.   

Navigating the world with a hopeful perspective is a drastic change.  The juxtaposition of April and every 2024 month that preceded it is dramatic.  I am different now, that deeply scarring pain changed me.  Still, I am actively morphing.  I never want to return to who I was then–some days this feels like going into battle.  When I feel myself building walls, I quickly put down the bricks and mortar and allow myself to cry about it.  Then, I step right over the wall and confront the situation honestly.  It is terrifying to be aware and present but it is a beautiful gift to know how to arm myself these days.  Before, when avoidance was my weapon of choice, I was not only hurting those who loved me but, above all, myself.  I no longer wish to run from everything that scares me–it is so tiring. 

Thoughts

I began my newsletter around this time last year and subsequently hit a writing roadblock the following summer.  I was sweating in beds all over Paris and pinching myself for not writing enough.  I was filling up journals and notebooks but there was nothing to be said to an audience.  Not yet, anyway.  Without writing for the audience that expected it, I felt incredibly useless and obsolete.  Then, toward the end of my time away, on a train back to Paris from a visit to Monet’s garden, all of those words I had been missing came flooding back to me.  I did not share this with anyone, I wrote them in my journal immediately and that was where they stayed. 

I have written many essays and narratives that I do not share with an audience but I feel a certain pressure to share something if I find it to be well done.  This was the first time I had written something of that nature and desired it only for myself.  In hindsight, it was an extraordinary moment for me;  For the first time in a long time, I relinquished my projection of what I believed everyone’s expectations were for me and did what I wanted. 

I finally wrote for an audience again back in February of this year.  As it has always felt, it was like wearing my heart on my sleeve.  This time, I was ready for the vulnerability.  Finally, I was okay with having not been for months. 

A hiatus does not equate to my meaning.  It also does not make me a non-writer.  For the entire summer, autumn, and winter months I had been avoiding defining myself as a writer at all.  I was not writing publicly–of course, I was not a writer.  I was hardly writing at all–of course, I was not a writer. 

In the quiet moments without words, I realized that I was only feeling through the dark and collecting experiences.  Deeply within the emotions and experiences, I had not yet formed the vocabulary to define them.  After all was said and done, I still needed time for processing.  And then all of the words came onto paper without much thought.  Or maybe it was all thought.  

I guess what I am trying to say is that the modern era of constant “accessibility” puts pressure on creatives to constantly output content or art.  Everything needs to be sold.  When I tell people I write, they almost always ask me if I am writing a book.  What happened to the idea of creating just for creation’s sake?  Hustle culture has informed me that I must never give up if I want to succeed.  I have taught myself that my creativity will always ebb and flow and it is probably better not to try and sell everything I am feeling. 

What I am reading

Not That Kind of Girl - Lena Dunham  - I truly hate how talented she is… Must she be?  Must she be so annoying also? 

The Woman Destroyed - Simone De Beauvoir - After reading my last newsletter, a friend reached out and asked me what my thoughts were on this.  I shared that I had yet to read the third story to which she responded that it was her favorite.  Immediately, I went and read it.  So beautiful and the perfect end to the collection. 

I had an exciting month and did not read very much.  This always surprises me when it happens but sometimes it is nice to have a break so that I can pick up the next book and fly through it. 

Reader Recommendations

Tom Lake - Ann Patchett

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Suzanne Collins

Another Country - James Baldwin (giving this a *** for my preference.  Go read this!!)

Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation - Marcus Anthony Hunter

Devil House - John Darnielle

Stitches - Hirokatsu Kihara

Tragedy is Not Enough - Karl Jaspers

Sex and Rage - Eve Babitz

A Certain Hunger - Chelsea G. Summers

What I am listening to

LISP (life in sweatpants) - A few years back, this artist came up on my Discover Weekly playlist through the song “Good 2 Yourself” which is an ultimate summer song.  Most of the music they make is warm weather-appropriate and has been in my rotation since.  I was delighted to see their collaboration with Sjowgren on “twenty” which will easily become a song of my summer. 

Good Luck, Babe! - Chappel Roan - No words needed.  You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling. 

Cinderella - Remi Wolf  - Summer is coming and I know because everyone is giving us perfect summer music. 

