I was wished a happy birthday and felt so special, so remembered, so loved. You didn’t even know it was my birthday until you saw a friend had posted about it.

The door was held open for me on a rainy day, and I was reminded that people are pleasant, worth it, capable of small grace. You did it on instinct, and honestly, lingered there a little past the point of comfort.

In my gut, there are many feelings brewing, as in yours. Recently, a new one has introduced itself to my GI, and it’s growing and affecting my microbiome to the point that I’m now here: that things are bigger to me than they are to you. That things are bigger to you than they are to me.

That should be obvious, but we live our lives ignoring it.

That our guts are similar but not the same. We share the same microbes, yet we don’t, not really. You can’t eat garlic without your stomach turning on you; I can eat it by the clove and absolutely will, given the chance. We both love garlic, or maybe you hate it. Either way, we simply don’t share what it does once it’s in us.

I used to consider these emotional fixations, these lingering scenarios and feelings, blowing things out of proportion. And that was me, blowing things out of proportion. Completely bulldozing an entire private emotional ecosystem into a singular character flaw.

There used to be some level of shame here, when I felt one way, but it wasn’t reciprocated, or I assumed a boulder out of a pebble of a moment. Until I remembered that you do the same, that everyone does the same. What makes this commonality so ambiguously soothing is that whatever that moment is for you, be it for me, it doesn’t matter. The rumination does; the bubble guts, the sharp pangs, the anxiety aches. The fact that we share it.

Many nights, between the both of us, have been spent wide-eyed on our pillows wondering why we can’t shake off something so insignificant. We couldn’t, because they never were. Beyond how this personally helps soothe us, it’s a reminder to accept that we will never fully know what something becomes inside another person. And that human intimacy demands that we understand this.

Recently I tried to cut out gluten. I hear it’s good for you. I’ve watched strangers get loud and proud about quitting it, watched friends transform by nixxing it. But I’m not allergic to gluten. And I really like pasta, and even more so, I actually don’t need to cut it out at all.

We share the mechanism, not how we metabolize. My gut is telling me we should all remember this.

The winter months flux and flow drastically, from embellished skirts and fresh stockings to sweatpants I’ve owned since college. There are weekends when I put my hair up in curlers every late afternoon, and there are others where I wear the same ponytail for so long I end up cracking into a bottle of Advil. I love them both equally.

My time during the winter feels like an algebra equation, though it’s likely much simpler (think: if Sally has six apples and two friends), but whatever its complexity, my time is divided all the same. There’s an inspiring balance during these months, brought in with the frigid cold, that forces a scale so equalized a Libra would graciously nod in approval. And I nod back; happy, full, fortunate.

Sadly, eventually, the late January slug and February lethargy roll in, and I spend more time in my bedroom, retiring to my sheets the moment the sun does. And the more I stay under my duvet, the longer my stockings remain in the drawer. But my batteries are moving quickly, and as I open my laptop to order more for my controller, I see I miss you’s and if the weather gets better from some friends, and I’m in ‘freaks’ and the battle bus driver has died from others.

And it remains like this, more pyjamas than charcuterie boards, more PC updates than freshly ironed skirts, until one day I look out my bedroom window and see the leaves are growing back on the barren trees that have kept me company all winter. That evening, while I’m getting ready, I slide my laptop under my bedside table with my foot, which is now in a frilly sock that matches the Doc Marten sandals I bought for the spring.

Now my time is split between sitting at long dinner tables decorated with candelabras and fresh baby’s breath, and the ATM at the dive bar I hate, but all my friends love. It’s split between walks through the park that’s now lush and covered in tulips, and early visits to the beach where we stay on the sand because the lake is too cold. Some of these nights, I return home, stumble to my office and boot up my PC, but in half an hour I am both tired and preoccupied with the errands I need to run the next morning - for the party the next evening.

Like this it goes until I open my laptop to get some work done and read dinner Weds night? and there’s a vintage fest this weekend from some friends, and I miss you’s and we should play again soon from others.

Then the wind is humid, the sun is large, and the water is warm enough to swim in. I forget what my bedsheets feel like after I’ve spent the evening dancing in them. There are two weddings, a bachelorette in a rental with too few bathrooms, a passport stamped twice, and a friend’s couch in a city I don’t understand.

As I sit on my patio with my coffee one morning, I notice the humidity is building up moisture on my glasses. For a moment I don’t recognize it; my mind is so hazy that the way my eyesight blurs seems normal. I run back inside to escape the heat and notice someone has left open the office door. As I move to close it, I see that my PC has developed a fine film of dust. I take a mental note that I should sort that out, shut the door, and run upstairs; dinner is at 6, the movie at 7.

Later that night, I sit down at my desk, use my hands to wipe the dust off the side of my computer, and grab my controller - but it’s dead. But this time in a way that batteries can’t fix. As I pick up my phone to order a new one, I see I miss you’s and I miss you’s and I miss you’s alone; I wonder how, in all the time I’ve spent running around, I feel like I’ve run into no one at all.

Finally, eventually, the wind grows chilly, the leaves turn amber and aubergine, and the air is cool enough to slow my pace to a walk. My phone buzzes less, my brain even more so. And here, the Libra smiles again, as I pull out my stockings from the drawer for the pumpkin patch one night, and my matching pyjama set with the little roses on them for the next.

-

A note:

When I was a child, I often wrote about autumn. None of it was very strong at all, but the themes were - that the most comfortable season of the year was cradled by wilt and by death, though now, I understand it was only ever dormancy. Nothing is lost; it only hibernates. Nothing stays forever, but nothing leaves entirely either; it waits, patient as the seasons.

My friendships do the same. They disappear, lie still, just long enough for me to wonder if I’ve neglected them beyond repair, only to return with the first snowfall, the tulips growing in the garden, the longest day of the year, as if no time has passed at all. I wonder if intimacy isn’t measured by frequency, but by our instinct to recognize when it’s our season to come back.

Maybe, for you, it coincided with the first time your feet touched salty water, something you had never felt before. Well then, the seaglass would be an accessory to a day that’s already etched in your memory, and so you, without a doubt, you would remember the first time you bent down to pick it up, your hands brushing the ocean waves. Of course you would.

From there, maybe it jump-started a lifelong journey of collection, bubbling inside you a need to find a piece in every color, in every shape. An itch you couldn’t reach, a feeling you never had before, but are now entirely consumed by. Then, remembering that first moment becomes consequential - nearly inevitable.

I wish I remembered, but what I do, instead, is a few special moments with a few special pieces that I’ve collected over the years, from as young as eight years old. This feels more important for me anyway; it was never about the first piece of seaglass, it’s always been about the seaglass itself. Where it came from, or how it came to me. Where I keep it now, or how it was lost.

—

When I was eleven, my Mama took us to Fort Lauderdale for a grand family vacation. I remember little to nothing about it, if we drove or if we flew, where we stayed, or what we did. But I do remember the beach, the sand in my toes, and the feeling of the arch of my foot stepping on something hard and jagged. When I bent down to find the culprit, I didn’t just see the piece that pierced me, but two more like it, next to each other, a flock of glass. I picked up all three and tucked them in my pocket.

I didn’t look for more; the three were enough - one a pale pink and trapezoidal, another brighter, like hubba bubba after you chewed it up, and one more, light and soft, and green like the shallow mouth of the sea. For the remainder of the trip, I kept them on me, in my trouser pocket or in my little nylon bag. And when we returned home, I put them on my shrine of things-that-I-love with the other trinkets on my vanity.

In the morning, I would see them as I teased up my hair, and at night again as I brushed it out. Seaglass can be with you for a lifetime, and those three pieces have proved so. They’ve traveled with me throughout it all, from my childhood bedroom to my college dorm, and here today in a little cauldron on my new shrine of things-that-I-love, mixed in between agate and obsidian and pyrite.

