Lettitor

Dear Reader,

In this issue, we’re obsessed with obsession. When does a healthy interest cross the line? How do we find ourselves spiraling down into obsession, and what makes being swallowed up by our own captivation so strangely tantalizing? Obsession is more than just an interest gone too far: it consumes, it snowballs, and sometimes, it confronts us with a side of ourselves we never knew we had. It’s playing with fire.

And then there’s the little obsessions that we choose for ourselves. A movie we’ve seen a hundred times, a sport, a carefully curated sweater collection, or a certain song we just can’t get enough of. The pieces of the world that we can immerse ourselves in are limitless, and our passions are a source of joy in our lives and integral to who we are. Sometimes, letting ourselves go down the rabbit hole is just what we need.

As CC students, the block plan encourages us to throw ourselves into a subject for three and a half weeks at a time. Many of us have spent all day in the library working on a single project, so   absorbed we hardly realize the time passing. Sometimes it’s overwhelming and a pain in the ass, other times engrossing, and sometimes a mix of both.

Obsession can mean so many things at the same time. So, what is it to you?

We wanted to give writers a chance to talk about their own obsessions, topics we were sure they’d have lots to tell us about, and take us along for the ride. We weren't disappointed by the wide array of obsessions and experiences that they brought to the table: from music to relationships, from the past to future. It’s all the big things and all the little things. In many ways, our obsession can feel bigger than ourselves, taking on a life of its own. We were fascinated with the unique voice that each writer used to paint a picture of themselves, and each piece came together into a collection of the wonderful, the dangerous, and the unpredictable. As we dive into the many faces of this theme, we hope you, like us, will be engrossed with the mysterious and powerful world of obsession itself.

Thanks for reading!

Alex and the Cipher Staff

One Direction Affection

One Direction Affection

Loving Liam and the Music That Shaped Me

Article by Kylie Haney, art by Alex Wollinka

            It was August 29, 2014. Liam’s birthday. I had traveled to Chicago to see One Direction for the first time. As the lights went out, my body came alive. I started screaming, crying, and shaking. My mind went numb and all I could focus on were the five boys walking onto the stage.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines obsession as “the control of one’s thoughts by a continuous, powerful idea or feeling, or the idea or feeling itself.” For me, obsession is visceral and unrelenting; true obsession consumes and ignites you. It’s a compulsive infatuation that never truly disappears, but rather morphs into various forms. I had numerous phases before finding my passion for music and musical artists. It all started when I bought One Direction’s Take Me Home album. I don’t know why I bought it in the first place – I had vowed that I would never like One Direction because I didn’t want to be labeled as another girl obsessed with a boyband. Still, I bought the CD, listened, and fell in love. It began with me being able to discern their voices, then I fell down the rabbit hole of watching videos on YouTube–music videos, interviews, fan-made content. After that, I didn’t stand a chance at resisting their appeal.

 The “One Direction Infection” took over all of me. They consumed my thoughts constantly. I could tell you the smallest detail about them. Any time I heard a song lyric, dopamine rushed through me. If I heard one of their names, my head spun around to find the source. My teachers started forgetting my real name because I wrote “Kylie Payne” on every assignment. I still have a hall pass that says, “Mrs. Payne to [room].” When I found out Zayn had left One Direction, my teacher had to send me to the bathroom to cry. I quit track and made a shrine in my room because I couldn’t handle the heartbreak. I cried on the 25th of each month for 8 months straight. 

One Direction dominated every aspect of my life. Any miniscule criticism of my boys was a direct attack on me and my existence. Now, my obsession looks different, but still looms large. I have the lyrics “all these little things…” from One Direction’s song “Little Things” tattooed on my body, because while my world may not revolve around those boys in the same way, the impact they had on me will last forever. They were my role models, inspiration, and motivation at an incredibly formative stage of my life. Now, music remains one of the biggest parts of my life, with my favorite artists being Harry Styles and Taylor Swift. My heart and soul. 

Of course, my love for Harry is somewhat residual from my One Direction obsession. But I don’t just adore him for his 1D days or his beautiful face; I love and appreciate his music and the life lessons he has taught me. He was one of my biggest role models at a key developmental stage and has helped shape much of my personality and many of my values. He has taught me how to be outgoing and compassionate and how to be respectable yet also embrace my goofiness. He has taught me how to love and to “Treat People With Kindness.” Most importantly, he has taught me to be myself and value those around me. 

I connect with Taylor on a different level; not only have I grown up with her, but my life experiences have aligned with hers– I have experienced her “eras” with her. I was at my rock bottom when Reputation came out and found true love for the first time as Lover was released.  To find someone so relatable who can articulate my thoughts and feelings so well is indescribable. It’s almost unbelievable how I relate to every line of “Fifteen.” Each song of hers has the power to transport me to a particular memory or time period… singing songs from Red in the backseat of my grandma’s car; crying to “Last Kiss” while eating ice cream when I experienced what I thought was my first heartbreak; the butterflies in my stomach while listening to “Delicate” when I had a new crush and found a way out of the darkness; feeling the insanity of love she describes in “Don’t Blame Me”; the sense of peace I felt in listening to “invisible string” and understanding that everything happens for a reason.

I could chronicle my life in a book of Taylor’s songs and lyrics. The best part is that none of these songs and their associated memories are static; as I gain new experiences, some songs can transform in personal meaning and invoke entirely new feelings. Even the songs I don’t relate to allow me to imagine different situations, and sometimes make me hopeful that one day I will experience their significance. 

Many people don’t understand. They think you are just crazy, though I prefer to think of it as passion. Passion and obsession are not bad things, especially when channeled towards doing good. As I always remind my mom, I could be addicted to things that are much worse. Addicted is another good descriptor – I simply cannot get enough. You could lock me in a dark room for 10 years with nothing but music and I would be content. Why? It’s something about the way it makes me feel. There’s a song for every emotion or situation that can help me process my feelings and show me that I’m not alone, even though it might feel that way. Music is there for me when no one else is; its melody surrounds and embraces me. Music literally relieves my pain, both emotionally and physically. It strikes a chord deep within me, resonating with my entire being. 

Look at Me

Look at me

Article by Alexis Cornachio, art by Lucy Kramer

He was much older than I was. Or at least it felt like it. I tiptoed along the tightrope that was the age gap hanging precariously between us. When I would lose my balance on the line, because I thought it would make for a funny joke or something, I’d mention the monumental 4-year age gap between us, and he would immediately correct me. He would say, “It's 3 and a half years.” Like the “half” that he was adding and simultaneously taking away made the world of a difference. He also liked correcting me. He was probably right anyways; he was much older than I was.

I was never interested in any of the boys from my high school. Because I could never imagine them being interested in me. That summer between my middle school years and the uncharted high school territory, I was deeply self-conscious of my body. I had grown into a woman with a speed unrivaled by most of my peers. I was jealous of their flat chests and how they didn’t tower over all the boys our age like I did, like a monster. I had gotten my period at the age of 11, and still, at the 8th grade moving up ceremony years later, I had not figured out how to use a tampon. I walked at the ceremony in a quick step, with my shoulders hunched forward, my hair long, distinctly covering the right side of my face. My 14-year-old self should have been buzzing with excitement. The true end of her middle school years had culminated in that moment. Instead, I just wanted to get it over with. I was long overdue for a “grow up”. And I thought that in high school, maybe I wouldn’t feel like my body was as out of place as it was in middle school. Instead, when I look back on it, the 14-year-old girl only felt an ever-lingering heaviness from the eyes of the audience, the same weight that put the hunch in her shoulders and the hair in her face. I’m unsure how or when it happened, but the burden of everyone else's perception had forced itself within my mind and on my body. I winced as I rewatched my mom’s recording of me accepting my certificate on that stage. I remember how I resented that moment.

I resented my body. I resented the way it moved, and the shapes it held that I felt like no other bodies around me did. Jack made me love a lot of those insecurities. I became so infatuated with the parts of myself that I noticed he liked. 

Jack was my first love, I think.

Jack holds a lot of my firsts.

Jack was the first time I was truly obsessed. 

