did it hurt when they stared at you with their hardened gaze? did your voice quiver? did your skin grow grey?

it’s easy to smile, keeping your eyes away. but beneath the skin, the truth awaits. you get on your knees crying, you place your hands together to pray.

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“oh god take me from this body. change me into anything else. a bird. a bee. a worm in a tree. just so i can stop feeling so depleted.”

all her life she was an outcast, a burden, a castaway.

for she didn’t carry her mother’s skin, or her father’s brass. she didn’t belong on either side. if only she could wear a mask of paper-white skin, with paled lips.

she wished for straw hair, thin thighs, and arms that didn’t feel thick.

it was hard to look at herself when everyone else looked the same. she began cataloguing her favorite protrusions. circling angles and doodling illusions, someone she could turn into. someone she could truly make her feel like herself.

this franken-her. the perfect body. once it was made, she’d never have to feel the hate. the eyes would avert; better yet, they’d wait.

hold and simmer, admiring the glimmer from her gloss white skin. no more pin-straight hair, darkened features, vampiric suit. her stomach wouldn’t protrude past her belt, it’d behave behind the band. oh the cheeks that sink into her gums. she wished they’d stay hollowed and numb.

the vision was all too exhilarating. she couldn’t keep her hand off the pen. circling. scratching. summoning. back to her knees, back to her heaven, she’d pray she’d transform someday. that her body would grow nimble, small enough to fit between thumbs. for love was being small. everyone knew this to be true. the body you wear, determines the type of people you ensnare. and she couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

oh frail, timid little girl. would you take it all back if you could? when granted the life you wanted, was one you never should have had?

as your bones began to wither, and your life shortened in span, did you think about the beginning? did you remember the middle, fear the end?

would you have done it at all, if it meant to start over to heal again?

your body isn’t a game. your life holds a timer. the choices you make are ones it’ll always remember.

but sweet, gentle girl, it was nice while it lasted. though you hate to admit you were sick, you loved feeling plastic.

to heal isn’t an easy thing. their eyes continue to look your way.

i know you miss the approval.

no one praises the recovered bodies that stand before them. they do not see the work that was done on the side.

they assume you to be lazy.

to be aloof.

to have let things slide.

but darling girl remember this forever. your life isn’t for others. and your body isn’t meant to be solved by a mastermind.

while it’s easy to hate, and harder to accept. you’re doing the best you can. the best you will. the best you are.

in my restless nights, the twin-sized mattress we pushed to the corner of my dorm feels a thousand miles long.

your pillow remains uncreased; not a single wrinkle or print of a head lies in your place. no, even my body in it’s deepest slumber takes up your space for comfort. instead i keep my back to the wall, the way i would when the sheets grew too heavy from the heat.

yet, even then, despite our sticky palms and sweaty features, the tender callous of your hands reach for me. you’d bury your head behind my neck and breathe me in as if i were as sweet as wet morning dew. like magnets pulling towards one another, the curve of my spine would fall right into your shoulders. knee beneath my bum. feet intertwined.

when our breaths aligned in a melodic rhythm, for a single moment, i’d believe we were two people truly in love.

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i’d imagine what the morning would look like if i didn’t have to pick up my clothes from the edge of the bed. you’d take them off of me, petal by petal, like a flower in a garden of love-me-nots. he loves me, he loves me not, i’d say in my head with every tug of my skirt, sock, and shoe. then at last, after all the careful pruning, you’d take your bite of me, nip the bud, and my leaves wilt beneath you.

could it ever be right to call whatever this was love? i had barely known you, yet my soul has seen you through a thousand lifetimes. i find our love in mythology. in stories of gods and mankind. when orpheus calls to eurydice, i vividly picture you and me.

but do you turn towards me when my steps grow quieter? would you have traversed through hell and high water just to be with me? would you have worshiped the body, the soul, the mystique? was it i you would fight a thousand men, hide in horses, defeat monsters, and defame your life for?

it never seemed to be.

but, you are my muse. like the painter, every masterpiece resembles you. no matter the image, the colors, or the medium, your face fleshes out beneath the oil, the acrylic, the idiom.

there’s no escaping you. there’s no freedom from this fever. no matter how many bottles i searched to find you, i’d reach the bottom alone.

the moment you left grows clear like the day. the bottle sings the lyrics we once shared back when we were at our happiest, that feeling now delays.