—

When I was twenty, my partner bought me a ring from an eccentric vendor at the campgrounds of a music festival. Their stall was built from mismatched tapestries and long tables filled with coiled wire rings in different shapes and sizes. He picked one for me that looked like the inside of a conch, wrapping around itself like an ouroboros. And in the middle of the ring was a sage piece of seaglass wedged tightly into the wire.

I don’t believe it was ever my style, but during that time, I couldn’t go a day without it. For eight months, it hugged my index finger. In class, I would twirl it around and around while my professor lectured about deviance, distress, dysfunction, and danger; when I washed my hands, I would make sure the water doused it just as clean. There were many things I had to apply in the mornings to survive: contact lenses, mint toothpaste, and that sage, seaglass ring.

Then the seaglass was lost, out of the blue and into the yellow, leaving behind an empty coiled wire. I checked under my duvet and beneath my bed, in the dark corners of my handbag beside empty wrappers and loose tobacco, and the bottom of my dirty laundry hamper. When I realized it was gone, I cried and told my partner I was so sorry. I put my empty wire ring in my jewelry box and replaced its spot on my index finger with a pearl.

A few weeks later, my partner brought me a gift, and I thought of candles and ornate lighters from the Greek store a few blocks away, like the first gift he ever bought me. Instead, it was the ring, with a new piece of seaglass wedged into the center coil. Green still, but not sage, more teal and less bright. Moved was an understatement, and I pulled off the pearl and wedged the new seaglass ring onto its digit throne. But as time passed, it no longer suited me - and I no longer wanted to wear it. Week after week, it lived more in my jewelry box than on my finger until one day I wore it on my hand for the last time, and I never even knew it.

—

I hadn’t thought about seaglass for some time, outside fleeting moments, like packing up my jewelry to move to a new home or digging through my cauldron to find a gem that might aid in some craft that could set my mood straight - until three years ago, on the Oregon coast. When I wasn’t even sure I would find it, but went looking for it anyway.

Not to replace what was in the cauldron or make up for lost time with the ring, but only because I wanted more of it. New pieces, different shapes and colors, to hold in my hand for a little while. To see if anything I found would be worth joining me in my lifetime. I scoured the sand on my walk to the ocean and found nothing at all for quite some time.

But I remained focused and fixed downwards, darting my eyes, waiting for seaglass to sing to me or catch the sun and cast pastel shadows across my face. The sand was rough on the Pacific coast, and at times it was painful on my bare feet. But this is how seaglass is made, brushing against coarse sand, saltwater, and unrecycled glass bottles and showing up on shore in fragmented pieces; so I knew the pain meant it must be here.

This patience was rewarded with so much seaglass that I was overwhelmed by it. As I crouched down to a squat and surveyed the rainbow around me, I noticed I was comparing what I saw to what I already had. One piece of seaglass reminded me of the first ring from the campgrounds, frosty and translucent; another reminded me of its replacement, deep and turquoise. I found one more that was pink like untouched gum in its wrapper, but I only thought of my hubba bubba piece at home.

Even still, I bent down, carefully choosing pieces to pick up and turn over in my palm. I stuck the ones that called to me deep in my pockets, as I’ve always done. And there they stayed with me, on the train, plane, car, and another, all the way back home again.

Some pieces still sit on my shrine, and others on my bedside table. A few pieces I’ve lost along the way, either entirely or just in sense, buried in the depths of the things I love or collect; others left to the dust in the corners of my closet. But when I put them all together in my memory, I see a mosaic of pale glass - teal, sage, blush, rose - softened by time, and wrapping me in seaglow.

I bought an iPad for little to no reason a few months ago because it was treat-yourself-day and I thought an Apple Pencil would change my life. I haven’t picked it up in two weeks and I think my pencil is dead, but it’s fun having it. The option of it. It’s blue. I thought that was interesting because I always buy things in black. I should have bought a laptop. The spacebar and the “P” are the squeakiest of the keys. Pppppp ppppp p p p p. Like halloumi beneath your teeth.

My laptop is a “her” which I never realized until I named it in writing above. Everything I own is a her. My car, my eyelash curler, my kindle. Of all the pronouns when it comes to the things I love, I always pick “her”. I have one “him” object - no, actually I don’t. I thought if I thought hard enough I could find one. For who? Him?

Ppp pp p p p. Like a plastic beach ball slipping out your fingers in the pool.

Whatever happened to explosions in the sky? Nothing. I just stopped listening. But I used to love them; I used to write to them every midnight in high school, under the covers of my twin bed. When I forced myself to type and type until something came out. I’m listening to them now - they’re kind to write to. Dramatic, but kind. Certain. Like that teenage absolutism about balance and finding it. Somehow, approaching a new decade, I’m returning to it. I spent the last ten years fighting it off, but now I’m coming back, and it feels homely. Squeak.

I’m working hard to keep this piece going, but honestly I don’t have much else to say. And the keyboard is getting to me a little, which is bad, like truly, really bad. But I did it anyway; I wrote something down. And she helped me do it. Even as a beach ball, even as halloumi, even as a mouse. And like her, I do the same. I do it anyway, even with it all, even without it all.

Hi, I have the shop across the street from you. There is something I need to make you aware of. Can you email me or call me. Thanks.

In a letter folded into eighths and wedged between the slit of my front door.

They had always felt a little odd, the windows here. But they’re the reason I signed the lease. I had a few magical weeks where I left them undressed, letting all the light pour in and cast minimal shadows on my walls. Then the light turned dark. Dreary, scary, terrifying dark. I bought sheer curtains. White ones. To only let the good light in.

I got the stalking thing very wrong once before. Just a few months earlier, in this same apartment. Every night, at 5:30 pm, I would hear a knock on my door. Three times, sometimes four. Knock, knock, knock. But not as sharp, more a drawl - a soft, extended whisper. And it wasn’t always 5:30, sometimes it was 5:34, sometimes it was 5:28. I peered out those windows every day at that time and could have sworn I saw the same person passing thrice. I also saw squirrels and dream babies.

My partner bought me a Ring camera and installed it outside my front door.

Mission: catch a man, a very bad man.

That first night, he came over, and we sat down beside the window, peering from the app to the street again and again. Then it happened. The three knocks that sounded more like shnooooocks, but nobody was there. Not on the street, not on the phone.

It was my automatic cat food dispenser. Three weeks of stalking allegations because of my abandoned automatic cat food dispenser. I threw it out.

Now, as I stare at this letter from the chocolatier across the street, I can feel my heart racing and my underarms sweating and my knees going wobbly. Is she crazy? This seems like a letter from a crazy person. Is this a prank? I’ll kill whoever thinks this is funny. Is this real? Or is it a food dispenser situation? Please, not another one of those.

After ringing the number on the note and a twenty-minute conversation, it’s confirmed. It’s real. A stalker has been sitting outside my apartment, parked right outside the chocolate shop, and peering into my window. I tell my neighbors. We start a group chat to track his visits. The chocolatier even steps out to confront him one evening, but he drives away.

I start hiding in the furthest corners of my home, away from the windows. I have someone over at every moment, staying with me from the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep, and to be honest, every minute in between. When I see the Toyota, I call the police. They tell me nothing can be done but to call them back if something is done. I make a mental note to call them back when the man breaks into my home and brings a knife to my throat.

Coming home doesn’t feel safe anymore. It’s as dreary, scary, terrifying as the dark that used to leak through my windows. The other day I drove home alone, and saw his car sitting there. I could have sworn I saw binoculars in his hands. I panic, hard and fast. I didn’t want him to know that this was my car, that I was coming back home alone, to know that my front door led straight into my living room.

I called my neighbors, and they came running out, so kind, so loving. They opened my car door and brought me into their home while we waited for my partner to arrive. While I dialed the police, they did the same. Three calls are better than one. It had to be. By the time my partner had arrived, he had already driven away.

When moments like these happen, they feel pivotal. Three calls to the police and hiding in a garden unit were the straws that broke that poor camel’s back. Yet somehow that moment didn’t come until a few weeks later, after more bouts of minor stalking. It didn’t come until I pushed my curtains to the side and let myself dive feral into the dark. When I decided I was going to lose it and, more importantly, lose him.