My Love is a Painter - Max DiRado - So beautiful.  Kind of hurts.  

I am in desperate pursuit of new music.  Please share your favorite new listens with me.   

You can find my playlist with these songs, albums, your recommendations, and more here: what is going on right now?

Reader Recommendations

Youth Lagoon

Omar Apollo

Frances Baker

Reggie Pearl

Ava McCoy

Sara Hells

Don’t Forget Me - Maggie Rogers

Waxahatchee 

Tigers Jaw 

Weezer

Bright Future - Adrienne Lenker

What I am watching

Sex and the City - Aged terribly, still rewatch it every spring.  

Challengers - I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and that has not happened in a while. 

With Netflix adding SATC, all of my friends have begun watching the series for the first time.  I am overjoyed and have been rewatching alongside them.  This has been consuming the very short amount of TV time I have, unfortunately. 

Reader Recommendations

Killing Eve (so many of you have said this)

3 Body Problems

Utopia

Origin of Ava Duvernay 

The Bear 

Corpo Celeste (Heavenly Body)

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2024 series)

Criminal Minds 

Artists to watch

Hannah Gebhart -  I have written about this fantastic artist before but not in this capacity.  Hannah has worked extremely hard to launch her gallery, Izora Contemporary. I am so proud of her!  If you are in the Chicago area this Saturday evening (May 11th, 2024), consider stopping in for the opening reception of “it’s me, again”.

Reader Recommendations

Sally Keiser (handbags)

Bradford Michaela (music)

Boy Jr. (music)

For what seems like the first time in my entire life, March has been a hard month.  It started well, ringing in my twenty-fifth year surrounded by the people I love most.  Progressively, distractions fell away, forcing me to look inwards.  If I am lucky, I can move quickly enough to ignore feeling guilt or grief but March provided idle time to twiddle thumbs and feel every passing emotion.  Once, on the bus ride home, I noticed a rowing team in the Chicago River.  My heart twisted in my chest.  March, spring–once a hopeful time, now a reminder that though the seasons may change, I am still weighed down by what feels like infinite grief.  The budding trees and blossoming daffodils perpetuate my pain.  Change has always been hard for me.

As I write this, I am careful to avoid using words such as “sorrow,” “despair,” or any of the like.  Grief does not work that way and I could never box myself into that.  I was full of sorrow, true, but my tears were also hot and angry, burning my cheeks in fiery streaks.  When it seems the pain is getting smaller, it stabs me in my spine and brings me to my knees, gasping for air on a Sunday afternoon.  They are inescapable, these complex feelings; I cannot run from my own heart.  

The world will go on and dishes still must be done, floors swept, gardens tended.  I get outside more, I wash my plates, and I make dinner all the while, biting my cheek to keep from crying.  My heart is locked tightly beneath my ribcage and I only reach for it when I am showering, wringing it out beneath the hot water.  Go on heartbreak, wash down the drain.  Though I am in the practice routinely, it never works. 

I text my friends that I feel I will be carrying this pain forever and they assure me that they are here to lighten the load.  I sob in therapy, begging my therapist to tell me what it will take to get through this.  When they tell me “time” I cry harder.  Come to find out, “time” really is the answer.  Each day it gets slightly easier.  

March offered me multiple moments of finality and a desperation to get off the internet.  Even though the reasoning was painful, it was a gift.  One day I will wake up and while my pain is subtly shrinking in size, I will realize that it is minuscule.  The time will pass anyway.  In the end, I have my memories and nostalgia paints them beautifully.  It is enough;  It must be. 

What I am reading

The Red Zone - Chloe Caldwell  - This was recommended to me by my therapist as a way to cope with a new PMDD diagnosis.  It made me feel seen, understood, and not alone. 

The Woman Destroyed - Simone De Beauvoir - If anyone is capable of putting me on the verge of tears, it will be a French woman. 

What I am listening to

*Calico - Ryan Beatty - This devastatingly beautiful album has crept back into my rotation this month.  Especially “Multiple Endings” and “Ribbons”.  To be loved is to be changed.  To be heartbroken is to grow very, very much.  I am thankful that I am not the first person who has ever experienced it.   