big thief, admiral halsey, lilac wine out of tune.

every pitched note, every foolish swoon, led me back into that bedroom, missing your candor, missing your spoon.

the bed feels so big without you. since you’ve left, i couldn’t be bothered to play any music that reminds me so soon. the nights have grown louder, and the monsters grow uncouth.

there is no knight in shining armor. no orpheus. no zeus.

two lovers, unfathomable, burned too bright far too soon. like icarus towards the sun, his melted wings, i fall just as deeply for you. i savour the taste of the love we shared. if it could even be called such a word. love is far too kind, too tender, to describe the lapse of what we shared.

sometimes i believe the universe realized her mistake. when the moon put gemini and sagittarius together, he knew it couldn’t be. so lady universe stepped in quickly, angrily, deciding to bring it to an end. how dare we pair two halves of a whole.

one’s erratic. one’s mad.

she takes me in her arms, to soothe my gentle soul.

i’d like to think she whispers to me when i grow weary, when my bones grow cold. she wrinkles your pillow, and pulls our blankets taut and old. warms the spot beside me so to stop my tremble. and when tears reach the brink of my eyes, they leap off the tips of my lashes. her voice whisks me into a deep slumber that promises me that i am safe in this void.

for here, you do not exist to me. your voice grows faint and old. and for just one night, lady universe is kind, and undoes me from your hold.

nothing beats the first time you look up and spot someone from across the room. there’s a small chance they may look back, and an even greater one that they won’t at all. but that’s the fun of it. that rush. that split second when you think, “they’re perfect,” and you can suddenly feel every brush of air that hits your skin.

what are the chances that in a sea of seven billion people, you happened to be in the same room at the same time as this lovely stranger? you consider yourself lucky. so lucky you may as well have placed a chip in the lottery, because success in gambling feels far more obtainable than pushing yourself off of your seat to walk over and make the first move. so you fantasize about it.

you let your thoughts roll a new film on the projector.

the perfect relationship: starring you and the mysterious blue-haired reading some pretentious feminist literature with wired earbuds. you and blue-hair live this magnificent life together, of course, all starting with the coffee shop meet-cute.

blue-hair shares the glance, looks back down at their book, looks back up again, and this time beckons you to come over with their muddy eyes. and who are you to deny the offer? your feet take you before your mind can stop them, trapping you in awkward small talk while your jittery bones rattle in your itchy thrifted capris.

the imagination is a powerful thing. i’m able to paint these beautiful scenarios with such careful strokes that i no longer desire performing any actual initiative. what my film doesn’t show is the potential rejection that follows after the small talk. see, there’s a possibility of blue-hair having a partner, or not finding me attractive, or even worse, not even acknowledging me at all. the feminist literature could be nothing but smoke and mirrors, a hook to snap up naive wanna-be manic pixie dream girls desperate for a partner who really “sees them.”

i am a fool to think that anything could happen at all. and god bless the fools.

there has to be a little foolishness to be in love.

i think some of the best love stories erupt from rash thinking and thoughtless movement. a brush of the shoulder, a quick quip about a mundane situation that breaks you out of the mold. it becomes coffee talk for your and your friends. suddenly everyone is all huddled over your phone, deciphering hidden meanings behind story posts and response times.

we create stories like, “oh they posted that for you, they look too good,” or “three hours to reply, who else are they talking to?”

the unknown. it keeps us alive. we thrive off of it. we suck the meat off of its bones and relish in the flavor, until like most things we savour, we get used to it. it’s familiarity is the death of spontaneity. the rush fades, and we can feel the solid core of the earth against our heels.

i am just a girl in this coffee shop, and blue-hair is one of seven billion people in the universe that i will never meet again. they push their chair in, slide their manifesto into their beaten tote bag, and disappear back into the sea with the rest of the faceless strangers.

and while it can be easy to see this interaction as bleak, or a missed opportunity, i find beauty in it. it’s a reminder that i am alive and full of love. that my emotions range so far and wide, it can extend its hand to the gentle palm of a stranger, even when the moment has passed.

i have encountered a thousand blue-hairs in my lifetime, and one day, just one, will eventually be the one from the film.

Oh, how I wished I had stared at those flickering bulbs for a moment longer. I was always mesmerized by the way it’d beat in sync with the rhythm of our bodies when we made love.