The obsession was accessible. He lived just down the road from me that summer. I had my first kiss with him on my grandparents’ dock one night in early June. I felt like a poser who couldn’t purse her lips the right way. I spent the next day in angst thinking that my inability to kiss was just like how I couldn’t use a tampon. These insecurities stood as self-imposed contradictions against my body. But there was something in the green specks of Jack’s eyes when he looked at me that soothed those insecurities. That validated me. He had the greenest eyes I’d ever seen, and they noticed me. They would look at me. And I remember the sky’s dots exploding and connecting in the most intricate patterns that night when he kissed me for the first time. So it was okay that he hated holding hands. Because our relationship had to be kept a secret. I convinced myself I didn’t like PDA either. But when he drove me around in his beige convertible with the top down, I felt like it was the first time I had ever felt the wind against my face. I wanted the winding roads to be more endless than they looked. I said I didn’t like to hold hands either. The truth was I wanted so intensely to have our hands tangled in one another’s as we walked along the coast. 

I snuck out every night that summer, my arms floating through the midair nothingness as I ran past the couple houses between mine and his. Jack worked the night shift at Il Cappuccino, an Italian restaurant in town. I would wait for him all night until he was done and get to his backyard just in time to sit under the clothesline and watch as he finished his chicken parm dinner. We wouldn’t even kiss sometimes. Memories of him fit into a painful, perfect little secret box in my head which makes it difficult to write about now. Maybe keeping my memories of Jack for myself made it more special. That summer my heart was impossibly light. I tucked my hair behind my ears and licked melting ice cream, sometimes getting it on my chin. I was discovering how Jack’s love and attention could rush through me like pumping adrenaline. I learned how to float. I learned how to become intoxicated from someone else’s doing. I couldn’t believe this was getting to happen to me. This is what growing up meant. It didn’t feel like womanhood, but I was getting closer? At least I felt like my woman’s body, that held a kid’s mind and a 14-year-old girl’s heart of glass, was learning how to behave right. Did I think this because Jack validated my body so I finally could? I learned what feeling sexy meant. I finally learned how to use a tampon. I wanted to skip past high school years onto true adulthood because he made me love to grow up. I wanted to feel this free indefinitely.

Jack wrote me love letters over the school year, but I had eventually grown up and grew out of loving him. What I had experienced and learned from our relationship had become a part of me, but we were just temporary. We could never last indefinitely, but that feeling of arms splayed running to his house every night is indefinite. I made it to college, and I got to the age he was when he got to have so many of my firsts. It’s my first semester of college and my newfound best friend and I manifest lovers for ourselves at night. 

My neck aches as I dissect my body in the mirror of my college bathroom. I’m twisting in all impossible directions trying to catch every angle of myself. Trying to visualize how others will perceive me. HOW DO THEY SEE ME? WHAT DO THEY LOVE ABOUT ME? Am I confident? Do I radiate that energy? I hate mirrors but I couldn’t live without them. I hate when all I see is my body and how compulsive I am to pick it all apart. Do I love the way I look, or do I hate it? Confidence feels like tinkering on the tightrope that connects me to Jack; that connects me to the male gaze. Like one step off balance could tip me over and I would shatter like my 14-year-old heart made of glass. 

Just a couple weeks ago, this one guy held me in his hands. I was his glass of water. He decided to drink me up, every last sip of me, until the glass was empty. The glass dropped from his grip. Shattered onto the rusting turquoise tile of the kitchen counter, some pieces dropping to the floor. I think a couple got lost under the regrettable white carpet of the living room. 

Broken glass pierced the foot of someone who stepped on it before I could clean it all up.

They bleed all over the white carpet now. 

He dropped me. Shattered, broke. How are we expected to be whole when we have been shattered like an empty glass? How can you piece the glass back together when you are the shattered pieces themselves? And worst of all, is that the shattering was someone else’s doing. Maybe this is what you get when you become reliant on someone else’s intoxication? What if one of the tiny glass pieces is lost under the regrettable white carpet? What if someone steps on the pieces before it’s all picked up and fixed, with their bare feet, and they are bleeding all over the regrettable white carpet now. 

You may have dropped me and forgotten, but since you had once wanted to drink me up, I have become infatuated with the water that you so badly needed. You drank up every last drop and left me questioning what it must’ve tasted like, and what it must’ve felt like to have me as entirely yours to either love or destroy. I am left with the brokenness that I have to pick up and fix myself. 

When you are done with me, I am still left with me. To fix me. 

Confessions of an Accidental Conspiracy Theorist

Confessions of an Accidental Conspiracy Theorist

Article by Anonymous, art by Sanders Greene

There are dangerous connotations to the label “conspiracy theorist.” The word suggests someone potentially anti-government or anti-science. It conjures an image of a pale, greasy person in a dark room with only their beady eyes lit up by a computer screen. Or an image of January 6th, 2021, the news footage of those sneering and costumed masses swarming the Capitol, chanting delusionally. Mostly it just brings to mind a fear-filled person, a skeptic who has trust issues. The kind of troubled and cynical mind that stretches their fingers to contaminate and taint everything they see or hear. But honestly, it doesn’t take much to go down a mistrustful rabbit hole; all it takes is misplaced faith. In my life, I’ve struggled with misplaced faith. And sometimes I’ve felt like a naive, scared conspiracy theorist when my gullibility has gotten the better of me. In moments when I realize I’ve strayed too far from reality. The thing is, I used to purposely stray too far because I believed it would help me. I didn’t know entirely what was real. I’ve learned now that I can get farther in life and be happier by just going deeper into the immediate reality around me and mundane simple pleasures, rather than the obscene and nearly unbelievable. You’ll see what I mean.

When I was bored at home during the pandemic, I began to research astrology. Of course, my foundational knowledge comes from semi-sketchy websites or blogs written by unknown astrologers. But I find it really interesting. I think it can be a fun tool. Ancient Mesopotamians began the crude versions of these studies and the unwavering stars encouraged worldwide civilizations for millennia. My belief in astrology stems from my belief in cycles, in the gravitational pull that connects humans to the planets, as well as the gravitational pull that connects people to one another. We are small, and the planets are insurmountably colossal, and their orbits around Earth affect us and how we live. 

I took my imaginative beliefs a step further than personal, halfhearted research about a month ago, when I paid $70 for an astrology reading. Okay, hear me out – I particularly admired this one astrologer. She had a really interesting podcast and seemed to take an objective and academic approach. But after the reading, an hour-long Google Meet video call going over my natal chart, I began to feel uneasy. A lot of what the astrologer told me was affirming and inspiring about my life, my skills, and my future. I cannot deny that she observed things about my passions, hopes, and personality traits that were very specific and resonated with me. But I couldn’t shake the negative messages I had also received, the ones that lingered in my head and kept poking at me: “people will not be afraid to be mean to you in this life...” “this life is going to be a hard one...” “relationships are always going to be difficult for you.” Several of my friends reassured me that these messages were very vague, not nuanced enough, and too harsh to possibly be believable or true. Nonetheless, the call made me realize that I need to be more careful where I place my faith. My personal faith in astrology had been loose, glittery, and dreamy. When another person imposed limits, absolute truth, and heavy prediction onto my natal chart, I hated it. 

 Last year, my freshman year, whenever I faced a crisis, I would pull out my Tarot Reader app, which would present me with a singular card with a few sentences of explanation. I took these messages to be advice from a divine force, about if I should pursue a situationship (it indicated that I should, so I did), if I should take the summer camp job (the card said I would get new opportunities and grow, and then I took the job). This faith in the tarot app was similar to my astrological research – fun, lighthearted, helpful. But if I received a bad card when I asked the app about something I was excited about, I got annoyed. So really, I didn’t want to be told what to do. I didn’t believe in the powers of digital tarot strongly enough to change my mind or my decisions. I was just looking for affirmation of what I already thought. But best believe, on the occasions when the app told me that fulfillment and success were on their way, I ate it up.

  So now you see that I am imaginative, I choose what I want to believe, and am perhaps a little gullible. Maybe you can relate. But now I need to make a confession. When I was 17 and on TikTok a lot, I accidentally bought into the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory has dangerous connections to the Alt-Right, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I saw a few videos made by young people on TikTok who claimed to have ‘shocking evidence’ of Hollywood corruption. Then, as though in a whirlpool, my TikTok algorithm fed me small nuggets of other information, tame enough that I got sucked in. So, I fell prey to aspects of the Pizzagate conspiracy. Not the Donald Trump stuff, not the Hillary Clinton stuff, but a more niche ideological branch of the conspiracy that focused on Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein Island, and cult-like behavior of celebrities and high-up government officials. Now, allegedly, Jeffrey Epstein was connected to Pizzagate, but what I didn’t know was that Pizzagate was literally just Q-Anon. I was observing and genuinely respecting the swirling foam bubbles that lay at the top of a horrific poison cesspool. Now, I didn’t spread Pizzagate ideas, nor discuss them with my friends or post about them, and my political beliefs are adamantly far left. But for a few weeks, in the secrecy of my mind, I casually and lightheartedly believed that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to high-up democratic officials running a child sex-trafficking ring. I was gullible.