There was his Toyota, across the street, as it had been for the past month. The chocolate shop was closed, and my neighbors were out of town. My friends were visiting later that night, and I let myself be alone for an hour - let myself, in my own home. Protocol was to pick up the phone and dial 911, but this time as I punched in the numbers, I wasn’t concerned nor scared; I was angry. Viciously mad, seeing red, furious.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s a man who keeps parking outside my house - has been for the past month. He just stares into my apartment. This is like my fifteenth call. My neighbors have called too, and the store owner across the street has as well. I’m really scared. I’m terrified for my safety and I don’t know what to do. It feels, honestly, useless even calling at this point because nothing ever happens. But I need you to do something about this. I really need you to do something.”

Give me your address this, where-are-you-now that. “Dispatch is on the way.”

I hid in the furthest corner of my home.

And then there they were, red and blue lights flashing on the pavement, sirens echoing down the street. And there he went, rolling up his window, turning on his engine, and revving away. I ran down my steps and onto the street, watching the police pursue him down and around the corner.

When they called me later, they said they followed him to his home. That he lived only three minutes away. They warned him that if he was going to return, he would be detained. And when they asked him why he kept parking here, staring through the window, he didn’t really answer. And they didn’t really have a reason to push - he said he would stop.

I never saw his Toyota Corolla again. Not on my Ring, not by my neighbors, and not by the chocolatier. When I moved out a few months later, I wish I could say I remembered to be concerned for whoever would move in after me. But I didn’t have to. A few months after I moved out, a car drove into my building, totaling the first floor and displacing my neighbors. Condemning the building.

I still wonder why he did it. Not as much as I did in the moment, but the thought creeps up when things are already creepy.

Did someone important to him die in my apartment, and he visited every day to pay his respects? My cat was always scared of the tub; perhaps a child drowned there. Or maybe he followed me home one day, and I never noticed, oblivious, drunk, and happy after I ignored him at an event; or maybe he liked the way I looked, even hated the way I looked, and decided he would observe me from afar to untangle his feelings.

There are chocolatiers and sweet tooths. There are marathon runners, and there are mental sprinters. And I ran and ran thinking about why this man decided to park his Toyota across the street and break all trust I had for people and all the love I had for windows.

Still, I picked my next apartment because of the light.

Fumbling to find my water bottle, I swallow back the sleep from my throat before I rub it away from my eyes. They’re still crusty as I reach for my phone and check my 24 notifications. I look for Outlook first, scanning my email for anything I’m waiting for. There’s nothing, and I sigh, and I clear away the rest - daily horoscopes and a voucher from Uber Eats.

I open my messages and see a few from my friends, a few from my family. I don’t respond unless it’s completely urgent, whatever that means, so I read them but slide them as unread. I’ll reply later, when I feel like it, which is when? I have 330 unread messages. It was fun when it was at 160, but now it’s ugly.

Remember, I replaced that fortune of a gentle alarm? I do it with Tiktok or maybe Instagram reels or maybe Youtube shorts or anything at all that’s fast, loud, and grating. Anything at all that fills my head up before I can produce a thought of my own.

I think I’m gonna die in this house, they nerfed the holo in Fortnite, Tyler Catstrophe painted something uninspired, another Hantavirus case and two being monitored in Georgia now, Cassie from Euphoria is in her redemption arc, Trump is vile and dumb, buy this sweater - better yet, buy this perfume, I think I’m gonna die in this house, and why am I getting Big Bang Theory clips on my timeline? Is that a sick joke?

After thirty minutes, I stretch in my bed, the full-body kind that makes you buzz with oxytocin, and I pull myself from the covers and hobble to my bathroom. I do what I do, and decide that today I’ll do something interesting, something outside, something new. I head back to bed and do my daily chess puzzle, which helps activate my brain, or so I believe, and then I forget why I’m back here under the covers.

There’s a mini bean in New York City, the World Health Organization says not to worry, these are the top 5 rogue lites to buy on Steam, lolcow, lowlcow, lolcow, the millennials are fighting with genz, this polka dot swimming suit is 50% off, medicube is 70% off, Uranus just entered gemini and you’re fucked, Sheldon get the fuck out of here please.

I don’t remember waking up today; my alarm tone didn’t go off, and it’s not replaying in my head. No, I found it, right there, I think I’m gonna die in this house - wait, actually, my granny got hit by a bazooka.

Recently, as in the past ten years, I’ve found that I prefer cold brew in the morning. I pour myself a cup and take it to my balcony, and as I sip and as I smoke, I let the sun wrap me in a blanket.

Kids are screaming at the daycare nearby, and a fly buzzes too close to my ear. It’s so beautiful out today, and I wonder where I’ll go, what I’ll see. My phone buzzes and snaps me out, but this time I respond to the text, but when I see the others, the 330 others, I get overwhelmed, and so I close my messages and open up something else. I think I’m gonna die in this house.

Last night I visited and sat upon the small rocky beach, sloping gravel and sand, and pulled out my book. I felt the October chill from my open window earlier this morning, so I brought along my treasured blanket, tired and torn, but warm and soft. Wrapping it tight around my shoulders, I flipped through the final pages of my book as the sun set over the river.

It left the sky mauve, casting up shades of purple and pink on its way down. I set aside my book to watch the colors dance, more magnificent than whatever I could read. Perhaps too magnificent, as before I knew it, the moon was massive in the sky, projecting its fullness onto the water and illuminating it indigo. I packed away my things, hearing the water ripple lightly from the wind.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed a stone shining. So bright amongst the others that it seemed as if it were glowing. As if it were placed there just for me. I picked it up, studying its shape, the chip on its left, the scuff on its right. It was throwable enough. With a precise flick of my wrist, I sent it down the river, adding waves to the current. It skipped four times over the water before it sank to the bottom. My father had taught me to skip, though I never had it like him. I picked up another. As I went to toss it, hoping for five skips this time, my entire body tensed, and the rock fell from my palm.

From the middle of the river, a stone was skipping in my direction, seven times, eight, then nine, until it landed beside me. I picked it up hesitantly, surveying the river and across it through squinted eyes.

“Hey! Nice skip!” I called out, the wind carrying my words over the water. The opposite bank was dark and quiet, but not empty. I couldn’t have told you what I saw, only that something was there, and that I felt it.

Rising to my feet, I walked closer to the shore, scanning the water and banks again. “Anyone there?” I meant to yell, but half-whispered. I heard nothing back.

When I opened my palm to study the stone, I nearly lost my balance. This was my stone: with the chip on its left and scuff on the right. That which I just tossed, which was just throwable enough, that I watched sink to the river depth on the fourth skip.

I peered ahead. Rarely do I stay at the river this late. When the sun is gone, the water turns black as the sky, and you’re lucky to see just a few steps ahead. Tonight, I could see under the moonlight, and still I saw nothing.

Cold water hit the soles of my shoes as I stood as close to the river without getting in. I flexed my wrist, warming it up, and skipped my stone again. One, two, three, four....five!... and dead in the water. I watched it sink beneath the midnight ripples, certain this time it was lost to the depths. But I waited a beat - just in case. Nothing.

I grabbed my book, tossed my blanket over my shoulder, and turned away from the river to head home. That’s when I felt something lightly hit my ankle. There I saw it, shimmering as bright as ever, illuminating the dullness around it: my stone. I bent down to pick it up and felt its familiar shape in my palm, spotting the tiny chip on its left. But this time, there was no scuff on the right. I tossed it over and over, looking for that mark, and it was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared. It was there, had been twice, black and jagged, but now it was certainly gone. But I knew this was my stone - like the opposite side of the bank, I could feel it.

Staring out into the water, I called out again. Had I not been desperate for a response, the silence would have been beautiful; the water lapping on the shore, the gravel mixing beneath my feet. Still, no answer.