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I’d taken in the scent of incense that burned in the corner, beneath photographs of hiking trips with people who will never know me. People who have entered this room a thousand times, but never in the way that I have. For I stepped in with my socks and sandals and would leave barefoot, unbalanced, and unwound.

When the lights turned off, I’d think about the bodies that once lay in the sheets we’d share. For once, my jealousy wouldn’t become me. It didn’t matter how many had heard the same gentle praises you’d whisper into my ear. Or how many throats you explored before deciding mine fit your index and your thumb.

I’d forgive them all and share these wilted sheets with a thousand more if it meant that we shared a cupboard, a key, and a floor. I’d settle for the weekends, the night shift, the hallway closet if it meant that I would be spared a moment longer with you. I miss that tattered couch, the ripped leather that you’d try to mend with loose thread. Our bodies settled into a fold, a crease just for us. It was as if the universe had tailored such an object to guide our bones into one another, to circle warmth from our breaths to our hearts.

“I’d missed this,” he’d say, eyes soaking in every inch of my youth. Starting from the legs, to the hips, to the breast, to my neck. I’d spin your words around in my head, feel the rush flood to the woman between my legs. I needed you like the blood in my veins, or the air in my lungs.

My mouth tangled in a prayer, thanking every deity that ever graced thousands of generations before me in churches and altars. I’d thank the stars in the sky. The sun and the moon. The luckiest charm. The dandelions beneath my feet. Somewhere between all the 11:11s and journal manifestations, I found you. It made all of the hurt before feel like something I could forget about.

If all of the evil I had endured before we met would lead to his hands being full of soap, delicately sorting through my hair the next morning, I’d do it all over again. With him, I breathed a little easier. I lived a little loosely. Thrived on theories and unknowns. It was a lifestyle I had been unaccustomed to. A born and bred rule follower would loosen the pressure that hung over her shoulders her entire life, to follow the whim of the man whom she thought loved her.

So I soak in those walls. The incense. The fan. The clothes you’d lend me. I try to remember the faces on the walls, the journeys without me, if you have added or removed any since me.

I wonder if there would have been a day I’d earn my place, as if our journeys would one day been worth the tape.

Piece by piece, I try to remember it all because I know that I’ll never see it again.

If you’re anything like me, your love life has been a drought, and any ounce of attention (good or bad) is a break from the repetitive void you’ve fallen into.

Yet, there’s something familiar about this pattern of conversation that keeps you intrigued. There’s a natural flow that happens after the first break in the ice. Tyler [23, 5’9”, Barista] is suddenly a human being. Humor is being spun back and forth, memories are being shared, and before you know it, you’re “attached” to them.

Well fuck, now what?

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There’s this weird attachment pattern I’ve adopted towards whomever I’m speaking to. If there’s romantic intention, I’ll fall and fall hard. Despite not liking the person or knowing the person at all, I’ve begun to weave a new web of realities. Between two thumbs, I’ve created our first date, maybe the next one too. I’ll dream of our first apartment, how our friends will get along, and even the hypothetical future conversations we’ll have after work. All within a week or so of “knowing” this person, I’ve invented a new reality. It’s insanity. And I don’t even like this person.

So why does this begin? Why can’t I just be content with being alone or have a “normal” and “regulated” want for a relationship?

Since high school, I have always been attached to a label. A best friend. A girlfriend. A “something”. I lately have been a nothing. And at the age of twenty-two, I’ve realized that this is the longest I have been without a label. I don’t have the attachments of a close friend to entangle myself in or a significant other to fill the gap. I’ve forgotten what it means to be alone or to enjoy my own company. Writing has been the release I’ve needed for a while, which is why I’ve picked up this blog format. But there are still the hours in the day that I stare at the endless photo albums, dead group chats, and Snapchat memories that remind me that there was a time when I wasn’t like this.

Science has told us it’s human nature to want to be around people. It’s an evolutionary survival instinct. Belonging to something, or in the older days, a tribe, meant protection and survival. It meant companionship, but not in the romantic sense. Our bodies are at ease when we know we’re being provided for. We weren’t relying on our own strengths to gather food or provide shelter. There would be someone else to fill in the gaps, to help you hunt, to sustain the tribe.

Evolution hasn’t seemed to catch up to the situationship of it all. What is the bodily desire to have someone for the moment?