*Last Night In The Bittersweet - Paolo Nutini - All of it, over and over.  “Take Me Take Mine” is one of the most lyrically beautiful songs ever written.  It deserves a listen. 

*Somersault - Beach Fossils  - I need to be reminded that there’s a part of this that will feel easier.  All of it. 

Bright Future - Adrienne Lenker - For obvious reasons.  I’m a sapphic, don’t roll your eyes. 

*Boyhood - The Japanese House - One of my best friends reminded me of this song and I have been revisiting it. 

The von dutch remix with addison rae and a.g. cook - Charli XCX - It’s not all devastation, okay?  I can still get down. 

***To revisit albums is to remember a different time.  I know where I was when I listened to these the most–in Paris walking the distance.  

You can find my playlist with these songs, albums, your recommendations, and more here: what is going on right now?

What I am watching

Insecure - Revisiting it.  Issa Rae is a genius and this show is just such a perfect testament to that. 

Love Lies Bleeding - WOOOOOF

The Worst Person In The World - How did it take me so long to watch this?  I love hurting myself. 

Good Grief - A beautiful debut feature for Dan Levy.  Without being overly sentimental it shares the realest version of grief. It hurts so good.

Problemista - I love Julio Torres and this film was what I needed it to be.  So cute and funny and slightly heartbreaking. 

The Real World - As always. 

Sitting at the end I can share how absolutely beautiful grief can be.  In this pain, I am repeatedly reminded of all of the love shining in my window.  How hard my friends have loved me this month.  How glorious moving on can feel. 

Hi… It’s been a while.  I have opened the draft of this email and rewritten it over and over again, trying to find the words.  The last time I updated this newsletter was a review of May 2023.  Since then, my life has been a whirlwind.  I thought that if I could not share a happy and thriving Ry, then I should not share one at all.  The truth is that I was unsettled and I was happy.  The two things can co-exist.  I share just enough of myself here, careful not to give all of her away.  This is an important rule for me in general.  I don’t regret not updating this but I am happy to be back in a way that prioritizes me and my sanity.

I spent my entire summer lying on my ex-girlfriend’s bedroom floor and throwing a tantrum.  And then seven months came and went.  It was strange to be suspended in the in-between all of August, the midwestern sun scorching my neck.  I hunted for apartments like it was my full-time job and once I found a place to call home, time flew by.  

I suffered intense writer’s block.  The turmoil of my romantic and financial life causing a subsequent whiplash provided nothing for me in terms of inspiration.  I always thought that I was someone who wrote best in the depths of despair but now that I have worked through these things, I find myself unable to keep the words off the page.  Whenever I am deep into writer’s block, I am convinced that I will never escape.  I must go experience to write.  Adjunctly, I must sit with myself.  Introspection and experience make way for growth which, in turn, provides freedom to express everything thoughtfully in hindsight.

To be in my mind allows me to sift through old files until the new ones are processed and I can finally talk about them.  More importantly, the reflection, pondering, and thoughtfulness allow me to heal.  Recognizing the past as the past helps me differentiate between an action and an emotion.  It leaves it there.  I cannot go back, I cannot change what I know now. 

Here I am, writing to you but for me this time around.  I’m confident that it is better this way.  It will find who needs to hear it anyway.

What I am reading

Scattered All Over the Earth - Yoko Tawada  The first of a trilogy.  I enjoyed it but that may have been due to my interest in linguistic studies. 

The Girls - John Bowen  Love cottage-core lesbians. 

Dogs of Summer - Andrea Abreu Predictable but still so cutting. 

DeTransition, Baby! - Torrey Peters    SO funny. 

***Reader Recommendations***

I Love You So Much  It’s Killing Us Both - Mariah Stovall

Let Us Descend - Jesmyn Ward

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewsk

Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner

The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead

The Neopolitan Novels - Elena Ferrante

The Last Pomegranate Tree - Bachtyar Ali

What I am listening to

Light On - Dehd - To me, nothing feels like summer is on the horizon like a new Dehd release.  The single “Mood Ring” and its follow-up, “Light On” have been on a hopeful repeat in my playlist. 