       I did not entirely care if my TikTok feed ever told me the truth. During that time in my life, if it entertained me, that was enough. Delusion was okay. I do my best to not let it be okay anymore. Falling for a conspiracy theory was embarrassing but was not out of character.  It is one of the dangerous consequences of living in your imagination. Luckily, after a few weeks of buying into some of the above-the-iceberg ideas of Pizzagate, I discovered an article from the New York Times about Pizzagate and its connections to Q-Anon. I was shocked and appalled that I had been tricked into even slightly buying into something that was so clearly ridiculous. But sure enough, the ridiculous soon turned into the nightmarish and horrific. About 6 months after my dip into the cesspool, I watched the news, stunned, when on January 6th, 2021, Q-Anon worshippers among other idiots committed an act of domestic terrorism and complete sinister delusion. Misplaced faith can turn so dark, so fast. 

  I don’t know what to make of genuinely trusting a spiritual system and then realizing something has turned dark. Like when my experience with astrology went from fun and esoteric to foreboding and anxiety-inducing. Or when things are going well in my life and then a set of tarot cards I own tells me, when I lay a few of them out on my soft carpet, that someone will betray me soon or that now is a time for large changes to come. I don’t know what I believe at this point. The truth is that I went to Catholic school for 10 formative years of my life. Then I grew to hate Catholicism for its insistence on extreme shame, for its dated homophobia, for its insistence on ancient scriptures that are irrelevant and prevent a person from being sovereign and expressing themself. When I was eight, I used to cry while I prayed to Jesus, because I loved him. Now I am moved to tears by daily notifications from CoStar, my astrology app, weird messages that are sometimes funny but sometimes manipulate me into thinking my day is worse than it is, or sometimes tell me dark things like “You are not meant to live a normal life” (July 2022) or “You are a constellation of sadness” (March 2022). Believe me, I wish these weren’t real quotes. 

Since 8th grade, the year when I knew that I loathed Catholicism and was done trying to agree with it, I have been floating around a strange place. In this new place, I still believe in a higher power and energy and connection and divine purpose. I still believe in destiny. But it’s translated in weird ways. I make the rules now because I didn’t like the rules my teachers made. 

Honestly, it was always less about me being anti-Bible and more me being anti-Catholic schoolteachers who make it their life’s mission to shame kids, especially young girls. I’m not anti-Bible – the text is incredibly rich and meaningful. What wasn’t rich and meaningful was when my male P.E. teacher gave our 4th-grade class a sex education talk. He told the boys to leave the room. Ten wide-eyed nine-year-old girls sat facing him. He held up a pink rose made of tissue paper and asked us if we liked the rose, if we thought it was pretty, if we wanted it. We said yes. He began to tear the petals off, one by one. After each tear, he asked us if we still wanted the rose. His tone increased in aggressiveness as he spoke. Finally, the rose had only a few petals left. He held it up and gave some awful spiel about how the rose was now damaged, how no one would want it because it had been touched and ripped. He said that the beautiful, untouched rose represented someone who had never had sex, and that they could give their whole self to the person they married. I knew that what he was saying was wrong even at nine. But I was young and he had authority, and as much as I tried to shake the image, it lasted. 

You’ve heard of Catholic guilt, maybe you haven’t heard of corrupt thought paradigms inscribed like a tattoo into the hearts of nine-year-olds. Or maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about. The only way for me to escape it was to create a new world where I could make the rules. Where I decided what I was proud of, and what mattered. 

But I am a devoted person – I was born to be passionate, and I am bound to be devoted to something; I’d be empty without some kind of worship. It’s just a matter of where I decide to channel it. One manifestation of this devotion was an over-obsession with love. Deep love, loyal love. Over the past few years, I have worshiped the ideals of true love, of true friendship. I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve just recently been able to break free of the self-sacrificial chains that I gave myself so that I could be subservient to an all-knowing lover, to the all-knowing tremors of my own heart. If, for example, I developed a crush, it was all-consuming, and I believed the person was put into my life for a reason. If I was dating someone, I put them on a pedestal. I believed that love meant giving everything, that you would be willing to give up your own pleasures for the sake of keeping the relationship going. Notice any similarities to Catholic teachings? I believed that love was sacred and on multiple occasions, over the span of about five years, I became so confused by my feelings of lust and devotion that I couldn’t see straight. 

            When my grandmother passed away a few years ago, when I was in the initial throes of physically pulsating grief, I believed I could see her memories. I believed she could talk to me and that she liked the smell of the fall candles I lit for her. I believe that all butterflies are sent from her. Of course, this is a sweet example, and you probably think it’s cute; it’s the least problematic of the things I’ve told you. The part I’m not saying is that I don’t really believe she ever died. I won’t let myself think about it. I refuse.

        At my high school graduation, the valedictorian told us that it’s best to romanticize life, because no one else can do it for you. This is how I wish to live and what I tell myself I am doing, but when I examine things logically, I can see that I am not romanticizing. That would imply that I am happy, that my methods make things more beautiful. Instead, I am spiritualizing, existentializing, making everything a symbol. I have trouble letting the past go. That’s putting it lightly. In my mind I am still friends with everyone who has left or moved away. In my mind I still get to be a child. In my mind my ex-boyfriends will always love me. I am so scared of change that I have become skeptical that it’s ever occurred. Like the conspiracy theorists who think they are prophets who can see the truth, I am convinced that I am intuitive, that my dreams can tell me the future if I want them to, that I can manifest things. Can you see how scared I am? You can laugh, but what if this was your mind? What would I have if these beliefs were not true? 

             Well, let’s see. There’s plenty of time for life to prove me wrong. There’s time for me to become okay with change and to be happy in the present. There’s time for me to get a Religion minor and maybe find solace in some ancient text I’ve never read, some room of humming people chanting in pews, singing songs I have yet to hear but that will sing right to my heart. I think I need some kind of faith. I don’t know what the right one is yet.

          There is an essence of a laughing, talkative, smiling girl that is still here without those beliefs. Right now, she is running around crying because she’s trying to build a religion of herself, all by herself. She’s convinced she doesn’t need help, either. If religion fails you, forsake it and do it yourself. If your life keeps changing and the tide keeps moving forward, refuse to go with it. Stay in the murky sand at the bottom and scream. But I see that there is still time for me to stop holding on, to close my eyes and let the tide envelop my small body with the trash and salt and tears that fill everyone’s ocean and allow it to violently keep me moving onward. I can see a future where I trust every decision I make. My trusted friends can give me advice instead of the tarot cards. CoStar can stop being one of those trusted friends, can stop being The Bible. Repeat after me: I trust in the chaos; I’m not going to question it and rebel against it. I’m going to laugh and keep moving through it. Say it, then write it, then look up.

The Shadow of Her

The Shadow of Her

Article by Anonymous, art by Koli Razafindandy

I am obsessed with your ex. And it’s not because I have any real vested interest in her—she lives in a different state, I’ve never met her, and if things go to plan I never will—it’s just that you have loved her, perhaps you still do, and that is too painful to bear. Thinking of you as you were in high school inevitably leads me to think of her. She is the thread that runs through every one of your stories from home, and this is the poison that has slowly been building in my bloodstream. I know you must dream of her because of the way I still dream about the people I’ve left behind, and that fills me with unspoken emotion. One might call it anger, but it has no one to settle blame on, so it sways uselessly in my chest, manifesting feverish rage back on myself. In your dreams, does she tell you how I obsess over her? Does she moan about my omnipresence? Does her presence detract from my beauty? Does seeing her make you wish you’d stayed with her?

Just before you and I started spending a lot of time kissing and rolling around together, you lied to me. You said you and her had broken up a few months ago. That’s what you said but you knew it wasn’t true. Did you say that just so you could have me? Was it because you didn’t yet imagine me fully human? It isn’t fair that I must carry around the knowledge that you were still recovering from her, from four fucking years of her, when I agreed to be yours. It had been what, a week, since she called you and said it was time to let go? You told me she broke up with you, and not the other way around, to assure me I didn’t cause your breakup. I wasn’t asking because I felt guilty, I was asking because I wanted you to tell me I was better, that she didn’t matter. I wanted you to tell me you broke up because the relationship had run its course, and nothing she could say would get you to take her back. 