Sociologist Mark Granovetter dives into this concept of “weak ties.” It’s a compilation of low-stakes relationships (platonic, romantic) that behave solely as bridges to new insights, perspectives, and opportunities. The lower emotional burden means less to lose. We can have lighter conversations without the fear of an actual loss. It’s something to rely on outside of your usual social circle. It’s an opportunity to unlock something new about yourself.

There’s something mystical about the new. I’ve lain in my own bed one too many nights; how nice would it be to see a new color of sheets? I can calculate every thought in my head; I’m strong-willed in my beliefs, so there’s nothing to be thrown there. Imagine a conversation with tension, new jokes to discuss, with someone who had never known a life with me?

The Gemini in me treats attention as something that I’ll bum for like cigarettes. I’ll scour every bar, every app, every discussion board in hopes that someone will eventually latch.

I hate the habit of scrolling. I wish I could confide in friends, busy myself with hobbies, and devour media and literature. I think with each piece I write, I bite back the urge to go on another shit date or waste words with a stranger. I tire myself with my hyperactive imagination. Not every human being has my future in their trajectory, nor do I want the first match to be the love of my life.

I just wish my mind could soften the anxiety in my heart.

i came to this epiphany as i was driving home today. instead of sticking to my usual routine of coming home from work to dig my head beneath fig-colored bed sheets, i decided to take on a new trail with a friend. it was a muggy day, clearly about to rain, with humidity at an all-time high. yet, neither of us dared to turn our backs to the comfort of our cars, or fish around for excuses to grab our keys. instead, we kept our eyes on each other and strutted along the trail like we weren’t wearing the wrong shoes.

the rain trapped us beneath a canopy.

i learned things about her that i wouldn’t have known if we weren’t forcibly coaxed by mother nature herself.

i believe the universe has a way of bringing people together when they need it. she knows how to soften the awkward edges hidden between sentences and unravel the unity we shared all along.

it’s self-evident, but being a human is a shared experience. i mean, it’s amazing how much you can discover you have in common with someone if you choose the right questions.

the dilemma is that society has lost the ability to ask questions. maybe it’s just where i live, but there is this strange lack of interest in getting to know others intimately, unless they’re being intimate, as if the ability to remember a person’s family history is solely reserved for the last dick inside of you. and honestly, even then i’m lucky if they so much as care to remember.

somewhere in between learning about the first time we came out to our friends, the awkward emo phases we suffered through, and the horrible men that ruined our early years, lies a deeper friendship we didn’t realize we were capable of having. hours of conversation, staring at the beautiful world that surrounded us, made me realize one thing: i never needed a boyfriend, i just wanted to have a friend.

i wanted someone to ask me about my day, and actually care to hear the answer. if the answer doesn’t involve them, people tune it out. a common example of a conversation i’ll have with someone i consider a friend will go like this:

“i just discovered the cutest thrift store yesterday. i got the cutest skirt the other day and I had been searching for something like that for a long time.”

“oh my god, i went shopping too! i got this super cute shirt, want to see?”

while this in format appears normal, inoffensive, there’s a layer I hold on to here. while relating is a key element to human connection, the relation only lasts to serve the purpose of sharing THEIR thing. her phone will come out, and she’ll scroll through her recents until her thumb lands upon the said shirt. i’d see the shirt, comment about how it fits her well and suits her aesthetic, and then the conversation ends. no question of the new thrift store, or how i found it, or even what my skirt ended up looking like.

normally, this wouldn’t bother me. i get it. who cares. only now, i realize that i do. for a long time, my boyfriend was the person who i could confide details to. early in our relationship, he’d ask me about my day. he’d ask what i plan to do for the week, and why my coffee order changed by the week. curiosity became synonymous with relationships. i assumed mental intimacy was something reserved for the significant other, and the significant other alone.

today i’ve since debunked this reality. it doesn’t have to be this way.

a man would have never grazed along my path if i had just had a stable group of people in my life who truly cared. and most importantly, i have to learn how to give my energy to the people who do matter. cultivate it too.

so for the love of god, before you settle in with a man because you feel “heard” or “listened” to. i beg of you, have a good night out with your friends. make a moment of it. let the laughter ring out from within you, and sit with the feeling, and most importantly, keep doing it again.

at least, that’s what i’ll be doing from now on.

cheers! xx

TW: Eating disorders

This year, I have accomplished the impossible. I recovered from hypothalamic amenorrhea.

