Sometimes I chip away at myself, thinking I’m making myself in her image. And in those moments, she’s never farther away.

This year started with a deep exhale that said I give up. What I’m doing, who I’ve been, it just doesn’t work. It was like I was clocking in at a workplace called “being myself.” All too aware that authenticity was a goal that felt achievable if everything else was outside my grasp. I could embody being myself in a way that wasn’t accessible to people who had taken different paths. And along the way, I even praised myself for doing such a “good job”, taking arbitrary stock of the ways one can assert being themselves.

Recently, I heard someone say that getting to know yourself isn’t a group project. Everyone who meets you meets a different version of you. So it would be a fracturing pursuit to try to synthesize all those versions of yourself. And on some level, I’ve always understood this instinctively. I have been myself despite my best efforts to fit in, to play nice, or get along. And trust me, I’ve tried. And these periods have always closed out in various lengths of self-imposed isolation, spent recouping what I had lost.

Before this year, I had already begun to give up. But giving up looked like not loving my body, not taking care of my mind, letting tension dictate the direction of my days. Most of all, I was obsessed, on some level, with asserting who I was into every facet of my life. My opinion was always present, if not outright spoken. I proudly wore solitude because it told people who I was. I was wearing a costume of all the things I thought suited me best, and despite the rank smell of my unwashed costume, I religiously showed up to my one employee job.

I couldn’t understand, wouldn’t fathom, why this seemed to correlate with one of the most deeply unhappy times in my life. I was achieving, at least in the echo of my own mind, so many of my former ambitions. But I was the ouroboros of my own Achilles heel. I had taken my best instinct and made my silent audience into the protagonist. And I imagine the people around me, who love me, wondered why I was trying so hard.

Frankly, it was the death rattle of immaturity, the expression of having missed one or many of the chapters that more integrated minds read on the road to adulthood. I was always in such a rush to not be a child that I made the honest mistake of never learning the basics. Performing individuality is not the same as being yourself.

There are, I’m proud to say, so many things I like about myself. Including the narcissism that feeds creative writing. The hyperfixation of the author’s experience. And what followed my deep exhale was, in true fashion, a period of intense isolation, one where there was no one to perform for. In fact, I lived in a community that loathed self-expression, and I felt no temptation to assert myself. I wanted to love my body again. I wanted to take care of my mind. And I wanted to do right by the people around me, because it actually felt good to be relied on.

By the end of the year, many things had changed. I never took my former employer up on their offers to come back to work. And in a lot of ways, I forgot who I was. I stopped thinking about it. I grew entirely bored and apathetic toward my own thoughts, outside of writing. The freedom was glorious.

And as one might imagine, my life started to flourish. I felt closer to people; I had more authentic conversations. My confidence exploded! Not the wiry feral beast that used to go by that name. But the subtle, steady steps of someone moving in a direction, completely unfazed as to why and where it was going. I had submitted to exactly how much and how little I knew.

What I did know at that point was that I was tired of being alone; it no longer bore sweet fruit. I had in part consumed myself in the absence of another, overshooting self-exploration because there was no chapter after the finale. That I was simply was, just like all natural fixtures. And as benevolent as fate tends to be, I met my person on an unassuming day when isolation ended, and my mind was free of the trap of trying to be myself.

I had realized, in no part for lack of effort, something I had always wanted, and it felt like a gift just like it’s supposed to. But habits, and especially the ones with deep neural pathways, are the roads most traveled. And through the eyes of love, what looked back at me, unwashed, was the costume I used to love, and now it spoke to me with the confidence of someone with security. I found myself playing the role of ‘myself’ when the ugly sister of sensitivity, insecurity reared its head.

At the whim of a new depth of feeling, I curdled when I felt a lack of control. I wasn’t out of control because love was unkind, or because it wasn’t healthy. Exposed by the costume that served no purpose. And now I was, in fact, not alone. I was just as afraid as anyone else. So, when I let go of the control I wanted to wield over him and myself. I was someone, frail and insecure. Who said the quiet parts out loud. And as cathartic as that was, I was not an echo chamber. And my life was now two experiences that lived side by side. So when I chose control over authenticity, I could see, in a way made manifest, the real harm it caused.

When I’m stressed, I white-knuckle control. When I sense change, which used to be my constant. I sit down, with my back to the wall, my grip fused by raw fear. And I hold onto whatever I think will shield me from being seen for what I am. But what we fear becomes our master.

I am afraid of losing control of who I become; I’m afraid of being wrong. I’m afraid of many things that need not be listed. More than anything, I’m afraid of losing the sense of closeness I’ve gotten from this new life I occupy. And the sacrifice is being seen, losing control, and saying the wrong thing. And in saying that, it does not undo my desire to have control or be right.

The only thing it does is remind me that on even given day, who I am is enough. Not who I think I am, not who I want to be. Just the person who shows up when I open my eyes.

Sometimes, in moments of stress, I still feel tempted to assert myself the way I used to. Sometimes I still make the honest mistake of assuming that’s the road to becoming who I want to be. Sometimes, in my relationship, I wear that armor because I think it’s what suits me best.

But I’ve never been closer to the elusive character I call myself than when I’m not thinking about who I am, or who I want to be; I’m just being.

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” - Jane Austin from Emma

Some of us are so adept at loving other people. That the pursuit of it alone builds narratives like the ones so beautifully woven by writers like Jane Austin. Who never married, never ‘achieved’ the conventional union all her characters sought. The ultimate state of love in the customary sense is love’s supreme intention to bind two people ‘forever’.

“I shall think of you at sunset, and at sunrise, again; and at noon, and forenoon, and afternoon, and always, and evermore, till this little heart stops beating and is still.” - Emily Dickens from Love Letters to Susan Dickinson

Again, a person so artful in the expression of love, yet unmarried. Arguably, two of the most successful ‘lovers’ lived out rich emotional worlds through the universes they crafted. Most likely inspired, or written to, in this case, to people who were real in the physical sense. The love they experienced was entirely real, if not esoteric by nature, because it did not practically manifest in any other way than the words that readers have ravenously consumed for millennia since their conception.

During the medieval period in Europe, there was a literary and social code, commonly known and referred to as courtly love. Almost entirely enacted by higher social classes, but that could also be because most sources come from said group. And, their access to idle time. In lieu of most marriages at the time being ones of convenience to social ranking, land, and assets. The practice of courtly love was issued. It gave access to couples who could not be bonded in love to show affection. It allowed for flirtation and poems, and gestures of love to be politely exchanged. But it seldom involved corporal love. In fact, the term almost exclusively implies the former. It was meant to be the longing, but none of the culmination. Courtly love was not what you shared with a mistress; it was the game you played with someone you would most likely never have contact with beyond the lust, and possible passing touch of a hand. Longing and lust simply for the sake of the experience of both.

“Though I be long out of your sight, I am your man both day and night.” - Anonymous Medieval Poet

For so many throughout time, it was the longing alone that fueled the passion that so many romantics to this day center their contemporary desires around. The bedrock of even the modern romantic tropes, albeit the pivot from longing alone to longing, trial, to success. In the form of enemies to lovers, or loving the so wrong to so right. But we’ve become less hardy to heartbreak, and at the end of the movie, they usually end up together.

Which I think it was makes stories like Normal People by Sally Rooney so essential to a progressive narrative of love.

“Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him.”― Sally Rooney from Normal People

The story of two people so intrinsically bound by fate to each other, yet, **spoiler alert**, that do not end up ‘together’. At least not in the conventional sense. The story, in so many ways, is a painful exploration of what it is to actually love and be loved. And how the existence of love, even mutually felt by two people, is almost always just another victim of the fate that brought it together. Love doesn’t mean or imply the culmination of anything but the agony of longing so deeply to love another person so entirely that it consumes you. It seldom includes the act of being loved.

Maybe it’s from a purist perspective, but love stories are never about being loved; they are almost always about what it means to love someone else. Even if ultimately the love is returned, and finds its ultimate expression in togetherness.

I am a writer, a poet, and usually a very deep lover. I’ve loved many more times than I’ve been loved. I’ve written, maybe not countless, but quite a few poems myself on the agony of loving without reciprocity. And at times, I’ve chosen to love people who would implicitly never be able to return the affection. Which is a safe bet from a purist lover's perspective. If circumstance dictates a certain amount of being doomed, one is free to entirely unbridle themselves in love without the agony of ever knowing what lies beyond mutuality.

This exploration is not done in the name of analyzing the reasoning behind this handicap. It’s to draw light on the lost art of relishing loving another, which is, I believe, one of the many reasons people experience a certain amount of apathy towards modern dating. Our need to get what we want has also permeated into the thematic sphere of romance.

But, to what avail? We’ve become people who are entirely worried about what it means to be loved in return. What it says about us to be treated a certain way, or what it means to be attached to certain people. The social status of achieving togetherness. And in the mess of orienting our identities around those who love us. Most people have sacrificed what it really means to love another. Which, when done to its highest expression, is a humbling sacrifice of one’s ego.

For fear, so many of us no longer write love letters because what if? What if it ends? What if they don’t love me back? What if my soppy words render me a fool? What if my grand gesture falls on the wrong ears? What if they don’t love me back?

Loving never implies reciprocity; loving another is, in many ways, the selfish indulgence of the esoteric pursuit of defying the practical. Which is what makes it a rich enough experience that so many people who have mastered the practice don’t ultimately achieve the conventional pinnacle.

The songs you listen to are about longing and rarely having, even if your novels are the salve.

There was a time before you, a time before your parents. And that’s where I am now.

I haven’t met your grandfather either, but I know I love him too.

All I’ve known is the life I had before all of you. I know my story well, but I’m so eager to know yours.

Right now, my parents are alive, and it feels naive to imagine that you might know them too. But you should know they loved you, too.

I have a brother. He is my oldest friend. Maybe you’ll get to know him.

I hope he has a family he loves as much as I love all of you.

I live in a time when we often speak about the responsibility we have to the people we bring into the world, and the earth you will inherit.

I hope we made a difference.

When I was very little, the world was still somewhat free from the internet. But, even now, that has changed.

I wonder if you love nature just as much as I do.

I always wanted to live in the forest. Maybe your grandpa and I do.

The world is complicated, and I imagine it still is. But I know you are strong.

You have always been loved, especially by me.

I have always thought of myself as a willow, bending with the wind, in the hope that one day we would become a forest.

I have a dog. Her name is Betty.

You won’t meet her, but she taught me so much about love, at a time when I was young and lost and lonely.

There was a time before all of you, when my path was opaque.

Now, I imagine sitting amongst you all, seeing all the love I carry take shape outside of myself. The feeling in my chest made manifest.

I loved you before you existed. I loved your grandfather, your parents, and you long before we ever met.

I imagined what you would be like. Your names. Your laughter. The way your presence would cast light on the people around you.

If you are reading this, I hope you feel it. The quiet magic of being loved before you arrived.

I am your grandmother. I am 28 years old, sitting with my mom in New York City, falling upward into a life that includes all of you.

I hope you understand that love is the spark for all creation.

One of my longtime friends recently met the woman he will most likely marry. Or at least the first woman he’s met while being my friend who even comes close. Which brings about a challenge specific to a male–female friendship. They are in the early stages, where boundaries and personalities meet and make contact. He mentioned recently that she would prefer him not to speak to any other woman at all. We laughed and started to jest about fake scenarios. One being my place at a wedding, his, where I would most likely be an unwelcome guest.

He said he hoped I would make an outrageous speech. I said, I know exactly the story I would tell. Our friendship is long enough that we’ve seen each other at very low points, and we’ve known each other long enough to laugh at the people we were in those moments. A uniquely intimate access to someone.

He said that would be so messed up.

And I said, I know.

And I said I would choose to tell that story, knowing that by telling it, I would have done something so unforgivable that walking away from our friendship would be easy for him.

And then I said, that’s exactly how I’m fucked up.

There was a blissful time in elementary school when I was part of a little trio. I was friends with twins, one boy and one girl. We would often have playdates, and we associated ourselves with each other.