I prepared to toss it back into the river. This time, I warmed up my wrist twice, flexing it back and again, building a skip even a stranger would be proud of. I let it go on the third. My record was beaten as it hit its sixth skip, and just as before, I watched it sink, melting into the river.

And again, though sooner this time, it skipped its way back to me. The stone gleamed in my hand, and I felt its familiarity in my palm as I moved it around. The scuff was still gone, but this time, the chip was too. Right there on the left, where the ragged cut had been, the stone was now rounded, entirely whole. The stone was not just throwable now; it was impeccably throwable. It was perfect.

Straightening my posture, I rounded my shoulders and flexed my palms. This time I closed my eyes. The moonlight above cast a soft white on the back of my eyelids, setting the stage for the images I saw underneath them. My father’s strong wrist, the hair on his arm gold from the sun, his muscles releasing as he let go, his stone skipping gracefully over the water. Skipping so far, we lost count.

I swung my wrist back, just as he would, and released my stone into the river. I let my ears count for me. Six, seven!, eight - and then I could no longer hear it. But I knew it continued.

When I opened my eyes, the river was the calmest I’d ever seen it. And like the river, when I opened my eyes, I felt streams down my cheek. I stared ahead, grateful as ever, and whispered a soft thank you as I wiped my face with the back of my hand. And as if in response, glowing and perfect, I watched as my stone skipped over the river and back to me one more time.

On the stone, in ashy ink, was carved an image of a figure. They sat on a rocky coast, with a book in their hand and a blanket on their shoulders, beneath a full moon, while the river lapped at their feet. Across from me, the bank was just as quiet, just as dark.

I opened my book to my favorite page, leaving it on the gravel coast, and tucked the stone safely in my trouser pocket. I listened to the river flow down as I made my way back home.

Last year, the rain wasn’t here on residency like it is this week. It actually wasn’t here at all. When I left my house, the sun was out; it beat down from the buildings and onto the sidewalk. I walked in the shadows, playing the floor is lava with sun patches because I wore too heavy a coat.

After I quit my job, I stopped getting my nails done. It was an easy expense to kick off the list. My nails are important to me, though, so instead I would buy 8 or so packs of stick-ons off Amazon and pray that at least four of them looked promising enough to glue to my fingers. This worked for a long time, and I even developed a highly effective, but exhaustive, application process that made them last three weeks. But I destroyed my nails. They would snap if I looked at them too hard.

This time last year, when I left my house, it was bright, but cold, and it had been six days instead of four. What finally got me out was an appointment to get my nails painted. To hopefully begin repairing them. In a leap of faith, I booked at a new place just a 14-minute walk away. A leap of faith might sound dramatic, but when my old nail tech left my old nail salon, I didn’t get my nails done for four months in an act of mourning. I probably cried about it, too.

The nail salon was enough to make me feel better about rotting in my house for nearly a week, but still, I didn’t want to get home so soon. So, I decided to take the long way back. Two minutes into my walk, it started to rain. My favorite type of rain, but only when I’m indoors; the type of rain that falls when the sun is out, that’s soft and feathery, and leaves translucent rainbows in the sky.

Somehow everyone around me was prepared, pulling out their umbrellas, pulling up their hoods. I followed in their lead and pulled up my purse, lifting it to my head to use as a shield. Someone looked at me funny and I put it down and let the rain hit me. Easily influenced when you don’t leave the house for a week.

As the L stop came into frame, I saw the woman. She was standing there with a tote on each shoulder, wearing a yellow raincoat and matching wellies. Waiting for the train. She looked cartoonish; with her matching outfit in such a bright shade of yellow, the type that’s reserved for some A24 or Focus Feature film from the 2000’s. This could be Clementine boarding her train, not knowing Joel was doing the same on the other side of the track.

She stood there, as she always would have. But it felt like she was placed in front of me as a reminder that the world moves, even when you don’t. In isolation, chosen or otherwise, you forget that people are moving while you’re still. Her stillness was my momentum.

In college, I had a few friends who started a clothing brand called Sonder. Truly, I couldn’t tell you what the clothes looked like or if they were even sick at all. I never bought anything so I fear, likely not. But what I do remember is learning the word; sonder, meaning, the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

I was pretentious as hell in college so I thought it was funny and cringe and, honestly, lame. Born from the depths of tumblr. Which is hilarious because all this time later, I still remember the word, its definition, and am now writing a piece about a woman who stirred that in me. Sorry to those friends - but also thank you.

Oftentimes I spend far too long in my house. Grabbing packages from the lobby can feel like a truly fulfilling physical activity. Then I remember that day I walked back home in the rain. It didn’t leave a rainbow in the sky, but I suppose it did, as a woman with two totes.

Today is day four and I’m leaving now, not because I have to, but because last year I saw a woman in a yellow jacket and matching wellies waiting for her train.

This is not to say that I stopped watching horror that day. If anything, I actually started watching even more of it. For a while, it was my favorite film genre. While I spoke at length about whatever pretentious film kick I was enamored with outside my home, inside I was watching Insidious, Paranormal Activity, The Last House on the Left, The Human Centipede. I just couldn’t read it, because I associated my panic attack with The Shining, which was associated with Stephen King, who I associated with horror novels.

A few months ago, I tore that bandage off when I read my first King novel, Misery. I adored it, enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. Then I watched the movie, which was brilliant, and still, the book was better.

Fast forward a few months, and I’m reading On Writing, King’s blend of part autobiography and part instruction manual for writers. I’m enjoying that, too. But one note that he’s hammered home a few times now, and has glued to me, is that to write, you must be honest.

There are two applications of this. The first, and most nuanced and literal, is that writing is most effective when based not only on what you literally know, but also what you feel, what you intrinsically know. Prolific writers have already done a great job of explaining this; Twain, Hemingway, Machado. I won’t explain that because I would do a horrible job, but also, that’s not my point here.

The second is that when I think of writing as a form of honesty, I realize that is why Substack culture annoys me.

This is the blanket statement of all blanket statements. There are incredible writers I follow on here who pour out their hearts and produce masterpieces I wish I could tear off their blogs and put in collections. But the culture as an entirety is so exhausting to me because most of the pieces I see promoted to me are dishonest. At best, recycled attempts to diagnose trend phenomena like yearning or why social media is bad, at worse, exhaustive lists of SEO bullshit, and at worst, ragebait.

I know that is somewhat of a me issue. I cultivated a bullshit timeline, and now it’s feeding me back that bullshit, and so I read that bullshit in anger, and so they put more of it on my timeline to keep me scrolling, and so I read even more of it, and so and so and so. And this is intentional, because even if Substack is considered a better social media site, it’s still an algorithm that functions to keep you there. And rage keeps us here. And so it’s written.

But is it a me issue, or a Substack problem? Because, as I scrolled this morning, I saw that Andrew Tate was the #1 New Bestseller, and #2 Rising in News on the site, scrolled to avoid that hellscape, and landed on a course, disguised as a post, on how YOU can get your first 500 subscribers using these three rules! My timeline slapped my face and then came in for a punch before I even processed the first hit. Jab after jab, shit after shit, all coming together between mixed media images that say nothing and sub-for-sub posts that are haunting me. (Which, on that, do we think that people are celebrating their 22nd subscriber because they are truly happy, or because they know that Substack will push that post out and they’ll gain another 10? Where’s the honesty in that?)

Substack has just become the pretentious version of Twitter for me. A fantastic piece is wedged between a photo of a journal with text that reads me after I say idc, and a post that reads “big fan of how the sun glitters on the water.” Beside a beautiful short story sits a post on why men need to go back to war, which says nothing new at all. Today, even something as honest as writing must be fueled by words that enrage or empty us because that’s what keeps us scrolling. It works, and it’s working, with Tate being #1 on the site.

There are so many answers to escaping this that I’ve heard a million times before: limit your time online, find more productive spaces, don’t engage with ragebait, forget about even lingering on the post or it will clock your interest immediately. These things are true. Notably, these are all very platform-specific solutions because Substack has become another chamber of hell.