If the word is foreign to you, you aren’t alone. I didn’t know what it was until my blood test results came back, and my doctor said it so quickly, I almost didn’t pick it up. The word was fluid to him, as if he had introduced this diagnosis to me like an old friend. Someone I had become familiar with.

To spare you the Google search, I couldn’t produce a period because my body didn’t trust me. I had voluntarily put myself into fight or flight mode, due to disordered eating habits justified as a “healthy diet.”

Despite his tone, the word frightened me. What did this mean? I had never been anything. Suddenly, I had joined an entire community of women who had all fallen into the trap. Succumbed to a disease no one had warned us about, but now suffer from the consequences. And worst of all, it awakened an obsession in me.

Now I had a name for the beast that had stripped me of my womanhood for the past four years. That brought me down to nothing but brittle bones and an empty womb. I became a detective, in denial that I could have possibly caused my own body peril.

After hours of Reddit searches and TikTok deep dives, the answer wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.

Gain the weight back.

I had to undo everything that I had built for myself. The lifestyle of timing my meals, counting down calories, and working myself down to the bone. The habits that I had become so proud of were actively killing me.

To my own surprise, I had become a husk of a human being, clinging to rice cakes and diet sodas as sustenance.

For the first time in my life, I had a thigh gap. The envied thigh gap I remembered girls in the playground bragging about, while mine always rubbed together. My mother said I had to be slathered in vaseline to prevent the chaffing.

I worshiped the way clothes fell on me. I looked like I was being swallowed alive by fabric. Loose jeans, loose shirts. There wasn’t anything too small for me, ranging from small to extra small, and even smaller. I tested every fitting room, checked every mirror, admiring the gaping in the back of my jeans. I double-knotted my bikinis with pride and would lie out in the sun, despite my black and blue legs.

I loved this husk, I EARNED, this husk. But the husk did not love me.

There wasn’t a single night I spent without squeezing my eyes shut to ignore the creature in my stomach. Constant churning and irritation would bubble up until I’d snap at the timer in my head. Every meal had to earn my palate, or deserve a space on my tongue. If I didn’t like the taste of something, I’d hold it in the pocket of my cheek and wait until there was a good time to spit it out. I wonder what my mother must’ve thought when she opened up the kitchen trash to see piles of half-chewed slop clinging to the edges of the plastic.

I couldn’t believe the beast I’d become; no one had. Weight loss is never a bad thing. It’s praised. I was suddenly “getting myself together,” “looking better than I ever had,” “the beautiful girl I always could have been,” “healthiest they’d ever seen me.” But when the lights turned out, and the rooms fell still. I wasn’t that beautiful girl. No. I was ravenous. Dangerous. Decaying. Thrashing in my sheets to ignore the desperate ache of my body, begging to survive.

It clicked for me on my father’s birthday. When the cake came out, I fought the urge to take the smallest slice. I cleared it in two bites, felt immediately terrible, and tried to throw it up in the hallway bathroom.

Somewhere between the fingers at the end of my throat and licking the frosting off of my lips, I realized that I was being crazy. That the acrobats of silently leaving the room, jabbing my painted nails into the depths of my throat, and bruising my knees on the tile was more of a production than just eating the damn cake.

It was my father’s birthday, and I had found a way to make it about myself. As if anyone in that room cared that I took the largest slice, or wore a smaller pair of jeans today. As if any of that mattered at all.

I stole this quote from my loving mother, who believed I could do it. Who bought the first pair of jeans that I didn’t have to squeeze into while I was recovering. Who made nourishing meals that repaired my estrogen levels and put my body into temporary peace.

She said, “Do it because you love yourself.”

Obviously, this felt narcissistic. Why should I ever love myself? Who actually loved themselves? I got here because I hated how I looked. How I looked affected how I felt about myself. And how I felt about myself wormed and infected every relationship I longed to nourish. But the point she made changed the entire way I viewed my recovery.

Gaining the weight back was hard. But I did it because I loved myself. Because I love waking up every morning and having a million things go right.

Every morning, my eyes open and I am introduced to a new day that is uniquely my own. My body lets me walk, stretch my hands into the sky, and touch all the beautiful things that belong to the Earth. I can go to my favorite coffee shop and order with whole milk, because I have never had a dairy sensitivity. And I can throw in a banana bread slice because it’s my favorite thing they serve. I can call my mother with the voice that I am lucky to have, and hear her voice when she tells me she loves me.

