But now I have a job again. And the J train doesn’t run into Manhattan. I struggle to climb out of bed most mornings. Not because I don’t want to get to work (I surprisingly and thankfully do). But because I’m met with my first decision of the day. And I change my mind too much for it ever to be simple. If the J train won’t run into Manhattan, I have to take the A or C train. The C is a fifteen-minute walk—exactly point-six miles away. The A is a 20-minute walk, roughly a mile away.

Some days when it’s raining, I try to time everything to the second: I run down the street, making the B47 bus by the grace of God (or a slow-changing light). Ride that some stops, and I’m at the C train. Only, now the C train is still 12 minutes away, so I might as well walk over to the A train up the road. It’s a 6-minute jog in my ruby ballet flats.

Other days, when the bus is more than 12 minutes away from the stop near my house, I walk. I over-flex my calves as I twist my hips, trying to decrease my arrival time. It’s a 15-minute walk, and the next train is 13 minutes away. If I let this sweat pool atop my forehead, clench my abdomen, and ignore every crosswalk lady I normally wave at, I can make it.

Halfway through my journey, I’ll peek at the transit app. The train is delayed and still 15 minutes away. But I’m now 6 minutes from the station. I check the app once more. The A train is 8 minutes away. So I pivot and sprint in a new direction.

I change my mind often. I’d like to believe it’s because of my Gemini sun, the need to learn and grow and evolve so much that I am ready for a shift at every given turn. (The quiet part might admit it’s also because of my anxiety.) I live by the idea that yes, you can try to change my mind. If you bring new facts, new numbers, new minutes, and you’re onto something I didn’t account for, I’ll change. And I’ll change again.

I know people find it annoying sometimes. The party I initially sent, the boy I swore I liked, the thing we debated over, all became points of apathy by Friday.

I’ll still go with you to Grown & Sexy in the Warehouse, but who I was then is not who I am today. I don’t want to perform. And the vibes I planned to bring don’t exist today, so I’ll be an adversary to your fun. I changed my mind, I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me.

That Yale boy I liked so much yesterday, who called me beautiful woman, said something juvenile, borderline malevolent while we were hanging out. He gave me new information, so I left his house mid-sentence because I changed my mind. No, I won’t see him again. Yes, that was his first offense.

That point, which I was fiercely arguing for, no longer holds. I heard your side, and I agree. “You’re right, actually. I see where you’re coming from,” I say coolly. It’s usually met with a perturbed look before a valiant smile, especially from the people in my orbit who cannot fathom doing the same. Because to them, they’ve won, even though I don’t hold my ideas and theories to such standards.

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I don’t wait to change my mind. I don’t let my ego and the idea of being right about someone or something hold me hostage in rooms and notions that no longer feel true. Change is unnerving when you’ve convinced yourself that it’s a reflection of your self-efficacy.

Because if I feel strongly, I can always change it back. I don’t owe the world one singular path. I can plan to take the C, change my mind halfway, and run to the A train up the road. I can get to the station, watch the C train pull up, and hop on that, even though I diverted from my original path specifically for the A. I changed my mind and changed it again. I live knowing that the right path is the serpentine, twisted, and looped road I continue on—the road where I honored every feeling without hesitation.

Watercooler:

• I wrote this on the train! My hour-long commute to work gives me space to write. And luckily, read. I just finished Big Girl Blitz, The Summer Girlfriend, and Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It, all thanks to my two hours daily commute on this godforsaken train. I just started The Missed Connection two days ago, and I already love it. (Tia Williams, you have my heart!)

• I’m in the last few days of my final round of book edits before it goes into copy and prep, etc. and it’s crazy that this world I built, these characters I wrote will be out in the world in a little over 200 days. I can’t wait for people to meet Ryleigh and Isaiah. They mean so much to me.

• I also started a science fiction & fantasy writing workshop last week. Our first assignment really got me excited to hop back into my first love: dystopian, speculative fiction, and magical realism.

Here’s what I wrote with the twenty minutes our teacher gave us. The prompt was: A device allows people to swap bodies, leading to a thriving black market and identity theft.

Olivia Irwin planned to burn the twelfth grade statistics classroom down this morning but she overslept. Now, she’s strumming through her final exam, bubbling in the letter C fifteen times in a row, adding overzealous hearts to all the I’s in her name at the top left corner, and contorting her neck to steal a glance at James’ test in front of her. She needed to pass this exam to graduate. Her mother, of the helicopter and academically presumptuous kind, had already scheduled a celebration three days from now. Everyone in the great town of Sugar Mountain, North Carolina had already been invited—all 539 of them. Including Miss Barnaby who was the reason why she’d be the laughing stock of her own graduation party. No one needed statistics. And whoever thought of gelling riddles with math equations was at the top of Olivia’s burn list. Maybe not literally, though. As she’d only been prepared to take on arsonist charges, not first-degree murder.

Olivia scratched through the remainder of her test, accepting defeat. She’d need to regroup and plan her next best option. Breaking into the school after hours to adjust her test could be the way. She knew Miss Barnaby kept the answer keys in the rusted shelf near the window. Olivia sat through the rest of her classes, hid out on the worn-down bleachers the school said they’d remove almost two years ago, eating her lunch, just waiting for the day to end. She didn’t have many friends at this school. Her mother, bless her heart, moved them every year, for a new job and a new man. She didn’t find the time to build true kinship with kids her age, hopping from one racist, small town to the next across the Southern United States. That was why she needed to steal the answer key tonight. She needed to graduate so she could make her way anywhere—maybe California where the Malibu beaches had claylike sand or Colorado to work at one of those ski resorts. She didn’t have a plan for college yet, but she knew a high school diploma could at least get her far enough away.

Miss Barnaby won’t take this from her.

She crept into the classroom at three-fifteen on the dot, hooked a metal key she’d found on the floor of the girl’s bathroom and jimmied it into the metal shelf. She shoved her thin frame into the shelf while hooking her second hand on the cracked opening, getting a peak at something inside. She prayed it was the answer key. She needed it to be.

Olivia threw her body into the shelf once more, really trying to pop it open. Her hip dipped into the metal block, and she slipped on her grip-less converse sneakers. The locked top shelf finally popped open just as her shoulder hit the cold granite floor. She bit down on her tongue, trying to minimize the screams begging to be released from her full lips.

The shelf was open. Olivia wanted to cheer, but she knew silence was key. Not a single paper flew out. Just a black square, almost like a remote, dropped out and landed in her lap. A small sticky note on the back side said, “Don’t use me.”

<3

Here’s to all the fun and all the fluid, my friends! xx

Season 8 of Love Island USA is causing a real-time schism in the Black community.

After spending days reading Black men and women’s IG stories standing behind KC in a far more vicious nature than they stood behind Taylor last year, the question I’ve been wondering is: why? And I think gender norms, unconscious bias, and the manosphere are why.

There were several Taylor defenders last year, but largely the majority of Black women (and most men) could acknowledge that Taylor didn’t like Olandria, he used her to stay in the villa, dumped her once it was convenient, and was wayyyyyy too casual about it.

KC inarguably is worse than Taylor. The way he secretly spoke about Aniya, whittling down his disinterest in her to their lack of sexual interactions, is what made him significantly more harmful.

Last year, it was actually the reverse. Taylor didn’t want to kiss Olandria as much, which made viewers feel it was a clear sign he wasn’t interested.

The second-largest difference I see between KC and Taylor is physical features.

KC is objectively more conventionally attractive than Taylor. His build and stature aren’t as awkward and childlike. He looks more like what the Black viewers want to see. Last year, Taylor was made fun of for his gangly build and awkward bodily mechanics. Whereas early on, KC was getting “Hot Boy” edits made of him. His muscular arms and sheepish grin were plastered all over my feed. (And I was not complaining!) It’s the reason why he got the hero arc in the first few episodes. No one picked him on day one. Why couldn’t the Villa girls see what we, the audience, saw at home?

When you lay these situations out flat, besides the 1:1 physical attractiveness between Taylor and KC, the main difference between them is their original pairing (Taylor & Olandria and KC & Aniya) and the gender role swaps, which open up the wealth-and-class discussion we’re being bombarded with online.

We don’t know the full financial situation, but Olandria made it very clear that she grew up with a single mother, as the oldest of six siblings. That, in itself, tells viewers she had to mature quickly, take on a leadership role, and provide for her family.

Taylor, on the other hand, comes from a well-known Black cowboy-rodeo family in Oklahoma, which lends itself to money. The horses and acres our ancestors were promised but never received, Taylor had it.

But now in season 8, the roles are reversed. Aniya is the one who comes from wealth—her father played five seasons in the NBA and went on to start a foundation alongside his wife. She comes from a two-parent household with security and a confirmed family job, just as Taylor does.

KC is the one who comes from a more hardened background. He notes his single mother and the “South Central” life he’s lived.

I’m not saying this is why Black people are specifically rooting for KC harder than they did Taylor. It largely is misogynoir and a growing viewership that didn’t exist last year. But it is interesting to see how the power dynamics, when flipped on their head, lend themselves to a greater amount of vitriol towards Aniya from a select group of Black people. In contrast, there was a sliver of more care for Olandria coming from Black women. [Not all, because we were there watching as many of y’all called Olandria dumb and praised Clarke for 50 days and 50 nights.]

Aniya has not cried more than Melanie, Sol, or even Kaylor. But she also isn’t as tough-shelled as Olandria and Serena. She doesn’t feel as assertive as TiTi or as nonchalant as Amora and Clarke.

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She is her own type of Black girl, but the viewers at home, specifically a large set of Black women and men, do not like her. They find her annoying, and when asked why, their only answer is, “She cries a lot.”

It’s all a matter of personal preference on how they’d react to the situation, rather than seeing her emotional expression as true and earned.

I think the caretaker, strong Black woman role is often expected of us, especially dark-skinned Black women. And while she eventually chose herself, in many ways, Olandria still upheld those characteristics because it was all she knew how to do. As the girls sobbed, packing her bags, she stood tall and told them to stop crying, that she wouldn’t cry, couldn’t because that’s her onerous duty. She waited until she was alone to let herself crumble fully.

This is what Black viewers expect, what feels comfortable and easy to connect with.

Which is why Aniya isn’t easy to connect with.

My community as a whole (especially the God-fearing heterosexual group) holds on to gender roles. I, too, still hold onto them in many ways. I grew up in a household where my mom didn’t let me touch the trash can because my dad and two brothers were there. I heard in church every Sunday, it was God first, Husband, Wife, then kids.

It’s led to the “Soft Black Girl Lifestyle™️” TikTok sound bites, Danaia Jackson’s cheating husband and her Bonnet-Helmet of Salvation, and the my man, my man, my man-ification of what it means to be a straight Black woman right now. “Take care of me. Provide for me. Lead me.” All words spewed by different pretty Black girls using their most soothing and monotonous voices as I scroll down my For You Page.

This subservient role has been a pillar in our community. A dream life for some, given that Black women are one of the main groups currently dealing with dating horror stories—largely because we’re also one of the largest, most educated demographics, which makes it difficult to “date up” as we’re told to do.

KC comes from a different background than Aniya. There is nothing he can easily “provide” her with, without having to step up to a plate he is not prepared to eat from. It’s why, at every given chance, he spoke down on her with his boys. It’s a means to make himself feel better about his positioning in her “world.” Looking at Aniya and him is like looking at a future that doesn’t sit right in the conservative, red-pilled, trad wife society many of you are unknowingly shifting toward.

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KC’s social media showed his reposts of Kevin Samuels videos, a signifier of manosphere ideologies. From the Fresh & Fit podcast to Andrew Tate, we’re seeing more young Black men tapping into the idea that “Alpha men” are leaders who deserve to be chased and desired by women who want to serve them.

The dichotomy of Aniya being the emotional, soft Black girl while still the dominant, providing figure in the relationship is something many people cannot confront without oversimplifying it to: Aniya is annoying.

This is why TiTi is comforting to KC; this is why he made the remarks about her reminding him of his mother and sister.

He can be the provider and stand above her far more easily. Over the last few episodes, all we’ve seen TiTi do is stand behind and defend a man who has treated other women poorly. KC constantly tells the world he’s a good guy, but his actions don’t back it up. Which is maybe why it feels more natural for some Black viewers (who are also succumbing to the manosphere) to root for the Black man just “doing his best” and the subservient woman he chose. Especially over the whiny, well-off Black woman who “comes from a good family.” The woman who won’t reward his emotional passivity with “DJ sessions” and “French frying.”

Our own community has upheld these archaic systems that perpetuate stereotypes of Black existence. It’s why so many people were quick to see Aniya’s “Bad Girls Club” comment as a dig on Black women, as if Erica Marie, Lea Beaulieu, and Jada Cachilli—all white women—weren’t the ghetto-est of them all on that show. It’s why so many of my mutuals still follow and engage with The Shaderoom, as if it’s a legitimate news site and not a feeding ground for red-pill ideology. It’s why the Ralph Lauren Howard x Martha’s Vineyard collection discourse lasted so long.

Most people exist in all-or-nothings. Like toddlers with object permanence. The projection of one identity means the entire erasure of another, when that can never be the case in something as highly selective and manufactured as Love Island.

As a larger community, we are constantly touting that Black people aren’t monolithic, that we shouldn’t be judged by the actions of one person. But then, when tested with those larger ideals, we crumble. Saying KC is harmful to Aniya doesn’t mean every Black man is harmful. It also doesn’t mean every Black woman is either whiny like Aniya or “aggressive” like TiTi.

Aniya, TiTi, and KC don’t represent every Black person in America—the same way Olandria, Clarke, and Taylor don’t. Nor do Serena, Daia, and Kordell. Most Aniya fans can acknowledge when she’s doing a lot (myself included). Still, almost every KC defender I’ve come across refuses to address his bad behavior, as if it’ll be a stain on all Black men if they do so.

The worst part is that most KC defenders don’t even realize they’ve been indoctrinated. How they’re sitting with red-pill ideologies and can’t see it because they’re distracted by this belief that they’re protecting the “Black man.” It starts with laughing at Dr. Umar, realizing a broken clock is right twice a day, sliding into Kevin Samuels videos and quietly agreeing, until one day you look up and cannot recognize the misogynistic harm you’re allowing in everyday spaces.

These kids hold pieces of our existence, magnified by the drama-chasing Love Island producers whose only goal is discourse and commercial success, not community unification.