Hazel English - When I was 18, I drove to Chicago while listening to her debut album, the summer sunshine beating in through my windows.   This time around, I listened to her newer music, “Real Life” and “Blue Light”.  I am always reaching for what once was and this time, I feel like I am reclaiming her music for who I am now, 7 years later. 

Where we’ve been, Where we go from here - Friko - This Chicago band’s debut album was so timely in my personal life.  It has touched me so deeply and I listen to the entirety of it approximately three times a week.  I needed it now, I have to have it.  If you listen to any of my recommendations, please let it be this one. 

Fool - Adrienne Lenker - Another timely release.  All three singles that she has released are jabs to my heart and sound a little bit like letting go while my other hand is white-knuckling the hell out of it.  

You can find my playlist with these songs, albums, your recommendations, and more here: what is going on right now?

***Reader Recommendations***

Lana Del Rey

Creep - Glee Cover

Raye - NPR Tiny Desk

Lykke Li

Memories - Kid Cudi

Artist to follow/who I am loving 

Bedroomer (Musician) - So beautiful, so sweet.

Jake Minch (Musician) - ouchie on my heart. 

***Reader Recommendations***

Raye

Addie (duh) on instagram @addiedrawsfish

What I am watching

Love is Blind - I really did try but gave up after a few episodes because it annoyed me.

Tiny Desk Concerts - All of them, cannot stop.

The Real World - Season 3, San Fran 1994.  Inarguably the saddest season BUT we have lost what reality tv is truly about.  NO goal, just 7 people living in the real world under the same roof.  Such a vibe.  The drama is so silly. 

***Reader Recommendations***

Bad Girls Club (Season 6)

Glee

Nature Documentaries

Substacks you should be reading…

Words from Eliza - Eliza Mclamb - I first knew of Eliza as a musician.  Having enjoyed her music, I was thoroughly delighted to find this gem. 

***Reader Recommendations***

Words from Eliza

That’s the month.  Maybe something will happen in March that will be so big and explosive.  Or maybe I will still be consuming media, writing about it, and settling into Ry–whoever she is. 

On my twenty-fourth birthday, I went to Edinburgh and sat around a dining table full of women I had just met and one I had loved for a long time.  One of them had cooked a mushroom risotto for all of us to enjoy and someone else had bought a couple of bottles of wine to pair with it.  Candlesticks stuck in recycled bottles of wine burned brightly and I remember thinking that if this new age would be defined by anything, it would be this night. 

Managing to survive twenty-three, twenty-two, and twenty-one felt like an accomplishment.  My early twenties chewed me up and spit me out, no longer able to stand the taste of my rotten and naive flesh.  Unfortunately, naivety persisted and had me believe that reaching my twenty-fourth year could leave me on the outside of the trials and tribulations of young adulthood.  In the ways that one cringes upon individual self-reflection, I cringe at having believed I knew a single thing at all.  I hadn’t a clue. 

I returned to Paris and a new job feeling hopeful at the promise of a fresh start.  Something about birthdays makes me feel new, the turn of a new age and leaf making anything possible.  In March of 2023, I had no idea what I wanted.  I dated aimlessly, walked along the Seine on my own, and wrote so much that my fingers cramped.  I thought, often, about what I would do next, fearing that whatever choice I made, part of my heart would always be somewhere else.  If I left Paris, I would miss it the same way that I was missing Chicago then.  Oh, how homesick I was both for Chicago and in anticipation of my inevitable, unplanned departure from Paris. 

Sometime between figuring out my plans and embracing the directionless journey, I fell in love.  Great love.  And it tethered me to Paris in its complex, emotional beauty.  Time races by me as I grow up.  Love made it fly.  I could kneel on the banks of the river of time and try and scoop up as much as my hands could carry but there would never be enough of it.  Eventually, I would have to decide to go home just as I was always going to.  Now, my heart was factoring in someone who never asked that of me.  

Summer came and summer went.  I lost my job, leaving me eight short hours to pack up my European life and move fifteen minutes away into a willing and patient girl’s apartment.  In July I was throwing tantrums on her bedroom floor, reading books, and picking up odd jobs to get by.  I was ruled by neuroticism and anxiety about what came next for me, I could hardly ever be where I was. 