But allow me to look beyond the platform, to a specific group of people who allow this to carry on: those who contribute to the chamber. Who allow dishonesty to creep into their writing so they can incentivize success built on shallow engagement. Who write pieces about everything that contribute nothing at all. Who no longer care and make it everyone else’s problem.

For writers, it’s personal - as it should be. So, to join a website centered around writing and produce the garbage they do is a uniquely upsetting quality, and more so, an indictment of the way they value community. Which is to say, they don’t at all.

My final piece of honesty is that I am exhausted, everywhere, all the time. If your writing contributes to this, you are not honest, and so, even worse, you are not a writer.

Still, I’m here. I really do love horror.

I’ll start by saying that I used to consider myself an incredible drafter. It was actually once my favorite job. I would spend hours at the Writing Center, working with first-year college students, PhD candidates, and even professors who were putting themselves up for promotion. I read their stories, their essays, their testimonials. I helped them sharpen their theses, build their arguments, and structure their ideas. I kept books on giving and receiving feedback in my personal library.

This is a selfish way to start this piece. I lead with it as a reminder to myself that I wasn’t always so troubled with the drafting process. A reminder that, while I currently struggle, there was a version of myself that was proud of her finesse. I considered that version of myself a drafting veteran. Actually, I was more than a veteran; I was an experienced editing lover, a kill your darlings hussy, a cut the fat tramp. Then I graduated college.

Years of inactivity went by. I went dry as the Sahara, unpracticed in my craft. I lost the Writing Center when I graduated, and the day I walked out those doors for the last time, it also closed shop in my mind. There was no place to go anymore, no solid foundation, no beautiful escape from reality to loiter in. And as a newly adult woman, I didn’t have time to write, let alone draft. I had a full-time job (where I wrote all day!), clubs to dance in, or buttered noodles and Game of Thrones waiting for me when I got home.

So, I barely wrote, let alone drafted. A little midnight Notes app poetry and a few Google Doc stream-of-consciousness, but nothing significant. Not a piece that wanted to be read aloud or shared with a friend. The world submerged me in a pool of time scarcity and exhaustion and I came out dripping wet: a born-again virgin.

Until two years ago, when I wrote something that I was proud enough to draft. Though unfortunately, my systems were broken and aging from neglect. I was writing my first book. At the time, I incentivized drafting by finding a victim (my partner) and gamified the process. Every time I finished a chapter, I would let him know, and that became his night-time reading for the day. I would collect his notes in the morning and then revisit and rework the previous chapter before I continued on.

That was a horrendous way to draft. I was stuck in the past of the story, revisiting chapters before moving forward. So much so, that the future of my book dissipated into thin air. My story died after 45,000 words. This was so heartbreaking for me, that I dipped out again. Left drafting in a ditch and hopped in an Uber to the club.

Until December. This is the annoying part of this essay, but that’s why it’s titled a “Virgin’s Take.” It’s only been two months and some change but I know that drafting is back; I can feel it deep in my abdomen. I know drafting is back, because on the way to a club last week, I spent the pregame talking to my friend about the importance of sharing work, line-editing, and receiving feedback. I get butterflies thinking about it.

But I am bad at it. Not bad like I’ve never drafted before, but bad in the way where I’m noticing I wasn’t as good as I used to be. And somehow that’s a more difficult pill to swallow. Though I think that the first step is always acknowledgement, and I’ve done that. Now it’s time to flip through those books in my library again, loiter the halls of a Writing Center (my friend started a Discord for writing and feedback and that’s my new WC), and kill my darlings. I’ve even added a new element to the mix; the other day while I was doing my makeup, I was on YouTube watching a video about Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules of writing a short story.

I don’t know Kurt like that, but I do have Timequake on my bedside table. A friend suggested it, so I bought it, because as drafting is back in my life, so is reading. Anyway, I’m going to yoink and twist the number 8 from him, and the idea to make a list, and leave you with this:

A Born-Again Virgin’s 8 Rules on Drafting:

1. It’s Not Personal: In high school, I co-founded an event called Writer’s Week and was tasked with making a shirt for the event. It was maroon and I added text that read “you are your words.” Writing was, and is, so personal to me that I thought it was necessary to let the world know. And in a broader way, that still remains true. But like yourself, words are meant to change. They bend and shift and find new meaning. Let them.

2. Share Your Work: I have felt guilty sharing my work because I don’t want to waste people’s time or demand too much of it. You need to trust your friends and family. If they tell you they want to read your piece, they mean it. You must share your work because you hold the curse of knowledge; you know everything about what you’re writing, but does someone else? Lift that veil and be vulnerable. If not for yourself, do it for your piece.

3. Don’t Just Kill Your Darlings, Extinguish Them: Like this piece, oftentimes I write something out once, give it a line-edit, and clean my hands of it. This doesn’t work with things you care deeply about. You have to light your first draft on fire and watch it burn to ash. Very rarely, the first thing you write will be the final version. If you cannot tell the story for the second time, you will understand what you were missing in the first.

4. Let It Breathe: I have always hyperfixated on what brings me joy. I won’t leave it alone, I will suffocate it with my time. This often happens with writing. But, you need to let your piece breathe. A piece that is not able to rest, to inhale time and reflection, is at risk of death. Step away from your piece for your safety and theirs; give it the oxygen it needs to survive.

5. Read It Aloud: Unfortunately, there was a silent excitement in my gut when I would be chosen next to read out loud in class. I know that not everyone is like this, and that’s fine, but there is a reason why it’s enjoyable: reading something out loud brings it to life. You need to get the piece out of your head and into the world. By reading your piece aloud, you will hear what you are missing.

6. (Ew) Don’t Let AI Line-Edit: This one is a sad inclusion but it would be ignorant to ignore it. You might lose me here, but I have 1000% sent a draft into an AI chat and asked if it understood, or comically, felt a certain way about it. It responded back to me with line-edits (!?), telling me to shift my words this way and that. AI writes like a moron, do not let it change your words. In this sense, I revoke number one, and will say You Are Your Words.

7. Find Perfect Later: Like I mentioned earlier, the way I edited that first novel was a horrible process. I was editing while I was writing, and that pushed me so far into the past that the future of my story was lost. Write your entire piece out. Write it awful and ugly. You cannot make something perfect if there is no something at all.

8. There Is No Eight: I read back this piece and realized that I was extending this list for the sake of it. I have nothing more to say.

When I had finally had enough of cleaning around 15 minutes later, I sat down on the couch beside him, “Did you finish it? So, what did you think?”

“It was good! I also don’t finish all the books I read and it’s a relatable feeling.”

“No, but, what were your thoughts on the actual piece? Do I need to fix anything? Are any points weak? Is it lame? Did anything stand out to you?”

“Nope!”

“What the fuck?”

“Well, it couldn’t have been boring!”

This shockingly made me laugh and I quickly wrote it down in a note that homes all my writing ideas. I had no clue what it sparked nor what I was going to do with it. To be honest, I still had no idea when I sat down to write this piece.

As I typed it out, my brother sitting down to read while I bounced around my home like the Tasmanian Devil, I realized that I blackout when I clean. I move from one place to another, ricocheting from surface to surface. It makes sense in my head, mostly, or maybe what makes sense to me is just running around from thing to thing, focusing on whatever is in front of me. But it’s more calculated than that, as I stack each task in my brain like Tetris.

I saw tufts of my gorgeous cat’s hair contrasting the black threads of my living room rug. I despise my rug, it’s a faux cowhide that always bends and creases in the oddest shapes. My coffee table, which I call my chicken wing table (it’s a wooden slab connected to three legs, completely useless in concept and shaped like a chicken wing), doesn’t help as it always snags the carpet and further bends it out of position. I constantly need to adjust it.

As I walked to my office to grab my vacuum, I noticed that I had unopened mail on my desk that I needed to read through and throw out. I hate grabbing mail. Every time I take the trip to our mailroom to empty our box, it’s filled to the brim. I know that our mailman hates us. One time our mailbox was so full that a wedding invitation from a great friend got crumpled up and shoved in, because there was nowhere else for it to go.