I think the idea that Aniya would be the “providing Black man” in her relationship with KC makes a lot of red-pilled Black viewers uncomfortable.

I think the fact that Aniya cries freely, making some Black viewers feel as though her tears are weaponized against KC, is because they’ve spent their entire lives being told no one will care about their emotions—that they’re secondary to white tears. Her existence is confusing because it gels all the gender norms people are trying to neatly place in different boxes into one being. And that is mentally complex for a lot of y’all in this current political climate that is heavily right-wing. If something as mindless as Love Island power dynamics cannot be status quo, what will you hold onto to make you feel normal?

This year’s season, piled on top of seasons seven and six, is opening deeper discussions, showing the cracks we all still willfully skip over in our neck of the woods.

Love Island might just be a silly dating reality television show, but it’s caused me to argue with more Black men and women than white schoolmates when Trump ran for president the first and second time.

It’s telling of a larger conversation that I don’t necessarily know we’re ready to have. But one that clearly needs to happen.

At 17, I couldn’t wait until our ten-year reunion.

At 19, I wondered if I’d still be alive to see it.

At 22, freshly moved to New York City, I prayed I would never have to see you again. That 27 would be a lifetime away, and I wouldn’t be forced to sit in the same room as you to commune over old times and relive a friendship that took more than it gave.

At 25, I stopped crying whenever someone asked me about you. They’d say: Are you two still friends, quietly wondering what happened.

At 27, I start planning this reunion, that burning pain that sat at the base of my stomach five years ago rekindling itself. Am I impressive? Am I interesting? Am I stronger after you dragged me through muddy sand?

I fly to Miami and count down the days. I turn 28. I drive with the windows down, letting all the ghosts of my past kiss my skin.

There’s nothing I have to say, but we talk anyway.

There is a twinge in your eyes when you ask me what my book is about.

Is it a memoir? Your eyes linger on mine as if what you’re really wondering is: Will I be in it? And, what will you tell them?

Will it sting? Will they know? Do you still hate me?

I smile, saying it’s fiction. There’s a relief soaring through both of us. No one gets to know the whole truth just yet. No one gets to parse through the subliminal and pick a side.

This underground bunker that ripped through my existence is still intact. Still hidden from the sunlight—probably, surely festering inside.

A thunderstorm passes through the party, washing away the remnants of blood from the scabbed wounds I forced myself to pick at all night.

I am happy. You’re probably happy. And yet that happiness won’t be tethered ever again. I cannot let it be, but it still hurts.

And I still blame myself for feeling hurt. I blame myself for never hating you with the resolve necessary to destroy a section of your life’s library.

Every book is going up in flames. Every story turned to dust.

I pulled out of the driveway as fast as I could. Rain droplets are covering the rearview camera. I should really learn how to reverse the old-fashioned way, I think, painfully struggling to pull away from this driveway after you hugged me, kissed me on the cheek, and said: See you soon, as if that were something we both wanted.

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I turn down these residential streets, leaving the party and my friends—who knew me back when—for a bar down the road.

I met up with a guy at the Flanigan’s bar in Pinecrest; he took me on a date the day before. He reminds me of home in all the simplest yet idyllic ways. I unwind, talk about you, how your flippant response to everything you’d done made tonight more difficult.

Do you forgive someone who used your body like a science project? Do you move past the harm and gaslighting because we’re almost 30 now?

I don’t know, but I let this new guy buy me a drink. I ask for a ginger ale, and the server says it’s just Sprite and Coke mixed together. I ordered it anyway. He sets his hand on my knee, asks when he’s going to see me again, and I tell him I’m on a flight back to New York City tomorrow at 6AM.

He asks if I’ll ever move back home, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t have a true answer.

For the first time in a while, I want to run back to New York and keep living. Away from the same streets he and I once drove down. The same streets I cried on. The same streets I thought about taking my life on.

I don’t sleep when I get to my parents’ home. I texted my date to say I had fun. See you in September, maybe.

I get on my flight, turn on the third Avatar movie, and try to calm the anxiety still spurring through me. My legs tremble, and I practice the breathing techniques I found online.

Sometimes it feels like my anxiety is for show. As if my brain is just begging for someone around me to notice. I wish I could turn it off.

The wheels touch the tarmac, and I am somewhere else. I am new, or becoming someone new. I made it to this point. The one I’d been counting down to—the after.

We joked at 17 that if we weren’t married by 27, we’d marry each other. So naive and twisted looking back. So hopeful despite the abrasions that already traced my then supple skin.

What a life it’s been since you left my orbit.

What a life it will be, I pray as I walk through the sliding doors at LaGuardia.

I make it home and cry for a while. For the angel we lost in 2018, who didn’t get to open her time capsule letter. For you and me, our friendship, boundary-less and pernicious, doesn’t exist anymore—even though your being touches every memorabilia in my time capsule box.

I call my new friends. Tell them I’m glad to be alive, to know them and love them. I call my old friends. They are home personified, and I relish finally getting to move on.

Finally getting to live without this night hovering over me.

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<3

I turn 28 tomorrow, and I thought I’d be sitting on my wraparound porch by now, somewhere in the outskirts of Charlotte, North Carolina, rocking in a sandy wooden chair—similar to the ones I loved at the entrance of the Cracker Barrel. I’d have a glittering, elongated oval cut ring on my left hand, a finished novel on a shelf at the Barnes & Noble fifteen minutes away, with a partial manuscript propped open on my laptop. A quick live hit with GMA where I talk about my stint as an editor at the flashy fashion magazine set for tomorrow morning. A husband, doting, kind, and passionate, somewhere in the backyard, tending to the two American Quarter horses I asked for. Our Lowcountry spring Charleston wedding just in the rear view. My custom Alonuko Bridal gown sitting on the Pinterest boards of other young Black girls with hearts in their eyes. The idea of a kid (and three more on the way) sitting top of mind.

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Instead, I’m (almost) 28 and living in a cozy, very gentrified apartment, in a city I have a brawling love for. I’m single, begrudgingly dating, dealing with men who don’t want commitment, and couldn’t spell consistent if I spoon-fed them each letter. I have friends who make me feel whole, a new job that’s healing the pain of my last one. A finished romance book coming into the world next year and a life so confusing and beautiful it sometimes doesn’t feel real.

I still want that first life, but I know it won’t be here by the time my friends sing me Happy Birthday tomorrow. However, it will be in due time. It just might not look the way I constructed it in my restless mind. The same way 17-year-old Aiyana believed all she needed was to leave Miami, move to New York, and chase that magazine career guns a-blazing—to only learn that wherever she goes, there she is. And the harm of her past won’t magically disappear in a city she assumed would rebuild her.

A few months ago, I didn’t know where life was taking me. After being laid off and feeling burnt and torn by this industry, I wondered if I’d leaned too hard in one direction that I’d never have all the dreams I prayed for. That I’d spend the rest of my days letting the forest whispers turn me in a new direction, never fully finding my way out of this impenetrable thicket. That the mountain’s peak I longed for would always escape me.

I tend to live in my head. My anxiety props my fears front and center, reminding me that I’m too fat, too tall, too dark, too stupid, too dispensable to live sometimes. I’m doing everything to combat that belief. I’m going out more, saying what I mean the first time, and allowing myself to come up short, even if everything inside of me wants to hide those failures.

It’s as if every year I forget my past, create ideas of who I’m going to be, instead of letting who I am now form my foundation. But at 28, I want to own the unknown. Wear it like the pair of frayed summer daisy dukes I only throw on when I’m at my grandma’s house.

I don’t know where I’m going, who is coming with me, or if I’ll ever have the right answer to anything. But all I know is that for 28, the one thing I plan to strong-arm through the woods is myself. If I am feeling lost (which I often do these days), I want to trust my gut more and hope the phantom voices tickling my ears aren’t coaxing me down just any ole’ path—that I am letting life take me towards the sunshine.

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I ran my first HYROX two weeks ago. I crossed the finish line with my best friend and felt relieved to complete something I’d spent months training for. I cried as we sprinted up the ramp, falling to my knees. Tears slid across my round cheeks as I whispered repeatedly: “I’m so sorry.” I felt like I’d slowed her down. We didn’t get the time I initially wanted, and I blamed myself. My mind shut down. But my best friend wrapped her arms around me and said, “I am so proud of us. We did it.” In that moment I realized it wasn’t about how long it took us to get to the finish line. It only mattered that we made it there.

I accomplished a physically grueling race that many people wouldn’t even attempt. I bet on myself, and I want to continue betting on myself, proving that I am built for hard things. That I possess the perseverance of those who get everything they desire.

I want love, a career, and friends who see me. And I can have it all. So this year, at 28, I feel old as hell, confused as ever, and hopeful beyond a doubt.

Instead of daydreaming about what the next year will bring, building out a detailed storyline in my mind, I’m going to live. To love. To run until my chest burns, breathe in the air, and hold onto the liquid-y feeling coursing through my thighs, reminding me that I don’t need an answer to everything. I just need a reason to keep moving forward.

GOALS for 28:

• finish my next manuscript

• go on a besties trip (you know who you are, start prepping)

• save money

• live alone (maybe for like six months lol)

• have a summer fling (serious inquiries only)

• travel to London and Italy

Love you all. TW: assault.

I feel like a conservative prude talking about sex. I watch my chest tighten, and thoughts percolate when my carefree, beautiful friends muse about their latest escapades. I watch the glimmer of freedom run across their cheeks as they giggle and gush about a guy they’ve slept with. Maybe they’d sleep together again, maybe they wouldn’t, but there wasn’t something lost in their retelling.

I’d cheer along because their autonomy was enticing. But beneath the surface, the whiny loser in my mind is melting gummy wax against my insides. She’s disgusted, misaligned. I let her pitch a tent in my head and nag until she turns unruly, begging me to say something aloud, to disagree. To claim that one-off casual sex couldn’t be enjoyable, can’t be something you’re smiling about. Because to her, it isn’t.

I add to the conversation in a candy-coated voice: “I love that for you.” The silent part being that it couldn’t be me. And my friends are never the wiser, even though it feels like I’m placing a sharpened knife in their backs.

My head won’t let me feel any other way.

But when the conversation finally shifts to the next topic, I can breathe again, and I let my whiny loser rush back into her cave. When she’s gone, and my mind has space to settle, I remember why she exists. Why she’s there and why I can’t be fucking normal.

Why I can’t fuck like it’s normal.

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There’s a guy who takes up monumental real estate in my past life’s story. He shaped my teen years, established my baseline for future boundaries, and taught me more about myself than I’d like to admit.

My first therapist colored in the words for me entirely: “You’re trying to learn how to forgive yourself for not saying no. For not knowing what boundaries were when you desperately needed them.”

I let the little infractions slide by with a laugh. A dainty “stop,” filled with glittery dust and no certainty, so how could I feel definitive about what happened to me when I wasn’t forceful?

I am forceful. I am a force. One with edges and curves and brilliance beyond measure, but I’m involuntarily carrying this burden.

I am in therapy, I’ve talked this through with so many other women, and yet it feels like an ache I can’t heal. A dull tremor at the base of my abdomen, never letting go.

I want to have fun and be young. I am fun, I am young. This is the youngest I’ll ever be again, and yet I am so vastly seasoned. My body has seen many seasons, lain in the dirt-crusted snow, and survived it all.

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My coworker listens to me lament about my dating life, unaware of my history, and declares that I just need a good hoe phase. I laugh, give her a smile I’ve trained myself to hold, and agree. Yes, a hoe phase, indeed.

I couldn’t shake my unrelenting tiny loser for a week. She gnawed and tugged at my chest, conspiring against me. Building out hypotheticals about a bad night, a belligerent man who will use my body as a playground.

My chest is a plastic slide, my hips are a swing, my love handles are just like rusted monkey bars.

I don’t want sex to feel transactional; I don’t want it to exist as something that happens to me and not with me, and yet my mind can’t alter its twisted funhouse.

I want to be 27, magnetic, and fearless like my friends, but I am calculated, cautious, and endlessly searching for answers. It straps me down and holds me close to the ground. I want to be free.

One day I’ll be free. Someday. I can see it through the misty haze, calling out: One day, it won’t hurt me.

The great white boy grift has gone too far. And Jack Harlow’s recent “I got Blacker” remarks during his PopCast interview are a testament to that.

When we think of cultural appropriation and its defining stain on a celebrity’s existence, it’s often women who face the brunt of the fallout. The term Blackfishing was coined by Wanna Thompson in 2018 through a viral Twitter thread where she highlighted white influencers and celebrities “cosplaying” as Black women on Instagram. It’s a portmanteau of Black and catfishing, describing when non-Black public figures use makeup, tanning, cosmetic procedures, or digital editing to appear Black or racially ambiguous for social media engagement and profit.

But because Blackfishing identifiers aren’t as permanent when it comes to white men, the internet is more forgiving of a clumsy Kangol hat and ashy blonde taper fade. Men aren’t held accountable; it’s laughed off just as general male apathy toward responsibility often is.

These weaselly men slide through because the efforts to avenge the proprietors of this disillusioned act comes in waves. From their niche beginnings, to the public’s viral outrage (usually focused more on jokes than actual reprimanding), and then indifference as we skate into the next news cycle.

But the white boy grift is more predatory because it rests on the shoulders of Black women in a systemic way. White men get to experiment with Blackness, and Black women are expected to authenticate it.

The White Boy Grift Taxonomy

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The Cosplayers

Our primary offenders and case studies are Jack Harlow, Timothée Chalamet, and Justin Bieber (during 2013–2014, and again in 2025 via Druski and the perfectly-crafted SWAG album).

I subscribed early to Jack Harlow, when he was beardless and still in the shadows of obscurity. I liked his music and thought he had a real knack for artistry when done right. Over the years, he struggled to make a strong album, which led to my slow fade in interest (sorry, I’m a Gemini sun and Virgo rising. The talent has to stay for me to stay).

I haven’t listened to him in a while, but he has inundated my timeline over the last 72 hours for his latest album, Monica. Harlow has always teetered on the line of uncomfortability and closeness to Blackness because of his career field and his candid flirtation with Black women (lest we forget that viral clip of him with Saweetie). He likes to center Black women in his music videos, and this iteration is no different.