Then I left.  Even though the August air in Chicago was thick and heavy when I arrived, I took the deepest breath I had in months.  Anything was possible where I was fluent and native.  As I got into my friend’s car, I thought that maybe I had come back because it was easier.  Then I accepted that sometimes it is okay to make the easy choice.  Who was I trying to prove myself to?

I was teaching again, I was cultivating a new community, and I was thriving.  The easy choice was validated in this.  Home was wherever I needed it to be and in that moment, it was in Chicago.  And it still is.  Home, in its complex nature, was also 5,000 miles away, in the bed of the woman I loved.

Heartbreak, though a common occurrence–especially in one’s twenties–is more cutting than one can ever imagine.  She comes in full force and takes me out, causing erratic behavior and tear-stained sheets.  Leaving me with the knowledge that grief can manifest from many sources.  I learned to allow myself to feel it and to be loved by my friends despite my avoidant tendencies.  I bowed towards the great Joni Mitchell and “Blue” for giving me the space to grieve. 

Twenty-four comes to an end, as all years must but this time I am more sure of myself than ever before.  Now, I know that I am going to learn over and over and over again before I ever really know anything at all.  On dance floors, I come to life.  I date again and I am kinder this time around both to them and to myself.  In bars, restaurants, and my apartment and those of others I am present for the conversations.  What will come will come.  I only have moments left of being this young. 

I turn twenty-five in a room full of the people I love most in the world.  They sing me happy birthday, tell me they’re proud of me, and kiss my cheeks.  I know I am loved but I am feeling it full-force in this moment.  I use my candle wish on wishing to learn to be present all of the time, constantly.  I wrote in my January 2023 Instagram post, “I cannot go on without accepting I cannot go back.”  In the same beat, I cannot go on without being right here, living in it as it is.  

Candlesticks burn to the nub, bottles fill up my recycling, and my friends squeeze me goodbye.  I am there, in my life, for my life.  As I lay my head down, I reflect on the turbulence of the year behind me and count how many ways it shaped me.  It is strange to keep getting older when I never thought I would.  I am privileged to be living for it is a strange, glorious, heartbreaking, and humbling thing.  

In the summer of 2022, I had little notion of who I was as a person.  I spent every other evening in someone else’s bed, nitpicking the individuals they belonged to.  The sheets irritated my skin and the tender and innocent touch of someone else made me want to cry.  Then again, my own sheets made sleep an impossible chore and the touch of my right hand on my stomach made me want to be sick.  Intimacy beyond the anonymity of a meaningless sexual encounter was to be avoided.  I jumped out of their beds before I dared to fall asleep.  I simply never slept in my own, tossing and turning and looking for the next person to be made sick by. 

The issue with being twenty-three is that one is never truly self-effacing.  Yes, I could acknowledge that I had commitment issues but I could also make them sound quirky and fun.  These personality flaws became a large part of my identity; they made me an “enigma” and fun to be around.  I clung to this truth about myself as if my entire life depended on it.  I feared that letting it go meant losing so many of the people I surrounded myself with or worse–losing myself entirely.

Trying to live up to an image you have created for yourself is not fun.  It is grueling work.  I spent the summer teaching for 10 hours a day Monday-Friday and then sacrificing myself for the weekend.  I was clutching everything I felt and pulling it to my chest.  I was holding it all so tightly that I was becoming the worst of it.

I was not a good person that summer.  I was an awful friend, unfair lover–if a lover at all, and unkind woman.  I cared only for myself, every action a plea for survival.  I was in the thick of something but being that I was unsure of what, all I could do was try to come out the other side.  To keep moving meant I would eventually see it end. 

If I moved fast enough, no one could see the tears rolling down my cheeks.  If I stayed in constant motion then I was likely to never cry again.  Avoidance has always been my weapon of choice and summer in Chicago provided sufficient distractions.  I provided myself no solitude for introspection fearing that if I began to cry I might never stop. 

The issue with my avoidance was that no matter how quickly I ran, I could never really hide–my problems followed me everywhere I went.  Instead of confronting any, I was being consumed by them.  I was restless inside the belly of the beast.  I wanted nothing more than to burst out immediately, unaware that the only way out was through.  I felt that I could never really confront myself in that environment, in Chicago, being as I was, being as it were. 