It was so convenient once I found out about your ex to panic about her. Better that than thinking about the way I was falling violently, drastically in love for the first time. The first few times she reached out to you it hurt me so much. I think now you must hide it from me if she still contacts you. That or you two truly don’t talk, but I can’t believe you because I am not the trusting woman I might have been in a different life. Regardless, it felt like relief to long for evidence of her—that painting you did of the two of you on a hike, the playlists you made with her in mind, and the songs off them that you later sent to me, the photos of embraces like when you first left for college—rather than to reckon with how I was feeling. So, I focused in, and I’m not sure I’ve gotten over my obsession, even after this whole year has passed. And I’m sorry, because I know you want me not to worry and not to bring it up—but she is in some way a defining part of us. And I’m so fucking afraid of her breaking us, or my obsession doing the work for her.

Sometimes I wish I was her. I could have grown up in your hometown, played your sport, been exactly what you needed me to be. We could have been high school sweethearts, destined to be together until death, with abundant inside jokes and memories and nicknames and peace. Of course, we have some of those things, but we can’t have them all. I don’t want to resent her for that, or you, but I wish she didn’t have such a claim on your past. I want to be the only one with a right to your comfort—how terrible is that?

Thinking about your ex leaves a hot pain in my rib cage. I dig my fingers into it again and again, trying to staunch the bleeding. But it’s no use, because like the bone that God took from Adam, she leaves a rot in my body that makes me overprotective and embarrassing. I am causing myself pain and anxiety and I wish I could stop but I can’t. Thinking of her feels like shame and ugliness and haunting. It feels like I am unworthy of you, like I don’t have a right to know you, or like I am at the very edge of a cliff, and she’s at the bottom of the ravine telling me to jump down and talk to her. Maybe if I got to know her, we’d get along so well that I couldn’t hate her? My brain wants to pour over her, to understand why she let you go and to see if she wants you back. You just want to move on from her, and it’s the twisted irony of this obsession that I won’t allow that to happen.

It feels awful to write this. You have hurt me by not giving yourself more time, and I have hurt you by resenting that. The worst part is that I don’t want to admit to some of it–don’t I deserve to be with someone who was fully committed to the relationship from the beginning? And yet, I feel guilty as well to be writing this. We are the happiest we have ever been, and my jealousy is the creeping disease that drives us toward destruction. My writing must be selfish, as well—I am the unreliable narrator of an English critic’s dreams—because I can only say what feels meaningful to me. I can’t do you justice, no matter what I write. I’m sorry for the way this can only hurt you more.

The reality of being a person who is depressed is that a lot of the time I don’t feel very much at all. You made me feel fireworks. You made me feel like I was back on Splash Mountain as a child, about to go down the big hill, staring at the spikes around the waterway and being convinced I would die right there in that silly log. You made me gasp and spasm and see. I needed a proxy, a distraction from the fear I felt about relationships in the past and she—and all the details you’ve let slip about her—have been exactly what has taken its place. I need you to stop telling me things about your relationship with her, but I don’t want you to. Let me self-destruct. I long to cry; let me break us down and let me drown at the bottom of the sweet honey of the love we have built.

I am not sure why I feel the need to share this. I assume I’m somewhat normal, or that jealousy is just a fatal flaw that I must battle… but you should know that it isn’t everything to me. I focus when I can on how you make me feel, rather than the shadow of her that haunts me when I am at my most anxious. Love doesn’t feel all-encompassing and alarming to me like it did at the beginning, but rather like a soft bed I can climb into at the end of a long day in the cold. I desperately want to find safety in myself, too, and through new rituals of rest and friendship, I have started to feel that. Of course, my fear still lives in me, but deep warmth and care is bubbling up to overtake it. She is just a woman who taught you some lessons and kept your heart safe until it could come to me. 

I just wish you had never lied. I wish that getting over her wasn’t more difficult than you expected. But mostly I just wish I could stop thinking about it.

Blame it on the Stars

Blame it on the Stars

Article by Katie Rowley, art by Katie Kamio

I am a Scorpio Venus. That’s why I am the way I am. Obsessive. Crazy. Consumed by love. Consumed so fully my mind fails to think of anything else. It could take as little as one night, but as soon as I decide to love someone, they become the focus of my twilight fantasies, the focus of my daydreams, the focus of my every waking thought. It’s torture. My goal in life becomes finding out everything about this new subject of my desire. And by everything, I mean everything. 

Before I even knew what a star sign was, I knew the way I loved was off. In kindergarten I decided I had a crush on a boy, and I didn’t stop having a crush on him until my family moved me 50 miles away six years later. The boy's name was Mitchell. He played football. He had a West Highland Terrier who knew how to ride a skateboard. In third grade he cried because someone kept bringing up that his name had “hell” in it. And, for all of elementary school I spent my days vying for his attention. When I learned what kissing meant, I told all my friends that he was going to be my first kiss. In my voice-opened password diary, I wrote my first name paired with his last twenty-bajillion times. I could’ve sworn I was gonna marry him. Before I moved, at our school-sanctioned 6th grade carnival, in front of all the boys playing football on the field, I chased him down and confessed my six-year crush on him. I thought, with the newly donned power of our cell phones, we could sustain a long-distance relationship, he would reciprocate the feelings, and we’d go on to be that miraculous couple that had been together since elementary school. Needless to say, he rejected my feelings, and I haven’t seen him since the night of our 6th grade graduation. But I still check up on him, through Instagram and LinkedIn and his college’s varsity football team roster. 

In middle school, as I started to learn more about star signs, I ingrained the fact that I was a Virgo into my personality. I had another one of those obsessive crushes. Three days before 8th grade ended, I decided I had a crush on a guy in my friend group. His name was Blake. I spent the next three days spending as much time with him as possible. I’d stand next to him outside during recess and walk with him in the hallways. I found out everything I could about him. His favorite band. What his relationship with his parents was like. Why he wore an old leather jacket every day. On the last day of school, I wore a leather jacket and forced our friends to take a polaroid picture of Blake and I standing next to each other. I got his number and invited him to a Blink-182 concert with me. He declined. I wrote him a letter confessing my feelings, signing it with something cliché like “your secret admirer” or “you’ll know who this is.” This letter was put in our “Letters to Our Future Selves” that our middle school teachers sent to us the summer after we graduated high school. We went to different high schools, and he didn’t even have my number, but half of me expected a text that summer. An acknowledgement that he also felt that intense, obsessive desire for me too. 

High school brought about a plethora of these crushes. I sat behind Chris in health class and memorized the curvature of the back of his ears. When he mentioned his favorite band was ACDC, I begged my mom to buy me a t-shirt of theirs so he’d have an excuse to talk to me. Zack liked playing cards and shitty male manipulator music, so I started captioning my Instagram posts with Neck Deep lyrics and buying unique decks of cards I’d hoped to give him as a gift one day. I memorized the license plate of his beige Subaru Outback so I always knew when I saw him driving around town.

Luke pursued me first, but once I had him, I couldn’t let him go. He told me he loved me on our first date; I know it's a red flag, but within a week I felt the same. I loved him. And so, when he asked me to be his girlfriend two weeks after we started talking, I obviously said yes. The culmination of our actual relationship was only three months, but I stayed infatuated with him for two years. Refusing to break off contact. I would add and unadd him on Snapchat. Send him drunk texts and pretend I didn’t know whose number I was texting the next morning. I got over the fact that he cheated on me during our relationship, and ignored the fact that he was talking and keeping things “low-key” with my ex-best friend when we reconnected. I was convinced that I loved him and that we were going to work it out and get married. None of the cruel things he did changed that fact. A week before he got me too high and took advantage of me, I told my mom that I just felt that he was the one. Even if we broke up due to the distance different colleges created, we’d meet in nine years at some bar in Washington D.C., we’d catch up like no time had passed and we’d get married. He was my plan for the future. Now, I drive by his house and flip it off. And my heartbeat spikes with every little red car I see. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking, these examples just sound like a young girl experiencing love and the hope of being desired for the first time. But my friends never experienced this all-consuming intense romance. They’d have crushes and still be able to focus on school and not need to know their addresses and not need to do everything for that singular person’s attention. I couldn’t relate. I still can’t. 

Your Venus sign rules how you love, how you interact in your relationships, your sex life. You know, just the important things. Scorpio is a water sign, and they’re known for being loyal, turbulent, extreme, dark, passionate, obsessive. Think Lorde or SZA. Give Ctrl and Melodrama a listen, and you’ll understand the Scorpio psyche. 