One day, while ascending the stairs back from the recess that comes after lunch, probably in the springtime, I remember relishing the feeling of the cool cement handrail while we chatted on our way back to the classroom. My friend, the girl of the twins, let me know in a very matter-of-fact way that we would no longer be friends.

The feeling creeps up the front of your chest like someone exposing you. Removing the security of your chest plate to reveal your heart in a naked, ugly way.

About a year ago, I met up with her for coffee. We didn’t discuss the time she broke my heart. But she told me she thought I wouldn’t make a very good mother, and was surprised to hear that that was something I wanted. She thought it wouldn’t suit me.

It stung. I laughed.

Behind me, lurking as all shame does, are the many friendships I ruined or walked away from. Sometimes when I meet people, I feel like it’s something I have to announce. Like an obligation during a job interview to be transparent about my small stint in jail. It’s both a warning and a preemption of a lack of responsibility.

This feeling of shame began that day on the stairs and has compounded with every failed friendship. At first, it was sort of: I have been discarded before. Someone knew me, and they decided I was not worth keeping.

The next time it was: I should not be myself in order to be kept. But rejected nonetheless.

The next one was: by being myself, I am disliked.

Then it was: by choosing myself, I am rejected by those who benefited from my not.

These loops fold into and onto each other and make up the threadbare jacket that covers my back. The shame that barely covers me.

When I was younger, it was not only shame that I felt. The way I internalized these failures, these fallouts, was that I was genuinely flawed. That at the bottom of who I was was someone truly broken or cruel. I did things that caused rifts so large they couldn’t be mended. I didn’t apologize for things that I didn’t feel bad about. I broke rules that I stumbled into.

I toed the line between wanting to be an exemplary friend and wanting to honor my divergent nature, and oftentimes it led to a lack of cohesion. And it always seemed like my friends enjoyed this about me until it became something that didn’t serve them.

If I had ventured to commit this story to words years ago, it would have sounded very different. I would have written about the complicated feelings I had about being so flawed, and about having made such selfish, self-indulgent decisions that involved other people. It would have been somewhat of an open letter of apology to those individuals who used to call me a friend.

At the end of high school, on one of the very last nights, I slept with someone who had a girlfriend. Someone who, mind you, had “cheated” on this girlfriend many times before me. I, however, made the honest mistake of talking about it in the aftermath of our graduation.

I fell extremely hard in terms of social status, but in a lot of ways, I was extremely over the politics of being in high school and was ready to fan the flames of individuality in myself. It left me with a select few friends and an extremely inflamed sense of shame, albeit with a strong, determined attitude to appear as though I was immune to the pain of being a social pariah.

Of the two friends I retained, eventually it turned into one. The story of how I lost the first is a story for another time, but could be summarized as: don’t become fiscally entangled with friends, don’t let them put you in debt to them, and ketamine is a terrible drug.

One day, little to my knowledge, my last friend and I would have our last conversation as friends. I don’t remember it being contentious. He had just gotten a new job and had begun to really thrive. He had a girlfriend he was falling in love with. And he was really starting to love his life.

Years passed. Subtle things, became things that rendered the friendship over for me. One of our mutual friends died. It was complicated in a way that goes beyond a conversation.

Until one day, he reached out to me over an Instagram page that was far removed from the social media he would have had access to. He reached out in a friendly way.

“Hey! How are you doing?”

I wrote him back, saying that, although I wished him nothing but the best things in life, I had created a life that didn’t include him, and that I was not interested in him being in it.

He wrote an extremely long response that was aggressive and brought up my many failures as a friend. I was the only reason for my solitude.

It was in that moment that I thought to myself: Why did you reach out to me if I’m so awful?

Surely if I were such an awful person, you’d be glad to know I was far away from your life. Glad that I wasn’t lurking in the periphery waiting to get my ugliness on it.

It isn’t humiliating to be disliked. It isn’t humiliating to think of the ways my behavior made people turn from me, or the ways I should have acted. The apologies I should have made. It isn’t even humiliating to think of the way people talk about me behind my back.

What’s humiliating is how thoroughly I absorbed the shame of being flawed, until it taught me to believe I wasn’t worthy of choosing friends who truly liked me.

I’m not in elementary school anymore, or in high school. I’m a grown-up who has had just as many failures. But I chose myself every time. And this life, the one I can show the scars I earned to have it, has friendships that span decades, that I keep in the depths of my soul like my most cherished belongings. They have navigated seasons and reasons. We laugh at all the mistakes I’ve made.

I am beyond grateful for the people who saw my flaws and chose to stay.

Pearl Street. The green house. Early 2010s. My brother and I, estranged by puberty, shared a room filled with the soothing background noise of a plastic fan. Your toes stuck to the crudely painted floorboards, textured with sand. Sand that lived in your sheets, your clothes, your cracks. One of those nights, when our parents were far enough away, my brother invited me to smoke weed for the first time. Little did he know, less than 24 hours earlier, had been the actual first time I met my best friend, marijuana.

There was, and is, a sailing school in the West End of Provincetown. A relic even then. A stand-alone building with a large garage-style first floor filled with sailing materials, and above it an apartment owned by the woman who runs the school. A small terrace looked out onto the water. Below it, a cruder one with a bench and nothing else.

It was hierarchical. Ms. A at the top. Beneath her were the handful of instructors and students who had graduated from the program. Below them were junior instructors, anybody who could sail. And below them, the students, ranging from small children to slightly larger small children. A beautifully feral affair. When things went too far, you’d hear the familiar roar of the only adult on the premises.

That summer, I looked older than I was. I’d met puberty early, and people assumed I was 15. But I was 11. I wasn’t interested in sailing. I was interested in unaccounted-for hours and the freedom of being somewhere no one cared what I did as long as I didn’t die. I angled toward those above me in the hierarchy, probably too aware of the ways I seemed like a baby, which was the most telling sign of my age.

I became friends with one of the instructors. After only a few days, I was invited to ride our bikes to her house for lunch. To my surprise, part of lunch was smoking weed. The appetizer, I suppose.

Have you ever smoked weed before?
Yeah, just not out of a pipe like this.

I took one big inhale. A mistake. It ruptured through me longer than I expected. Lunch was a blur, a happy one. And as we headed back to the sailing school, we ran into my parents, together. An odd occurrence. I assume they read my behavior as silly summer antics, the desire to distinguish myself from them. I always found it funny that of all the times to run into my parents, it was then.

Back at the school, I had no desire to sail. I sat in the powerboat with my new friend and fell asleep for the entire afternoon. Unmoving from the position I’d passed out in, I completely sunburned one whole butt cheek. I woke up ravenous and bought a baked good around the corner. I stood at the register long enough to have the novel experience of interacting with someone who wasn’t stoned.

Is that all?
…….
………..
Hello?
Huhuhuhuhu uhhhhh….yeah.
Eye roll.

It wasn’t the beginning of our relationship. Just the first time we really met.

Throughout high school, I wasn’t bold enough to seek it out. If it was around, I participated. At boarding school, I was part of a very small group that regularly smoked weed. If you hung around certain people long enough, you’d be invited. I never bought my own weed. But I was associated with them, the five or six of us with secret spots deemed safe enough for this risky behavior. We weren’t the only naughty students. Almost half of us smoked and drank. We were just, as I would come to understand, “the stoners.”

It wasn’t until a few months into my first year at university that we really started a relationship.

I lay in my single bed on the fifth floor of an aging student accommodation on Russell Square in London. Grey and raining, illuminated by the city. And as the rain pitter-pattered on the single-pane window, at 18, I gave myself my first orgasm.

Afterward, with a newfound sense of the world, I made my first prayer for love. I asked God for someone present, warm, cozy. Someone who wanted to be together all the time. Someone who always had my back. Everything felt magical and new, brimming with new types of pleasure.

A few days later, I met Nevine.

She didn’t like me at first. I was friends with her friends, and she was curious why they liked me. We hung out in a group. I really liked her. She was suave in a way few people our age were. Earthy and proud. Sophisticated in an arrogant way, I liked. She had swagger.

At first, I practically begged for her attention. What I quickly realized was that she always liked having company. Eventually, she enjoyed the way I prickled her and began to notice the softer middle beneath the person I presented. She was charmed by how rarely she was wrong about people.

Nevine smoked weed all day. It was her constant companion. No matter how much she smoked, she never seemed stoned; she just got more relaxed, more insistent on the vibe of her apartment.

A few weeks in, we lay on opposite sides of her bed, taking turns putting on songs. Barely speaking. Just passing the joint and passing the phone to queue songs. It was the most romantic experience I had ever had with someone. I remember thinking how well the prayer had worked and how silly I was not to have specified that I liked boys.

Our friendship became a constant for a couple of years. She was my best friend. My days centered around when we would reunite. I slept at my own place, despite her constantly asking me to stay. I did what I needed to, then rejoined her. Every day was like this. I never tired of her company; we ate, smoked, listened to music. And still, I never owned my own weed.

The agreement was simple: if I didn’t bring my own, I rolled every joint. I became very good at it. Just how she liked.

The only time I didn’t enjoy Nevine was when I felt hazy from constantly smoking. Or irritated by sharing her attention. She didn’t like going out. She liked to host.

Eventually, I changed. I bought my own weed. I liked being in my own house. I craved nights out, different substances, different avenues. I didn’t like the people she surrounded herself with. And to my disappointment, she didn’t want to join me.

At some point, I realized we saw each other every day because I sought her out. I started to resent being someone’s pet.

Our friendship ended in the rain just like it had begun. She asked to talk to me outside, and we stood under an awning.

Have you been speaking about me behind my back?

……..

Your silence tells me everything I need to know.

She walked away. I puked in a trash can. I had been talking about her. I knew it would sting.

By then, I always had weed. I had adopted her habit. The frequency. The attitude. I was someone hard to keep up with.

A few months later, I found myself in my first real relationship. We met on Tinder in Palo Alto during Christmas. I was house-sitting with my mom. Staying in their daughter’s room, she must have been four or five. It was the first time in years I didn’t have access to weed. I got a real haircut. Ate regularly. Loved the temperate Bay air. I felt broken. I had just been kicked out of college, but I felt safe.

That’s when I met Colin.

Colin had a photo of a truck and another of him standing in front of a pile of dead ducks. We matched. He went skiing for a week but was eager to meet when he returned. I sent him photos of my butt, stuffed animals in the background. He sent photos of his meals.

When we met, there was an instant connection. I had never felt so desired. I think he felt lit up by me. Our first date was in San Francisco, and we spent as much time as possible trying to be together. He had to return to his weed farm four hours north, and I was moving south with my mom to Venice Beach. It felt urgent. Like, there was no way I could walk away from what I felt. On the day I left, we looked at each other, knowing this couldn’t be goodbye. He helped us pack. I cried most of the drive south.

I lived in Venice for a while, until it was decided that it would be easier for Colin if I came up to his farm. I packed my bag. Got on a plane with the intention of staying.

The farm was remote. A real bachelor’s pad. In a state of unfinished-ness that made me relieved my parents hadn’t dropped me off. There was a pack of guard dogs. A safe filled with guns. Big plastic containers filled with weed. For the first time in my life, when I rolled a joint, I swept away what fell because there was such abundance. I felt smug knowing my friends in London smoked roaches because weed was in short supply.

He worked. I hung out and cleaned. I wasn’t very domesticated then. I barely knew how to cook. I liked doing laundry. I liked doing yoga. Funnily enough, I started keeping a journal because no one ever wanted to talk. He woke up early and worked long hours, coming in and out of the house. We loved each other in a way that was very quiet. Like a dull ache.

I wanted him to be happy with me. And he wanted me to be happy.

One day, not talking turned into blowing up. We both cried. During the fight, he told me to leave, and I changed a flight I had scheduled weeks later to one the next day. But in the aftermath, we made up. Closer than before, we lay in bed holding each other. That same looming feeling of being torn from the only person I had ever felt this way about. We found each other in that dark room, where the dull ache found some kind of salve in knowing we were doomed.