Knowing when to leave was maybe the only redeemable trait I possessed in my twenty-third year.  When my co-teacher told me that she had given her month’s notice, I knew it was my time too.  I made arrangements in Europe, albeit hastily, and handed in my resignation.  I was leaving, I was going away, this would all be over.  Or, rather, I could finally confront myself outside of my comfort zone. 

In the month before my departure, my friends rotated through my apartment, helping me pack up my things or saying goodbye.  On Sundays, my recycling would overflow with wine bottles and takeout boxes, remnants of the week prior, and I would take it out with flushed cheeks.  How can I be embarrassed to be loved so much?  Or perhaps I felt an underlying guilt for having to leave.  I had to go, it was the right choice and I knew that even when I was in it.  I gave away my things, left my keys on the counter, walked through each room that held two years of my life and memories within its grasp and said goodbye.  

When I was leaving, I was convinced I would never return.  Regardless of how right it felt, I cried in the car as my father switched on his blinker to exit the city.  Everything that happened to me there mattered.  As much as I wished to be able to, I could not release my grip even a little.  I needed to hold on so that I could leave safely.  I thought that remembering meant never letting go, my memories would escape if I did not always feel the emotions they gave me.

Airports are not a place to release and yet, my mother’s tears stained my sweater and my father hugged me tighter than usual.  I moved through security quickly and once through, I made space to acknowledge that I was on my own then.  I tried to write about it on the plane but there are no words to explain how I felt.  It was everything from the entirety of my life all at once.

France would not save me, this was apparent immediately upon my landing.  Being there did not immediately fix everything. The solitude of the mountains led to more introspection–making all of my problems more apparent.  I wandered around the small mountain roads and passed bulls wearily, afraid that the flimsy fence surrounding their fields wouldn’t protect me against their force.  Sometimes, at night, I would imagine having to confront one and how the adrenaline coursing through my body would have me behave.  I hoped I could avoid them just as I had everything else my entire life. 

On a hike up a mountain with a mother and her two young daughters, we enjoyed a picnic on a grassy mound.  I noticed a pile of cow shit near us but, too afraid to know the truth, did not ask if they were living in the field.  Later, as the girls complained of exhaustion, their mother decided to cut through a field full of bulls, following the worn path in the dirt.  I needed to confront this now.  Having no other choice, I blindly followed them into it.  And it didn’t immediately harm me.

I don’t know if I’m a full lesbian.  I’m sitting at the dining room table and I’m writing and she is cooking fish in the kitchen.  The pigeons who have built their nest in the nook of the roof are crying for one another, the sun is shining in through the front windows, and Ben Howard is singing about the moon in my ear. And I know I’m gonna go have dinner and learn more about this girl that I love and I am happy.  For the first time in a long time, I feel genuine happiness and it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks about that

My queerness doesn’t define me but it is a huge part of who I am. You have to know this about me to understand me, to know me at all.

06/12

Girls will always sing about how they cannot be like their mothers and you will know that it’s normal to feel on the outside of something you cannot relate to. You only wish to be exactly as beloved as your mother. You only wish to be exactly like her to be as beloved as she is.

06/22

Today I went to text an old friend and realized that I have virtually no idea how to get in contact with them. Some things are as finite as they seem.

07/01

My hand climbs your thigh as our friends read the email she sent me and scowl in disgust. I wonder what it means to be 24 in Paris but they are defining it for me now.

07/23

And I will build it again. I will adapt.

08/01

As fast as it started, it ended.  In apartments and on the Seine, I think about what this city meant to me, and what it will always mean.  Not the stereotypical markers of independence but it certainly signified my own ability to adapt and take risks.  There is a life for me there if I wish to return.  Maybe no one will remember my time abroad in 10 years but I will.  How could I forget the deep reminder of who I am?

And the return home to a place that never changes after passing through a city that always does? Swimming in the lake with my childhood best friend who makes me feel like I am 12 years old and completely free.  Chanel gifts to remind me of my time abroad.  Goody bars in the car with my mom, wandering around the school supply section of Target in July.  Now we both teach.  Time moves on. 