But what irks me most is that comfort has exposed how his underdeveloped understanding of Blackness is shaped by his belief that a faux-melodic croon somehow makes him “Blacker.” That his shift from quick-witted “white boy” rap to (as the internet dubbed it) Neocolonial Soul is his deepening of culture-adjacency.

Then there’s Justin Bieber, who has been welcomed into Black spaces because of his talent, but falls short of actual cultural fluency largely because he’s never been pressed to learn. (And has people like Druski lamenting that his soul is Black.)

Timothée Chalamet, like his Cosplay Brothers in Christ, likes to toss out a Blaccent when it feels relevant and lean into sartorial choices made popular by Black men to solidify his separation from the artsy film flower boy he once was. He’s historically dipped his toe in and out of “Blackness,” but especially dove in the last few months during his ruptured Marty Supreme press campaign. (And it’s not lost on me that Druski is at the scene of the crime for all three of these cosplayers.)

They lean into Blackness when convenient, toying with Black women before redirecting to their preferred white or racially ambiguous partners.

I remember losing my mind as a tween when One Less Lonely Girl came out and Justin was serenading a young Black girl. She was, in fact, light-skinned, which also tends to be Jack’s M.O., but it felt like a calculated nod to Black proximity without commitment. As if they’re auditioning for “down boy” status in Black spaces while keeping their real romantic loyalties elsewhere.

I don’t want or need any of these men to openly date Black women, but the cosplayers are textbook grifters—they monetize being in Black spaces, and next to Black women, without true understanding of the space they take up.

The Eaters

Our next grifters are different. Their interaction with Blackness and Black women, unlike the cosplayers, is often more “legitimate,” which is why they skate by unscathed for so long.

As a football girl, I’ve known of Travis Kelce for years. Travis is arguably one of the best tight ends in the last decade of the NFL (he has slowly fallen off, and his ego won’t let him retire, but that’s another conversation).

Travis was someone I liked because he was tall, hot, and talented. I religiously watched Catching Kelce on E! because I am a reality television connoisseur and a hopeless romantic.

But Travis, a dedicated cosplayer in his beard, clothes, and exaggerated voice, also dated Black women. It wasn’t a gimmick—it was his choice, which wasn’t necessarily harmful at the time.

Travis left his show dating a Black woman and went on to have a long-term relationship with Kayla Nicole. I don’t have the energy to dive into his transition back to whiteness, but as most of us know, he’s now engaged to Taylor Swift.

Once you enter the Blackfishing chamber, there’s nothing inherently holding you in that cell forever. Exit quietly by all means—but when that rebrand harms the Black women you’ve previously dated, that’s when you become an eater.

Travis will always be on my personal docket because of how he handled his breakup with Kayla and his subsequent relationship with a mega-pop star that has a rabid fan base. He never publicly defended her while she faced vitriol and racism from Swifties, proving that his co-opting of Black spaces and Black women was about building a personality, an identity, at the expense of someone else.

And the other demon rebrand that is always top of mind is MGK. MGK started off as a popular “hard boy” rapper, constantly in Black spaces. So, when he transitioned into a pop-rock boy and started dating Megan Fox, the internet craze was nauseating, especially working in media.

I remember 10-year-old Aiyana, enamored with this tall, lanky rapper getting spots on 106 & Park. That changed roughly two years later when I came across a red carpet interview where he was asked what he loves about Black women. His response: “Black women give the best head.”

Even as a barely teenage girl, I knew his words were flagrant. MGK has a Black daughter who might see that video one day and feel the same visceral reaction I did. His attraction to Black women and reasoning for existing in Black spaces was rooted solely in sexual acts, fostering the idea that Black women should be fetishized, not loved.

So no, edgy millennial white women, I don’t care that you’re obsessed with MGK in 2026. The MGK I know will always be a grifter. No matter how much he ups his rocker persona or starts flopping across the stage doing jazz squares, he’ll always be an eater who couldn’t pay the bills as a rapper, so he threw off his aesthetic and slipped into a new skin to find some sense of self once more.

The For-Lifers

Our final boss floats under the radar and gets whacked only here and there, mostly because they’re committed. When a cosplayer or eater dedicates themselves with no end in sight, they become a for-lifer.

Sam White, the Kappa, made a career off shimmying on command. He first went viral when I was in high school, gliding across his university yard alongside other Black Kappas. For months he was praised and cemented into Black culture because of his rhythm. He arguably was not as smooth as the Black men dancing beside him, but he was a first-wave social media unicorn.

He existed comfortably in Black spaces and floated over to the side of appreciation more than appropriation. His endless effort to uplift Black voices leveraged his place. Did he irk me? Absolutely. His centering in Greek spaces felt contrived, but once his virality faded, he stood ten toes down. He now works as a social impact strategist, partnering with civil rights organizations, which doesn’t erase his tap dancing in Black spaces, but makes it feel less like a costume.

On the other side, there are for-lifers who will always be a problem. Namely, this ginger boy who occasionally harasses my Reels FYP, constantly talking about the hypothetical Black women in his DMs who are saying he’d be their “first white boy,” to which he posts up as if he’s a light-skinned menace (terrorist) prepared for the war that is being entangled with a Black woman.

Am I mad at my sisters in his comments begging for a taste? Yes. Please, ladies, disembark from that humiliation ritual. But there are a sea of white men like this who spend the rest of their days thirsting over Black women and showing off their transition from basic white man to seasoned corn on the cob. And while their consistency puts them at the bottom of my whack list (so I can deal with the bigger fish to fry), they’re still men worth keeping on a watch list.

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This white boy grift into Blackness will always be icky because of the patriarchy and Black women’s role in their attempts at social integration. They’ll come for me, but it’s why I take Nicolandria with a grain of salt. Whether they’re dating or not, if this is a business venture, it benefits Nic more than Olandria. Being attached to Black women is cultural capital you cannot buy.

Olandria is a star on her own, but Nic grows with every Olandria appearance. It’s in his interest to be publicly seen loving a Black woman. It’s why people ate up Kenny and JaNa from Love Island USA season six. Historically, Black women have endured disrespect and been repeatedly cast aside by men, so seeing them loved feels like a win. But I don’t subscribe to that narrative.

If we meet people where they’re at with this basement-level appreciation of representation, excited that a run-of-the-mill white man holding hands and calling a Black woman beautiful is some extraordinary task and burden he’s so graciously taken on, then we’re feeding into the same belief that Black women aren’t lovable.

Nic is lucky to even breathe the same air as Olandria, and he only has something to gain by being on her arm. He may not necessarily be grifting, but he’s the measurable result of the great white boy grifting act. It always stems from Black women, their cool factor, and how these men get to monetize that proximity.

I don’t believe Black culture exists in a vacuum or will ever have the ability to be siloed and outlawed from appropriation and appreciation all the same. I went to an HBCU where non-Black students happily walked around campus, joined Greek life, and served in leadership positions. As a Black Southerner, I find it more exciting when white people actively choose to engage with Black people and experiences versus the radical right and Ron DeSantis approach of erasure and silencing.

But these men that get propped up for being spicy or swag-ified are never the ones actually engaging with Blackness in a normal way. Don’t utilize Black women and the Monicas of the world for your gain when you have the choice to toss it off like a costume.

From today and every day after, we need to whack these white men with the same physicality and consistency as y’all do the Kardashians. I have no plan of stopping, and I make sure to mention that red carpet interview from MGK whenever a white woman tries to tell me she loves him and his new music. He gets to walk away and gain new fans and a new identity, leaving a wake of harm behind him.

The great white boy grift extracts value without accountability—it doesn’t have consequences. It has open-armed welcomes into white supremacy and Morgan Wallen collaborations when the phase no longer serves them. The grift works because the exit is always waiting; and Black women are left to reckon with the wreckage.

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A guy asked me recently what I like to do for fun. I named them down a line like a smeared grocery list that got caught in the rain: gym, volleyball, dance, nights in with my friends, brunch, brunch, alcohol-less brunch. I hesitated as his eyes shifted; he partied a lot (and would later say that we weren’t compatible). He wondered why I hadn’t seen the inside of so many bars and clubs after four years in the city. I stopped drinking at 22. Why stop something just as its beginning, he asked. I teetered between the truth or laughing it off.

Does admitting I started drinking at 16, blacking out at 17, and spending Tuesday nights vodka-filled, crying in a stranger’s bathroom ruin the mood? Does admitting the drinking got worse to hide from the emotions I so desperately wanted to disappear from, answer his question? Will he still want a second date? Or will he think: man, does she have issues?

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I often run out of my house before looking at the weather app. My friends believe I’m just silly-natured, but it’s really because I don’t get dressed with the weather in mind. Maybe I should. Maybe I like coming home, shoes soaked, clothes drenched. It makes my evening shower warmer. It reminds me where I’ve been, who I’ve lost. In the warmth, I see her: 19, walking through a New York City snow day in ripped jeans, wishing to wash every liquid off of her. I read somewhere that rain on wedding days makes the knot tighter, and I can’t help but believe that rain on random weekdays can do the same.

I don’t like feeling out of control. I stopped driving at 23 for a few years because I didn’t like knowing there were people next to me who could determine my fate. Who could stare at their phone too long or drink too much gin, grab the key, and turn me into nothing. It panicked me; I’d break down, my forehead pressed into the steering wheel because I couldn’t do it anymore. Something I’d done since age 16 became quietly impossible.

But then I remember that day in 2018. It had been a month of nightmares ruining my sleep. I swayed on the highway, praying for silence, serving as the danger I’d soon fear.

I’m 27, and most days I’m settled. I read my books, write my fiction, laugh with my friends over a board of charcuterie, rush to volleyball, learn a few dance steps, hit the gym, and I feel happy. But when I get whiffs of the old me—19, drunk, floating through a room with no space for anxiety because her stomach acid is filled with cheap tequila—I can’t help but wonder if she’s more fun than me. If her lack of stability and sanitized heartbreak is more interesting. If my adult monotony has burned my whimsy. If her constant self-destruction made for sweeter moments of joy, of excitement, of storytelling.

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The younger me wasn’t whole, but I often think about her. Who she would’ve become if not for everything—if not for that night, or that guy. And when I sit with that, I feel heavy. Because I should be able to live without its memory by now, the things that hurt me then should not still be shaping who I am at 27, but they do. And on first dates and when new friendships blossom, I think about her and how she would’ve lit up the room around her.

If this new me is lighting it up in her honor or entering coolly—a bit timid, reserved, and weary of what life can do to you. I wonder if everything she went through made me more stagnant, boarded up my walls, and tidied up my careful. I am safe now. I am clear-minded and away from it all. But how far away? Is everything I am a distant memory from the whimsy I once had? Is she still in there? Some moments I feel it, others seem like a caricature of what once was.

I worry it looks how it feels. And right now it feels like a mask. A forced attempt at joy and lightness, as if I’m trying to draw it from memory. Only the alcohol destroyed my brain, the purging somehow destroyed my stomach lining, and the acid now drips into my veins.

I don’t miss all of her, but she was sillier than I. She laughed louder, danced harder. And maybe I should stop thinking so much and just try to do the same.

But I can’t help thinking about her on certain days, certain milestones, certain dead spaces. She was never given a chance. She died back then so I could live. And I miss her, I love her, and I hope she’s proud of my routine. I hope she’s somewhere laughing, staring down, finding my Monday night volleyball games and Wednesday night Survivor watch parties interesting and inspiring.

For a moment, in my braider’s chair, reliving the show that shaped my childhood, I pretend once more that I am a contestant chasing that infallible CoverGirl contract and spread in Nylon magazine.

Like many people, I grew up on ANTM. My mother and I sat down every week to watch from season one up until The Jays and Nigel left (more to come on that). ANTM was my first taste of fashion. It was attainable and slightly skewed. I devoured fashion magazines as a kid, but the language, the understanding—it all came from ANTM. I was more like the Tiffanys and Shandis, who came from families that didn’t understand that world. For me, it was sports or nothing.

I often joke that when I first got the job at Teen Vogue in 2021 and told my dad I’d be working at Condé Nast—the same place where Anna Wintour has run Vogue for 30+ years—he looked at me plainly, smiled, and said: Who is Anna Wintour?

Different worlds, people. Different worlds.

So, as a young Black girl dreaming of one day writing for fashion magazines—or, if I was lucky enough to drop the baby fat my 5’10” stature might lead me to the runway—ANTM was everything.

There’s a lot to dissect when looking back at ANTM. As a survivor, it was hard to watch Shandi recount that night in Milan—inebriated and having the world watch her have unconsensual sex (because yes, if you are drunk, you cannot consent to sex, and it is still assault, no matter how you twist it). Then seeing Danielle and Joanie spend hours in that dentist’s office talking about bodily autonomy brought me all the way back.

But what sat with me the most was Tyra’s retelling of why exactly she went off on Tiffany Richardson—which led to the highly viral and lip-synced clip: “I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. How dare you…Learn something from this.”

Throughout the entire three-episode docuseries, the recurring throughline Tyra kept dragging through the narrative was this proliferating idea that she was opening doors and showing the world that Black is beautiful.

And I think if you wade into shallow waters, unaware of the ocean beneath you, it’s very easy to say that yes, Tyra Banks and ANTM did in fact bring Black voices to the forefront.

But when she said, “We slammed [the door] wide open [for diversity],” it made me realize the ways in which older generations of Black women can be incapable of acknowledging their own limited version of first-wave change-making.

There’s no world where I’ll ever deny the impact of Tyra Banks—as a supermodel, as an entertainment executive genius, and as a Black woman in fashion. But I do find it interesting that she’s accepting this tired role of untouchable matriarch who, when confronted with documented instances of abuse and harm, has an initial reaction to deflect and victimize herself.

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Tyra once stood outside the gates of fashion demanding to be seen. Now she’s inside the glass house, mistaking access for ownership. But glass walls still confine you; they just let you see the sky while convincing you you’ve reached it.

And now she’s watched other renowned voices—some even being former contestants—take a running start at the ceiling, knowing it might cost them everything, understanding that progress isn’t about being sheltered—it’s about breaking the structure altogether. These other Black voices in fashion were willing to lose their footing so the women behind them could inherit something sturdier than permission. But Tyra never was, and she’s trying to convince us (through an over-saturated Netflix special) that she was doing just that.

ANTM did something the fashion industry refused to do, and that’s special in itself. But why Tyra refuses to acknowledge where she came up short is the sticking point.