I can do all these incredible things because I chose to love myself.

The first time I experienced heartache, I promised myself to get over it as soon as I could. To scoop up the fractured pieces of my colicky heart and start anew.

I’d hop into cars, step foot into every bar, and discover new interests. I’d tell myself that I was better off without the dependency.

But nothing could have prepared me for those quiet hours, when the lights turned off, and my thoughts were louder than the ceiling fan.

Each blade held a memory, a word, a phrase, a reminder of where it all went wrong.

I spiraled.

So the second time it happened, I allowed myself to sit with it. Let my weary bones rest in the soothing heat, finding comfort in the memories. I’d lie my head back onto my pillow, shut my eyes, and indulge my sorrow.

It was an addiction. Thumbing back to the playlist we built together, opening up the notes app, and throwing my heart onto each line. I’d rehearse the ending. Pick and prod at the final words, dissecting the hidden meanings. Anything to find the missing lines, anything to feel like he was in the room with me again.

No hours of the day were safe from my mind. My body grew older and heavier, while my mind replayed the way our lips would spread open to accommodate each other’s tongues. Or the way our hands intertwined beneath the covers before finishing the other off. How our feet wrapped along the perfect curve of our legs, binding our bodies like two halves of a heart.

Memories turned into playlists. Playlists turned into late-night journal entries. Each page was full of self-loathing and rediscovery. I’d circle back to the same dilemmas, find a new excuse to stay deep in it until my wrist snapped.

It was like picking at a scabbing wound. I never recovered. But it felt so good.

I know it’s not healthy to admit that I’ve grown comfortable in my self-pity, but there’s no other truth. I loved to think of him. Even more, I loved the ache like the morning’s first breath. I didn’t even feel the pit in my stomach or notice how hard it was to stand on my feet again. Or that my heart didn’t have to feel a hundred pounds. I forgot that being alive didn’t have to feel so painful.

So this morning was the first time I reached my hands to the sky to stretch. To let every vertebra breathe, every muscle relax from the physical tension I placed on myself. Because that feeling wasn’t in my head. It was tangible. Proof that I was alive in my body, not succumbed to the zombie-like haze I had fallen into.

The cocoon of self-misery, despite its comforting hold, was suffocating me, and I hadn’t realized it. Memories are nothing but a disease. My tender heart built holes in my chest, devouring every ounce of strength I had left in me. It’s time to change that movement.

I beg myself and anyone else with an aching heart to stop reaching for the past. Stop chasing the phantom touches and cryptic messaging. If it’s not meant for me, set me free of it.

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Why do we obsess over the people we’ve never even dated?

After falling out of love in a five-year-long relationship, I’ve learned a lot of do’s and don’ts in a relationship.

Like, don’t call out other pretty girls in front of your partner. Or mention how small your partner’s boobs are when it’s clearly an insecurity. Or complain about the fact that your partner complains too much, when you’ve done nothing to help resolve the problem.

I wasn’t always this nitpicky, but at some point after being stepped on for so many years, wearing tight-lipped smiles and cog-like nods, eventually, from beneath the ashes rises a phoenix.

The phoenix in question: a woman who is convinced that loneliness is more comfortable than having to send a goodnight text to a man who’s comfortable in his own skid marks.

The rage lasted a while, but in the end, I couldn’t be bothered to miss it. I gave it nearly nine months before I picked up a dating app and three more months until I went on a date with someone from said app. It wasn’t my proudest moment, especially since I had lived so comfortably on my own. I’d finally detached myself from the private photo album, removed all of his favorite songs from the queue, and wrote my last journal page about how awful I felt because of him. Little did I know, I’d repeat the cycle.

I fell head over heels for a well-dressed Jewish boy wearing fig-scented perfume.

Fuck me.

I tried to resist it. I reminded myself after the first date that this was going to be the reinvention of a lifetime. A homely girl with undying devotion would become the free-spirited manic pixie dream girl she’d always wanted to be. Unattached. Unbothered. That was my new spin.

Old habits die hard.

I fell for him on the second date.

Somewhere in between the Seinfeld quotes, crushed up cigarettes, and tallboys we bought at the gas station really got to me. My asian flush did NOT disguise any of the redness that flourished around the bulbs of my cheeks and lips when he asked to kiss me.