I grabbed the mail and shuffled through it, throwing it out in the kitchen bin as I continued my walk to the office to grab my vacuum. I noticed the cushions on our patio furniture had fallen off and soiled during the storm last night. When I moved in, I envisioned long reading sessions sitting on those cushions, cups of morning coffee, and taking meetings. They’re too dirty to sit on now comfortably.

I vacuumed down the hallway, through the dining room, and into the living room. Once I was there, my brother instinctively lifted up his legs as I vacuumed beneath them. My new vacuum ate up all Smokey’s gray hair. He sheds so much during the winter that at times it’s concerning. I always wonder, do cats go bald with old age? I think cats are the most gorgeous animals on Earth. Except the bald ones, which scare the shit out of me, though I’m working on it. I think it’s funny that I exclusively pick black rugs, they act as a proof-of-concept for his existence.

When I finished vacuuming, I saw that there were two dirty mugs on the couch that needed to be loaded into the dishwasher. I won one of these mugs in a Twitch giveaway for a streamer I really dislike. I still have it though, because what did the mug do to me? I keep it around because we have a mug shortage in this house. My mama told me once that she would drink her Coke out of a mug so her little brother would assume it was coffee and wouldn’t bother her for any. She got more Coke out the bottle this way. I drink Coke out of my mugs now too because I think it’s endearing. That doesn’t help the mug shortage.

Our dishwasher was nearly full, so I loaded in the mugs, tossed in a pod, and turned it on to cycle. I looked at my countertops and realized I forgot to load in a water bottle hiding in the corner. That corner homes a kitchen lamp (get one if you don’t have one), a few cookbooks, and a visor for my dads old restaurant. It closed in 2021 due to the pandemic. He owned that location for nearly 40 years. I grew up spending my afternoons in the attic of the restaurant, on a futon that was literally falling apart from the seams, playing Neopets until I went dizzy. I still order food from the restaurant that took it over. I used to see it as betrayal, but now I think of it as legacy. The same men who worked there for my dad for 40 years work there now. They cook my food like I love it.

After I wiped down my kitchen counters, I sprayed them with this little bottle of countertop perfume. I had no idea a product like this ever existed until I moved here. The previous owners left it when they moved out. Two bottles of pine scented countertop spray from Williams Sonoma. I use it sparingly. I only ever spray the countertops when I do a big clean, not just disinfectant wipes but a massive scrub down with my pretentious detergents. The smell reminds me of completion.

I looked around my house and decided it looks perfect enough. There are a million other things I could have done, but I didn’t really care to tackle them. That was for another day, another time, another burst of energy.

I write the same way. If you followed me this far, it couldn’t have been boring.

She created Asian recipes for the brand, particularly South Asian, though she was known to fuse flavors from the continent - recipes with Chinese herbs served in Pakistani staples. She wrote these recipes for the magazine, detailing the exact measurements and including tips on the actual preparation process. She also cooked them there, stylizing dishes for photographers, centering perfectly cooked pieces of meat so their steam could envelope the dish. These photos were paired next to her recipes, bold, focused and beautiful. Her name, in tiny font, was printed below them.

My mama worked with some of the greats - she mentioned in passing that Mary Berry was her boss for a specific baking project she led. When she tells me these stories, they’re always in pieces. Fragmented scenes I collect and organize to pull together an entire story. She mentions little notes from her favorite dishes or people she met along the way. She reminisces about her commute, her proximity to her favorite stores. She rarely mentions the impact she had on British Asian cuisine in London in the early 90’s. She never speaks about how fucking cool it was that she was printed in magazine after magazine, featured in publication after publication.

If she had this job now, I wonder if she would share her newest recipe on Instagram? Post photos of herself with Mary on her grid? I think she would.

I think we all would. That’s the standard now. A massive advantage at our disposal to create or lead fascinating lives and share it with our friends, families, acquaintances. Cast our creative net out and extract interest. Position ourselves to grow because we have the tools to share quickly and with so many others.

I really hate it. Not when I see others share their work or their lives, because outside a few personal vendettas, I love seeing people live lives they’re proud of and create creations that show their passion. It’s a selfish, intrinsic hatred, because I don’t like doing it myself. Call it nazar (evil eye), call it embarrassment, call it fear, call it secrecy. At one point I believed this hatred to be a fusion of them all.

In my daydreams, I produce whatever I want, pursue hobbies and passions, and find success without telling a soul. They’re dreams, so delusions can be true. But I fantasize of people finding my work, my streams, my clothing line, my Substack, without me ever posting about it to anyone at all.

A week ago, I shared a very incomplete version of this draft with a few close friends because I didn’t know where to go with it. I asked guiding questions for their feedback: do I speak more as to why this hatred is embarrassing, or prose about the feeling itself? Should I explain the ways that this hatred of sharing has helped or harmed me? They provided incredibly thoughtful and helpful feedback (thank you), but one particular note caused an earthquake-scaled synapse in my brain:

I’d love to see you unpack this hatred more..... I think a lot of people I meet today want to make things, they want to share them with the world, but they also get that feeling of being embarrassed to do it. I would love to see you untangle that and discover where that comes from.

So here it goes. Let’s start with where this hatred doesn’t come from.

It’s not laziness. I work in marketing, I can expedite social posting, execute creative campaigns that fall into neat schedules and optimize performance. I am not fearful of being perceived as promotional, I understand that it’s necessary in order to grow, understand that anyone who sees my posting as promotional is not necessarily someone I would want to engage with in any case.

It’s actually not even being embarrassed. I want my work to be found, appreciated, or admired. I believe in myself and what I create to a fault. I think everyone should behave that way. It’s critically important. Belief grows for the ashes of embarrassment. Have you ever had the thought that you can’t prove anyone truly exists outside yourself? If you don’t believe in yourself unabashedly, then you’re cutting out even that simple truth. That’s a train ticket to psychosis.

Now let’s close with the truth.

In high school, I wrote a poem. I performed it in front of hundreds of students. I was the lead organizer for a first-time event called “Writer’s Week” and I was closing out the performances. I remember standing on stage, looking out at all the people sitting on the red auditorium seats, sweating buckets. These are the first two stanzas. And it’s all there.

i’m unsure the way I should string my words together
to make sense of the tangled yarn
that ravels,
unravels,
knots in my mind.

the problem is I cannot reach to untie the mess,
for when I let my hands enter my mind,
all the tangled yarn will spill out,
and i’d much rather be complicated and confused than
empty.

I am scared. It’s not hatred of sharing, it’s the fear of it. And hiding behind hatred is easier.

I am so fearful of sharing anything at all because that means I am open to criticism, I am open to being perceived fully and earnestly. I am terrified of putting my work or life on display, exposing to the universe that I have a shell I intentionally hide my reality behind. I am frightened of sharing too much because it removes the velvet veil that I have spent a lifetime weaving. The veil that keeps me interesting, mysterious, complicated.

12 years ago I wrote that poem and I never realized it would prophesize and summarize one of the greatest hurdles I have placed in front of me. I’d much rather be complicated and confused than empty. The idea still resonates. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. In fact, it’s so wrong that it’s almost painful to deconstruct.

A few days ago, while we were having a gorgeous Christmas dinner my mama had prepared, I told her about this piece. I asked her more questions and she shared with me more stories I had never heard. Mama told me that her mentor, a man named Jeffrey, was devastated to hear she was leaving her job to cross the Atlantic and get married. So when she moved to the States, he gifted her a fax machine so she could still work. When she put me down for bed, she would spend her nights crafting recipes, sending them to her office in London. Ultimately she couldn’t keep up with her work, a heartbreaking story that I would love to tell one day. A few years ago, she found out he had passed away in 2017. The article mentioned he founded Prêt à Manger. He owned it even back when she worked that job. She would stop there to grab a coffee and a bite and he never once mentioned he owned it.