In the years that followed, all my relationships involved cannabis. I was always post-consumption or on my way. Naturally, the people I liked were of a similar constitution. All my best days involved being stoned. Food was better. Orgasms easier to find. Writing felt more productive. And it always made not talking about important things feel like the wisest decision. Any bad feeling could dissolve after a nice joint.

This past summer, I decided it was time for another break from weed. Something I did periodically. I had walked away from yet another relationship built on the patterns I’d solidified between me, love, and cannabis. A few months later, when I decided the break was ready to end, I had my first weed-induced panic attack. I walked around for almost four hours trying to decide if I was dying.

I tried adjusting the amount. The context. The way I was consuming. Nothing changed. Only panic.

I came to terms with the fact that maybe cannabis and I were no longer on good terms. Worse, I started having these sorts of panic attacks regularly. Dehydration. Low blood sugar. Lack of sleep. Any small discomfort meant box breaths and trying to decide if the anxiety warranted a trip to the hospital.

I guess cannabis and I never really spoke either. We loved each other recklessly. Or at least, I loved her that way. And one day, we broke up — only for me to realize the relationship had probably fallen apart years earlier. She left. And she hasn’t come back.

I think about smoking weed a lot. Sometimes, right before I sit down to eat, is when I miss her most, imagining how much better I could gorge myself if I had just smoked.

In a lot of ways, my life hasn’t changed much since our relationship ended. I picked back up the habits I used to stack with her. Exercising. Writing. Less funny. Less intense. But unchanged in many ways.

The one major difference is that I haven’t been on a single date. Haven’t had an all-consuming crush. I can barely carry on a conversation with someone new, or even someone from my past.

I think about love more now. I’m acutely aware of how much time I spend alone. And not because I don’t want to be with people. I still relish the time I spend in my own company. In the same way, I once relished being stoned.

Recently, I sat in front of a fire I built, after eating a meal I cooked, watching the snow come down. And I noticed I felt the same kind of peace I used to search for through smoking. Just a few thoughts. Just as little worry. The same quiet I was always trying to reach.

See, in a way, I’m just not over my ex. My ex being marijuana. The one I was always dating. Always sleeping with. Like all toxic relationships, we had just enough good to keep me nostalgic. It was always good. And I never expected it to end.

I never wanted it to.

How do I choose who to date without the litmus test of who I like being stoned around? My relationship to pleasure, love, and closeness has been so intertwined with cannabis that in a lot of ways, I’m not sure how to do any of it without that crutch.

My favorite movie, the centerpiece of my budding ideology, was Thumbelina. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Thumbelina is a wish made manifest. A woman who lives in the forest longs for a child, and from a barleycorn, a tiny girl emerges from a flower. One night, she meets the Fairy Prince, ending her lonely existence as the only person her size she knows. They dance and sing, and he flies off into the night to tell his parents he has met the girl. But Thumbelina is stolen by a frog, then a mole, and on and on. Her epic tale becomes treacherous as winter comes. Eventually, she is saved by a sparrow, returned to her Prince, and they live happily ever after. She is made a fairy, embraced by the fairies, and her life becomes one of community and love.

I think it made sense to me that love was about overcoming. That there was a certain amount of perseverance required for dreams to become reality. Hard work went into everything. Passivity meant a lack of devotion and, therefore, made you unworthy. The other archetypes did not appeal to me. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty just waited around, pawns in other people’s drama, only to eventually be found by destiny. I was not buying it, and I did not want it. It did not make sense to me that destiny would find you, and you would have nothing to prove, nothing to work for.

Whether consciously or not, I felt like expectations involved a certain amount of performance. Another layer of earning things. Or maybe just another thing to barter with. Equipped with no material abundance, I could offer myself. And if I performed the most heightened version of myself, I was increasing my value.

I think this was probably confusing for the people around me. It probably did not make sense what I was trying to prove, where my effort was placed, or what my overall goal was.

In my mind, if I asserted myself hard enough, made it clear who I was and how much I could offer, I would have my needs met. Even if I was not entirely sure what those needs were.

In my adult life, this manifested as attracting and being attracted to people who met my needs, which were often access to material things I could not afford, like meals out or excursions. In exchange, I performed a version of myself they liked best. Eventually, I would lose my waning energy. The exchange would lose its equity, and things would fall apart. Almost all my relationships have followed some version of this pattern. I am smart enough to know that is not love. And in the softest part of my heart, I know those stories were just two lonely people trying their best.

It probably did not help that my perception of love involved so much compromise. Which it does. But not in the way I thought. Not the kind I was willing to make in the name of the company and access.

At this point, I have spent a lot of time by myself. Listening to a lot of music about love, reading stories about all the different kinds of love there are. I have been loved by family and friends, and my dog. I have let myself feel loved by strangers, and even more radically, by the earth and its incessant desire to keep me alive. At some point, I even sampled loving myself.

I think when love finds me, it will be much simpler than I once believed. I do not think I have to brave kidnappings or the elements to prove I am worthy of it. I do not think it will require withstanding cruel tempers, cold shoulders, distance, bigoted perspectives, or rejection.

I would like to think that one day I will be out in the world, and someone will sit down next to me. We will just sit there for a while, maybe talking about everything or nothing. And then one of us will suggest getting out of here, and we will start down the long road I now understand love to be.

If I push a little on the feeling in my throat, I can cry at any point in the day. I can feel every single thing that’s stuck in my body on Tuesdays. I can feel the unprocessed sugar in my gut, or the secrets I let fester in the cupboards of my mind. I can feel the thing I never said, the person I’d never admit to missing. I’m hiding in my room and lost in the mall all at once.

I could probably murder someone on a Tuesday. It isn’t a lethargic feeling. It simmers in my veins like I’ve taken some kind of drug. I know the riverscape of my capillaries, veins, and major arteries, because on Tuesdays, I take whatever this substance is. It peaks where my elbows and knees meet. That’s why I think I could probably murder someone on a Tuesday. I can imagine this feeling taking over. I don’t think I’d know when to stop. It wouldn’t be consuming; it would feel cathartic. It feels like what I might need.

The feeling is charged, but my body does feel weak. Like what’s taking me over is toxic. Like it’s ruining my relationships. Like I can’t hold back the fumes of it that waft up through my breath. I say things without checking if I mean them, or not if I mean them, because I do — but if I want that to be something I’ve said out loud. It doesn’t feel good to say them, but it does feel good to let the feeling escape.

I always lose my boyfriends on Tuesdays. No one really likes me on Tuesdays. Well, apart from me. See, I’m still me. Hog-tied behind my eyes. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing wrong or differently on Tuesdays, but I can see how the people around me shrink away. Like I’ve lashed at them, like my facial expression stinks.

Sometimes this feeling, the one that pulsates through me, tells me it’s closer to me than anyone will ever be. It whispers in my ear that it’s the only one who cares about me, the only one who knows what I need, the only one who’s okay with me being ugly and fragile. The only one who has enough space to let me be so needy and mean. It tells me this is who I really am. It tells me people are saying nasty things about me, that they don’t understand me, that they don’t like me for who I really am.

On Tuesdays, I wish I could escape to the forest, the one that’s four hours from the nearest gas station, and another two from the nearest Costco. I wish that when I felt the trickle of it in my bloodstream, I could get in my car and disappear. I wish other people didn’t have to know this about me. Didn’t know the way I change on Tuesdays. I worry that one day, on a Tuesday, someone is going to say the wrong thing to me, and I’m going to murder them, and Wednesday me will have to deal with the mess.

In a way, I want to be alone with this feeling. I don’t want it to go away. I just don’t want to be seen like this. I don’t want to share it.

I wish it could be my little secret that inside me is something so feral. I’m not anyone but myself on Tuesdays. I can’t hide behind learned behavior or a logical mind. Me and my favorite ex in my secret cabin, smoking meth once a month. We make art that makes no sense in the context of my opus. The work I’d never sell, because I can’t look at it.

Tuesday is a metaphor for my period.

****She cackles and howls at the moon.****

‘Hmmmm’ - Yeah, I would like to indulge in ‘What I learned from sleeping with my cousin’.

I think we are too far gone, too deep in the simulation of hyper-reality coined by Jean Baudrillard, and that, apart from the very few, not including myself, the well of intellectualism has been poisoned by a wider societal push, one that replaced profoundness with the perverse.

I think it’s entirely natural for the human condition to seek out intellectual avenues, mysticism, and meaning. In large part, I think the entire reason that we are still here, in our repurposed material shacks, wearing textiles, eating food that has been transported unnatural distances, is that incessant background noise telling us to move, to go, to create, to seek. It drove us out of caves into communities. We applied meaning to the world around us, and then, in reverence to that world, we made replicas of its beauty, stories of its myths, and we adorned it with all the love we felt for it, and the drama of being alive.

My primary point of reference for this piece is going to be the work of Jean Baudrillard. In an attempt to solidify this post-reality piece, I plan to use him as a root to tie this article to a time that was more grounded in ‘reality’ than the one I currently write from.

In 1981, Jean wrote a book titled Simulacra and Simulation; the book serves many purposes, but its primary modality is a criticism of how we, modern society, replaced ‘reality’ with symbols and signs that reference reality, but are replicas, and no longer originals. What this creates is what he calls ‘hyper-reality’, a copy (simulacrum) of the original, a simulation of what reality is, without the same substance as the time when we were a culture and society of originals. He argues that consumerism is one of the primary forces behind this; the need to endlessly produce drains the well of original thought, and replaces it with reworks that reference originals, some of which have been reworked so far beyond their source that we no longer recognize them as copies at all.

I think a great example of this are these three ads, which are obviously references to the very famous painting of the Mona Lisa.

The first image is instantly recognizable despite it being ‘blurred’. We are so familiar with the Mona Lisa that even an amorphous reference is something you can pick out. - clever.

The second image, for Pantene, we know the painting well enough to see what is amiss: her beautiful, perfect hair. Which does not reflect the original. Mona Lisa, if she had Pantene.

The third image, and the most emotive of the three, is for Amnesty International. If you aren’t familiar, Amnesty International is a global movement that campaigns for human rights. Obviously, likening Ms. Lisa to the many women in the Middle East who adhere to the modesty laws put in place by Sharia, which requires women to be entirely covered; what is it trying to say? I’ll let you come to your own conclusion. Either way, regardless of understanding the point it is attempting to make or the organization that the ad represents, it’s potent by and large because of the internal referencing, a classic image, mixed with contemporary socio-economic hot topics.

In his work, he lays out four stages of this process. The first is a reflection of reality. The first copy of the original, the most honest rendering. An example of this would be a portrait. Stage two, distortion of reality. A heavily edited portrait or a rendering of a fictional woman. The third stage, the pretense of reality. A drawing of a woman in ‘the future’. The fourth stage, pure simulacrum. An AI-generated video of a woman with ginormous breasts telling you she loves you.

I think he would have considered himself to be existing in the third stage, the era in the 1980’s where advertising was starting to rule the roost, especially here in the westernmost part of civilization. In no small part entirely intertwined with the growth of capitalism. He foresaw the encroaching, maleficent world of advertising entering our homes, our minds, and eventually every aspect of our lives.

We live, I believe, in the fourth stage. Our lives are almost entirely intertwined with this hyper-reality. Jean Baudrillard could hardly have imagined that his point would stretch so far beyond his conception. That we would carry around tools of advertising in our pockets. Constantly being suggested what to buy next. Things we didn’t know we needed, based on the information we feed it. We so passively became a part of the many layers of simulacra that one hardly even considers how deeply involved they are in a desert of original thought.

Which brings me to my primary point and motivation. Aside from the very detrimental impact that comes from allowing a lack of reality into your conscious waking hours, it has simultaneously over-saturated and underfed the intellectual garden that we all draw from. As humans have lowered their regard for, let’s call it a ‘classical’ education, due to many factors that include things outside of the individual’s control, like poverty and accessibility, we see a rise in the exchange of intellectual simulacra. Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of false information.