So, having a Scorpio Venus means that, when it comes to love, I cannot help myself from craving everything from the person I’ve decided to love. I cannot help myself from jumping in heart first and declaring love after one night. Which sucks. I tried to enter college with a new mindset: I would be easy to love. I’d be chill when it came to relationships. I’d participate in hookup culture and be able to keep things no-strings-attached. I wouldn’t love too hard. That plan lasted until November 3rd of my freshman year. 

When I met Peter for the first time, and he kissed me for the first time, I knew I would stop at nothing to make him mine. I was utterly obsessed with him. I had to talk to him 24/7. I had to know everything about him. So, I spent the next three months in bed with him, savoring every moment, eating up every word he said. My attitude each day of those three months depended on if he texted me or Snapchatted me or made some attempt to communicate in any way. I was obsessed with his attention. I was obsessed with him, and I needed him to be obsessed with me. When I left for college after those three months, the obsession didn’t fade. I still needed him to talk to me, each and every day. I craved the notification with his name. I didn’t care if he was texting me stupid Tiktoks, at least he was sending them to me. And then of course, in May, I learned, solidly and completely, that he was not obsessed with me. My reaction was uncalled for. I freaked. There’s no other way to put it. All the focus and attention I devoted to him poured out in tears on the floor of my dorm room. And then, I got over it. With nine months of not talking to him, my obsession with him dimmed. That’s not true. It just changed shape. I’d try to not spend my days thinking of him. I slept with his best friend as an act of silent revenge. I sobbed over him, drunk and inconsolable, sitting alone outside of my apartment. My intense love for him grew into hurt and pain. It raged inside of me, burning brighter than ever. I had nowhere to place it anymore.

We met again last January. He was girlfriendless again, looking for someone easy to fuck. I was ready to jump back into the obsession. I told myself that I wouldn’t feel that strongly for him again. I told my best friend from high school that I could sleep with him with no strings attached. I told him that I honestly felt the same when he said he could never fathom a relationship with me. But I lied. Ten months later, I was right back where I started freshman year, intensely in love with someone who would never be obsessed with me. 

Maybe this Scorpio Venus is just a curse I will have to live with for the rest of my life. I will spend every infatuation for the rest of my life becoming intensely obsessed and will never receive an equal level of desire. Or maybe, I’ll find someone who wants to know what shitty bands I like and my license plate number and my address and my parents’ names. Maybe, I’ll find someone who deserves my obsession. 

Daymakers and Dreamcatchers

Daymakers and Dreamcatchers

Article by Victoria Calton, art Fer Juarez Duran

Nowadays, mornings are quieter without your goofy aura and bony, warm back reclining on mine and prepping my dusky soul as your impatient elbow nudges me awake. 

During those mornings, I was caressed by the cold of night as sun-kisses attempted to beat out the heat of a flickering bud to warm my icy corpse. I greeted the dawn with a silent breath of fog as He peeked out, hoping to catch a glimpse of His creations. 

Once the sun overtook the hills, you’d cry like a rooster saying, 

“If you don’t wake up and look now, you're gonna miss God flippin’ through the chapters, waiting for our next adventure. Come on, Wake Up!”

“Damn it, Dante, the scream was enough.” My droopy eyes always resisted the flashiness of day. “This mundane ritual of yours is killing my sleep schedule, and I’m tired of dirtying my ass on all these rocks and gravel. I’d rather wake up at Denny’s, IHOP, somewhere with a decent cup of coffee at least—” 

My voice quickly dried out as I took another hit, laying my head slightly over his right shoulder, and watching my smoke race dawn rising into the sky. With a welcoming gesture of his wrist, I passed the cigarette to his right hand, hoping my breath would catch up with the soaring early birds, while he stamped out the bud. That sweet, bitter taste of living life to its beautiful yet tiring extent was addictive and being able to share it was even more intoxicating. I let out another fresh puff of smoke while laying back, fully extending my neck across his shoulder as he stared off into the eastward, rosy battle between the presiding dawn and the retreating dusk.

Peace and stillness filled the unmarred wilderness. Sometimes this silence was too quiet for me to stand. If I closed my eyes, it would carry the same uneasiness of reclining on a stiff chair, choking on each breath taken within the bleach-stained hall, waiting for my mother to be placed for visitation. I don’t think anyone could tell if she really needed the assistance, like a helpless sheep, or if she was playing the role of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This was a bitterness that had no sweet release, and when the heavy, pale medical doors swung open with aggravated force, a barely visible limp figure would stand in the glaring doorway gripping an IV drip. It was almost like the light was attempting to cure the encroaching darkness as she approached. 

With another hard nudge, a piercing pain shot through my back and shocked my amber tinted eyelids awake. Shaken by the memory of her, I nearly choked on the smoke. 

“Now that we’ve claimed the day, the world is ours. We can rip the clouds from the sky; how do you feel about a sunny day? Or chase down a phoenix and get her to teach us how to fly! Sounds better than green energy or gas-powered transportation to me. But bugs are probably ten times more annoying without a windshield, right?” Dante asked with a giggle. An intrusive pause lingered in the air as his usual spiel fell short. “But we don’t need wings to get the hell out of here, do we?”

Famiglia this, famiglia that. Everything about it tears me up inside. It’s like hoping for a future, for love – change is a death wish because family and our wellbeing is king. But slowly killing others with our poisons and addictions – devastating others’ lives is totally fine. “Sii un uomo,” “Be a Man,” “Sii un uomo” is all they ever say! I was tired of it, and now, even the thought of it, what I did– 

With that comment I sat up, turning towards him, hoping he would face me directly, but he didn’t. Dante just looked away from the sun, peering at the dark road leading home, saying, “You don’t need an angel to drop down from heaven to tell you what you're doing is wrong, and you don’t need to hear sirens to know when to run.” Not even the cooing of well-rested birds could break the loud silence between us. Not even I knew how to break it. “I’m not like them. You know that, I know that. So, how long do you think I’ll last…four, five months. A year before–” He couldn’t finish his sentence, fearing the manifestation of a deadly yet inevitable possibility. A fist covered his mouth while his other hand latched onto his neck, which silenced him, yet held him together.

A panicked, pensive look cut Dante off from reality, transporting him somewhere I couldn’t reach.

Last week, I was so ready to prove myself, to finally get all of them off my back. Before I knew it, it was nightfall. It was so dark I couldn’t see my own fists, and a heavy, hot metal stung my skin like a rash was spreading from my waist. I was sweating so hard, my heart was beating so fast, my eyes were darting, looking for any sign of escape, of danger, but our toxic or "prescriptive" dealings looked like they were moving in slow motion. Then, with a blinding and paralyzing flash, everything shot into hyper-speed. Blankness covered my mind, blinded my senses like it was trying to drive me mad. I could see their wild gestures pointing towards the man making off with our goods. So naturally, I followed suit. When I caught up with him, I tackled him to the ground, like a frightened doe. 

We tussled for a while, like two desperate dogs hoping for approval, until he was able to kick and push me off him. I had no choice. I grabbed him by his ankle, making him trip to the ground. I reached for my piece. I screamed, 

“HEY man!” I quickly stood up hoping he couldn’t see my hands shaking violently as my body sank from the pressure, “Don’t.” As he jerked to rise, I quickly pointed the barrel of the gun at his torso and pulled—it snapped back like the bloodthirsty jaw of a desperate snarling beast. The man quickly rose, smirked, and ran for the hills, leaving me with a jammed gun and crippled conscience.  

His mind seemed to linger as his soul was clenched in a devastated state. The only way to reach him in times like this was with a hug, empathetic acknowledgement, and vulnerability. With each passing moment, I was struck by gusts of cold, maddening air that poured out from Dante’s soul. This cold stung me on contact and violently vibrated through my core, freezing my veins. This freeze exited with a familiar sting before the next wave hit. 

As the sun rays tried to dry out our saturated conversation, I treaded towards Dante and kneeled down, wrapping my arms over his. I hoped my heart was close enough and beating loud enough to fight back the waves. 

“You define your strength, actions, and limitations which are unbound by any outside source unless you give it power over you.” Hoping to keep his attention, I squeezed him harder. “You are who you say you are. So do, act, and be who God intended you to be. Do that, and we’ll be alright.” He slowly unraveled and latched onto my arms as the sun peaked higher over the horizon. 

I continued, failing to hold back a loving smile, “I mean, who will be there to beautify my braids if not you? Who will hold my hand when we’re touring from Troy to Athens Ulysses-style?” I could feel him holding in his laughter deep within his chest. “You're too young,” I paused to kiss the left side of his neck, “too insanely intelligent,” pausing again to kiss the right side of his neck, “and way too beautiful inside and out to give up on me before our journey’s even started.” 