When I asked her if she would post about these people, these experiences, and her work on social media now she didn’t hesitate at all before delivering a strong “yes”. She explained that it was such an incredible tool at our disposal, one she didn’t have all those years back. She spoke about how if she had access to it when she was young, perhaps she could have even found herself as one of the greats - a pioneer of Asian cuisine in London, or maybe even the world. That perhaps her career would have taken off in an impossibly beautiful trajectory.

The deconstructed idea here is that I don’t want to market myself because I am scared of revealing too much of who I am to the people I know. I don’t want to share everything because I’m scared that authenticity can actually lead to a lack of character, particularly if that authentic self is seen as boring, bland, or incorrect. But that fear is neglect; it is a maltreatment of myself, my work, and a rejection of the tools we wished our mothers had access to.

I really love my black, velvet veil. I believe it to be one of my most endearing features. We will never separate, you would have to pry it out my cold, dead hands. Though I have eyes I love as well. They look like my mamas. If you see me pushing the veil aside to stare at you, please hold my gaze.

I texted my friend a photo of the book and he said he’d never read this one - it had just come out a year or two ago. His personal favorites were Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore. I thought it was fun that I could report back on a book he hadn’t read, like I was joining a new conversation midway through with insightful input right off the bat.

On that plane ride, I picked up the book three times. It was beautifully written but never stuck. I didn’t touch it once during my trip, though I rarely do while in England. So much of my time is spent running from a shop, to a dinner, to an uncle’s home, to another.

On my flight back home, I was at a WHSmith grabbing my meal deal, and saw a thriller I had heard great things about. I didn’t buy it because I had Killing Commentadore in my backpack... so I wasn’t allowed to start a new book yet. On the plane, again I picked up the book three more times but couldn’t focus on the story. It hadn’t pulled me in. I ended up watching movies on the tiny screen ahead of me and secretly wishing I had grabbed that thriller.

When I got home, I put that book on my nightstand. I didn’t pick it up once, nearly sighed every time I looked at it. It stayed there for a year and a half until finally it was forced to move because I was moving - to a new apartment. While I unpacked at my new place, I thought about homing it in my bedroom, back on the nightstand. I stacked it on my bookshelf instead.

One of my fondest memories from childhood were the days my mama would take my sister and I to the public library. We went every two weeks, on a Sunday afternoon. We would spend an hour perusing the bookshelves, stacking our favorite contenders in our arms, and running to self-checkout to take them home. I never knew what I was looking for at the library. I would figure it out while I was there, reading summary after summary, judging books by their covers. And I always finished every book I checked out, extending my hold when I needed to, as I thought it was my responsibility.

Where that sense of responsibility came from, I still don’t know. Maybe because it was a borrowed piece, something I had in my home that meant someone else couldn’t? Maybe it was because it built a strong sense of achievement in my little body? Perhaps my mama told me I needed to finish my books, which would be the easiest explanation, but I don’t remember her ever telling me that. What I do remember, though, is that from the age of nine, I always felt an innate responsibility to finish a book I cracked open.

If I didn’t, I had failed. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be allowed to get a new book. If I didn’t, I was being disrespectful.

While writing this piece, I searched through different articles from others that also experience the guilt of not finishing a book. And many of them shared so many of the same sentiments; they shared the guilt, of course, but also the lack of understanding as to where any of these feelings stem from. It’s a common reader problem with little to no solid evidence on how it grows nor why it exists.

It wasn’t until this year that I pushed past those feelings of failure, anxiety, and guilt when I didn’t want to continue a book. If it made me feel uninterested for even a minute, I would close the book and move onto the next. I wasn’t perfect the first few times. I did pick the book up again hoping another few reading sessions would pull me back in (I’m looking at you, Tress of the Emerald Sea*).

Particularly, I noticed that I would give more chances to books that were spoken highly of. In those circumstances, it was more difficult to move on. All those complicated feelings would arise and build ten-fold. Questions would spiral around in my head; Am I the problem? Is this book above my paygrade? Am I missing something?

But finally, I came back to myself. When I felt I was giving a book one too many chances, I would shove it back on my bookshelf or immediately delete it off my kindle. I would remind myself that reading is one of my favorite hobbies, one that has brought me so much joy since childhood. Tainting it with guilt or failure reduces that impact. It’s a sacrifice of joy and none of us can afford that.

This year, I came short of my reading goal. I read 17 books. I DNF’d five of them. But they still count towards my goal, because I cracked open their spines and gave them a shot. This is where I might lose people, but I don’t care. Reading is for me.

*Last night, post-final edits for this piece, I realized why I couldn’t bring myself to finish Tress of the Emerald Sea. I knew exactly what was going to happen. The large twist in the book was so apparent to me that I felt that I was reading retroactively. I wanted to add in this little note because I really do believe that there are multiple reasons not every book is for you. And putting together this list of reasons, for me at least, helps alleviate the guilt of not finishing a book even more.

My younger sister and my friend moved over to the living room to play Animal Crossing on their Nintendo DS’s. I didn’t have one so I buzzed over Zed while she made her rice krispy concoction and asked her questions about how it was binding, where she learned to make it, why she was using fruit loops. Zed was always kind to me, but recently she would engage with me more than she used to. Probably because I was turning 12 soon.

After she wrapped up, she asked me if I wanted to go hang out with her while she checked her Facebook. I had heard of Facebook - I wasn’t internet illiterate. I just chose to spend my time on MySpace, FanFiction.net and the New Twilight Saga Forum. We looked through her messages, she showed me around the platform, and then she turned to look at me with excitement in her eyes.

“Technically you have to be 13 to make a Facebook account, but what if we made one for you now? It’ll be so much fun.” What the hell, sure. There really was no reason I hadn’t created an account yet, except for the fact I didn’t know of any friends on the platform yet. We spent the afternoon creating my account, editing my new profile picture on PicMix, and setting my first few statuses.

Vip is..... At a sleepover and eating rice krispies!! With fruit loops!! :3

I added a few friends she suggested and called it there. It eventually became my primary social media platform until Instagram won me over. I’ve always been explorative online, from posting on Lookbook (RIP), DailyBooth (RIP), Tumblr (of course), politico posting on Twitter (Obama followed me), and streaming on Twitch. I could write a comprehensive memoir just using snippets from my social media presence.

But Facebook is my oldest social media account. At least the one that still exists. The account I made that day is the same account I have now. I haven’t posted on it in three years, but I open it once a day. It’s my last stop on a doomscrolling rampage. I open it after I’ve consumed enough short-form content to pull together a feature length film. After I’ve read so many garbage takes on Twitter that I think I’m going to hemorrhage.

I have 828 “friends” on Facebook. They’re made up of people I haphazardly added when I was in high school, college professors, colleagues from my first job, and friends of friends. I never check profiles unless their post comes up on my feed or someone served me tea and I wanted to see what I could decipher. I’m also unhealthily obsessed with micro-communities and follow dozens... Stanley Cup Traders of the Midwest, Are We Dating the Same Person Chicago, Labubus In the Wild; those stories are for another time.

Recently, something interesting has repositioned in my heart, and arguably, it’s late-onset. The last four days, every time I’ve opened Facebook, the ghosts of my past burden me with trauma. This has always been the case but I’m tiring of it now.

On Monday, a girl I went to high school with, who I had maybe two conversations with in my entire life, posted professionally-done photos of herself and her two kids. The caption read something along the lines of being strong in the moment. Her husband wasn’t in any of the family photos. I clicked on her profile and her relationship status read “separated.”

On Tuesday, a third-cousin of mine, that I’ve met once, posted fifteen times in one day. He was talking about how the government had implanted a microchip in his body and he was looking for someone to help him take it out. He had money and knowledge to trade for the operation.

On Wednesday, a woman who graciously homed me when I was working in Iowa posted about having the most difficult year of her life. A three-prong thesis on how age only makes you wiser, and experiences only shape you stronger. I lived in the attic of her home for only two weeks until I couldn’t stand creeping up the steps at midnight and rented a studio downtown. She and her husband had gotten divorced. I remember thinking they were an interesting couple.