As air time becomes the most valuable asset to anyone, instead of a high regard and competitive attitude towards seeking a higher truth, we see a trend towards the absurd, the perverse. What makes this an even more complicated topic is that, unlike the very beginning of this process, which used a type of shock factor that was clearly absurd, many of the things that are, in fact, true now are absurd. The Epstein files, the absolute most important piece of news that exists currently, are, in fact, probably so true that it makes it hard to believe. Or, so true and horrible that one can’t accept how true it is without overwhelming their already overstimulated nervous system. And what is even more curious about the Epstein files is that we have original evidence involved. Photos, emails, and first-person accounts of what happened on Pedo Island. But, because we are so far within hyper-reality already, it almost creates a lack of trust in the original resource. Our minds are so far down the rabbit hole of trying to distinguish between true, copy, and false copy that we no longer have synced perceptions of originals.

People amongst the freer minds like to discuss the possibility of living in a simulation. And it’s given the sci-fi lens. The Matrix is an on-the-nose metaphor for computers taking over the human populace and enslaving us. It’s a potent message, a reflection in many ways of the truth. But, it is nearly an overshoot. We do live in a simulation. But it isn’t the one depicted in movies. It’s the one you welcomed into your home. It’s the one you allowed, innocently, I might add, into every aspect of your life. As you engage less and less with the originals in life, you slowly lose ground in the war against reality.

What I believe is the only medicine, really the palliative care, is a search for intellectual profundity that exists outside the pervasive external forces. Clean the abandoned side streets of the post-apocalyptic cityscapes of your mind. Search for meaning within the continuous decluttering one must do in a world so entirely synthesized with hyper-reality. Find your token, and keep it in your pocket to remind yourself that you are, in fact, not dreaming, as long as you are awake.

The death rattle of being profound. I cautiously move along the irony of the point I’m trying to make.

But, there is something almost tender about it. This desire to mean something. To anchor ourselves in something solid. Even as the ground becomes increasingly synthetic beneath our feet. Hyper-reality is not a villain because it is not real. Maybe it is a mirror, exaggerated, distorted, luminous. Showing us what we value by what we amplify. Showing us what we neglect by what we allow to disappear.

The tragedy is not that copies exist. Copies have always existed. The tragedy is forgetting that they are copies. Forgetting that there was once a texture to things. A slowness. A weight. A consequence. If there is any hope, it is in remembering. In touching something unmediated. In choosing depth over display, even when no one is watching.

Because the fourth stage does not erase reality. It only distracts us from it. And reality, patient as ever, is still there. Waiting for us to look up.

But I am not employed. I have not received a paycheck or filled out a time card in what will soon be an anniversary.

When I first became “conventionally” unemployed, there was an enthusiasm about the freedom I faced, a clear sign of ventures paved by my own hands. There was money around me, and through careful procurement, I could know its riches. And for one brief moment sometime in the summer, I had everything I wanted, and more. But it lacked longevity, and this too was a lesson. - Feeling temporarily satiated is a wicked temptress.

As the fumes of that affair ended, I became truly unemployed, stripped of routine, financial means, and the company that the former implies. I came back to the most essential part of myself: writing, reading, the world of transcending the physical through the ephemeral landscape shaped by words. The deepest part of me is a lush place, where the sky is purple, and the water is shimmery black. The trickle of a bustling brook is the only sound apart from the glide of pages turning or the rhythmic pitter-patter of my fingers dancing along my keyboard.

I have no practical reason to believe in the dream of being a writer, other than the peace it brings me to share my contemplations. I am the man in rags on a soapbox in the square, where a passerby stops for a moment at some salacious comment, then moves on when the content does not suit them.

I pour myself into this work because it’s the longest, purest form of love I’ve known in my relatively short life. This, this place, has never done anything but love me back. And maybe it’s the echo of my own words in a lonely place, but all I hear is I love you, and all I feel is the warm breeze caressing the backs of my knees, the nape of my neck, and sweaty palms.

In the real world, the one I physically exist in, the one not artfully curated for me to escape to, the one that comes crashing in on me when I’ve been gone too long, is the exchange. Outside of the hours I spend curating, I am employed by those who sustain me. I occupy the spare beds, the relinquished bedroom, the leftovers, the things I am given, and the overall generosity of those who wish I did not look so sad outside of the hours I spent locked away inside myself.

In exchange, I do the things those around me cannot or do not wish to do. I am the efficient, multi-purpose tool that can be slotted into any role. Maybe because the real me is so far removed, the one here can be anything anyone else needs.

It is such a chaotic, beautiful clusterfuck. Because I have no job, my life is in service to myself, my family, and anyone my heart yearns to help. I just wish I knew I was at the bottom of the well before my mouth was filled with dirt, because my eyes have been closed, and my fingers are too far gone from the blisters of digging to have noticed.

I wish being so spiritually filled up could also meet my physical needs.

Just know my inbox is already filled with “we’ve decided to pursue other candidates,” so don’t worry about responding to this article. Apple has already been holding my mail hostage for insufficient funds, so I wouldn’t get it anyway.

Whether for rhyme or reason, I have always occupied an outsider position. I’ve got prickly corners and inconsistent edges, in a way that’s something like the opposite of glue. I’m the vinegar to the baking soda of connection. Cleansing, but experimental.

So, that’s to say, no one would miss me. My meteoric rise to fame would affect no one but myself. I could crash and burn with no great impact on anyone else.

My voice is my own. If I’ve fought any real battles, it’s been to remain intact and authentic, despite all the valid reasons I’ve been given to change my nature, to find ways to fit in better. I’ve never chosen those paths.

Every time I’ve been asked to change, I’ve pigheadedly stayed in tune with my own drum. Yes, there has been sacrifice, some worthy, some not. But I am my own tastes, opinions, and trials. I am walking upstream, and I’m not alone. But I am one of the people willing to be annoying enough to go on and on about it.

In tandem with that first point, once I make it into the inner circle, which inevitably means the podcast circle of influencers, I’m sure to make an enemy or two. Most likely by saying something truthful and antagonizing on air in ways that could be clipped, edited, and consumed in one-week intervals at a time.

And for you, fandom, I’d be willing to throw kindling on the fire for the enjoyment of your scrolling. I do not mind having beef with these people at all. Because again, I’m used to being on the outside.

Another point: although I’ve been on the outside, due to the constant moving around I’ve done, I’ve met a lot of people. I’ve had a lot of face time with the wider public because of my curious, friendly nature with strangers.

So that means I offer a lot of “Omg, I met that girl once,” or “Fuck, I used to hate that girl.” I think I’ve also accumulated a lot of random lore from periods where I was bored — which (a) makes good content and (b) offers a lot of accumulated character.

I’ve never known a boring day in my life. I was brought up by two people who agreed on only one thing: only boring people are bored. I took that saying and pretty much etched it onto the backs of my eyeballs.

Therefore, I am an endless well of, at its worst, shit, and at its best, entertainment. Apart from my brief reprise of watching TV, I am creating, moving, or flirting with everyone in my vicinity.

God, I do love strangers. It’s such an equitable exchange when there is no context. But the primary point here is that I will never run out of things to share. I’m even willing to air other people’s laundry.

Joking! Haha — not really. I’ve been accumulating an unreasonable amount of insider info. It just comes with flirting, and I am happy to share. People are really out here doing some wild things. And also, some really mundane, day-in, day-out living.

See? I’m funny. Especially for a woman! - Got you. Wouldn’t this make for a great cultural narrative?

Which brings me to my next point, maybe the most significant one. I am a very well-traveled, educated person. I know, good for me. But in a world that is increasingly online and increasingly devoid of education due to defunding, don’t we need more articulate, irreverent narratives? Comedic, serious, and thought-provoking? Because that’s just me in a nutshell.

I am chaotic, but I am chaotic good. My corners come from contact, and my edges come from experience. I’m a kinesthetic learner. I’ve been out there in the big, bad world, equipped with just a sharp tongue and an iron stomach, bracing reality. Not the conceptual one, the real one.

The gas attendant. The alcoholic neighbor. The angry grandfather. The Trumpster. The Mamala rally-goer. The Venice Beach skate bum. All the way to the Malibu house meditation throat singer.

I love this life, in a way that makes me insatiable in my need to consume its endless characters. Now, isn’t that just the type of content you want to be consuming?

Yes, I want a job. Yes, I want to receive promo boxes from the online Instagram stores I scroll through. Yes, I want to be at home with my dog. - No, I don’t want to go on the Tarte brand trip.

But more than anything, I believe I do have a poignant voice. I believe the way I am is unique. And God, that’s got to have a purpose. So why not this?

Just like Jody Sawyer in Center Stage, maybe I’ve got bad feet, and my turnout isn’t the best. But I do believe in my ability to be “center stage.”

Therapy’s purpose, its intention, is a noble one. Unburdening oneself is probably as old as language. And the relationship between the plight of being is as natural as living and breathing. Even in nature, we see animals comforting each other. The big question religion has always offered answers to is: why do we suffer? Buddhism offered that life is suffering. Stoicism said, deal with it. Catholicism said, tell me your shame, and I’ll tell you just how guilty you should feel, and how many atonements erase it.

The original theory of the therapy we use today was born just over a hundred years ago. The likes of Freud and Breuer collaborated to create the “talking cure,” and with the publication of Studies on Hysteria in 1895, psychoanalysis was brought from the intellectualized to the wider population. But it was really a rebrand, if you ask me. Their work was well expanded on in the following century by the likes of Carl Jung and numerous other well-educated men in clinical spaces. Up to the point that I sat in an office in the year 2018 and was offered the very new and shiniest tool: CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy).

The internet is now saturated with therapy talk. We all practically have the skill set to assess narcissism and ADHD. We know the precursors and traits, and have all been equipped with the language to diagnose each other and ourselves. If you add in the more woo-woo parts of the internet, you can basically ascend therapy talk into ego disillusion. And you’re fixed, right? Or maybe that’s the point where someone signs up for BetterHelp, or even uses their insurance to go see a “real” therapist. Probably not, because having insurance is a myth that people who are employed tell the rest of us to get us to join their 9-to-5 cult.

My real question is: at what point has the introduction of therapy into our kitchens and bedrooms started to hinder the most fundamental pursuit there is as a person, which is to know oneself? Have we been equipped with the real answer to suffering, or have we just been given the language to better explain our suffering?

Knowing oneself is a messy ordeal. Dissecting the calcified seams of the way you were brought up is both painful and, at times, alienating. Some people have had things happen to them that are so heinous that they live in that trauma. But at a certain point, we are all the stories we tell about ourselves. Is there really any way around the slow grind it takes to know yourself? And, dare I say, forgive.

The real irony here is that, in my day-to-day life, I am very equipped with the language we inherited from those licensed to use it. The moment a conversation gets dicey, I don’t think twice about establishing a “boundary.” Before we even get there, I’ve hopefully registered the “trigger,” knowing its origin is most likely with my “inner child.” And my reaction is most likely a “trauma response.” And I implore the other person to validate that by “holding space” for me. One scenario, and I’ve hit all the buzzwords. It’s that easy. Am I closer to myself? Hard to say. I think it depends on maybe what I do with the information I’ve gathered from that interaction. Am I closer to the other person? Depends how equipped they are with that same language and how they feel about people using it. Possibly what generation they’re a part of, too.

Having the language to discuss your inner world is productive; I will give it that. It has a concise way of addressing things that can be murky, or at the very least, gives you the space to distinguish yourself from the reaction, which is usually where the most damage is done, at least in an interpersonal context.

But what is the real cost of utilizing clinical practices on oneself? I’d argue an erosion of sorts. Your emotional world, a place that is most likely messy and probably self-loathing if you’re reading this, is also stunningly, gorgeously unique. And all of a sudden, it’s being managed, not explored. You’re using diagnostic tools instead of being curious. And I’d say, worst of all, you’re making a poetic place feel clinical. You aren’t a trigger or a boundary, you’re upset. You’re trying to quell the feeling by understanding it, and in the process, you’re probably overshooting the whole thing. Artists are just people who use those feelings to make things. That’s why they live in dysfunction. They, unlike the wider population, have learned how poetic it is to feel everything, including the shame and pain of being alive. Healthy is feeling it so you can move on from it. I’m not sure that being able to label something is really enough action.