I ended our chat with a final kiss on the nape of his neck, then nuzzled my way onto his right shoulder saying, “God’s next chapter, right?” 

Something about remembering that moment creates an adoring sting, like the piercing comfort of a coat of alcohol on a freshly barren wound. That’s the type of pain my mother specializes in. When I’d visit, she’d spout nonsense about a curse of death and despair that fed on our family’s souls until they were left bare and driven mad. She says I’m her last and only regret because my birth bore her madness, and that crimson red mark proved it. 

“You’re my Hell. Everything you touch, everything drawn to you will be corrupt and poisoned with ceaseless pain and suffering. Like Cain, spurned from every public, and outcasted. Not even God will rest your soul.” She’d clench my arm harder saying, “Beg for mercy now or suffer in purgatory for life.”

She’s full of it.  

As the sun broke away from the confines of the earth’s horizon, I couldn’t help but smile, feeling his body and soul quenched by the light and warmth of a new day. He carefully twisted around to return a bear-sized squeeze and a loving peck as we both turned away from the overpowering strength of the sun.

“Sooo it’s hiking and phoenix-hunting for today then,” Dante said as his dimples tried to fight off his pearly-white smile.

It’s important to remember that dawn breaks day into the future and dusk seals our fate for the historical records. The past eclipses my present because letting go is too painful and holding on is too suffocating. 

I can't motivate myself enough to watch the sunrise on my own; it hurts too much. Most days, I watch the sunset and pray nothing happens when dusk settles and my work begins. My taillights carry on the sun's duties of chasing away the shadows as they mask the once-clear, welcoming land of the living.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Never forget the daydreamers ready to light a fire under their dusk’s beautiful and revolutionary sweet dreams by breaking the darkness with the light of tomorrow’s quest.

Pinterest, Primates, And My Passion For Escaping the Present

Pinterest, Primates, And My Passion For Escaping the Present

Article and art by Emmaline Hawley

Two and a half weeks ago I sent my mom a TikTok video with the caption “the scenic route.” I had been sobbing on my floor over it for the past ten minutes. It was a series of monkey illustrations. 

To rewind a bit, a couple of days prior, I had been complaining to my mom about my apartment’s state of cleanliness (or lack thereof), my disdain for CC’s bureaucratic email system, and most of all my desire to move on in life. To plant myself firmly in the future, into some ideal vision where I work for myself, live in a perfectly polished apartment, and travel regularly to Italy using my flawless linguistic skills picked up through only two beginner blocks. Sounds feasible, right? As I described this ideal “next chapter,” my mom reminded me that this was not the first time I’d envisioned a perfect future rather than worked to create a better present. I rolled my eyes at her clichéd use of “you need to live in the present,” because obviously I was, right? I mean, I hadn’t invented time travel yet, because surely if I had, I wouldn’t still be sleeping in a Twin XL. I think I responded with some quip about how she and my therapist would get along swimmingly and shrugged her comment off. It was block break after all; I had to get to living.

However, come Friday night, Anna-Laura’s monkey coming-of-age saga crept its way onto my For You Page, and prompted a breakdown of an impressive scale. The illustrations, done in a nostalgic style, depict a monkey from youth to retirement as they express their desire to jump to the next chapter in their life. By the end of the series, the monkey has changed their statements from “I can’t wait…” to a content “I think I’ll take the scenic route this time.” While the monkey’s words seem to convey anticipation for all the wonders that life holds, their expression betrays the deep sadness in this obsession. I often find myself hiding this same melancholy as I dream of my future. Yes, I can’t wait for the next stage of my life, but is it because I value change and growth, or because I can’t wait to escape my present? 

This question has been on my mind recently as I prepped my final composition and presentation for my Intro to Italian class. The prompt, “describe your dream home,” had me in the trenches of my Pinterest boards as I searched for images I could describe only with my limited vocabulary. But while I scrolled one night, feverishly placing velvet couches, gallery walls, and iridescent tile onto a slide, I realized that I wasn’t invested in this activity because it brought me joy. Instead, after receiving the troubling news from CC that there would be limited housing next year, I poured all my efforts into building not just a home, but a lifestyle, a community, and a career…for ten years in the future. Did I look at nearby apartments for next year for longer than five minutes? No. Did I pull out my pen to practice tattooing for the studio I had planned to occupy the ground floor? No. Did I go downstairs to spend time with my friends who have been with me through seasons, good and bad? No. I doom-scrolled on Pinterest and convinced myself that this was a healthy practice of manifestation. 

As I’ve reflected on my tendency to be like the cartoon monkey, I’ve come to three conclusions:

1. It isn’t a bad thing to plan the future, as long as you are actually excited about it and are taking steps in the present moment to create it.

2. It is far easier to plan out an ideal future for yourself years down the road than it is to visualize a better tomorrow.

3. There is so much good in the present moment beyond clichéd breathing techniques and walks outside. 

Think back to when you were in elementary school. Did anyone ever ask you what you wanted to do when you were older? I wanted to be a farmer. While this dream was dashed when a Belgian horse snuck up behind me and tried to eat my ponytail during a field trip, I didn’t feel any dread in this planning of my future. It was driven by pure curiosity. Later, I decided that I wanted to be a famous paleontologist and dug up my school’s entire kickball field with roughly fifteen accomplices because I was genuinely excited to see what I could find. Unfortunately, I found myself face to face with a talking-to instead of a triceratops on this specific occasion, but my point still stands. Back in those days, while I was excited about my future, it came from a place of curiosity. An “I wonder…” rather than an “I can’t wait…” statement. I enjoyed my present moment and explored my passions whenever I could. Unlike my current self, I didn’t discount my present, but rather brought my excitement for what could be into my everyday life. 

It was around seventh grade when this joyful approach to conceptualizing my future turned into an obsession. I remember staying up late at night to plan out my future dorm, major, and career. I should’ve been worrying about which headband to wear to our formal; I was thirteen! But when academic pressure, friend group breakups, and sports team anxieties waited for me at school the next day, this planning felt like an escape. I didn’t have to think about what Halley said to me on the field that day, because in five years I would have a new friend group who understood me, who decorated my dorm with me, who I worked with. Instead of returning to school the next day and having a conversation with her, I dealt with low self-esteem in my friendships for the rest of middle and high school. But in my perfect future, these problems didn’t exist. I don’t blame myself for coping the way I did, I was just a kid. But as I’ve gotten older, I am trying to look tomorrow in the face with greater confidence, knowing that the future can only provide respite for so long. 

When I decided that my obsession with the future was getting problematic, I turned to Google to find helpful ways to live in the present. All that awaited me there was a series of guilt-tripping and demeaning articles claiming that a simple breath of gratitude or a walk outside with a smile plastered on my face would make the present more appealing than the future. Unfortunately, neither of those options have ever brought me much comfort. So instead, I propose that the present has so much to offer if one leans into their curiosity. I’ve found that asking my friends about their passions, my counselors about possibilities I can start working towards today, and myself about what actually brings me joy in this moment have been monumentally more helpful in creating a beautiful present. I can still dream about the future and plan it out practically, but I can also experience the full depth of what it is to be human right here, right now, by approaching each moment with excitement about what could be.

Flea Market Finds

Flea Market Finds

Article and Art by Katie Kamio

“Where have you been?” I ask the tarnished ring encased in memories. It sits dejected on a tray sparsely littered with rings at a flea market; the gold speckles of light dance off the translucent stone and the silver band is scratched with wear. The ring warms to my touch and asks if I will be the one to take it home. It glitters with seductive promises but I cannot decide if I want to make it mine. I find myself wondering about the ring; who has it seen? 

Maybe once you belonged to a girl with straw-colored hair, who went shopping on the weekends and wore you out to the country club. The kind of girl who at the club would spin in circles with her friends, tossing her hair, carefree in the limelight. Her drink sloshing in its plastic container. Eyes are magnetized to her and she commands them, the center of the club, the main attraction. Her friend leans in to say something and all of a sudden, she is laughing. The ring on her finger, the same ring, sparkles in the disco light, highlighting her dainty fingers and her meticulous taste. And then one night, as she is spinning in a circle, twisting to the beat of the speakers, she lands in front of him. 

“Having fun?” He smiles down at her. 

“The time of my life,” she replies with a shy grin. 

“There’s one thing missing,” he says.

“What?” She asks.

He motions to her hand, “A drink, let me buy you one.”

She agrees and the ring sparkles a little extra, accentuating the twist of tequila and lime she ordered. 