I move on.  And it’s sad but it’s good… and it’s necessary.

08/05

And we watch the sunset “for old times’ sake” and I remember how it felt when it was a natural part of my routine.  And it makes me feel deeply sad to celebrate a love that is past. And it makes me feel very happy to be with you.

08/07

I went to the lake and read today.  I feel fat but it doesn’t bother me anymore.  My best friends took pictures of me over the weekend and I felt so illuminated in their gaze that I didn’t care about my belly in those pictures.  My book talks about bad thoughts women have and I like that we share these experiences and stories.  I like feeling fat because so many women before me felt this same discomfort.  It connects us, to patriarchy.  It sews us together like a patchwork quilt.  I hate that this is what it takes. 

After the Barbie movie, my best friend told me that she had to pinch her sides to keep from crying.  Another friend told me that she did not shed a tear, and that it was not akin to her own experience growing up.  I wanted to hug her for that even more.  I am fascinated by how we relate to things differently.

I want a donut and I am searching for one.  I have $200, my bank account was charged off, and I am unemployed.  I am tired and anxious and have no appetite.  I am searching for my appetite for community but I feel that I have lost that too.  “When will you have a welcome back party?” My friends ask.  I make something up, too afraid to admit that I do not want one at all.  I have changed.  Or maybe that’s the anxiety.

I am overwhelmed. Nothing sounds appealing and when I sit within the confines of my own company, I have the sudden urge to cry.  The book I was reading felt way too spiritual.  My friend said to interchange “god” with something else.  I don’t know that I believe in anything else.  “God wants you to create” becomes “community wants you to create” but I know that they would never place that sort of pressure on me anyway.  

I tell my girlfriend that I love her more and today I feel like I do.  It is give and take.  Long distance is hard, I am tired.  I feel like it is hard to do anything when you are sad and broke because most of my problems are linked to my financial hardship so almost anything I am going to do will be for money.  Especially my craft—which is writing.  It does not feel worth it.  It is the seventh of August and it has never felt more like it ever.  

08/18

I wasted half the summer missing who I was before and the other half I spent lying all over your bedroom floor.

At night I smoke my cigarette and imagine that in the morning I stop talking to you and it doesn’t hurt either of us and that’s it.

08/20

I’m home but it’s not mine anymore.  Everything has grown and even the things that didn’t don’t feel the same anymore.  I don’t know if my old roommate and I will ever talk again.  I don’t have an apartment. I am very, very tired 

Watching a little girl try to pick up her bike.  I am gut-wrenched at the loss of my youth. The aloof Rylee did not grasp at the air, trying to claw her way out of loneliness.

08/21

Your early twenties should come with a warning label.  Something like, “you’re probably going to self-destruct a few times but some of your friends never will and you might think they’re miserable but they’re actually just in better mental health.  You’re going to be broke and some of your friends will complain of this while making twice as much as you do.  This will annoy you.  Everyone will go on trips but you will be so deep in debt that it feels impossible to climb out of the hole no matter how much extra work you pick up.  Your friends who make twice as much as you will offer unsolicited advice about this which will infuriate you. You are going to break down at least once or twice a week but you’ll sleep and realize that’s all you really need.  The amount of cigarettes you smoke now will definitely cause cancer later in life but at least you know what the long-term effects are.  You’ll be heartbroken most of the time and it will make you want to crawl out of your skin but it is necessary.  Journaling helps so make sure to stay in practice. There is no other advice. Get some sleep.”

09/02

Did it happen? Does it ever at all?  Short, long, sweet, sour August is an itch! I am always saying this! It is an itch I cannot scratch and it drives me nuts. Let’s end August, let’s invite in a stranger, let’s drink wine with friends, and bid summer adieu. 

Nothing is as it seems.  Dogs in cones are suddenly dogs in space helmets and cicadas are a part of every conversation and 12 two-year-olds have touched your earrings and told you how beautiful they are. And you’ll tell them, “I think you’re very beautiful” and they’ll gasp and touch their bellies and cheeks and run away.  Life is good.  Hard, good, beautiful, sweet.  And just like that, I realize I cannot have it all BUT I CAN be right where I need to be. Or… right where I am. Wherever that is.