There is a through line between Socrates’ “know thyself” up to the most contemporary style of therapy they use called “insight delivery.” Its most basic foundation is that information doesn’t equate to insight. The goal is about guiding your “patient” to arrive at the click, the aha moment, a gentle journey they’ve been guided into. In the safety of professional hands, you’ve processed your story and been guided into relief, and you’ve been validated by someone who has achieved an accreditation to ensure that your arrival was the right one.

The only, and the fatal flaw I see in this practice is the externalization of it all. You’ve pulled out your innards, half the battle. And your bruised and battered little heart looks to the other person to tell you it isn’t so bad, or maybe that it was that bad. Sweet, sweet validation, the real nectar I think people want. You’re asking: Is this valid? Am I healthy? Am I worthy? To who? Because in this context, I am not so sure you’re asking the right person. You’ve situated the most important role outside of yourself. I foresee a stickier problem arising from the act of putting your emotional dependence on an outward interpretation.

I think what gives me a bigger pause is how much this practice reflects the wider shift we currently exist in. We turned from societal pressure and familial acceptance to a new type of validation. We homogenized what it meant to be a person in an entirely new way. We broke out of the stagnant roles that our grandparents wore like shields, only to trap ourselves in a contemporary version of the same garment, just with better language. We live inside hyper-individualism, and the language we’ve been equipped with seems to create greater distances between you, your pain, and the other person. Fictional or not. Behind a screen or right in front of you, you’re no closer to yourself or farther from the loneliness you’re running from.

If you’re on the internet in any way, shape, or form, it is molding you. It keeps you there with an algorithm created by what you look at to keep you there. The stories sound different, but there’s the same looming end-of-the-world vibe no matter where you look. It’s despondent and messy, just like you are on the inside. And just like you, it seems that the only validation it needs is an external one.

Maybe we’re all so lonely and sad because the moat we created between us and everything else, to keep our peace, is actually that we all fell prey to validation, which always feels good. Just like the cheap dopamine I get from scrolling.

I want to caveat something. The looming word over all that I’ve said: trauma. And I’m not a monster, so I won’t call it “real” trauma. But there are many valid, necessary reasons people seek professional help. The world was and is a heinous place, where truly awful things happen, and even not truly awful, just pretty shit, that leave people nowhere near the light of day and without a single skill to find their way back to themselves. There are moments of crisis when leaning on people, especially someone equipped to deal with your situation, is entirely the correct decision. And this piece, my argument, is meant to exist outside of this. If you have something you are seeking therapy for, you are in the right place.

It is my sincere belief that the best and most effective way to use therapy is with the intention of addressing something or someone. You walk in knowing that your back is up against a wall, and the wall can be a number of things. Therapy in the professional setting is about teaching you how to get back to the inner world I’m referring to, but it does not and will never replace it. There are, I believe, very few cases where therapy is a long-term solution.

In my heart, I hold a softer vision for the future of mental health, a more integrated one. One where we blend the best of all that has come before us. The intellectual meets the contemporary, and they pave the way into the future. Where an emphasis is placed on knowing oneself not from a place of individualism, but from empathy. I believe that by loving yourself, it is hard not to have love for all. Maybe if we turned more toward conversation, we would need fewer diagnoses. Maybe if we all knew how to sit with ourselves in a way that expected less, we would expect less from our neighbors. And we could be together in a way that required nothing. Maybe somewhere along the way, we would quell the incessant need to label everything, including ourselves. And we could just be sad sometimes, or melancholy, or angry, or having a great day, and it could just be that.

How do we do this? Treat yourself like a class, or like church, or a garden, or a car, whatever metaphor suits you best. Spend time there. Tinker with it. It’s a project that is as long as you’ve got. Go pray there. Take the long route. Bring your journal so you can map out your progress. Ask questions of people you trust, people who are farther into their projects. It’s all the same advice, no matter the metaphor they choose. Most importantly, fall in love with the process of getting to know whatever you are. Take the judgment, the need for validation, away. And I promise what you’ll find is something way less loaded. If you want to change it, change it. If you don’t, then don’t. You can assign the metaphor, the quality, and the experience you have. I guarantee that on the other side of this practice is a lot less judgment and a lot more connection.

The reality is, this process that I’m suggesting is not the easier path. In fact, I think it’s a lot harder. It can be lonelier at times, it’s definitely messier, and it involves a lot more humility. It’s the one I have ultimately chosen, or was flung upon me, and just looked too good to take off. And yes, I am delusional, and an artist. But I have also found the type of peace that crawls into bed with me at night, and we tell each other about our victories and losses of the day. And as I lay there falling asleep with a smile on my face, I know that the most important person in my life, the person who is always with me, feels proud of all the ways I’m unfinished. I am already eager for what tomorrow has in store, because I internalized the validation, which means it is always there for me to pull from.

Imagine who you would be if no one told you who you were. If you decided to put down everything everyone handed you. Swept the floors and cleaned the surfaces. Sat in the middle of the room and filled up the whole space. Who would you be if there were no language to tell you who you should be? And more importantly, who would you become in the absence of the pressure to be something other people understood?

Throughout my short and inconsequential life, people have told me all about myself. I’ve been to every corner of the graph. Extroverted, introverted, mean, overly giving, rude, too polite. And, I think in equal parts, different people would roll their eyes at that sentence.

Naturally, when I sat down to put all the mismatched pieces together, they spelled out ‘You’re Fake’.

I leaned back, and into the bittersweet satisfaction of an answer, albeit a self-deprecating one. Huh, I thought to myself. With little to no regard for my own experience of myself. A juvenile type of wisdom had arrived at the conclusion, and a juvenile mind would satiate itself with the tinder of a self-loathing fire. It’s so cozy and reliable to sit with self-hatred. Probably some existential appendix to our fear of dying, if you don’t like yourself, you aren’t worried about how long you’ll be around. A melancholy type of salve.

I’m very liberal in my support of radical self-acceptance. Aside from the heinous non-consensual side of that argument. For the people paying too much attention to what I’m writing, I appreciate your free labour, but not here or today.

I often find myself saying things like, as long as they’re consistently an asshole. Or, at least she’s always late. It’s a question of reliability to me. I think it’s more sage and copasetic to pick up on the page you last read. So, if I were fake, then so be it. At least I could rely on that self-knowledge in the face of the changing feedback I’d receive. I could sit back and keep myself cozy, knowing it was my nature to conform to the space. I thought that person was asking me to fill.

But, spend enough time with someone, let’s say a lifetime. You start to really get to know them. I’ve been with myself much longer now than the person who came to that conclusion. I’ve sat and let myself fill more space than that person even knew was possible.

When people tell me about myself now, I have the presence of mind to hear what they’re telling me about themselves. - I realized that my role wasn’t to fill the space, but to allow the other person to experience what was reflected back at them in the mirror.

Yesterday, someone told me that I needed to learn to let things go more easily. That, in fact, they were such a good friend that they believed that this was maybe my biggest challenge in life right now. The crux of all my problems. And, I swallowed the words like a thorny seed, trying on for size what it was like to hold my tongue.

I held my tongue for just long enough to projectile vomit these words.

It bothers me so much now when people tell me about myself. Especially when they are so wildly wrong.

‘What’s your problem, old man? If you’ve got something to say, you can say it to my face.’

In a previous Substack, entitled Chapter Three: The Proverbial Beginning, I wrote about his wife. I aired her laundry, and essentially fell into the patriarchal hole under the tree of my maternal family culture. I wrote about her reaction to his infidelity, her retaliation, and how she gave up her dream. I think I tried to avoid talking about him because I know he loves being the center of attention. And avoiding him would be the ‘proverbial’ burn.

She recently told me that, at the time, she wanted to be an artist, and my grandfather was the only man she knew who was going to make that life possible for her. - I told her, puffed up by decades of feminism between us, that she never needed a man to actualize her purpose. Dripping with the characteristics of my generation. Little regard for what all that time really meant, especially to someone who’d lived each minute. My rebuttal lacked empathy, hindsight, and ‘being nice’. It was perfect. It uno reversed the three-pronged therapeutic measure that most women employ for free to the toxic men in their families.

I know when they were little, the children in my mother's family were given the belt. Her first memory is hiding under the table, listening to one of the boys receive their punishment. His anger.

To me, he was a monotonous republican who sat across the table from me at meals, barking orders at my grandmother like an angry toddler. From the time they woke up to his evening of Fox News and popcorn, she waited on him.

To other people, he was a mentor, a great painter. A philosophical man exalted thanks to a small fandom. Maybe even a minor celebrity. He’d play coy, the shy lion. And she, the shrewish woman behind his success.

For most of my life, I avoided him. Between the anger I felt about the ways his abuse impacted my childhood (my mother), and how he treated his indentured slave (my grandmother). I just didn’t like him. I didn’t like his racially motivated jokes that people chuckled at - I found his wisdom elementary. And he had the audacity to mumble, making it nearly impossible to follow along the path you had no desire to walk.

Around seventeen, emboldened by an expensive education. I took him on one day during dinner. He was spewing about how blank racial group was blank. I asked him, ‘So, you're a white supremacist?’. His telltale grumble gurgling up, he looked so silly to me as his anger grew. He seemed frail even then. He was angry now, protesting not that he wasn’t a racist but that I had better keep my tongue in line if I wanted a man. I responded, ‘Do you think white people are better than other people?’ ‘Yes’. ‘So you're a white supremacist’. He followed up with something about how I was no granddaughter of his, and I smiled, being released from the contract. This granted me almost a decade of silence; I doubt he even remembered why for most of it.

My grandparents are much older now. The students have all gone on to modest careers; the farm no longer hosts teeming life. My grandpa sits in his chair, and my grandmother continues to manically hover over his needs. They shouldn’t be alone, but his anger was something so foul that even a child’s love didn’t survive.

I met his anger for the second time yesterday. Maybe, for the first time, really. Context: I was letting them know I was going on a hike in the coming days.

‘‘Why would I care if someone like you went missing?’’

‘‘If you’ve got something you need to say to me, you can say it.’’ (My whole life, I’ve listened to my grandparents talk about me from the leaky bedrooms upstairs. They’ve called me loose, rude, and fat. I figured I was ready.)

‘’You treat us the worst of any of our grandchildren.’’

“That’s why I’m the only one here, huh.”

The conversation is slightly paraphrased. But I gave you the real throwing knives of the whole ordeal. I stood in the center of the room, hands on my hips. He sat in his chair. I looked him dead in the face, his eyes averted. I don’t respect him, and he knows it. I took up as much space as possible. And left with my parting words being;

“I’m sorry you’ve been unhappy with your service.”

I went upstairs, and I cried, and I heaved. I cried so hard I thought about how well I would sleep. Like the child I once was, my face burned with the salt of my tears, and I felt better.

His whole life, people have placated him because he’s abused them with his anger. His endless hunger ate all four relationships he could have had with his children, all twelve of his grandchildren, and even more greedily, the entire career my grandmother should have had.

I feel even more vindicated to help my grandmother. And I can’t wait to tell him.

“All your paintings look unfinished to me.”

I came undone once. And, I kept this one relic of the best three weeks of my life. In fact, it was such a fantastic three weeks that the whole ordeal lasted almost an entire year. And if you rounded up, it took almost three years to get over it. - And sometimes I visit this photo to remind me of the real cost.

Recently, I found a journal from the embers of my womanhood. A leather-bound Moleskine, partially filled with the tightly coiled handwriting of someone who had never had an orgasm. I was not a sexually precocious teenage girl, at least not internally. Externally, if I had had the good sense to look at myself, I would have seen that I was emerging out of the sticky gossamer fog of youth with a body that now had rolling hills and dangerous valleys.