On their first date, the ring is paired with a sleek glass of red wine and then white on their second date. Then they move in together and the year blends into two. Slowly she removes the rings from her hands, hoping soon that her left hand will be adorned with just one weighty ring. 

Eventually, years later, when there is a baby or two, she goes through her jewelry box. And the woman sets aside the sparkling ring for someone else. She drops it off at a donation center where a curator happens upon the sparkly piece and places it in their gleaming tent. The ring, old and worn, sits tired. The veins of tarnish wear into the metal, hoping for a breath of new life. 

And now I find the ring at the flea market, where it is hoping to grace the fingers of another lucky life. I ponder and then decide against the ring and turn to leave, and that is where you come in. You find the ring at the flea market and decide that it is perfect for one of your middle fingers. You buy it and then weeks later find yourself on a date:

He sits across the table, weighing his words.

“I don’t read much these days, let alone fantasy novels, but I’d give it a try.”

You blurt out, “I can send you some fun titles, I’ve heard fairy novels are in, maybe you could try that?” You smile, he smirks, the ring on your hand glints. 

“Not a chance, I’d probably read something more factual.”

“How do you know fantasy isn’t real -- fairies are very factual, thank you very much,” you volley back with a sly grin. 

He laughs and asks the waiter for a check.

“You know, I’ve had a good night,” he says, nearing your apartment complex. 

“I have too,” you bluff, knowing you won’t text this guy back after. 

He leans in for a kiss and you feign ignorance, turning to look the other way.

“Oh, pretty flowers,” you say out of the blue. Then you turn toward him to say your goodbyes. He recomposes himself, smiles, and says “I hope to see you soon,” and then walks away. 

The ring sparkles on your hand as you twirl it around your finger. “Good riddance,” you think to yourself on the elevator ride up, and the ring dances as you text another guy from the same dating app, who you’ve been secretly crushing on. 

But in the end, the ring sits at the flea market; its past and future sit unknown. It dances in the light waiting as I come back for it. I let it dance on my hand during the drive back and when I do go dancing, the ring nods along to the beat and all those who have worn it in the past. 

Forget About the Photos

Forget About the Photos

Article by Anna Heimel, art by Fer Juarez Duran

I am terrified of looking at pictures of myself. I don’t know when it started but I know it was long after my mom took me to an endocrine doctor at seven years old to lose twenty pounds because I was overweight. I wasn’t aware of how I looked in pictures then. I remember becoming agitated as my mom or grandma took 100 photos of me because they needed the perfect one. I didn’t want to pose. Photos were an interruption to my time swimming at the pool or playing at the park. Anyway, I did lose the twenty pounds and by eight years old I was happy because I guess I looked normal for my age again. Aside from the weight loss, I actually enjoyed the daily 30-minute treadmill walks I was told to do and would watch TV or listen to music while having some time to myself.

I don’t think I was scared of pictures until around seventh grade. I remember wearing one of my mom’s old dresses to a school event. It was soft and comfortable when I put it on, and I liked its green and yellow earth tones. Later that day, I happened to glance at a picture of myself on my mom’s phone and was horrified. I remember thinking I looked fat and ugly. My face looked swollen, arms awkward, and my legs were so fucking big. From that day on, I avoided looking at photos of myself like the plague. I don’t remember any other photos from that year. Eighth grade was my last year at the school I had attended for eight years, and I remember having a strong urge to start running. I wanted to change my body. I wanted to look more like Emma and Sarah and all the other skinny girls that received attention for their looks. I had developed friendships with a few guys, and they thought I was funny, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted them to see me as attractive too. I took that thirty-minute treadmill workout from when I was seven and intensified it. I would split the time between walking and running and was surprised when I felt a mental fog lift away that had been present for as long as I remembered. As I continued to complete that workout each day, I finished my homework faster, became more engaged in conversations with my friends, and my anxious thoughts weren’t quite as loud. I lost twenty pounds quickly and my mom began to compliment my body. I felt happier than I had in years. I quickly associated my lack of depression with a lack of extra weight on my bones.

I remained thin throughout eighth and ninth grade and collected a few pictures of myself that I didn’t hate. I posted them on Instagram and was surprised when my friends complimented my looks. I would stare at their comments and feel warm and excited.

In tenth grade, I started drinking, which made me feel even warmer than the compliments, and put twenty back on. I met Esa, who I had gone to school with my whole life but didn’t talk to until high school. In middle school she was small and won beauty pageants, but when we met again in tenth grade, we had both put on a few. We drank together and she introduced me to edibles, and once in a while we opted for oxys and mindless TV. We put on weight together and we felt close. We went to Emma’s parties and met guys from her school and made out with them in front of everyone. We weren’t the skinny girls, but we felt attractive. Esa ended up kissing the guy I had my first kiss with, and we slowly grew apart. I cut her off the summer before college. I brought Emma on a trip with my family and not Esa. We went from talking all-day-every-day to never again. Emma was thin and never drank too much and I wanted to be like her.

I quit drinking October of my freshman year and got back into exercise. I started dropping weight again but this time I was more depressed than I had ever been. I went back home when Covid happened. I felt deeply and incessantly tired but made an effort to become closer with my younger sister.

I hopped on my family’s spin bike and rode. One day I kept going past an hour, past an hour and a half, finishing after an hour and forty minutes. I got off and every part of me felt calm. The world felt a little softer and my anxiety was pushed away. The next day I ran for an hour and a half on the treadmill. My knees hurt, but the longer I went, the stiller my mind felt. I started alternating running and biking every day and felt invincible. I was burning more and more calories, achieving bigger outputs, watching the bones in my arms become more visible. I didn’t know they could look like that. Sometimes I would glance at them in the mirror and see child’s arms. My mom would express her shock about how much I had shrunk.

I woke up every day with migraines and sore legs and swollen feet, but I feared that if I took a day off, I would spiral and start breathing fast and my thoughts would get louder again. I would run on days where I was almost limping from soreness. I would push my body through pain that I convinced myself wasn’t there, preserving the sanity I thought I’d achieved.

I became addicted to exercise. I had to burn 1100 calories every day. I didn’t want my body to change at all from day to day or month to month. I looked at it obsessively in my full-length mirror drilled into my wooden bedroom door. I watched it shrink. I didn’t recognize it and I liked that. I took some pictures with Emma when we were bored one day and loved how small I looked in them. I didn’t hate how I looked for one of the first times in my life. I would stare at these photos and obsess over them. I felt that if I kept my body like that and looked good in pictures, I would be happy and forget about all the ones that disgusted me.

I started antidepressants in October of my sophomore year. My depression became too much to cope with in the cold silence of my childhood room. The Lexapro took the edge off and I found I didn’t need to exercise every day to function normally. My headaches slowly went away, and I adopted a more flexible approach. I still enjoyed long cardio workouts, but I let my body heal a couple days a week. I lived in an apartment with some friends starting in January and became close with my current boyfriend. I ate Ben & Jerry’s ice cream every night and didn’t care to notice the effects it was having on my body. I didn’t have a full-length mirror. I wasn’t obsessed with exercise for the first time in two years. I was happy and didn’t think about my weight or the lack of visibility of my arm bones through my skin. When I returned home for the summer, I became aware that I had gained twenty pounds. I started the keto diet and lost a few, but the weight was hard to shed on the Lexapro. I was eating nothing and losing no weight and I couldn’t recognize my body in the long mirror on the warm-wood door.

In March of Junior year, I decided to stop taking Lexapro. I said it was because I felt good enough to go off it, but I really wanted to lose the weight I had put on and recognize my body again. In the first few months without it, my full spectrum and intensity of emotions returned, and it was a lot to handle, but I felt more myself. I started dropping some of the weight, but not as much as I had hoped or expected. I didn’t let myself become obsessed with exercise like I had before, but still wanted to regain the body I had during those months at home. I reminded myself that having that body came with migraines and knee pain and difficulty waking up in the morning. I asked myself if it was worth all of that and some days I still have to convince myself that it’s not.