In the docuseries Danielle recalled an interaction she had with Tyra years after she won season six.

Tyra said: “I knew there were doors you couldn’t get into and I did nothing about it.” This was in reference to Danielle struggling to book anything post-ANTM. She was in the same model house as Chanel Iman, and Iman informed her that their agent said ANTM girls would be treated differently—as black sheep.

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Danielle, tearily, said: “So to have [Tyra], a Black woman, say to me, I knew you were struggling and did nothing about it—hurt. Don’t see me in my suffering and do nothing about it.”

I think Tyra genuinely believes she is a titan of the great diversity push that happened. But the true diversity push came in the form of the young, impressionable, and incredibly endearing Black and brown women we saw each week for over a decade.

That shift in diversity happened in spite of Tyra Banks because when it mattered, she saw the push for diversity as a means to lift herself higher—not as a radical act to actually uplift young Black women in fashion.

I wrote back in 2021 for Poynter about what a real change for diverse voices in journalism actually needs to look like. This argument that she poured so much into Tiffany—helped her get into anger management classes, served as a mentor—is convoluted. Especially when your immediate reaction is to harm her further when the cameras are rolling, when the narrative is being shaped and the optics are being managed. That’s not thinking about her; that’s trying to make yourself a savior.

And it doesn’t help the dynamics that Tyra is still a light-skinned Black woman talking to a young dark-skinned Black woman as if she picked her off the literal street and gave her a life worth living.

I think it’s easy, once you’ve made it, to get lost in it all. I’ve already written about this ad nauseam, but what really struck me was Tyra’s constant refrain of “no sacred cows.” The sentiment itself is interesting, given she’s proclaimed she’s done so much for the fashion industry and still seems to value herself as prized cattle, not the farmer, at least.

I remember getting into the industry and being immediately jolted. After spending the last three years at a historically Black university, there was nothing I loved more than being surrounded by other Black people. It gave me solace in this new city I’d been forced to move to for work and reminded me what it all was for.

But then I had my run-ins with a few older Black women in the space who didn’t speak to me (particularly frustrating as someone from the South) and who also held this same scarcity mindset.

I don’t ever want to diminish the actual harm and abuse the veteran Black women in this industry experienced. But it’s exactly why we now have Tyra Banks, fifteen years later, sitting in a Nancy Drew trench coat with a honey blonde combover telling the audience that it was, in fact, our fault.

I love Tyra Banks. I think she’s ridiculous, but she’ll always be my crazy auntie that I still expect to see at every family reunion. But I will also remind her that she was very painfully wrong. And she’ll say that my generation is just soft. And that’s okay. But all I hope is that the Black women my age standing next to me will let this be not only a cautionary tale, but a reminder about the road less traveled.

There are no sacred cows, sure—but thirty years ago there also were no Black models. There were no fat women. There was no such thing as more than one Black woman in the room. Change doesn’t come by softly pressing your hand into a boulder already heading downhill and claiming you set it in motion. And when it crashes into the fortified structures scattered across this mountain, slowly crumbling piece by piece—something you’re able to see from atop your hill—you can’t back down and refuse to take ownership.

Actual change isn’t linear, nor is it perfect. It’s the reason fashion continues to move at a glacial pace—because no one wants to take ownership of shortcomings, the same way no one actually cares about diversity until the big players co-sign the thoughts you keep hidden.

When you’re scared the next person can take your spot, you zone in on that 9x9 square so tightly you don’t even look up long enough to realize there’s an entire field to be explored. You shrink your world to protect your position. You mistake guarding your square for owning the game.

There are no sacred cows. But Tyra Banks is a fortified Black woman in fashion, and if she would’ve seen herself as more than just lucky to finally be in the room—to finally have a say—she might’ve done even more.

You can’t in one breath claim to be a veteran for diversity in fashion and then say the “higher-ups” wanted to cut The Jays and Nigel and that it wasn’t a decision you could make—that all the harm, especially done to the Black and brown people were things out of your control. When really, Tyra wasn’t willing to put herself on the line. To say: I am Tyra Banks. I am the most sacred—and if they go, I go. If they’re harmed, I’m harmed.

She wouldn’t gamble. Wouldn’t risk falling. Because she didn’t want to stop being the one in the room.

But eventually, if you’re still the only one in the room, standing alone with no peers beside you, what is it all worth?

For the past few weeks, since lay-off-gate, I’ve had the freedom of nothingness. It’s something I craved deeply after being an insane work-obsessed college journalist who had exactly 48 hours between finishing college, starting as a contracted culture writer at Grazia, then a careers reporter for the Journal, before working for four and a half years at Teen Vogue.

So, this idea that I needed another elongated delay after spending the past several weeks pausing might seem ludicrous, but as I bumpily ride up the coast of Florida, making my way into Georgia and then the Carolinas, a part of me wants to extend this version of myself for a little while longer.

Going back to New York means attempting to find my footing again in a place I don’t necessarily recognize anymore—in a city that welcomed me, held me, and taught me more about who I am and who I want to be. It’s also spun me around and thrown me out, and that feels complicated to admit.

But honesty is my most significant flaw and skill, so I will always feel compelled to soliloquize on my little soapbox. I am nothing if not a mouthy, open book looking for answers in uncomfortable places.

I’m able to admit after spending two months in Florida surrounded by family and best friends, books, and my written words (I finished the first draft of my debut romance novel PASSING GAME!!!), that I’m scared.

Going back to NYC solidifies the fact that I am looking for a new (and now only my second) job in media. And a part of me wants one for many reasons, but I don’t miss the anxiety and self-awareness that comes with choosing to love fashion and magazines.

This industry is a circus—a dazzling, disorienting exhibition of tightrope walkers, ringmasters, ventriloquists, flame eaters, and spectators hungry for wonder. Some days, you are the one thrust beneath the spotlight, expected to perform, to build that elusive thing they call a brand—the ticket to ascending the glittering ranks. Dance, monkey, dance, I’d whisper to myself, half in jest, half in warning, fully aware of the optics, the choreography of ambition.

I’d been told countless times that if I ever wanted to rise the ranks as a fashion editor, I couldn’t just write, edit, and ideate with precision; I’d have to master the art of being seen. Ownership of the stage was part of the job: on-air appearances, interviews, live streams, panels—the never-ending theater of modern media.

I wasn’t a stranger to the stage. I’d spent the first half of my life under its lights—pirouetting, chassé-ing across dance floors, and pouring my heart into words about teenage tragedy at my performing arts high school.

I can still see myself in that AP Language Arts classroom, the smell of pencil shavings and cafecito clinging to the air, my teacher gliding between desks like a coach before the big game. When she stopped at mine, she looked at me, eyes like searchlights, before turning to address the room.

“You’re either born with it, or you’re not,” she said. “And Aiyana has it.”

I’ve held onto those words ever since, polished them in my mind like a small talisman in my pocket. I knew she wasn’t talking about our AP exam—just as my freshman year history teacher wasn’t talking about religion when, during a lecture, she gestured to me and said, “Aiyana, see, she’s the kind of person who could start her own church.”

I didn’t understand what they meant then. But later, in the glossy halls of my first job—that cathedral of image and influence—I began to.

Loving writing is simple enough. But working within the confines of a large institution means learning to play the game, too.

I’d spent most of my life in the background. As a plus-size, dark-skinned Black woman—who stood 5’10” by the third grade—all I’d ever wanted was to blend in. To shrink myself into the corners of classrooms, to fold into the edges of group photos, to move quietly through a world that always seemed to notice me first and understand me last.

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So entering an industry where visibility was the currency of success felt like a betrayal—a tug-of-war between my career ambitions and the social anxiety I’d spent years learning to tame. More visibility meant more eyes, and more eyes meant more chances for someone to point out the obvious: that I was larger than most—in body, in height, in presence. Sometimes, when I’m nervous, I stutter. And in this shiny new professional world, every old fear I’d ever buried was dragged back into the light, forced to run wild in pursuit of my corporate dreams.

Moving to New York, stepping into this world, was like breaking the seal on that beautiful bubble I’d built for myself. I was no longer blissfully unaware. It was like that moment when a child learns that the fairies and magical beings of bedtime stories aren’t real—that the magic had always been a carefully constructed illusion, created by someone with authority to preserve a fleeting sense of innocence. And you can’t help but wonder if the white lie was ever worth the deceit.

It made me hyper-aware of my position in that space—how easily I could become someone to know simply because I was an anomaly. We talk about diversity in fashion and media so often that the word itself starts to lose weight. But when you actually look around, the truth is sobering: there aren’t nearly enough Black people in this industry. And there are certainly not enough fat bodies taking up space.

That’s why I forced myself to keep showing up. To do the work, even on the days it felt unbearable. To smile for photos, to pose, to speak, to be seen—when all I wanted was to disappear into the background. I wanted to be one of those thin, white, well-off fashun girls in their quiet luxury uniforms, floating in and out of the office without ever having to perform.

But I knew if I took that approach, I’d be on the next flight back to Florida. Because the truth was, Black girls didn’t last in these types of buildings. I’d been in the industry for four years and watched a carousel of them pass through—bright, capable, brilliant—only to fade from every company’s halls as if they were never there.

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So I pushed through the noise, through the self-doubt, through the ache of not feeling enough. I did it because I knew other young Black and brown girls were watching, searching for signs that they, too, could exist here. If I could serve as a reminder, a cautionary tale, or a flicker of light in the darkness, then I had to. We need more of us in these spaces, not just surviving, but seen.

I’ve always known I was a lot. Ask my high school teachers, the ones who saw the spark in me long before I did.

My dream was singular: Aiyana Ishmael, big-time magazine editor. That was it—my North Star. But as the years went on, the path there began to blur. Each day chipped away at the certainty I once had. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted it anymore.

After everything I’d seen, all I wanted was simple: a decent salary, the chance to write stories that mattered, and a life that existed beyond those glossy walls.

And because of that understanding, I’d grown careful about the people I let close—the coworkers I allowed to cross over into genuine friendship. So when someone I’d once considered a friend echoed a fear I’d spent years trying to unlearn, something in me shifted.

I’d been locked in a months-long battle for a promotion right before lay-off-gate. When it finally seemed within reach, what should have been a celebratory moment turned into yet another gut punch to my endless need to be liked.

A colleague told me that my other colleague, one I’d trusted, was worried that my promotion would “usurp” her.

It wasn’t her feelings that hurt me most; it was her silence. For two weeks, she’d begun pulling away—going quiet when I entered the room, avoiding eye contact, letting conversations die mid-sentence. She’d always been transparent, her emotions written plainly across her face, but now that honesty had turned cold.

I understand that we’re all looking out for ourselves, that fear makes people act in ways they later regret. But still, it saddened me. She didn’t stop to think how her words could ricochet, how they might land on me, how they could quietly jeopardize something I’d worked years to earn.

I sat on the subway that evening, replaying those words over and over. Usurp. Such a sharp word, heavy, medieval, like something stolen rather than earned. By the time I reached the atrium of my apartment building, the weight of it caught up to me. I cried right there, beneath the fluorescent hum, the day still clinging to my clothes.

I called my mom and told her everything: how frustrated I was at being perceived, at watching my biggest worries unfold in real time. Maybe I did take up too much space. Perhaps I did suck the air out of the room for some people, even if I never meant to. And maybe that made others resent me, quietly, in ways I’d never be able to soften.

They tell you not to care, that you can’t care about what others think of you. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that that statement is easier digested in a 45-second sound bite from a first-time viral TikTok account.

I’ve always believed in community, working together to serve a purpose larger than yourself. It’s the reason why I was and forever will be a freaky little theatre kid. I’ll always believe we’re better together, stronger, working side by side. So, yes, don’t care when people have feelings about who you are, what you represent, but it doesn’t lessen the gnawing feeling that you’ve always, still, in some way, stood out.

My best friend reminded me of something I now hold close: It isn’t our job to dim the light we were given to make others comfortable in the dark.

That’s the most challenging part of a front-facing career: learning to accept that people will always have feelings about how you choose to exist, how you fight for the things you’ve rightfully earned.

The fight isn’t easy, and it’s rarely fair.

But it’s worth it if your passion is the one guiding you through the turmoil each day. I remind myself often, you’re here for a reason. Only that reason gets muddled with each passing hurdle.

So as I sit on this train, I’m admitting my fears—that I want to slow down time. Spend a few more hours in the Southern United States, away from the expectations I have for myself and away from the looming air I might unconsciously drag out of a room. I’m letting each railroad town that passes by highlight something new about myself, about my career, about my bigger picture. I don’t have an answer yet, just a lot of words thrown at a wall—hoping one day I’ll decode the next tenet meant to lead me.

The Fashion Police ended a year after I graduated high school, which means a younger version of myself had to pivot, dream up a new life and start at it. A few years later, she’d indomitably grab onto that new dream: big-time magazine editor. The kind with a desk people recognize and an email signature that makes strangers answer quickly.

I took our senior time capsule box back to my parents’ house in Miami, where I’m preternaturally cosplaying snowbirding. I left New York City on a one-way ticket in early December and haven’t bought a return just yet. It’s technically on my to-do list, given that I have a few prospective jobs, but for the last seven weeks, it’s been beautiful to slow down, sit in warmer weather, grow tired of my parents, and then be re-enlivened by them in the same breath. It’s been heartwarming to hang out with my best friends from high school and college, dance on yachts, and feel much younger than my knees want me to believe I am. I visited Dallas for the first time and walked around the campus where my prospective romance novel is set (Coming March 2027, AH!!). Seeing SMU’s wealth and Southern charm in full display reminded me that every single moment serves a purpose.

I don’t remember what’s in that box from ten years ago. I don’t remember who I was ten years ago. And isn’t that a beautiful thing? To know that everything you wished for didn’t come true—and you were given a chance to want better, or at least truer, things. At this moment in time, what first felt like a complete inundation of my life’s plan is starting to read as a reminder: not everything you want is exactly what you need.

Most of my fellow laid-off coworkers packed several boxes and came back two days in a row to claim their items. I packed an over-sized Coach bag with a few books, perfumes, and scarves, and left everything else on my desk behind. I didn’t need a box. I had the memories. I had the quiet confirmation that this moment is a redirection, a chance to reset. As I walked out of those glossy spinning doors, I reminded myself that they could never take who I am away from me.