I was obsessed with boys in the way that twenty-something-year-old men are fixated on wealth. I knew it was something I had to have, that somehow that one answer was really the answer to all the other questions. Once you found a male counterpart, you got a job, a house, and essentially your whole life. A real, hitch your cart to the right mule kind of gal, and you’ll get where you're supposed to go.

The musings in the journal are mostly about wanting my life to be something it wasn’t. Nothing particularly profound, a relatively quintessential teenage girl wishing she were anything but just that. Dedicating at least one sentence per entry on love, equally uninspired. Almost like, when you say ‘love you’ at the end of a call. You mean it, but it’s more a habit than an expression of deep passion.

I had crushes in high school, but I easily felt overwhelmed by the expectations that accompanied being someone’s girlfriend. And, it wasn’t the sex part; I liked sex just fine. You lay down and stared at the ceiling while your juvenile bodies found something like a rhythm, and hoped something magic would happen. The dorm rooms at my boarding school had little messages on the ceilings, like ‘not much longer now’. Sacred inside jokes among the teenage girls, who were not quite taken with the experience. I didn’t like the pressure of being attached to someone; I didn’t like having to sit with them, or sit next to them, or speak to them. Teenage boys aren’t known for being profound.

As the years passed, and I moved onto college and beyond, maybe in reaction or maybe simply because of the type of person I really am, I adopted, embodied a type of independence, where I spoke privately of a profound longing for love. But, constantly chose avenues for one. Made sure to always do what I wanted, and never lived anywhere long enough to meet everyone.

I was so good at pushing my own boundaries that, honestly, I felt uninspired by most men. I had had one boyfriend up until this point. He owned a weed farm in Northern California, and essentially told me I was the most magical girl he’d ever met in the first ten minutes of our first date. He brought me on the most exciting adventure of my life thus far. It wasn’t a passionate affair, but it made me feel special. It scared the shit out of me when, after only a few months, I booked a plane to an airport with one terminal and drove up a mountain with no cell service for hours, only to arrive in the dark to my new home. But that isn’t this story, albeit contextually important. I was longing for something that, at the time, I didn’t understand the depth of. When we broke up, I missed the friendship and the life I thought I wanted, but as the years passed, I came back to myself, cold and bored, filling my days again with my own appetite.

The day before I met Him, I felt it. It washed over me, this feeling that it was the last day of the life I had been living. I even took a photo, feeling the urge to document ‘the day’. I took a photo of the beach, knowing that the time stamp was more important than the contents of the photo.

We met the very next day on the beach just before sunrise. And like always, I instantly knew, recognized him as fate. The very next day, I told my boss I had a family emergency and would be away for God knows how long. And I packed my duffel bag, and got in his car, and as Los Angeles closed out in the rear view mirror, I thought about how alive I felt. I couldn’t drive, I didn’t know another living soul in California, and it was already shaping up to be the best day of my life. It seemed that this edge was the best feeling I couldn’t even name.

We slowly traveled up the coast, passing cigarettes back and forth. Stopping at beautiful hikes and staying with his friends in small, beautiful towns along the coast. We cooked dinner, drank organic wine, smoked small-batch weed, and didn’t once turn the TV on. I watched him surf and serenaded myself in being his plus one, in what I was realizing was the perfect life.

I had found the feeling I wanted, and it wasn’t that the sex was amazing. I felt alive, in a way that I had never been able to give myself. Never gotten from anyone else. It was like someone opened a window in a room that had been closed for years! It was incredible to realize just how stuffy the room was. And, in a way, he was entirely unfazed by me. To him, I was just another beautiful, independent, unknowable entity.

And, in hindsight, this again was not a great passion, in terms of the actual relationship. We had sex, like, well, like teenagers. I liked the attention, and I liked that we played rough. He’d tell me things about myself that hurt, and we’d kick each other like I didn’t bruise so easily. I liked it for the first time being attached to this person. I liked what it said about me to be on this adventure, so brave and aloof against the unknown.

A few hours after that first photo was taken, he asked me to go home. Said it was probably time for me to go back to my life. My life, it stung. That meant that he also had a life to go back to. I’d come to find out that he meant someone else. I spent days aimlessly biking around when I got home. Listening to music, staring off into the distance. Listening to my internal world start to crumble. I’d never noticed how much time I spent alone.

For months, he would come into my life for three days at a time. Refreshers, of all of the feelings, he’d seduce me, alienate, and then reject me. And, at a certain point, I had to tell my friends, I know that this isn’t good for me, but I’m just not done. One day, a wiser woman than I at the time told me, just make sure you don’t spend more than five years on this. I laughed; it seemed impossible. One day, something so foul happened that it finally broke the spell. I loved him, and he ‘had’ love for me. What happened went beyond that, and I ran away, tears were streaming down my face. I deleted his numbers, the photos, his contact. Within minutes, all remnants of him were gone. Except that photo, squirreled away in the text chain of a friend.

I had never felt so broken. And I had been through things far worse, experienced objectively more traumatic things. Been dejected by far more integral people in my life. It was like I had never cried. I had wrapped everything up, and this had finally smashed the dam, and everything flooded out. I felt disgusted, the way years and stories and hurt had festered and lived as stagnant water behind the wall.

It wasn’t the loss of love; we weren’t in love. It wasn’t letting go of the life I’d dreamed of for us. Because we never had a life together. It wasn’t even the sex; still untouched by an orgasm. It wasn’t even the embarrassment I now felt knowing what the subtexts of everyone’s comments meant.

It was that, I had finally realized I was nowhere near as whole as I once thought I was.

I was not the impregnable fortress of independence that I saw myself as. I was a soppy, sensitive teenage girl who wanted to be chosen by someone I looked up to. I wasn’t as cool as I thought I was. And, I didn’t like my life anywhere near as much as I liked his. - In a way, I wanted to be him, more than I’d ever wanted to be me.

In the years that followed, I started writing poetry. And I barely wrote about him. Maybe one poem about him even made it into the book, and it’s really more about the nostalgia of the friendship that we should have had. Because it wasn’t the torrid love affair I’m still craving.

In many ways, he’d just been the second chapter in the book of me running away from myself, hoping I could lose myself in the landscape of someone else’s life.

See, when all was said and done. It wasn’t really my first heartbreak. But, it was the first time I really learned that everything you're searching for, creeps up in the space between you and the person you think is going to make you feel whole.

And if you’ve made it this far, I’ll admit, I still look at that photo, and it washes over me just how afraid I really am to fall in love.

I’m not sure, nor is it pertinent, if this is a boy-girl thing. More importantly, I’d like to know how far it reaches into the reader’s soul to be asked, Would you like to read this? See what I have to say. It’s something about the space between desire and culmination, and maybe even about the forbidden empathy I might have for the avoidance inside that we dare never speak of.

I think when I reach back and pull at the very thread that holds together every first kiss I’ve ever had, lips and tongues merge into one impromptu combustion. I was turning my face, and they caught me, or suddenly our faces were close and then intertwined. And, I’ve been asked ‘Can I kiss you?’. And see, none of this is a crime, neither of passion or war. My enemy is not the kisser, just like I’m not the protagonist.

Soft lips and the pressure to seal the moment with a times-agreed-upon signature is a mating ritual we all understand. It’s the first note in maybe the song, or symphony of your love. There’s a great deal of pressure on the kisser to affirm their affection to the kissed, and the moment builds, and they’re ready to say, I want this. I think they feel that, without their push, maybe you’d be too shy; they are ready for you to know, and for themselves to feel the gratification of this new small contract between you.

But I just don’t think I’ve ever been ready. I’ve followed through on the gaze of invitation that comes from someone seasoned in the art of seduction. But I still wasn’t ready, in the sense that I was not sitting across from this person, staring at their lips, hoping, fixating, salivating at the mere thought of what it might be like to press my lips to theirs and know what it would be like to seal all the space between us. Breathe the scent of them in, and know that in that moment, it was just us. And doesn’t that just sound so nice?

Recently, I finally let go of someone. Someone, something, some fictional person so tenderly woven into the scarecrow that guarded that profound place so unknown. I stood in my field, the one that was well past harvest, and I looked up at them. And decided, maybe it was time to let go of the fear. The fictional thing that stood guard against, what? The rain? The process was messy, the innards readily fell apart, and it made my skin itchy and covered me in the remnants of its life.

I used to cast myself in a certain light in all my memories. Especially the ones about love. I was harsh and withholding; I would exile myself in anger and resentment toward those I loved. It wasn’t that I was hard to love; it was that my love was something complicated and my temper was something sharp. It was my habit to sit quietly and toil with the anger, fixating on the cars moving past ours. Being that I always found the answers if I could just stare long enough into the thousand yards beyond.

But see, something happened when that scarecrow came down. When the watch ended. It would go something like…

I let the piano climb

And the tears fall,

And then pour.

So, while something classic played on,

I could be something to be adored.

Maybe I wasn’t so callous and cruel. Maybe it was that no one had ever asked if I wanted a kiss. Maybe no one had ever asked if I was okay? Maybe no one ever told me that the space between desire is a gentle question.

The unknown is scary, and flowery words are ephemeral. But, I’ve met myself on lonely walks where the music in my ears filled up my soul so thoroughly that I shed a tear just simply because I felt so much of whatever there was to feel. And, I so long to let go of whatever it is I’m afraid of. The fear that maybe things are temporary or messy or unclear before the kiss. I think I’d like to live in the moment long enough to feel the music start to play from within me. And maybe, look at my lover and say, Can I kiss you?

Your ability to love is directly correlated to your capacity to grieve.

Funnily enough, there is a context clue in the years before all this transpired. I should have been too innocent for thoughts such as these, but my biggest fear was that, and this is how I conceptualized it, when you're handicapped, no one tells you. No one sits you down and says, ‘Listen, you special little egg.’ This is the way that you are special; this is why you do not, in fact, fit in nicely to your allotted little slot. I guess grown people feel that this slow burn, a self-actualization of sorts, is a kinder, more soft-launched approach.

I went to a charming little school in Maryland at the time, no doubt an idyllic little place, near my home in a waterfront suburb. School was play and butterflies, and mud pies. They had just begun to gently introduce reading. Worn in books, with soft pages for delicate hands. Safe corners of large rooms for small groups to practice, groups that had names that never implied rank, like the guppies or pelicans. If you were too old for your age, you may have understood the system. Even at those small ages, I think we understand pecking orders and what it means to be bright, and the value of being a pelican.

If I could give it a color, I’d say I was in the orange group. Not entirely hopeless, but not a strong reader. My only edge was that each week, despite what was probably the best format, we read the same books. And being that the timeline wasn’t strict, and the objective was simply to complete the book and move on to the next. Most of my reading was a very intentional game of memorization and learning facial cues from the kind lady who held the book in front of me, helping me sound out ‘dog is in a bog’. I closed out the year with completion, but in reality, a lack of success.

I don’t remember if I knew this was coming or not, but that summer we moved to Philadelphia. Being that I was a prospective first grader, there was a sit-down ‘interview’ of sorts. They wanted to know if I could read. The charade was something I was ill-prepared for. The book they had for me to read was not one I had carefully memorized, and this person in front of me was someone I had yet to dissect their body language. What was revealed? I couldn’t read at all, and I would not be moving on to first grade.

It would be many years before the word dyslexia came into my orbit. I loved school and learning. Those early years of filling in sentences and one-page expectations were something I could pull off easily. I cut corners in ways I assumed were regular. I copied people’s work just like the rest of us, right? Maybe homework wasn’t where I thrived, but in class, I raised my hand and enjoyed absorbing new information. I was curious and engaged within school hours, whether on topic or not, I was a part of the discussion.

Beyond those years, my education started to get chopped up. We moved, and then moved back, and then traveled for a year, which meant homeschooling, which really meant a year off school. And then, we moved to Spain, and I joined the British education system. I was maybe eleven, and what I lacked in written and comprehensive skills, I made up for with precociousness. I didn’t like the class I was assigned to; they felt young in a stifling way, and I made an early bid to be returned to the very coveted place of ‘the year above’. My true home, in my eyes, after the slight I had been dealt many years ago, at this point. I went directly to the head of the school, and this move alone secured my position.