A gentleman, I hadn’t had that before.

And when once or twice-a-week dates turned into every other night sleepovers, I found myself back to being domesticated.

From Trader Joe’s flower arrangements to hand-crafted dinners, led to my toothbrush sitting on the edge of the bathroom sink.

In a matter of months, this man had healed every wound that I had ever had on my body. Five years of passive conversations, empty compliments, and forgetting dates had finally meant nothing to me. I could forgive it. I could. So long as the rest of my life meant drunk Letterboxd reviews, candlelight sex, and Earl Grey afternoons.

It ended on a Wednesday afternoon, with my hands wrapped around his. My eyes were too swollen to remember if he had any remorse on his face. I’d like to think he did, especially since I fucking cried for two hours.

The reasoning was short, simple, and worst of all: I knew it would happen.

It was quiet. Discreet.

Not anything remotely tangible to the naked eye. Movements felt smaller, stiffer, not the bold and brazen kisser that I had become familiar with when I’d wake up next to him the next morning. His hands felt coarse, not slathered with the organic balm he’d give me a sample of because of how much I praised it.

Somehow, this was worse than anything I had ever encountered. It wasn’t a break-up, no, it was a secret third option I hadn’t become familiar with.

The end of a situationship.

My mind comes alive at night, unwinding film to find the hidden meaning. I try to reason if I could have avoided it somehow. Or if there was something I could have said to make him believe I was the manic pixie dream girl. I was supposed to be Summer. I could be detached. That I didn’t need to be with him.

Only, I couldn’t even convince myself of that. Not having the title was so much worse because I couldn’t blame him for anything he didn’t do. He wasn’t my boyfriend. Never was. Never will be. And that’s the catch of it all. That’s what keeps me obsessing months after the blow.

When I was in a relationship, I was mad at my boyfriend. My man. The person I had partial responsibility for. A person I shared my life with was impeding on my ability to grow. But who was this man if nothing but a passerby? A blink and then he was gone. Yet the impact leaves me wavering.

I can’t explain why the body does this. Why I forgive someone who wronged me for longer, but can’t let go of the one who detached so kindly.

I just hope that one day, eventually, I’ll be free of him.

I’m afraid I won’t find someone who will make me afraid of death.

I forgot to lock the door last night. Not intentionally, of course.

I have already imagined all the different ways it could have ended poorly. Luckily, I had locked my room, as if I knew that I would make one stupid decision along the way.

I get anxious because I remember what it feels like to love someone. To like someone so much, to be afraid to get behind the wheel of a car because of the possibility you might not make it home.

To stop taking risks, knowing that somebody else’s life rotates in rhythm to mine. Maybe that’s why things had to come to an end. There was this mutual fear, a sudden doubt that maybe we wouldn’t go to the ends of the Earth if it meant we wouldn’t have one another at the end of the night.

I’ve learned that there is only a short period of life where you get to soar. Soar far, far and wide before you settle into comfort. Before you decide to share a room, a bed, or a nightstand.

The desire withers when a couple comes into the diner. When they share a meal and sip from each other’s drinks, I study the way their eyes don’t flicker from each other’s view, like they’re the only ones in this crowded restaurant. Like the music isn’t annoying them, because their voices are each other’s symphony.

I think I miss not having someone when I hear a lyric that really resonates with me on my car ride back to my parents’ house. Or when I come home from work and need someone to take my head into their hands to soothe the nightmare customers and stupid mistakes of the day.

I miss it most when I have something to say in social circles. When I want to be heard, instead of diluting myself to static in the background. I never understood “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” until I became one.

I found it easy to disappear in friend groups, even my own.

I don’t think the people in my life truly know who I am. Not in the way that people at work would. For some reason, work is a place I’ve discovered control. The translation to my interpersonal connections is something to be desired.

When I try to impress people, I lose all sense of capability to socialize, imagine conversations, and share elements of myself. I shrink into my sixth-grade skin. Awkward, feeble, meek, apologetic.

I cried when he asked me how my day was, and cried even harder when I couldn’t find the words to explain it. I can’t remember a time someone asked it and truly meant it. When someone asked me a question, and waited for an answer to follow, without interjecting with their own experiences.

And so every time I enter a car, walk home alone, or fly to a new city, I don’t fear what will happen. The outcome doesn’t affect anyone.