I’ve spent the last few weeks away from all the noise of NYC and the media industry, and it’s helped turn my focus on what matters to me. I always said I moved to New York because it’s the only place I can have the career I want. That’s still true. But the last few weeks have reminded me why I don’t necessarily enjoy everything that comes with the career I love. I want to write cool stories, profile interesting people, and make a systemic difference in fashion, beauty, and culture. I want my words to linger. I want them to stand for something.

As my ten-weeks post-layoff period comes to a close, and I actually begin job hunting, I’m being forced to remember the energy that swarms a city fueled by insatiable hunger. In the quiet of this separation, my longstanding theory of the media industry being akin to sorority culture has only hardened.

Before I left New York for the holidays, the number of dinners and press events I avoided should frankly be illegal. (I’m sorry to my fave PR girls—I had to put me first.) I did that in part because of the performative concern, exacerbated by the amount of shrill “awwww, how are you really doing?”s thrown at me.

You’d think I’d lost a family member—the sudden onset of people who hadn’t spoken to you in months now deeply invested in your well-being. The slew of pouty lips and sunken eyes as if the worst thing I could be is laid odd. It was mostly frustrating because after the initial shock, I wasn’t devastated. I was angry. Angry that I had to figure out a new way to pay rent in a city I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be in anymore. But I wasn’t upset. Maybe I stand alone in this. Maybe other people who experience this go through a sea of emotions, like sadness and resentment, but that has never been how I’ve approached this job or my work.

My close friends would tell me, laughing, about the number of people texting them to see if I was okay—people who hadn’t bothered to text me directly.

Getting laid off, especially after spending four years at a high-profile magazine, is like getting expelled from Phi Mu at the University of Alabama. My Lululemon flare leggings are dragging against the ryegrass as they pull me from the million-dollar white house on sorority row.

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There’s a line of discretion that media folk and sorority girls share. Everyone complains about the castles they sit in, the luxuries they believe they deserve that the exec board gets instead. I’ve sat next to acquaintances who went on and on about their senior editor getting to go on an exclusive press trip with insert–high fashion brand here. I’ve seen them complain about the color of the $1,000 gift they just received. I’ve gotten texts saying that they hope I “get a new job quickly.”

There’s a separation that happens when you don’t get to keep your letters. And I don’t miss the greed, the constant comparison to other sorority houses who get more, the hustle to keep what was never yours.

There’s a level of pity they want you to carry. A Thank God it isn’t me that flashes across their eyes every time they see you. Because they know, behind the opulence and smoke of it all, that it could’ve been them. There are tier-one sororities and bottom tiers that never get the respect they deserve. It’s all a system we keep playing into. That I play into. And now, as a GDI, I can’t help but wonder what it all actually means.

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I don’t have an answer yet. I have a lot of thoughts, though—thoughts that have been calcifying in my mind these last ten weeks of unemployment.

I’m deeply grateful for the support system I have—for the financial and familial backing that’s kept me buoyant, when so many others have been laid off and are struggling. I get to dance on boats, go to brunch, fly to Texas, cheer at football games, and treat my layoff like a goddamn sabbatical. That’s a privilege. One that allows me to sit and think and articulate my feelings while others are doing everything in their power to stay afloat, to make it to their next bill without sacrificing another piece of themselves.

I love writing. I love magazines. I still want to sit and pretend to be Joan Rivers while watching the Golden Globes tonight. But if I reenter the Phi Mu house again, I want to see it clearly for what it is: a massive, multi-million dollar house in the middle of a confederacy-loving state. It is not a home. It is temporary. It does not define you.

And don’t let your sorority sisters—too taut with fear and the need to belong—convince you that it ever did.

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That silence hasn’t fully found me, but that inertia around my day-to-day has found its home in the crevice of my chest. I keep whispering to myself: breathe, as my heart overwhelms itself because I’m sitting on my couch, or bed, or in my apartment building’s co-working room clenching my jaw, no longer letting anything flow through.

I went to volleyball last night like I always do. Now, more than ever, it’s become a tether to my life in New York City, because frankly, without this job there is nothing truly holding me to living here.

We lost the first set 25–23. We’re currently the number one team in the league. “They shouldn’t have beaten us,” we said in our huddle before the second set. “We beat ourselves,” my teammate coos.

The second set comes and goes, we take the other team in one fell swoop, the score 25–22. Now is where it all matters. Set three. For those unfamiliar with volleyball, it’s best two out of three, and you have to win by two in every set. We were down 11–17 when the ball came flailing in my direction, landing a centimeter outside of the in-court line. I screamed across the room, “Out.” The referee called it in. My whole team yells at the ref, asking if she can see correctly. She claims that she can and that only she decides the call.

This enlivened us to the point of no return. There is no better feeling than female rage out on a court or field, especially given that this is pay-to-play recreational volleyball. There are no real stakes in us losing, only the thrill of competition feeding our inner angst. A few minutes after our unjust call, the score was 25–21. We’d come back from our deficit and won the set and game.

I left the gym to head home, my brain feeling a sense of relief. For two hours the only thing rumbling up there was: focus, no dropped passes, watch their eyes, they never lie about the next move they’re making. Freedom.

It was windier last night than it had been so far this fall. My winter coat barely kept me warm as I waited for the B60. Gosh, I love volleyball, I thought as I surveyed the men walking past me on this dark street. I’m tired, I hope no one tries me.

I make it home. A GoPuff delivery driver is fumbling through his phone for an apartment code as he tries not to drop the four fully stuffed bags in his hands. I tell him to step aside, I have a key and can let us both in. Ugh, I can’t believe I missed that pass in the first game, but damn was my setting beautiful in the second.

I get off the elevator, wish him a good night. My mother and father call, asking: How was the game? “We won,” I replied, giving them a breakdown of our three-set victory. My father says “Great,” with two exclamation points, which means he’s probably smiling on the other side of the phone or simply appeasing me; either way I need it.

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I wander around my kitchen, my sweaty volleyball clothes still clinging to my skin, ready to divest themselves from their current glory. My roommate is making something garlicky or maybe onion; I don’t eat either so I wouldn’t know. But her chimichurri sits on the counter—it was both.

My phone pings: Beautiful woman, how are you? A man from Hinge with whom I’ve gone on two dates and can’t decide if I like him asks me about my day. I tell him about my volleyball game. He says, Congrats, and asks how the job search is going. I put my phone down.

I start to pull off my spandex, toss them into the hamper. I need to do laundry tomorrow, maybe tonight, or Wednesday—really any day. I have all the time in the world. I think: my room should be spotless, what excuse do I have now?

I whisk off the black Nike Dri-Fit shirt that’s a little too big on my body, but it’s the only one that doesn’t show my still-bulging stomach when I jump to hit the volleyball.

I tug at my too-tight Nike socks and trip a little when my left calf is crossed over my right thigh. I shouldn’t be this clumsy at this age. Should I get checked out by a doctor to make sure everything is alright? Should I have done that before losing health insurance? Reminder: ask the Teen Vogue group chat when exactly our insurance closes out?

I pull the other sock off with ease, my balance gracefully restored. No unnecessary doctor’s bill this time. I toss the sock into the basket, making the mistake of looking at my full-length mirror. That noise is back and I try my hardest to ignore it, but the silence makes it so easy. My brain needs something to focus on and now that devilish agitator is pitching a tent.

I can’t look in the mirror at my naked body right now. I didn’t like it growing up and maybe five years ago I finally overcame that feeling, but now that progress is gone. It’s only been a few weeks. There was a quiet noise lingering in the back corner of my closet, where I stuffed broken-buttoned dress shirts I tried to squeeze into after excitedly shopping online. The noise had no time to grow thin, but muscled legs and perfectly arched feet as I rushed to catch the J train every morning into Manhattan.

But now, all I have is time and I can’t bear to look at my body. Is it a manifestation of my current anxiety, my Virgo-based need for control that no longer exists?

I’m sweaty and gross after volleyball, I’ve just pushed my 27-year-old limbs in ways they weren’t meant to move and yet, I get home and think, think, think about how I still need to lose 45 more pounds. How I’ve lost 100 and the man next to me on the plane still texts his wife that he’s stuck in between a gordita. What if I lose more, will my skin look worse than it does now? I can finally run, jump, and move without pain, but is that enough in a world filled with vanity?

Do I hate myself? Do I love myself? My phone pings again, and my older brother finally liked my message about winning my volleyball game. I’m reminded: I won. I win. I will always win. Some sets I lose, some days I can’t look at the mirror, but that is just one set to 25, just one 24 hours, not the whole game, not my whole life. And when it’s on the line, when a deficit is meant to be chased, a hole to be dug out of, I’ll be there, clawing away.

Today, I can’t look at myself naked. And I’m angry for feeling that way. But tomorrow I’ll work on it. Next week I’ll tell my mom about it. Next month I’ll have changed my mind again, and again, and again.

That’s obviously not true, but I’ve gotten a flood of messages from people sharing their own layoff stories, saying they appreciated how open and vulnerable I’ve been about this process. My coworkers have done the same, and as Noella also noted, it is so nice that we have a group of people to go through this with. I would not be remotely okay if not for having others to commiserate with.

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Laid Off: Style Editor at Teen Vogue

Laid Off is the coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off. To keep weekly interviews free for all 4ever, you can buy me a coffee or buy readers a coffee (aka sponsor a weekly issue). Appreciate you <3…

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10 months ago · 33 likes · 6 comments · Melanie Ehrenkranz

So while I’m neither the first nor the last to go through this, it’s been complicated navigating it all. Mostly because the untimely folding of Teen Vogue coincided with the layoffs of me and seven of my coworkers, so we’ve found ourselves in this strange moment where our separation from Teen Vogue has become part of the news cycle in ways I never expected. From Impact to Business of Fashion (to the very weird and ugly coverage from the Daily Mail — losers), I’ve seen my face — or a cropped version of my Bluesky announcement — on nearly every scroll down my timeline.

@aiyanaishmaelWe been connected at the hip the last four years, only right we went out together 😭 @KM #teenvogue #laidoff #layoffs #blackgirlmagic

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It’s a complicated place to be: trying to let the dust settle, to say goodbye to what defined a huge chunk of your twenties, while the world both rallies behind you and, in smaller bigot-shaped corners, spews archaic, elitist, and slightly micro-aggressive takes on the situation. (I’m looking at you, “Puck News” and National Review.)

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Still, I’m incredibly grateful for the outpouring of love we’ve received, even when it’s so easy to let the negative comments eat away at you. I’m deeply appreciative of everyone who’s chosen to follow me here, too. There are a lot more essays to come, but for now, I’m processing what all of this means, setting some new writing projects in motion, and scouring LinkedIn for a golden unicorn in a sea of promise-less job postings.

Here’s what the last seven days have looked like through my iPhone lens. I won’t lie, I’ve cried every day, but I’ve also smiled, laughed, and rejoiced for everything that still exists in my life and all that’s headed my way.

Moments after we got the news that Teen Vogue would be folded into Vogue, and that 75% of the staff was being let go.

Bags: Packed. Tears: shed. We: move. Also, while the security woman was simply doing her job, being shouted at that we “weren’t allowed to take pictures in the lobby” was so incredibly fitting to an already comical day. We got the picture, anyway!

My ID that I’ve had since 2021. My face is barely recognizable — a harbinger of truth.

Goodbye glasses of wine with the team because why not!

Miami looks good on everyone, but especially Madi — my college roommate, sister, and Louisiana-girl-turned-Miami-Mami.

I got to see my sweet friends Sophia and Isa — who is with child!!

I had the pleasure of taking my mother to a Heat game and we got to go down on the floor — and also see A’ja Wilson (from a distance).

My mom and dad at their regular weekend dining spot, My Root.

I watched Wicked on the plane ride back to NYC. I can confirm it is just as good the seventh time and I cannot wait for Wicked: For Good.

Kaitlyn and I were awarded the Storytelling and Spacemaking award by the non-profit organization, Justice for Black Girls. Laid off on Monday, awarded on Sunday. Wont He do it!

An exact week after being laid off, I returned to the scene of the crime to hand in my laptop. This chapter is officially closed.

I commemorated the moment with my sisters, Kaitlyn and Shauna, at Din Tai Fung. It was Shauna’s first time, and as a regular at the Los Angeles location, it was a treat to experience that with the two of them. We laughed until rendered silent, shared vinegar-filled soup dumplings, and planned our world domination. Life isn’t easy right now, for any of us, but we have each other, and that’s a beautiful thing to hold onto.

I promised myself a long time ago that I’d never swallow a single emotion ever again. I’ve seen what silence does to the mind. It might feel uncomfortable to pour your heart out while the world is watching, but to me, it will always be worth it. I hope you keep sharing every feeling, no matter how sticky or tangled. And I’ll do the same. xx

And this isn’t in a negative way. I love my dad. But specifically, I turned into my 60-year-old dad, the motivational-speaker-football-coach extraordinaire. This city hardens you, for better or for worse, and my form of protection became replaying twenty years of his pep talks and strategic outlays like game film.

“You have to have unshakable self-belief,” he’d tell us in person, through text every morning, and before any of our sports games.

I’d watch him demonstrate to my brothers over and over again how important it is to keep your head up when you’re going in for a tackle, because if you don’t you’ll end up paralyzed. It’s life or death on that field, and sometimes, in New York City, it feels that way too. I keep my head on a swivel on the train. I used my best tuck and shoulder when a drunken man cornered and groped me at Fulton Station. I sprinted toward the end zone, my purse serving as my pigskin. I didn’t cry until I was carefully sidelined — behind the glossy walls of my office job. My dad was who I called. He told me I was safe and I knew I’d done enough to win that day. Stay alive, I tell myself every time I enter the world; keep that head up and push forward.

New York City has made me into a sports coach, not only for myself, but for others. And after being forced to exist amongst the most clout-obsessed of them all, a lot of people are bitter because they’re playing the wrong sport.

I could write a book on my father’s lore, but one thing about him, he’s honest. If he thinks you’re not good enough to be starting on the court or field, he’ll say it. My mother is similar, but her adoration for her children will always offer a touch of bias, which I think is necessary to even out their parental dichotomy.