I was intellectually capable of the work, but this was the first period that teachers noticed the clear disparaging gap between what I was capable of verbally comprehending and my ability to reiterate it in any gradable written form. I could feel my teacher begrudgingly adding red marks to my work because I may have been the teacher’s pet in class, but my work, in fact, didn’t make sense. I was engaged and interested, but you couldn’t tell from my sentences that repeated themselves, ran on, and lacked any semblance of grammar. I had teachers ask me to be sure to re-read my work as I went along, but it was simply too hard and too uncomfortable confronting how little sense my work made when I read it back. Being that these were just weekly assignments, I let the red marks continue. I would shine in class, and hope that my work wasn’t speaking for me.

The first time someone called it for what it was was a very kind older teacher who taught business studies during the end-of-semester parent-teacher talk. He made mention that he believed there was something amiss and that an investigation into the large gap between class and work needed to be addressed if I was to succeed in the upcoming exams, which define the final years of education in the British system. - To which my mother responded, ‘He doesn’t understand how smart you are. You’ve just always had your own way of doing things.’ And that was it. No test, no further conversation. I took those exams, and I didn’t do well. I had been inventing systems my whole life to help me get around my dyslexia, but they started to fall short of the person my education wanted me to be.

About a year later, I had landed a very coveted position in a boarding school. I had been bullied out of my school for reasons that aren’t a part of this story, and being who I was, I made as big a leap as I was humanly capable of at the age of sixteen. An immense opportunity that I hadn’t landed with academics, but by being bold. Cold calling this institution, selling my story of a world traveled sixteen year old. I secretly did this in the tucked away office at my father’s job, and it wasn’t until I was offered the position that I let my parents know that I would be leaving. It was the most academically challenging environment I’d ever been in, but also somehow the very least. I knew very little about the school, and it wasn’t until I arrived that I realized the real gravity of the position I had snagged. Kids from all over the world aspired to come there, and the arrival was the success. Your ability to succeed academically would simply be your projected success in the next stages, like University and beyond. Being that you now hold the title of attending this school.

When the final chapter of this part of my education was circling the drain, people were studying, anxiously anticipating how this moment would impact the rest of their lives. I knew I would be landing somewhere, nowhere near where I wanted to be. I had a teacher whom I liked very much. His name was Mr.Bird, and he taught religious studies. And one day, he pulled me aside after class. He said, ‘My greatest regret this year is that your exams won’t reflect the type of student you are in any way. And now it’s too late for you.’ He didn’t offer anything else, no consolation or final wisdom. Simply an omission that he felt I would be a student forever, living in the shadow of something entirely out of my control.

I didn’t do well, barely one point away from failing my entire high school diploma. And consequently, barely got into University. I was able to join the religious studies program at SOAS in London again, only because I had cold-called and made my case. A fantastic institution, and another coveted place at a school that my grades weren’t up to. However, I had decided that I was no longer a child, and my education was entirely my own now, and I would seek out the diagnosis that had been floated to me years before.

The steps followed that I made an appointment with the disability office, they asked me a few questions, and said from what I can tell, you have dyslexia, and the next steps include being formally assessed, which we will offer to you free of charge. I was taken aback, they scheduled the appointment, and I returned to the campus bar to my friends. They all said, all you had to do was try and have a text conversation with me to know I was dyslexic, we laughed, and I quietly felt seen and embarrassed. Self-deprecation was a part of English culture, but I wasn’t English, and the feelings I had about being diagnosed with a cognitive disability weren’t very English either.

The test was the following week, and it was almost nine hours long. We played little games, ones that seemed inconsequential but were obviously speaking to something larger than simply placing shapes together. The woman I spent the day with was kind and had a therapeutic personality. I can imagine from her perspective, it was a delicate situation. I wasn’t someone who had spent their entire education in these special offices designated for the people who needed a little ‘extra’. I was confident like someone who had conventionally succeeded academically. By the end of the day, she left the room for just a few minutes and came back to announce that I had been diagnosed with dyslexia, and that this was a great thing because now I would be entitled to a number of resources that I had needed my whole life. She smiled and asked how I felt. In that moment, I think I felt vindicated. - but in the hours that followed, that feeling became bitter. It washed over me that I had been working harder than anyone, even I hadn't understood.

I exhaled, my whole body loosened up for maybe the first time in my whole life. Not in a relaxing way, but in the way that makes you want to rub your face and scream. All of a sudden, I noticed all the ways dyslexia played a part in my life. I couldn’t text without being aware of how little sense each one made, and I suddenly noticed how I always input ticket information wrong, something that had cost me money many times! I became acutely aware of how little of the reading I did in school was retained. I would sit down to do my work, and the hum of this newly validated weakness rang in anything to do with words that weren’t the ones spoken out of my mouth. And worst of all, I started to feel like everyone had seen this on me, and just as I had suspected, no one had told me.

I essentially gave up on school; any moment of friction that I found in my schooling became something I simply just would not subject myself to. If I got frustrated, I would soothe it with whatever I wanted. And my newfound favorite place, the disability office, had nothing but kind words and understanding sentiments around how I was slowly was fading into the abyss of academic probation. I had extensions on every single piece of work I had been assigned. And after two years of extensions, they offered me an out and I took it. My parents weren’t happy, and neither was I. But, I had replaced a lot of the effort I used to put into making up the difference, into having fun and staying entertained by the many social affairs of someone cool, young, and hip. And I was started to be consumed by substances, and trying to dissociate from my childhood, the death of a close friend, and the sexual assault that had been impetuous to being bullied out of my school in Spain.

For years after that, my world became entirely disentangled from words. I let go of social media, I didn’t keep up with friends, and forget about reading. I made sure to tell the new people that came into my life that the only friendship I would be able to offer was one that was face to face. I existed outside of academia, and words mattered as little as the value you assigned to them in the world beyond school. I worked easy jobs that paid hourly wages. And tried not to feel like, despite the high expectation that my education had implied. I was someone without a college education, and I was exactly where I deserved to be, which was underpaid. A consequence of the actions, many had warned me about. But at least, I didn’t have to read, which meant I didn’t have to feel stupid.

This was until one very fateful day, while I was working at a cafe. There was an older man who regularly came in for coffee, and being of a similar nature, he was curious about me. I knew he was a talent agent, and I had been carefully curating his curiosity in me. Little games that make the hours pass. He finally asked me one day, ‘And what is it that you really do?’, obviously people don’t aspire to work in coffee shops. I said, I’m a poet. I felt like it was funny because it was obviously not true, even though I naturally possessed many of the characteristics of a beatnik poet. So, it made sense to summarize myself this way. Because on some level, I knew my spirit was of the poet genre. He said that’s wonderful, let me know when you're ready to share your work, and I laughed and winked, saying he would be the first to know. I giggled, and returned inside to tell my co-worker of my little white lie. To which she responded, why don’t you go home and write something. I laughed her off, but something had been lit.

I went home, I smoked a joint, and I wrote something for the first time in my entire life with no expectations. I wrote in unfinished sentences, in choppy ways that reflected the way I really felt. I wrote in a furious way and flung the paper away with me, like I had written something so salacious it needed to be burned. I sat back and finished my joint, and decided that I was, in fact, brave enough to read what I wrote in this altered state. And, I loved what I wrote. It was the first time I saw myself in words, in a way that I felt really reflected how I felt inside, and how it sounded in my head. I had written something melodramatic and dripping with ego and pride.

It quickly became an integral part of my daily habit to write poetry. I would finish work, smoke a joint, ride my bike, and write a poem. Sometimes more than one, some good, some bad. But I felt proud of them either way, and more importantly, I liked the story I had begun to tell about myself. I liked it even better that it started with a lie and a joke about myself. I could see myself in a kinder, less restricted way when it had the lens of poetry on it. Because poetry could have no rules, and be soppy and silly and embarrassing, in all the ways I hadn’t allowed myself. And serendipitously, in the month that followed this moment, I had my heart really, truly broken for the first time, and all of a sudden, poetry took on entirely new meaning.

Poetry became the only way I could understand my life, and in the haze of the weed, the heartbreak, and the Venice Beach sun. I began what would eventually be my first collection of poetry. I had so many things to say, and poetry became the only way I could say them, the only way I could look myself in the eye. It put into perspective how little everything else in my life mattered.

During a visit, I confessed to my mother that I felt stuck in my current life. Paycheck to paycheck, and barely alive outside of keeping myself financially solvent on minimum wage. She asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to write a book of poetry, and she said I’ll pay your rent on an off-season cottage in Provincetown for the winter, and I’ll make sure you're fed, and you try and make this dream a reality. It was the first time I chose something just because my heart had asked for it, regardless of how much sense it made.

At some point in this story, nestled between Spain and boarding school, I climbed a mountain in Wales that legend says if you sleep on it, you either come back a poet or a madman, to which I am both. - I think there are so many layers in this story, and so many more layers to come. But I know that at some point, words were my biggest weakness, and they still are, but that’s my favorite part about me now.

These ‘winter’ months for me always fall at the end of the summer. Being that my new year starts on the joyous and auspicious day of September 25th. Its usually a sober somber time, where I am making amends with the year I am leaving behind. I feel drawn to spend more time with myself. Conceptually tilling the field of my mind, body, and soul.

I spend time thinking in very abstract ways about what I am anticipating for the year ahead. Usually by August, I am thinking about what I would like for my birthday, and these items typically hold some reflection of the year I would like to have.

It’s an awkward in-between phase. I am uncomfortable with who I am, and eager to be the person I am becoming. When I was younger, this meant an alienation of sorts; I was less graceful and tactful in how I shed the skins that kept me safe like living in a house with your ex and your new boyfriend. One always undermining the other, one you feel closer to, even though your trying to forget them and move on.

Last year on my birthday, I was living in Philadelphia. In my first studio apartment. Painted pink, and decorated in the discarded furniture people left in my building’s lobby. Objectively ugly, but something I was proud to call my own nonetheless.

I spent the day alone, getting belligerently stoned. Indulging meant ordering takeout and not getting out of bed. And, that has been true for me for a long time. I’ve let cannabis babysit me for the last decade. Keeping me safe and at home like a dowdy governess that hasn’t yet seen me off to the next phase of life.

I have a photo of a single cupcake with a pink sparkly candle on it from my birthday. Between the cannabis and the auspicious day, I wanted to add lore to the moment, feeling like the wish could be supercharged by capturing it. I can’t remember what I asked for, but funnily enough I would eventually get a job working at that very cupcake shop. That would be my job until I departed Philadelphia. I’ve kept that candle tucked away in my belongings believing it has some extra power.

At the onset of my year, I was dogmatically insistent on my independence. I wanted to know who I was entirely independent of everyone and everything. Held by a latent childhood home of mine I had spent my elementary years living in Philadelphia before we departed to Spain for the remainder of my ‘childhood’. And I felt a sort of nostalgic closing ceremony about being there. It was familiar enough, but foreign enough to be able to feel lost within it. That suited me just fine, my apartment was in a wonderful part of the city and I felt safe.

For the first few months that I lived there, I worked at the worst job I’ve ever had. A restaurant in Old City, where I felt neither appreciated or skilled at the job. I had worked in a restaurant in Los Angeles on Venice beach for a considerable amount of time prior to this. There I had felt like the host of the cutest sexiest coffee spot in the whole city. Regulars flowed in and out as the mornings progressed, beautiful, successful people, and I just happened to be the one with the coffee hookup.

This restaurant was dark inside, and the staff wore all black. It was advertised as a high end restaurant, but it looked tacky to me. It had a popular bar, and the layout of the restaurant was a nightmare for those who worked there. If you unlucky enough to be assigned certain stations, such as the second floor you were guaranteed a bad night. It meant that everything your customers ordered needed to be brought up a whole flight of stairs. A staircase we shared with customers. The expectation was that as you arrived at the table carrying three martini glasses, you wouldn’t be heaving for breath. Delivering a ‘high end’ quality of service as you ran around alone in the dark.