Decisions.

They’re hard.

I don’t do them. In fact, I would go through great lengths to avoid having to come down to two points and choosing. Closing my eyes and pointing isn’t an option, because there’s directional bias.

Meaning, I always lean to my right because I’m right-handed. Right turns feel easier than left. And right…well, it feels like the right choice. Always.

I can’t leave it to fate because that means believing it exists. And while I’m all for the whimsical and letting the universe take control of situations, I have to have a deeply rooted understanding of the inner workings of it all. But somehow, that seems counterintuitive considering that fate isn’t meant to be something understood. It just happens, or it doesn’t. That doesn’t compute.

Another option would be to challenge all of my options. But somehow I talk my way out of the desire to dive deeper. There’s always some convoluted excuse that I conjure up in the back of my mind, like I could learn more about this later because it’s 9 p.m., which is close to my bedtime, of a nonexistent barrier between 10 and midnight.

I put myself into a spiral.

Only — I don’t think spiral is a strong enough word.

How else can you explain a stream of consciousness that twists and swirls in an endless loop, centering in the deepest core of my mind? It’s impossible to stop once it begins. It’s nonchalant too, beginning as a brief hitch of a concept. An almost decision, that spurs into alternate realities.

If choose to eat Italian today, then that means I can’t cook the ravioli I bought at Trader Joe’s for dinner tomorrow because that’s two pastas in a row, or I could order something else, but I don’t like anything outside of the Gnocchi at that restaurant, or I could eat the two pastas, but then my gluten sensitivity would spike and I wouldn’t feel good for the rest of the week, and if I don’t feel good for the rest of the week, then I wouldn’t be apt to go out with my friends on Friday, which means this is the second weekend in a row I’ve devised a plan to be avoidant. And so and so forth.

It’s a demonic cycle, really.

Incredibly complicated when there’s a simple solution. Yes, or no. Do, or don’t.

But we never arrive there, but rather, discover a secret third option.

Nothing.

I do nothing, which is arguably so much worse.

Where does this indecisiveness originate? Why can’t I conjure up something on my own accord without running through the cycles in my head?

I’ve tried to psychoanalyze myself, pinning it on a bad childhood or years of mind-melting media consumption at a young age that’s turned my brain to shit. However, it doesn’t just work like that. At some point, I grew a spine and developed a point of view. I don’t align with my parents’ perspective, and the media I watched growing up awakened adverse opinions.

So this leads back to square one.

Is it possible to ever conquer this challenge? It’s certainly something that takes time. And most importantly, it requires confidence.

A quality I do struggle with is pride. I don’t trust my instincts, writing, or creativity. Instead of forcing myself out of my comfort zone, I stay in this limbo. I dance along the edges, content in this uncertainty because it doesn’t lead to any harm.

What I neglect is the harm in staying stagnant. I never learn how to conquer my fears, and worst of all, I never become all that I’m meant to be.

I resonate with Sylvia Plath’s analogy of the fig tree.

She stares at this fig tree, representing a bountiful life before her. The fruit is ripe with opportunity. The caveat is that one fig means the loss of another. So, with this indecision, she starves herself.

Sans fig, sans life, sans future.

So I take this time now to take the first step in ending the battle of indecision. I sit behind this stupid laptop, hammering away at the keys, hoping for some sort of miracle.

There’s not enough time in the world to keep waiting for the right decision to fall into place, or for my gut to agree with my heart.

The time is now.

This is my decision to break the cycle.

you told me you didn’t like tomatoes

and I said I didn’t like them too

we hated how soft they’d bruise

the watery texture

blandness in its flavor

the acidity too

i never really ate them

nor did I feel such a distaste

but if you felt so strongly —

i’d feel as strongly just for you

it wasn’t until recently when i noticed

i cut up a tomato and watched it prune

peeled it thinly, seasoned it fine

took my first bite and to my surprise

i didn’t hate tomatoes

i hadn’t all along

i just hated knowing that something

so fragile,

so delicate,

wasn’t something you loved

We fear the unknown

What death has in store for us

So we plant our crosses in our hearts

On our refrigerators

Place our bibles on our nightstand

In people’s faces

In case the lord calls our time done

We have a chance for something

Beyond the world we know as our own

Into the unknown, where no one who has went can come back and tell us what it is like

We fear it. But if we’re good

We may get an eternity