I grew up a girly girl, loving dance, theatre, and makeup. Every single one of my siblings has played or played a collegiate sport, as did my parents. I didn’t learn to run properly until I was in middle school. I played volleyball and basketball throughout my younger years (and I even play in an adult indoor volleyball league in New York now). A lot of people you meet in this city have never played a sport in their lives and it shows. I don’t say this to be demeaning or classist (I’m aware some sports are expensive and life comes at you — even though you have no problem touting your thousand-dollar bags and shoes), but it’s the reason why they walk around with this aggravated sense of entitlement.

When I first moved here, I befriended a girl who was playing the wrong game. She cared deeply about public perception, she talked shit about other young Black and brown girls in our vicinity, and she felt the need to keep up with the Joneses. We struggled as friends because I didn’t care to play a losing foot race with people who didn’t pay my bills or bring me happiness. Did it falter here and there, absolutely, how can it not when we are creatures of reward? But it didn’t feed me. The stature she so desperately chased wasn’t something I cared for.

At lunch one day, she glanced at my $450 Coach purse and asked loudly, “Why don’t you get a real designer bag?”

I blinked. “Are you going to buy it for me?” I asked.

She stuttered: “Well, I just mean you should invest in a Prada or something.”

The table shifted uncomfortably, but I couldn’t shake the thought — she’d made a scoreboard out of handbags.

I realized shortly after that moment that she’d mentally placed every girl in her orbit into that QB1 spot on the futile fashion football field. It was a self-inflicted benchwarmer role — one she dutifully carried, watching our every move to decide what to be angry about next.

Our friendship would later dissolve a few months after that. I’d confront her, telling her I thought her behavior towards me, our friends, and the other young POC women in our industry was very mean-spirited and competitive (when none of us should be a threat to her), and if we were going to stay friends I’d need her to change. She said she wouldn’t and that by saying that I was attacking her character.

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I realized in that moment, when I sat back and looked at our friendship, how this entire time she’d been chasing the wrong trophy and I was trying to coach someone I couldn’t. It’s not my job to uplift people who don’t want to be lifted. It was disheartening as a natural fixer, who rarely just lets friendships dissipate, but I think in New York City with the allure and taste of success at everyone’s fingertips, it’s easy to forcefully become something that isn’t healthy — not only for yourself but for others.

While being her friend I saw myself allowing and transforming into something that didn’t feel right, because in the back of my head, I knew — like my parents had taught me — no one can take away what God has already put in place for you.

Sometimes, you’re not meant to be on the varsity volleyball team after your first tryout. Like me, maybe you needed two years on JV before you could get there. Maybe, after a year of learning trick shots on the basketball team, you realize your skills are better suited to play lacrosse.

A lot of people don’t know how to self-assess and sports forces you to. You cannot hide behind false promises, smoke and mirrors, and social media gratification. You’re either good enough to get on the field or you’re not. You’re either willing to put in the hours to be the best at your craft or you’re not. It’s rare to climb to the top without having the ability to prove it.

But more than anything, it makes you a realist where it matters: competition.

I’m all for healthy competition off the court and in your regular life. I think we should look left and right to see what inspires us. As someone who spent all of college stalking the LinkedIn pages of every fashion editor I could find, to scan the types of internships, fellowships, and programming they had on their resumé — to see how I needed to stack myself up to get a competitive job — I think it’s normal to do so.

But it’s once people who’ve never touched a field start participating in real-world competition that the parameters get blurred.

Suddenly, you’re turning into a monster of a person, trying to one-up and belittle someone who isn’t supposed to be on your radar — someone, who is on a hockey field, when you should be swimming in a seven-foot deep pool playing water polo.

Volleyball was a slow burn for me in high school, but by senior year it had become essential. I put in the extra work because I cared, but skill-wise, I was still a step behind the two girls ahead of me. I wasn’t a starter, although my mother believed I should’ve been. My coach put me in when the game wasn’t on the line or if another player was making too many simple mistakes.

After each tournament, my mother would plant haughty ideas as we drove home, saying I was so much better than the girls my coach put before me. I’d remind her that our coach was playing who she believed was needed at that moment. I wanted to play more, but I also knew that sometimes in practice I wasn’t proving myself in the way I needed to be a starter.

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I wanted too many things. In eighth grade, I auditioned for my high school’s theatre program — 800 kids, 30 spots — and got in. I signed a contract committing four years to the program. So by 17, juggling varsity volleyball and serving as theatre troupe president, I knew my energy belonged to the stage. Did I want to spend more time sharpening my volleyball skills? Absolutely. But I’d already chosen another path, and I needed to honor it.

If I’d spent my time sulking over volleyball, I would’ve missed what theatre was giving me. Senior year, six classmates and I performed at Morsani Hall in Tampa before 20,000 people at the state festival. Our pantomime won Best of Show, earning us a spot in the opening ceremonies to represent our district.

I wasn’t a starter on the court, but I was starting on the stage. Sometimes you have to choose, and while others may tell you that you deserve it all, you have to ask yourself if you’ve truly earned it.

Life will always force you to choose: career or personal, love or friendship, faith or community. That’s where your real game lies. We fill our fields with imaginary players, forgetting that in the end, it’s just us — the only opponent, the only constant. We’re all running our own courts, hoping the score evens out in the end.

You have to decide what makes you happy, not what you think will bring you fame or adoration. Feed your soul and chase what feels good. If you don’t, your vision will blur and you’ll end up competing with a JV badminton player when you were destined to be on the Varsity crew team.

I write because I love it. I tell stories because it is what God put on my heart. If we stopped chasing fallacies, looking left and right to determine our every move, we’d all be better off.

It’s easier said than done, but what’s meant for you will never pass you by.

Years after that friendship ended, I still hear whispers that she repeats the same patterns with other Black and brown women. It doesn’t feel good knowing the cycle persists, but sometimes it takes a buzzer-beater moment to force the kind of real, uncomfortable growth that sticks.

Those who watch what others are doing instead of sharpening their own skills will spend their lives thinking the world is passing them by. As my father always says: Winners aren’t made on game day. Winners are made in practice.

If I want something badly enough, I go and take it. I don’t need to tear down the QB1 to claim their spot. Like real enjoyers of competition, I study, I train, I figure out what sets me apart — not what someone else has that I’ll never replicate.

Committing yourself to competition also means accepting that your best might not always be enough. Sometimes you’re forced to pivot — into a different position, even a different sport.

But if you spend the rest of your life on the bench, or worse, in the bleachers of your own game, heckling the illusory figures you’ve placed there, it won’t be a life worth remembering. And we all deserve to look back and know we left it all on the court.

You met him in a smoky Brooklyn bar at the tail end of summer.

Work forced you to spend the afternoon parading around Times Square. Your lack of financial discipline led to an $80 Uber charge on the already declining debit card wasting away in that Coach wallet—of course, it was a Godforsaken Tesla. You sit in the back seat being jerked across the Manhattan Bridge, stuck in traffic, hoping tonight won’t do the same thing to your mind. Instead of opening Hinge again, digesting his face, you fantasize about the sunset, ocean blue eyes on that actor you’d interviewed today. His kindness and gentle nature were what you hoped to be walking into on this date tonight.

Your feet sludge habitually across the apartment’s wooden floors. You hadn’t gone on a date in over six months. The last guy was sweet yet painstakingly pedestrian. Give him a chance, you reminded yourself every time he tried to kiss you. He was kind, and nice, and all the other synonyms, but you felt nothing. Tonight would determine if it was him or you who was the problem. You get ready. Grab the striped dress—the one with a story to tell. Yes, you’ve been to Paris; this dress sat in the pouring rain for hours at the Olympic opening ceremony. Maybe he’d be impressed, intrigued, or completely intimidated.

You put on the dress anyway.

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When he texts asking to push your meeting time back by fifteen minutes you rejoice. Your feet moved even more slowly now. You let the concealer set a little longer that night. You let time pass by. You can’t decide if you want this date to pass you by as well.

Hinge boy arrives promptly at 8:15. You arrive at 8:42. You both would later laugh about how if you had arrived three minutes later he would’ve gotten up and left. Waiting thirty minutes for a first date was his cutoff.

You believe him.

Somehow you felt it was all so kismet.

You don’t remember the color of his shirt but you remember his smile. The way you wanted to know more, drink all of him after just the first fifteen minutes. He grew up here, making you wonder if your hatred for this place was all some twisted fate. Maybe now you’ve found a reason to stay deep into your 30s.

He was attentive, with dark blue eyes, not like the ocean, but like a 5 p.m. Miami sky filled with thunderstorms. He asked you about yourself—had two and three follow-up questions every time. It made you wonder if he’d actually avoided becoming just like every other guy.

He had baggage that was worth carrying which made yours feel the same. That bar saw the two of you late into closing hours and you only wished you had arrived on time just to get those 27 minutes back. You couldn’t decide if this was going to open you up to a world you’d always dreamt about or break you all the same.

Either way, that night you decided you wanted to find out.

He was a teacher like your mother. A football coach like your father. Somehow he’d also taken your mother’s maiden name as his last. You both would laugh, you’d say with a smile: “At least we know we aren’t related, right?” But in that moment you grasped onto the idea of getting to have his last name and it holding pieces of your own.

He could be your new home.

You were hopeful, not hopelessly romantic, you said over and over and over again. He fitted perfectly in your world—or maybe just in your mind. So much so you thought he’d surely carve a place for himself to sit comfortably by your side.

He held the door, made sure you were always walking on the inside, kissed you softly, and held you tightly. By date twelve you told yourself to stop counting. You had reached a milestone you never knew before.

He was going to be yours.

He left on a frigid New Year’s day. Your first one in the city. You didn’t go to Florida because the tickets were too expensive, but a part of you wondered if it was because of him. He said, since home was so close, he’d only spend a few days out on Long Island; the others would be in Brooklyn.

You hoped that meant you’d be forming new traditions.

But he didn’t call, didn’t text, didn’t bring you into the next year. He was just a lesson, not an answered prayer.

You still cried all the same.

But when the tears dried you’d smile, knowing this was what you wanted. To grow, to finally feel something other than paralyzing pain—a feeling that formed in your heart at the ripe old age of 19, when your best friend stole something you would’ve given without hesitation.

Hinge boy made you forget that love wasn’t out of reach. That someday when the right one came you would know what to do. So, he’ll stay frozen in time—his broken promises held fondly in the last four months of a year you thought would never come.

A year that marked the beginning of a new world.

Tips on writing a standout cover letter for journalism jobs?

I live and die by this NPR guideline. It’s truly what helped me format my cover letter. I’m not saying it’s foolproof because I also had — and have — a very stacked resume, but I will say a strong cover letter will help you get through the door as well. I’ve included not one, but TWO old cover letters (so, if you’re feeling generous and want to leave me a tip, ily). Both cover letters are from 2019-2021!

JVCC TIP

The first is one I used for The Wall Street Journal’s summer internship program and The New York Times’ Student Journalism Institute. I got into both.

The second letter is a variation of the one I used for Teen Vogue, The Cut, and HuffPost the summer after I graduated in 2021. I got the job at TNV and was reached out to for interviews for the other two — I’d already accepted the job at TNV so declined both!

Either way, I hope these are helpful for you on your cover letter journey — whether it be internships or full-time roles. I always want to preface that I changed up the last few graphs to make sense for the publication, but tend to keep the anecdote the same, depending on the job. It’s also good to create a few anecdotes so you can switch them out depending on what you’re applying for. I’d also add, now looking back at these for the first time in a while, I’d probably trim them down and cut out any unnecessary fluff! Happy job hunting!

Cover Letter 1:

I sat in my Tallahassee apartment four miles away from where 19-year-old Oluwatoyin Salau, a Black Lives Matter protester, was murdered. As the details of her disappearance spread across the country, I wondered, “What can I do?” and “How can I make a difference?” Being a young Black woman, I felt helpless and without an answer.

My path as a journalist during this time was to reach out, ask questions, and allow others to share their voice. I spent a week interviewing over 50 Black college students to create the multimedia project: “Uncensored: Being Young and Black in America.” My team and I covered how the BLM protests are affecting the “Trayvon Martin generation,” the invisibility pushed onto Black women and how Black college journalists are navigating their grief and careers. During an emotionally tumultuous time for Black people, reporting, interviewing, and sharing minority voices felt monumental to my advancement as a reporter.

For me, it’s important to detail lived experiences in my reporting — addressing contemporary culture and how it will subsequently affect underrepresented communities. At its core, my reporting focuses on community. Attending junior college and then a historically Black university diversified my reporting, allowing me to focus on hyperlocal issues. For years I felt my collegiate experience was unconventional, but my unique journey brought versatility — something I believe is crucial in journalism.

Every story I’ve written has brought minorities or underlying issues within a community to the forefront. My incessant questioning and need to serve others are why I actively choose to pursue a career in journalism.

As the Student Representative for the Online News Association’s Board of Directors, I’ve spent my time navigating the future of journalism for young people and believe [redacted] is actively working on doing their part as well. Based on the experiences I’ve cultivated throughout my undergraduate career, I know I would be a strong addition to the [redacted].

Cover Letter 2:

I told my professor before I graduated college that I wanted to get a freelance byline in a major publication. “That’s not likely to happen,” he said. I told him I’d prove him wrong — and I did.

My first freelance byline was with Teen Vogue reporting on the limited clothing options for plus-size college students in Tallahassee. Once published, I had several women reach out to me about how they’d never seen this hyper-specific issue addressed and that they were grateful others could become educated on the dearth of representation within the retail market. Additionally, the local H&M retail store manager reached out to let me know she’d read the story and was now requesting plus-size options. My professor later apologized and noted that no student from our program had freelanced before, therefore he didn’t think it was possible. In that moment I realized how his rhetoric could easily make other young Black women settle for what is, instead of pushing for what can be.

Attending community college and then a historically Black university diversified my matriculation. For years I felt my collegiate experience was unconventional. But my unique journey brought versatility — something I believe is crucial in this industry. While in junior college I worked 39 hours a week at a fast-food restaurant while simultaneously covering sports for my student newspaper. I spent the rest of my undergraduate career at my HBCU leading a Black and Latinx staff to create award-winning multimedia projects.

[redacted] manages to report on the problems of fast fashion, TikTok trends, and wellness all with the same level of care and expertise. They answer the uncomfortable questions, address the larger issues that will impact my generation, and teach young women to fight for themselves and what they deserve. This is something I’ve learned as a long-time reader of the site. As a [redacted], I’d not only be able to support the team in expanding their coverage but I’d also help to empower other young women who’ve been told they couldn’t.