It smeared the first months of me being there in a sheen of failure. Because I chose minimum wage work, it was always a grind. But, I usually was appreciated for what I brought to these jobs, my unusual personality was always an asset. I wasn’t good at this job, and I didn’t want to be. But I was so desperate to be independent.

I worked, and spent the rest of my time in bed, sedated. This period could be summarized in the showers I’d take when I got home. Where I turned off all the lights, and would sit on the floor of the shower for as long as it would take to stop feeling the thump of my heartbeat in the soles of my feet.

My biggest win at the time was finding a laundry mat near my house that actually removed the crust of dirt that covered all my clothes. Unlike the conveniently placed but ineffectual one on the my floor in my apartment.

Funnily enough, on my birthday, I had walked into a cupcake shop. Something relatively unusual for me. I don’t have a particular fondness for sweets, I find the flavors kind of boring and similar. All sugary things taste like sugar, even the best ones. The place was homely and small. The two women in the back chatted and seemed relaxed. I asked ‘how did you find yourself working here, seems like a great place to work’. They laughed, I would soon understand why. They said it was as simple as applying, being that everything they did was teachable. I took down the information. And after a few months, I got the email that would start the next phase of my time in Philadelphia.

I went away to Los Angeles sometime in November, and I used it as an opportunity to quit the restaurant. And when I came back from that trip I started at the bakery. My boss, the woman who owned the bakery, turned out to be a frazzled, attractive woman from South Philly. Which is an archetype in Philadelphia, it implies she’s Italian, most likely a Republican, and very family-oriented. She was all those things. I liked her, despite finding out that none of my colleagues did. It was the first time I only worked with women. And the amount of drama and interpersonal strife that existed between the six members was just the distraction I needed.

There are so many things I could say about those months. About how I made ends meet or about the drama that perspired between the sweet coated women. Or the bar I became a local at. Or even my neighbors Skylar and Julien. But that would be putting aside the most important part of my time there. Amanda.

Amanda was the real boss of the bakery. She made the schedules, ordered products, decided flavors, and was the one who came in if someone called out. She was the unappreciated, the undervalued wheel that made the whole thing possible. And our little bakery wasn’t even her only job. She had three jobs, she was a full time caretaker of a man child, as well essentially the sole employee of a Mac n cheese shop across town.

She’s the type of person who is kind without affectation, and under her cool demeanor she is the smartest most capable person I’ve ever met. She could run this country without a single extra pair of hands. And still have dinner on the table somehow, and her cats would be fed because she’s just that capable. I won’t go into detail because she wouldn’t appreciate that, but, it made my heart squeeze when I realized that the reason she was like this was probably because she had to become this person in the absence of the care she should have received. She was an expert at anticipating the needs of others, and you can fill all the blanks.

There are many moments that we shared together in that kitchen. Like when she told me that she didn’t envy the pride I took in letting people walk all over me. Or the time she realized I wasn’t eating because I didn’t know how to cook, and I came into work, and she had bought all the cooking basics. Knowing that I was capable but needed the blocks to put it all together. She was observant and proactive like that; she somehow knew me in a way that was better than I knew myself. Being around her felt like cruel loving presence of Mr.Miyagi or Morpheus. She wasn’t going to tell me what to do, but she was going to give me the material to learn.

My whole life I’ve been stubborn. Always wanting to pave my own way, learn the hard lessons. I’d never wanted anyone to tell me the answers or give me their opinion but Amanda was different. I wanted her to tell me what to do. I wanted her to fix my life, and point me in a direction. I began to fold in questions that were complicated, hoping she would give me the answers, that the void wouldn’t. Until one evening, offhandedly she said, ‘I know this is just a stop on your on your journey.’ I protested, and tried to persuade her not to undermine the value of our time together. But then, she began to unfold a vision of myself that I hadn’t seen. One that was extravagant and meant for large things. And for a few minutes I got the feel like the person I respected the most in the world, saw the best of what I could be.

In the weeks that followed, I moved back to California with my mother. A somewhat seasonal migration for us, or a bad habit that we fell into together. And despite the change in scenery, it was that conversation that echoed and boomed down the months that followed bringing us right up to my birthday.

What I want this year for my birthday is to go legit. I’ve never wanted to be conventional, but I do want to succeed, in my own way. In a way that is unique to me, in a way that values who I am. And, I think there is a certain amount of seriousness involved in that. Not serious in a stern faced, somber way. But, the reliable organized authentic kind of way. I want to take myself seriously, my relationships, and most importantly the way I live with my life. Ill always be silly and stubborn and unusual, but maybe that doesn’t have to mean small and underpaid, and undervalued because I’m in the wrong spaces. I think Amanda was my Morpheus, and because she’s the smartest person I know, maybe she’s right about me.

I’ll say, I haven’t forgiven a single soul, and that resentment simmers at the bottom of my stomach, and I let the fermentation of my hate nourish my dreams.

I always make sure to say it with a steady voice, underacting the lines, as if I’m joking about joking. The best is when you say it to someone you know has wronged you, but you’ve feigned forgiveness for the long-term play. So brilliant.

See, I chuckle to myself as I indulge in the psychopathic voice fixture. But I haven’t written a single word that isn’t true. It makes me laugh, and it makes my stomach churn to think about the lashes of disappointment, the anger, the loneliness.

But see, then I think about how my nostrils flare, and my teeth drip with anticipation when I know some failure or cruelty steps into the light of our spar. I ready my sword, I close my eyes. I am so familiar with this hand-to-hand combat. I feel the whoosh of air as I gracefully duck and bow, avoiding every blow. Game called. No imperfection but the dew on my brow. And I sit, feeling smug, knowing that in this life I have truly mastered something.

And I do not stutter when I speak my truth, so much of my long-term satisfaction is the bubbling up of these memories. They move me forward, they make me feel confident.

But see, therein lies the real irony of this charade. I respect my ‘opponents’—without them, there would be no battle to strengthen my nerve. I have a love for them that I could never, would never want to share.

I feel the pull of my skin over the muscles in my back, and I know who I am.

Maybe it isn’t that I’ve never forgiven anyone.

It’s that I am someone who respects what it takes to be changed.

And when I need to feel strong, I think about all the people who changed me, and it gives me exactly what I need.

Your introversion is the loudest scream I’ve ever heard of your desperate need to be seen. And I’m not judging. I’m disgusted by us both. I loathe the pain of knowing how innocent your screams are.

We walk these paths alone, bearing silent struggles we’re too ashamed to speak of. Wouldn’t it be easier if we were just… broken? Simply, fatally flawed. Abused by hands, not by the subtle art of fractured people hoping you might share the ugliness they can’t admit.

At some point, I started walking my own path into my psyche. I validated that, inside my chest, there lived a pit. Like my throat was fractured deep within it. Nothing fatal—apart from the knotted sensation of something wound so tightly, I could barely speak.

It felt good to sit and consume other people’s needs, their made-known expectations. My little hands conceptually folded in my lap. It felt good to have adults tell me I was unique. Such a good listener. Such a good girl. I found new ways to be noticed. New ways to impress. New ways to be admired.

That pit climbed up my throat as I matured, and I began to call it sadness. I had enough reasons, eventually, to be someone others pitied. I learned how to shape my stories to justify the shadow I couldn’t shake. I got attention for being that person, for sitting sullenly at the end of the table, withholding the other version of me I made sure they’d like.

I secretly sat in lonely places, hoping someone would notice me and say, “I see you.”

As I moved into independence, I cast myself as though someone was always watching. Playing the role of someone worth paying attention to. It stroked my ego to feel seen. It gave me the same sick satisfaction as being “better behaved” than those around me.

I’ve spent years turning pages of life lessons, only to repeat them. I’ve spent so much time trying to understand myself. And part of me wanted it to be something tragic, some dire case of melancholy. I wandered through it, finally soaking up the sumptuous ambiguity of sadness, letting it bleed into my work and myself.

Until one day, while dissecting the nuance of the disrespect I felt, I realized what I really wanted—what I had always wanted—was attention.

And then it poured over me. Drenched me. Drowned the pit in my chest.

It was all a bid.

I’ve never shaken the habit of performing perfection as a bid for the attention I am so desperate for.

She’s cracking open a can of cat food, and as the cat swipes her body against my grandmother in the seductive manner that cats do, she asks me if I see how the cat moves, if I understand. If I understand? I haven’t gone through puberty yet at this point; I had very little concept of anything beyond the clasps and buttons that held our pride intact. But I understood being hungry. She says, “This is how I get what I want from your grandfather.” A man I understood even less, beyond his mumbling demeanor. What did men have that I wanted?

Her portraits were in every major room in the house. And each one proudly bore the signature of my grandfather. She wore elegant, simple dresses, no makeup, pale skin, and natural hair. Her nose was sharp, and she was beautiful in the way purebred dogs are.

There was a time when the only memories I had with my grandmother were a passing montage of ham sandwiches and light pats on the butt whenever I was near. Oh, and the constant barrage of how important it was that I brush my hair a hundred times a day. And… that I was never allowed to be alone with my grandmother beyond limited hours.

Then, there was a night that mostly passed in the regular ways that nights there did—popcorn, boring TV, and lying there listening to the deafening sound of silence of a home that my mom always braced herself to enter. And for the sake of narrating this with integrity, I won’t inflate—but an argument had turned physical, and my grandmother had sliced my grandfather’s earlobe.

It wasn’t like I didn’t know families were different, or that people didn’t have dirty laundry. I was mature in the sense that I was interested in grown-ups and the things they discussed. I understood the low tones and leaned-in faces of grown-ups, and the topics they hoped you didn’t hear. But HD downloaded, and the memories stopped being fuzzy at this point. I had questions that didn’t have innocent answers.

Alcohol was a drink on the table that was simply not for kids. I barely understood the effects it had, barely noticed how adults changed as the night progressed. It wasn’t something enticing or alluring; it was a routine I was yet to have the burden of carrying, like taxes and buying groceries.

But she had attacked him, and the adults could not shield me from this. Nor did they have the imagination to lie, or speak in the roundabout, ephemeral way that modern parents do. Grandma is experiencing a great deal of pain, and she’s navigating the murky waters of Grandpa “painting” other ladies. - It’s nighttime. Grandma is having a hard time feeling like she didn’t give up every ounce of being her artist for a man who didn’t need her like she needed him.

Maybe that isn’t how they’d put it, but it’s how I would.

She was the daughter of two German immigrants, Alfred and Alfreda. Her life had been organized and conventional in a way that I imagine made her itchy. In her home, bills were always paid, and there were outfits specifically for occasions. She was allowed to pursue art in the same way young women were shipped to Europe, as a social cue to assume culture.

At some point, she got married to a man she would one day leave. He would go to work only to return to a home without a wife or child in it.

I liked to imagine it in a cinematic way, as I’m sure she did too. Sunset, Philadelphia in the rearview mirror, Cape Cod on the horizon, with dreams of the artist she ran toward. The one whose arms she’d fallen into, and the one I imagine she hoped she’d become.

They started a life that was as conventional as two artists could manage. My grandpa was the second in a line of painters, and my grandma was the daughter of a banker. Together, they bought property, built homes, and started a small cult of wannabe artists. At some point, children arrived. Eventually, there were four—two boys, and then two girls. My mother, the first of the two.

They painted portraits, taught students, and traveled between Maryland and Cape Cod, repeating the days centered around my grandfather, who was carrying forward his father’s legacy.

My mother wore the insecurity of the way she was brought up in a way that I always felt. At some point, the abuse she suffered was the only thing I knew about her, aside from her “real” name.

My grandmother said four children, a husband, and a gaggle of underling cult members were hard to manage.

I know there was a time before alcohol and infidelity. My mother remembers being around ten.

I could air her laundry, and I could tell you every shameful thing that happened. And maybe one day, I will.

But recently, my cousin told me: Hating them is how women in this family love their men.

And I think about how cold my grandmother is. I think about the smell of chardonnay. And I think about how loving someone can ruin you.