On Thursday, a post from the homeowners association for a subdivision I grew up in. A home that my mother sold four years ago and I haven’t lived in for eight. A woman was complaining about being ding-dong ditched at 10pm on a Tuesday. They complained about the children of the neighborhood, how they were all horrible. Some of the comments agreed and some were angry at her framing. I read a comment from an old neighbor that was racist.

We’ve all read somewhere in passing that the average person today is exposed to more information in a single day than the average person a century ago would have been in an entire year. Though the unique edge with Facebook is that we know too much about people we should have forgotten about. Why do we carry people’s personal lives on in our hearts and minds when we should have buried their names at 18?

I know far too much about people I’ve never truly known. My brain is clogged with information about events that I’ve never participated in. My worry grows for people that don’t know my last name. And I can’t stand it. But I keep my Facebook for marketplace, like most of us do. I open it out of habit, like the strongest of you don’t.

There’s always that one entirely funny person that purges their social media following (based) but then ruins it by posting on their account with something along the lines of “If you’re reading this, you made the cut!!” I’m not going to do all that, but it’s time for me to send these ghosts on their way. And maybe this is your reminder to do the same.

I say this as if I was a regular Substack content creator. A woman who sat at her desk by a big, bay window and mused for years. A woman who would post on here to a hungry audience of twenty entire people but then disappeared due to an unforeseeable life-altering event that led to her disappearance (she won the lottery).

In reality, I posted here just once before. Around the same time of the year, in early January. A preview of my new-found dedication to Substack titled there’s no rule that says your new years resolutions can’t be for evil.

I promised semi-regular check-ins and snippets from the novel I was writing at the time (which I couldn’t name now if I had a gun to my head). I promised myself that I wasn’t going to be afraid of:

1.) not thinking; but doing;

2.) not asking; but telling

3.) not letting myself spiral to the point I developed a soggy biscuit of a personality, but embracing embarrassment.

And I actually did do all those things: just not here. I developed a community that I could check-in with regularly and honestly. I did share snippets of that novel, just privately to friends. I even started writing another novel I didn’t finish. I kept my promise of taking on new challenges: from quitting my horrendous job with no plan, experiencing a 4-month pottery stint, making genuine, beautiful friendships, creating content, and starting therapy for the first time in my life. I’ve even read upwards of 40 books since then, which is 40x the amount I read in 2022.

If there was a woman on earth who was more enthusiastically dedicated to any sort of New Years resolution ritual, it might be me. That is one thing that certainly hasn’t changed. This time every year I fall into the deepest trenches of reflection. The entire idea of new year’s resolutions from afar seems like Field Book invented it to spike their journal and scheduler sales. But from close up, and in my eyes, it’s a nostalgic love affair and a dedication to keep dating my memories.

And this is actually the exact moment in time when my commitment to new forms of expression or ideas come knocking. These long, cold nights in December. Like clockwork:

I’m going to start posting on Substack and pick up pottery (December 2022)

I’m going to start streaming on Twitch (December 2023)

I’m going to start a clothing line (December 2025) (shop sixsicksix.store)

I used to hate this about myself - though now I don’t mind it all. I have given up on so many interests, but I’ve tried double. I love being struck by who-knows-above with the idea to alter the trajectory of my life because I woke up one morning and decided I wanted to. I have created an intangible web of connections and experiences, and a catalog of decisions, that have shown me what I truly admire and what I don’t.

And right now, I’m actually in the midst of the deepest new year reflection I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. Because of an endearing Scottish witch on Tiktok.

A video of hers showed up on my fyp in October. She explained the 13 Magical Nights, or “Rauhnächte,” a ritual of self-reflecting and manifesting for the next year.

From that day in October, until the 13th day before the Winter solstice, you are to write down 13 wishes or things you’d like to accomplish or embrace the following year. You write them in the present tense, as if you’re experiencing them now. And then you fold them in half and tuck them away, let them live in the dark. Then every night, 13 days prior to the solstice on December 21, you take one folded piece of paper and light it on fire. On the last day, you unfold the final piece. Whatever is written there is up to you to take care of in the new year. What has burned will be taken care of by the universe.

It’s a waxing poetic type of witchcraft that I truly don’t believe in earnestly. I am embracing it in all ways and will open my heart to anything. But I cheated. I wrote two of mine late and I forgot to burn my first on day one. I didn’t want to forget what I wrote down, so I didn’t fold them up immediately, I re-read them every time I wrote a new one. And I didn’t let them disappear in flames... I took photos of them all and put them in a document so I could reference them at the end of 2026.

And even though I feel like I may be the wrong spiritual candidate for this practice to the witchtok girls, I have never felt more aligned and confident with myself heading into a new year. Because the exercise can be an incredibly strong mystical ritual, but I find the true magic comes from the intentional, and early, self-reflection. I’m beyond excited to see what my final piece of paper reads on the 21st.

This is not a post to promise a return to Substack because I actually have two other promises of myself in the new year: what if I started a bookstagram?? I’m actually here because my friend Hannah recently published her first Substack post. She captioned the release of it as popping her Substack cherry and I remembered I had done that once as well.

(Note: the piece was absolutely beautiful, and if Hannah is reading this, thank you for inspiring me to write again). You can read it here.

Right now, I’m just writing to write. I’ll definitely do it again. Maybe here, maybe not.

there is no rule that says your new year’s resolutions can’t be for evil

I thought it would be completely off-brand and pretty indignant to not add my nonsense to the already exhaustive online collective. I started this substack as a New Year’s resolution to commit more treachery - and by treachery I mean doing normal things that I normally can’t do as I find sharing anything online about myself outside a square photo on my private grid to be embarrassingly abnormal. 

When I think to myself about an evil new years resolution, I don’t mean I’m truly entering my villain era, as that will come much later and I’m still young and spriteful. I really just mean being evil to the 2022 version of myself, which can be reduced to:

• Doing, not thinking

• Telling, not asking

• Being embarrassed, but not letting it spiral me into developing a soggy biscuit of a personality

I’m thrilled beyond to carefully dropping all that and saying, doing, and being whoever I am or want to be - whether that changes thirty seconds or thirty days from now. Because it will. 

Jake said something to me about not closing doors but letting others close them for me.
I realized that even without a promise of opportunity, maybe just at times an expression of self, I have been sealing my own doors shut my entire life. Something something about not killing your cringe but killing the part of you that cringes.

lord of the rings continues to alter my brain chemistry 

If you don’t know that I watch LOTR every winter around Christmas, I do and you do now. It’s a little bit insane, a little bit religious, and likely a whole lot more a potential coping mechanism. It all started when I was a little adolescent child and my d-

I watched every extended edition of The Hobbit and LOTR this year as per and I literally woke up this morning thinking I was a character. It was so motivating that I treated doing my laundry like a little side quest and it fucking worked. 

I think there’s a part of my brain that is so drawn to drama fantasy because 1.) I literally should have been an elf in this lifetime and 2.) It makes such ordinary and mundane things in life seem a little more fun. 

I hope it doesn’t wear off too quickly.

Bilbo FRODO Baggins is literally the worst character of all time.

what i’m attempting to read because I failed my goodreads goal so damn bad last year

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami 
I haven’t gotten too far into this but I put the book down and picked my laptop up to start drafting this post after the first few pages. Not to compare this to his book because he’s brilliant and is discussing substance and this is borderline gag but that says enough.

Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades 
Haven’t even started it but excited to.

other thoughts and a request:

!! 

Does anyone have a podcast recommendation? I’m stuck cycling between four of them. In most ways, they’re not great but it’s a crutch. I can’t shower with music anymore; it has to be a podcast. Which is kind of sad I think?

!!

I haven’t made any progress on my novel since the wedding. I’m excited to get back into it. I think I will use this space to occasionally get serious and share that process and a few excerpts. There’s a lot to be said about what is passionate to me and how closely it’s connected to extrinsic motivation and I want to hone into that this year and see if it makes a difference.

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