[redacted] has created an incomparable space for the authentic and unapologetic, something I actively work towards every day. My values, at their core, are to create inclusive and insightful spaces to empower the next generation. Based on the experiences I’ve cultivated throughout my career, I know I would be a strong addition to the team. Thank you for your consideration.

In my second week of sophomore year, I snuck back to my English classroom after the final bell, dodging security who might catch my fingertip-length-defying shorts, to grab the book I’d left. My teacher was Black, so maybe that’s why I entered with my guard down, my voice relaxed, like I was home.

She was talking to another teacher, and I’d been forced to interrupt them. We shared a few words, and before I could leave the room, she asked: “You’re Southern, aren’t you?” I raised my eyebrow, excitement sweeping my entire face. I was. She said she’d heard it in my inflection and chosen words. The second teacher corroborated the sentiment, which only made my reverie all the sweeter as I rushed to make the bus.

I was born in South Carolina and moved to Miami at the age of three, when my father became a football coach there. Growing up, I straddled two cultures — surrounded by Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Venezuelan friends at school, but grounded by Southern Black traditions at home, where Sundays meant church and a home-cooked meal while watching Stomp the Yard for the umpteenth time. Still, in Miami I always felt different, immersed in cultures I couldn’t call my own, which is why summers back in South Carolina reminded me I wasn’t just from Miami. I was from the South.

I spent the last ten days in South Carolina; half at my grandma’s in Lexington, half on a solo Charleston trip. While sitting by the beach, I thought about friends — Northerners and relocated Floridians — constantly asking if I was glad to be away from the South. Despite their earnest smiles, I never feel that way.

I was grateful to be in New York because it meant that a decade of hard work, maternal prayers, and perseverance had led me to my dreams, but no, I’m not sooooo glad to be away from the South. Every time I go to Charleston, I stop by the International African American Museum without fail. This trip, I added a Gullah tour, delving into the lowcountry language and culture that outsiders tried to call “broken English.” As I revisited the history of this city, this state, and the Southern United States, I couldn’t help but feel immense pride. I'm frequently asked about going back home and not wanting to visit plantations and museums because it’s “sad to see,” but I feel quite the opposite.

I often say I’m as “Slave Black” as it gets.

I was born in SC; so were my parents, their parents, and their parents before that.

I’ve watched friends cringe as I say it, or feel apologetic, their bodies recoiling as if I’d just used a slur. They’d add in, “Girl, you’re more than that.” But I am nothing if not living proof that my ancestors survived hundreds of years of brutality — something I wouldn’t ever be able to withstand. I think because of our detachment from slavery, the way we’re taught about it in school, it seems as though we should tiptoe around its existence.

Especially Black people that immigrated here. They’re indoctrinated to believe that they’re the lucky ones, different from Black Americans because they can cling to another flag, one without strips and reminders of the harm done to people that look like them.

My mother grew up in Lexington, my father in Neeses. Both are under two hours from Charleston, home to the largest slave port in North America, where 40% of enslaved people were mercilessly auctioned. My family only made it a few hundred miles from where it all began, and never left — a truth I always want acknowledged. I’ll never be ashamed to say it. Now, more than ever, I want to remind people of where I come from — the Black Southern folk who lived against all odds.

In April 2025, the Trump administration targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture as “divisive,” prompting its director’s resignation. Trump has since ordered a review of Smithsonian exhibits on slavery, calling them overly “woke” and claiming they ignore America's “Success” and “Brightness.”

Two years ago, I took the train from New York to D.C. with my parents and visited that museum. Reading the exhibits, I felt enraged, harmed, and powerfully alive. As a Black Southerner, my existence is tied to the scars of my ancestors.

Online, I see the far right pushing to erase these brutal truths. In person, I hear Northerners claim New York and blue states are the only safe spaces for people like me. Both sides press against me with a force stronger than gravity. It’s suffocating. Despite their differences, they’re chasing the same goal: making the South and its complicated, painful history vanish. That erasure is why I cling so fiercely to my Southern identity — forgetting it means losing part of myself.

Every year, as hurricane season approaches, memes flood the internet joking about sawing off Florida or telling Texas and North Carolina that because of how their majority voted, they deserved whatever natural disasters swung their way.

It feels lazy and harmful when people write off the South as beyond saving or suggest it should be erased. Many Black and brown people can’t just move to expensive blue states — and some won’t, because their entire family history is here. Why should Black people be forced to leave the South when our ancestors built this place?

I don’t believe in diaspora wars, and absolutely refuse to partake in them, but moving to New York City and being surrounded by African and Caribbean Black folk has made it even more glaringly clear as to why there’s this belief that Black Americans have no culture. It’s because every day, we willingly participate in the hush-hush mentality of our story, which muddies most people’s understanding of just how much of America relies on our culture and history. But when that foundation is diminished to being “too sad” or “unproductive” for our future, we’re saying the South is unworthy of our preservation.

On the first day of my freshman year of high school, we were sent in groups of four to meet with our guidance counselor. I was just high off the tracks of middle school, where I spent three years jokingly claiming to be Dominican, like my best friend. Everyone was Latino there. No one was just Black, and I thought being from America wasn’t interesting enough. Our guidance counselor went around individually, asking us where we were from: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, all of which were thrown out. She got to me, and before asking, said that I was gorgeous and very exotic-looking. She wondered what island I was from, and a part of me laughed.

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I should’ve said Africa by way of the Middle Passage. Instead, I smiled and said I was Black American. She cooed as if saying, “That’s fine too.” The next morning, during my theatre class’s roll call, the question of the day was, “What are you?” Again, an onset of Caribbean and South American countries were shared. I remember the Black boy who went before me said he was Jamaican and Native American, which made me feel even more alone. When it was my turn, I stood up and said: “I’m just Black.”

The class roared with laughter. The two other Black students after me were biracial and then Black and Native American. I was Aiyana, just Black. It wasn’t a joke to me — it was true, but maybe I should’ve said Black American, to show I wasn’t lacking, but holding onto something.

With Florida’s teaching of critical race theory under attack by DeSantis, it feels even more important to go home. I want to visit Florida’s historic landmarks. I want to spend time in South Carolina with my grandma, on the same streets she used to drive down in fear of the KKK. My existence, and my open admiration for the South, is a loyalty etched in bone.

A few weeks ago, I watched a Subway Takes video saying that all Northerners should be required to live in the South for a week. Kereem quickly rebutted, disagreeing, and it reminded me of everyone’s response to the South once they’ve settled in a place like New York City. It’s easy to forget, to act as if you’re better off because you’re not faced with the oppressive discrimination and flamboyant racism Black and brown people are in Southern states. However, I think it's a disservice to you and this country not to witness it with your own eyes. We all need to sit with the sadness you might feel walking through a place like Magnolia Plantation. Understand that so many streets you’re passing in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, with newly renovated buildings and distance from the past, are built atop graveyards.

After you sit with that feeling and that understanding, ask yourself why it makes you uncomfortable. Ask why you think not existing next to is far better than remembering what comfort is built on.

As a Black Southerner living in New York, I think about the Great Migration — when millions left the South to escape Jim Crow, and the South’s Black population dropped from 90% in 1910 to just over half by 1970.

Now, it’s reversing. Black New Yorkers are moving back South. My sister sees it in Facebook groups every week — someone complaining about Lexington’s lack of good pizza. Black Americans in the North are being priced out of these same major cities you claim are better for them and heading below the Dixie Line.

Which is why dismissing the South is illogical; there is no Black existence in the United States, in any region, without the South.

Even if I spend the rest of my life living in New York City, I will never shut up about the South. I will never stop remembering, loving, visiting, and pouring into it.

Andre Leon Talley said it best: “At the end of the rainbow that has led me to a successful career in the world of fashion… I find that the things most important to me are not the gossamer and gilt of the world I live in now, but my deep Southern roots… what matters is a sense of place, a sense of self.”

I used to believe I wasn’t enough of anything. I wasn’t Southern enough because my words didn’t stretch like my cousins’. That I’d never belong in Miami because my ancestors’ ship didn’t go on to Haiti, Brazil, or somewhere exotic enough.

If all I ever am is just Black, I now know that holds the weight of the world, of this country. Every day that I spend writing, speaking, and pursuing my dreams with no inhibitions, I serve my people proudly. And that is worth never forgetting.

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• Most of you are probably very familiar with Andre Leon Talley. If you aren't, I hate that you didn’t get to love him while he was alive. But it’s never too late to learn about his beautiful and complex time on this earth. A.L.T. is my favorite memoir by him, although The Chiffon Trenches sits right next to it. A.L.T. simply produced one of my favorite quotes, that I featured in this essay here.

• Also, if you don’t know Brea Baker, you should. A friend introduced me to her a few weeks ago, and her book Rooted, and I’ve loved it so far. Go read that as well.

NYC doesn’t feel like home.

Isn't it sad to let go of a dream? To forcibly release a plan you’d glued together with glitter, Elmer’s, and a 9 year old’s aspirations. They said Home was tethered to our hearts, and mine was in a city thousands of miles from where I laid my head at night. Twenty-two years worth of New York City dreaming; a place built for me and all my aspirations.

My wants would be approved here. My dreams would be held. I'd glide across the Manhattan bridge in bumpy trains, with the sunset staring back at me, and I’d know: this is where I belong. I pictured it through my tiny, rose-colored lens. Nothing could convince me I’d ever feel better anywhere else.

But what happens when the dream is realized?

Isn’t it quite rare to do the thing you’ve said you would for more than a decade? The dream is no longer something you grasp at when your eyes are closed but an enigmatic reality strong-arming you through the frigid winter.

I’m 25 and I don’t dream anymore.

I close my eyes praying for magic and am left with darkness. My city at 9 is my city at 25, but what if I don’t fit here the way I imagined? If this beautiful kingdom is not actually made for me, am I banishing my younger self to the desolate cellar filled with all her other failed realities?

Was she wrong for wanting this?

Am I wrong for not wanting it the way she needed me to?

Is everything up to this moment pushing me away from this intangible dream?

I so badly want to dream, but in this city they’ve escaped me. I cannot breathe in this winter storm. I don’t feel connected to its summer heat. And if I lose my soul’s connection, will it be worth it? Am I going to let my body float aimlessly as she looks for a real sense of home?

Is it okay to have a new dream?

Is it alright to find a new home?

What does it truly mean to feel at home?

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I’m on a plane back to New York City as I write this. My old work always inspires my new words, and as I parsed through the blurbs lost in my Notes app, I got stuck on this exact entry. I’m 27 now. And this month marks my four-year anniversary living in New York City.

It was this week, August 2021, when the East Harlem streets welcomed me into its world. My body sunk into the too-large-for-my-shoebox-bedroom air mattress as I forced myself to fall asleep. My parents had just made their way back to JFK, and I tried to act like something inside me wasn’t being eaten alive. The tears came anyway — and only lessened once sleep finally made its way onto my windowsill.

I think about that night often. My first true moment alone in New York City; something I’d been wishing and dreaming about since I was a little girl. This was the only place I could have a real career in fashion media. This would be the place I’d finally fall in love — meet my The Bold Type best friends, date men who actually liked me. Everything, everything was meant to start here.

I thought running away from Florida would give me the life I was searching for, but as Confucius said, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Every month, every year that passed pulled me further from who I thought I was. And I couldn’t decide if it was for the better.

This is not to diminish the greatness I’ve experienced, career and friend-wise. If anything, the joys I’ve had are what made it painfully clear that something wasn’t fitting. And it was me.

The magic of living here dissipated the moment I realized how expensive it was just to exist. I went from a cup-half-full, bright-eyed budding journalist to barely scraping by — paying rent and bills, fumbling through random MetroCards stuck to the bottom of my purse, hoping to find an extra $2.75.

I went from loving New York to adopting a new mantra: NYC’s biggest hater. It felt like everything was happening to me, not for me — a chaos intensified by the valid trauma of a former friend who once claimed this city as their own, making it hard for it to ever feel like it could truly be mine after they’d harmed me.

I thought it was quirky — even cute — to misdirect my frustration at the city itself, when really, I was angry at what it meant to be starting over thousands of miles from home. I was grieving the Southern safety I’d grown up in. I blamed New York — its speed and scale — as if the lifestyle I’d chosen, romanticized, glittered in wishing dust, was somehow responsible for my lack of preparedness.

Whether it be Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York City, there’s always an annual influx of transplants moving for career or personal gain. I was no different. If I wanted to work at one of the best fashion magazines out there, I had to be in NYC.

Every scroll on social media reminded me of the many new faces venturing into the city to begin again. I used to scoff at the slew of Midwest, LES-living, sorority girls who’d go viral talking about their social bubble that never ventured past Flatiron. How they feared the train, or claimed they weren’t participating in gentrification because they, too, “deserved” to live wherever they wanted.

I felt different from them — because I wasn’t thin or white or blowing money on an Equinox membership — but I was shitting on NYC in different ways.

Like their trivial complaints about stores, I focused all my energy on everything that was mentally dragging me down. It was three years ago, on my way home from work, I decided to take the bus instead of the train. One of those Coach-like ones that cost $6.75, but spared me two transfers to Flatbush. I walked a different way from the office, landing in front of a Starbucks I knew well — one that had someone else’s name, and the memories attached to him, written all over it.

I sat on the bus and scribbled in my Notes app about just how much I hated this town. I posted it to Instagram and wallowed in my feelings. It said: “I hate New York City because I can’t exist here without being reminded of you.”

Instead of relishing how far I’d come — how I could say his name without crying, how it didn’t hurt as much anymore, how the nightmares finally stopped — I focused on the negatives. I let the things that existed on every corner feel like dead ends instead of markers of growth.

It’s easy to move away from home and believe nothing will ever hurt you again. That leaving behind childhood trauma means it won’t follow you — won’t sink itself into the new blocks you call home. But the memories become signs, reminders that grow into skyscrapers. Soon every street has a name. Every avenue sings a tune you can’t escape.

But it doesn’t have to be dreadful. It doesn’t have to discredit an entire city.

It took time, healing, and growth to realize that New York was never going to save me from myself. And, in truth, I don’t think I ever really needed it to. Like many transplants who go online and bash the city for being too different from their idealized perception, I think what I really craved wasn’t permanence — it was control. And having neither flipped my fragile world inside out.

Being here has meant reopening old wounds at every passing subway stop. I’ve been forced to sit in discomfort, to unlearn habits that once felt like safety nets. I hated the city because I couldn’t figure out how to make it feel like mine.

But the moment I stepped back — when I stopped trying to take ownership of an entire area code — I found joy again. I found hidden gardens to heal in. Quiet corners with Bodega cats that asked for nothing in return. I stopped demanding NYC to become a glittery fairytale, and I began to see it for what it truly is: a real place. Not just a canvas for my aspirations, or a haunted city clinging to my worst memories, but a city built by natives, by Queer icons, by creatives, and by Black and brown people — many of whom can no longer afford to live in the only home they’ve ever known. A home I so willingly took for granted.

I often think about the final two weeks of my fashion internship in New York City. It was the summer of 2018, and I was staying with my best friend in Harlem, right off 125th Street. The Whole Foods had been open just over a year. The clash between the hot, sweaty breath of the trains and the chilled whoosh of the expensive grocery store’s sliding doors gave me sensory whiplash every time I stepped off the 2 train.

But what always stopped me cold was the older Black man sitting in a foldable lawn chair, holding a sign that read: “Rent is too damn high.”

I never got his name. And all these years later, I wish I had.

Because eventually, I became one of the thousands of transplants — loud, overzealous — ushering themselves into a city with its own scars and systems, trying to strong-arm the magic out of it because it no longer met the impossible standard we’d set.

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New York is made of dreams, yes, but also of deep realities. I’ve realized I can’t just show up in someone else’s sandbox, kick out all their sand, demand they buy new sand, and leave when it no longer suits me.

I don’t know if New York will be my forever, but it is my right now. And the only way I’ll ever be part of its ecosystem is if I release every fairytale expectation I once placed on it.

Moving to any major city to find yourself is part of adulthood. But it comes with the responsibility to step outside of yourself. It’s okay to start over. To find a new dream, a new home, until the right one fits. But it’s not okay to blame a city for why you just can’t make it work.

Sometimes you are the problem, not the city. And that’s okay to admit.

As a fashion person who covers size diversity issues, the phrase “Clothes should fit you. You shouldn’t have to fit into clothes,” is something I say often. I think transplants put that same idea onto the cities they move to.

Four years ago, I bought a signature mini Hanifa dress from The RealReal. It was an XXL and I couldn’t even get it over my head. I’ve lost 100 lbs since then, and I decided to try it on this past week.

It still didn’t fit.

Only now, I could squeeze my changing body into it — the buttons still refusing to close. Maybe that’s New York for me. I’ve changed myself to survive here. I’ve contorted my limbs to fit within the constraining viscose material, trying not to let the ill-fitting sleeves drown my entire being. But maybe I was never meant to wear the dress. Maybe its thick material wasn’t meant to cover me.

Looking back, it makes me sad. I set New York up to fail — held it hostage to a fantasy crafted by my own insatiable need to become something more than I already was. I don’t see it that way anymore. And I hope other transplants won’t either. This city existed long before me: beautiful, complex, flawed.

And one day, it will exist without me.

Hi, captains! I’ve been writing and rewriting this essay for a few weeks now trying to decide if it would be the first one I post. If it even made sense — if it was too personal and sticky, and if you’d even understand it without having years of context. I didn’t know how to connect any strings at first, but I decided to start here. Because I’m finally, slowly beginning to find the words.

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There are rooms we’re all forced to step into that shrink upon entry. Moments stuck in time that braid into our nervous system. I think I was born to be larger than the sky; if you asked my mother, she’d tell you God moved oceans and mountains for my existence to be here. And yet, somewhere along the way, I let that belief system drift into the unknown.

It was this time three years ago when I sat on a sticky wooden bench in some grunge bar in the Lower East Side, across from a boy I once knew. I didn’t recognize the man staring into my summer-swollen face, even though teenage Aiyana always thought he’d sit comfortably in her orbit, in this lifetime and the next. Over the loud mumble-rock blaring into every pore on my supple skin, his voice ricocheted in and out of frame as he leaned close, toward the left side of my body. It had been four years since we’d spoken — since I’d seen him in person, after telling myself never again. I punctured the inside of my cheek trying to strong-arm any composure I had left. You owe it to her, I thought: My 17- and 19-year-old self who’d managed to crawl through acrid mud — barbed wire twirled at the perimeters of her lacerated elbows — and make it out of that silent purgatory.

He asked me if I was happy and I said, Yes. He prodded at a number scale, and when I said I was at a nine on his convoluted happy-o-meter (because I wanted to save my 10), he scoffed as if I were just some naive child still living with pretenses about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. He rambled on, saying that he’d been indecisive about showing up tonight (even though he was the one who invited me). He was scared of who I’d become. Worried that I thought too highly of myself now, that I was arrogant. That I’d changed. Never mind the fact that we were blindly walking across a minefield set to explode a few months from now.

He placed his cherry on top, adding that I was so emotional, so boy crazy when we were younger, laughing off any harm he’d done as if it were my fault I’d tumbled down the jungle gym, even though he’d forced himself onto my body without asking. I couldn’t hear myself think inside that bar. The straw floating inside my watered-down ginger ale was the only thing keeping my hands in place.

The fortified boundaries I’d built to stay alive believed the mature response was poise — to hold my breath even longer, even if that meant letting another piece of myself drown. I told him I’d gotten myself here, but he’d made me into the woman I was today. A glint of light, as if sparking a flame, ran across those brown eyes I’d once trusted so purely. I thought it was brave then, but after I’d finally seen his egoism — disguised as devotion — I realized I’d only fueled the fire.

I wish I had yelled, screamed alongside the unknown rock band spewing out of the speakers, banging into the chipped black walls of this hellscape. I wish I had said, fuck you and your fuck-ass haircut, and that potentially fugly apartment in bum-fuck town I’ll never have to see. I wish I had called him a bitch or said: Actually, you’re an extremely odd individual. And I do not want to talk to you ever again.

In so many words, I wish 24-year-old Aiyana had the gall and relentless emotional propensity that Amaya Espinal has. Like almost everyone down my timeline, the past few weeks have been spent watching Love Island via the Peacock app or through TikTok clips and post-game video DBQs. But for me, this season was a cracked mirror, and every shard reminded me of what it costs to be an emotional woman in public.

Yes, the argument that Amaya is too much — coming from the men in the villa and outside viewers — is valid. Sometimes, watching her, I cringe at the way she’s able to suck all the air out of the room, gathering enough wind to hurl out every emotion. Sometimes her sharpshooting aims at the wrong target, releasing her raw voltage onto everyone in the vicinity. Sometimes she gets it wrong and doesn’t let the other person speak.

I don’t want to wholeheartedly see myself in all her torrential candor but I respect someone who won’t let you leave without knowing exactly how they feel.

I spent years carrying my pain alone, stuffing it deeper into my own reservoir until one day it exploded all over my parents’ carpeted floors. I went back home to Miami for two weeks and cried every day, the weight of my entire life, of every moment that hurt me in some way, had been stuffed to the brim of my own mental chamber. So much so, it was compounded by that former friend. His baggage carried enough years and emotional debris to warrant its own landfill.

I lay in a fetal position in my twin-sized bed, my mother latching onto me like a bear to her injured cub, as my father said: Right now, you’re drinking the poison and expecting it to kill him. His words stuck with me and it’s the reason I’ve dedicated my life to being too much — too emotional, too loud, too honest, too in love. Everything that touches my inner altar will see the light of day. I’d spent my entire life taking it on the chin out of fear. Fear that if I spoke my mind I’d have to lose something in exchange — my friends, love, my family.

I’d rather let my mind and its immediate words run wild than ever let their decaying emotional waste fester inside my sacred body.

I grew up believing my emotions were distractions, tethered pieces of myself too ugly for validation. To be composed in the face of chaos was a false victory I’d wanted desperately, clinging to my superfluous podium like a lifeline. It didn’t make me better to be silent. It didn’t make any of the aches hurt less. It didn’t protect me from condemnation or save me from myself.

So maybe Amaya is too much. Maybe she can be maddening, overwhelming, and desperately emotional. But I’d rather be that. I’d rather burn bright than smolder in silence.

Women have been crucified for far less.

That former friend crucified me too. He called me arrogant when I’d held my tongue through most of our friendship — swallowed his storms, weathered his contradictions. My best friends lashed out at me for being the founding member of his self-righteous cult. Submissive to his aggression, trapped in our tangled boundaries, and yet somehow, I was still “too much.”

Now, I’d rather learn to rein it in, clean up my spilled milk, take it back (say sorry when necessary, like Amaya did), and lose some things along the way if it means I’ll never lose myself again. I’ll never drink the poison. I’ll never shrink to fit a room that was never built for me. Every time I raise my voice, cry in public, or take up too much space, I’ll remember what it took to survive the silence. And I’ll do it loudly — for every version of me that didn’t know she could.

I’ve been eyeing these Vibram shoes and it feels like they’re taunting me. As someone really leaning into all my hobbies, which now include hiking and an array of outdoorsy things, I’ve been wanting to get a pair for well over six months, but as a size 11, flat-footed warrior, I’m terribly concerned with how they’ll fit.

I also — as you’ll learn through this here newsletter — have commitment issues when it comes to buying myself things: Whether it be my constant belief that a few months from now, when my bank account is in the negatives and my service is crap, so my mother hasn’t seen my text message yet and the next two J trains are 1 and 35 minutes away, I’ll regret not having that 120 dollars I spent on freaky-deaky toe shoes or just that I simply won’t use them enough. Either way, they’ve been following me. I’ve spotted them at two Hike Clerb events, where I then spent several minutes complimenting and pestering the wearers asking about their fit, if they’re comfortable, do they actually feel like you’re walking on the ground, so on and so forth. The reviews have all been stellar which has me leaning into finally drafting these bad boys into my wardrobe. Stay tuned and if you see me walking around in my Vibram shoes don’t be afraid to show some love so I won’t regret my purchase!

Is it possible to get a media job in NYC without knowing someone on the inside?

I wanted to answer this because there truthfully isn’t a solid yes or no. I think overall, media right now is in a very complicated place. With the onset of layoffs and minimal hiring it is even harder to get a job in 2025 than it was just a few years ago when I was applying in 2021 — and even back then we were still worried about the limited opportunities for recent graduates. And that fear has only gotten worse as we now have mid-level people getting laid off and applying for jobs that recent grads might also be looking at. While I absolutely believe it’s possible (because I’ve seen it done in the last year) I always tell young people, especially Black and brown journalists of color, it does not hurt to spend equal amounts of time building strong relationships with people in the industry as you do honing in on your craft. Can you get hired without knowing anyone? Yes, it’s very possible, but having someone on the inside pushing your resume forward, following up with hiring managers on your behalf, or even just being liked enough at their job that others will believe in whoever they put forth does not hurt you. So definitely spend time building real, genuine relationships. (I can talk ad nauseum about surface-level networking, and can do that at a later date). Spend time fostering connections laterally and also with the media folk that are only a few years older than you, not ten. They’ll likely have more time to submit referrals and follow up versus senior level people who are vastly busier.

How do you decide on a career path when you have multifaceted interests?

You do it all! Maybe it’s because I’m a Gemini who finds joy in so many things (that it sometimes drives me mad), but I’ve never subscribed to limiting myself. Has it at times made me feel not as developed into a niche like some of my colleagues? Absolutely, but it’s not what ultimately makes me happy and that’s what your career should do. As a journalist, I was often told I needed to focus on one thing, one niche, and build out from there. I think it’s a beautiful thing to love and be interested in multiple crafts — from writing, editing, screenplay writing, acting, etc. I think when you’re young it comes across as indecision and apathy, so test out to see if you love multiple things or you’re just scared to try, so you start and stop a slew of projects. I decided that my senior year of college the strongest passion calling me was fashion journalism, so I decided to put all my energy into that. Two years ago, while still loving fashion, I decided to take my first creative writing class as an adult because I knew fiction writing was a dream of mine. Because I saw that I could lean in and focus for a few years on one of my many passions I then allowed myself to slowly open up the next one. Balancing is difficult, but if you want to do it all at the same time go right ahead, you just have to decide if you have the bandwidth, especially if you also want a full-time job in media.

One moment that’s always stuck with me came during Season 20. Laurel — arguably one of the strongest, tallest, most badass women I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching — continually belittled the awkward, outsider horse-girl Cara Maria, who’d later become the face of the franchise after years of self-discovery. Two sides of what has always felt like my coin.

After weeks of bullying and intentionally thrown competitions to get her out, Cara Maria managed to evade every hurdle. And somehow, she found herself at the end — right alongside Laurel. Their rivalry had reached a fever pitch. I remember watching, stoic and wide-eyed, as they sat cross-legged in the bathroom, whispering ninth-hour strategy just moments before the final — a game now worth over a quarter of a million dollars.

Laurel looked her dead in the face and said, “Right now, I feel like I’m taking you, a JV player, to a final when I’m on Varsity.”

And the truth was, Cara Maria was no Laurel — not by a long shot. But for better or worse, she had made it to the end when so many hadn’t. She’d proven herself — useful, malleable, adaptable — and yet, in Laurel’s eyes, she was still a JV player.

But if Cara Maria was on JV, then to me, she was at least the captain.

That moment shaped me in more ways than I knew. I never wanted the world to see me as a JV player. But in many parts of my life, I was — even if I, too, had dodged every hurdle and landed in Varsity spaces.

How do you not feel like an imposter in a world constantly reminding you that you’ll never be enough — physically, emotionally, existentially?

You hold space for that ache. You learn to cherish the version of yourself that made it here. You own it because you still made the team.

Welcome to the JV Captains’ Club.

This is for the people who’ve always felt good, but not quite good enough. Always on the cusp of greatness, but never fully crossing over — lingering at the precipice of popularity.

For the Lady Bird truthers who know, deep down, that this might just be the best version of ourselves.

JV Captains’ Club will be a space for me to explore the thoughts I usually keep hidden. For the conversations with people I admire who’ve felt left behind. For the books and media I adore — the ones the world barely gave three stars.

It’s high time we embrace where we’re at. To linger here. To relish in the years before we make Varsity.

Because sometimes, the most sacred part of becoming is learning to love the middle — not yet who you’ll be, but no longer who you were.

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