This year, I am trying to find balance. I am exercising around five days a week, eating more of the foods I like, and trying to understand moderation. I have been diagnosed with ADD and have started taking Adderall, which helps me focus on doing the things I love like writing, reading, and keeping up with friends. When I told my mom I was taking it, she said that Emma’s sister lost a lot of weight while on it and I’m trying not to focus on that. I have dropped a few pounds, but not as many as I would have hoped. I still feel depressed some days and lay on the couch in my apartment, blankly staring at the white-square-doctor’s-office-ceiling as hours pass by. I have pushed through my hardest months, October and November, without taking antidepressants, which I am happy about. I ask myself why I want to stay off them and to be honest, it is mostly because of their effects on my weight. I wish that wasn’t my main motivation but it’s okay that it is. I feel like one of the best versions of myself since I have been on ADHD medication. I wonder why no one saw that I needed it earlier and it was probably because I always did well in school. My family seemed to be more focused on my weight and appearance than my awkward jittery behavior while reading or watching TV. I don’t blame anyone for not noticing. We were all doing the best we could and I’m glad I was able to recognize what I needed at twenty.

I like how my body looks right now, but I’m trying not to get attached. I still don’t recognize myself in a lot of pictures and I’m trying not to feel so attached to those either. It’s hard not to see myself as a thousand different people. My boyfriend tells me that they are all me, captured in a thousand different moments. He tells me that pictures are just snippets of time. I try to take comfort in that and no longer want to allow pictures to impact my happiness and confidence. I am trying to accept myself more and judge myself less. I am grateful to my body for all it does (yes, it is a corny mantra and a good one). I am learning to approach it with more gentleness and less fear.

Evergreen Masquerades

Evergreen Masquerades

Article by Julia Nichols, art by Maren Greene

We always knew we had a deadline. That last night is blurry in my mind, like when tears get caught in your eyes and warp your vision. I felt my entire being held in suspense as I tried to act cool for you. As I tried to act like I had accepted it a long time ago–long distance never worked–but deep down my heart whispered stay. 

I pulled myself as close to you as I could, trying to remember the feeling of your sweatshirt against my skin, the smell of your hair gel, the smell of you. And when you cried that night, I pushed you away. I wanted to cry too, but I knew that my tears would last longer than yours, and I was right. As you left you kissed me goodbye, and I tasted all the salt that contained the words you were too big of a man to say. The next day on my flight to Colorado, I was certain I would keep you in my life and that nothing needed to change. I texted you as if I hadn’t cried for hours the night before, I FaceTimed you pretending that we were still us from before, I made the same jokes I knew would bring out that smile I had grown too fond of.

At first, we were the same. Or it felt close enough to before that I could convince myself nothing had changed. You had given me a plant for our 11-month anniversary, the last anniversary before I left, and I placed it on the corner of my desk as a reminder of what we could’ve been. What I thought we still could be. But as your messages grew few and far between, the dread in my stomach became harder to suppress. I caught myself checking your location on Snapchat and your activity on Instagram. If you had time for other people, didn’t you still have time for me? The constant tracking, however, backfired. One day as I opened Snapchat to the familiar unopened “sent,” a symbol was missing from beside your name. Trivial, I know, but that little symbol, the proof that you were still my best friend, and I was yours, meant something to me. Now that we didn’t text, Snapchat was all I had, and I knew that whoever took it from me wasn’t just “one of the guys.” 

My love for you was blinding, and somehow, I thought that if I looked you in the eyes and told you everything, I could win you back. We had broken up, sure, but we still talked every day, we still watched shows together over FaceTime, your plant was still on my desk. I flew home over block break with an overcompensated sense of confidence and a hint of desperation. The next day you walked up my backdoor steps and I smiled hello, heart in hand. When you smiled back, I knew you had missed me. 

I saw her name when I least expected. We were sitting on the couch and as I got up to get a snack I saw a yellow notification, a name that wasn’t mine, and a picture of a girl with red hair. Even now, I feel a simmer of anger as I think about how you responded to her. You were with me, you were in my home, and you were thinking of her. I saw you zoom in on your own face so she wouldn’t see my house in the photo. I didn’t say anything.

We spent the next day at your house. I had done my best to erase the pain of yesterday– this was my second chance. I met your college friends: three roommates and a girl with red hair who was introduced as your roommate’s high school friend. No, I didn’t put the pieces together back then. My anger simmers about that too. 

After dinner, I climbed into your bed knowing you would follow. I played coy by showing you TikToks I had saved for you, so aware of your hands under my shirt. I thought that if you still wanted me, you still wanted to be with me too. I looked into your eyes and asked you the question I knew could break me. You were honest, but it came out like I had cornered you into a trap. I’m gonna be honest with you, I did go on a date yesterday. I knew dates were likely; I didn’t like knowing it happened less than 24 hours before I saw you. I haven’t kissed anyone I promise, just like, cuddling. That didn’t make me feel better. The last thing I remember clearly was telling you I thought we were worth fighting for. My mind has fragmented the rest in an effort to protect myself. I remember rubbing tears and snot onto my new brown cardigan I had worn just for you. I remember begging you to understand. I’d rather look for someone here. Her name hit me in the chest, and I knew I had lost. 

I walked through the airport pale and alone and wearing my new brown cardigan. As I boarded the plane the flight attendant asked me how I was doing. Good, how are you? Until that night, I had never cried until I physically couldn’t produce tears anymore. I cried as quietly as I could, wiping more tears and mucus onto the brown cotton. By the time I landed, white crystals speckled the sleeves.

Every day I would check my phone for remnants of you. I wanted to believe that you were hurting too. And one day there you were, in a photo with some of our old friends, your roommates, and the girl with red hair. Her arm was wrapped behind you and your hand rested on her waist. I finally connected the dots. I felt physically sick, but I couldn’t look away. I zoomed in on every inch of the photo, reading your body language and analyzing her face. I wasn’t sure what hurt most, me finding out on Instagram, you never telling me, your roommates knowing but not saying anything, her standing there with all my old friends, or you by her side. It was like she had stolen who I used to be. 

I fell down the rabbit hole of despair and fixation, and no amount of consolation or rationale could bring me back. I looked at photo after photo of her, scrutinizing every detail, trying to understand what made her special, wondering why she was worth your effort and I wasn’t. I didn’t want to know but I had to find out. Was it her face? Her body? Her clothes? Or worse, was it her personality? Her laugh? Her smile? Had she been talking to you since the day I left? Had your roommates known the entire time? Something crushed me that night. I felt abandoned and dirty. You had left me, led me on, and two-timed me behind my back. 

I tried to keep busy in the weeks after you, but I only remember the numbness. Every word felt like an echo and every action felt mechanical. My entire body felt heavy but I had no substance. I applied for a job, joined a dance club, and rushed the sororities. I tried to smile at one of the sorority girls; it felt so fake I almost cried. My professor pulled me aside after class one day and asked if I was okay. I’m just a little anxious. She told me she wouldn’t call on me unless I raised my hand.

We didn’t speak for a month. I suffered silently because I didn’t want to tell anyone what I was going through. Because telling people meant it was real. I did my best to avoid all reminders of you, but I preserved the final fragment of us in an unopened Snapchat you had sent the day I left for the airport. My final fragment of power. I refused to give you the satisfaction of acknowledgment. You would wonder what I was doing, you would be afraid that I would never talk to you again, and you would feel the weight of losing me completely. 

Over time, I became better at distracting myself. A few hours could pass without me thinking about you…then almost full days…but the nights were always hard. I joined the sorority I rushed, I realized I was bad at dancing but liked it anyway, and slowly the pain began to fade. I watered your plant twice a week. It had grown five new stems that we had named together before block break. The one with the heart-shaped leaf was named after you. College gave me the distance I needed, and the plant kept you close. I kept it alive with a few good memories and as it grew, so did I. 

When the Traffic Lights are on Your Side

When the Traffic Lights are on Your Side

Article by Tasha Finkelstein, art by Sanders Greene

Therapy notes 8/31

1. Meditation 

2. Recording OCD

3. Grounding myself in what is

What is? 

I walked into a tiny yarn store this summer and said goodbye to the urge to go anywhere far from home ever again. I consider myself more of a dog than a cat, but I do see the appeal in a beautiful ball of yarn. The walls must have heard me because above the window, painted in the kind of script I just can’t seem to master, read a quote: “The essences of life are color, music, and the freedom to express yourself through creations.” - Jivie

Who is Jivie?

I used to think everyone I loved had an orange aura, but I don’t know what my favorite color is anymore.

Rooms that seem to hold the keys to the universe

1. That one yarn store.

2. My mom’s old room/my grandma’s office. The walls are pink, they always have been, except now they are chipped. Dust gathers – I am allergic to dust like everyone else, but I have never coughed in there. There is an old air conditioner unit on the floor. Air that will never flow dazzles. Some expectation is released. 

3. The school auditorium I watched assemblies in where I danced after the Fall Festival in where I got bat mitzvah’d in became A Woman in where the time was never too late to dance in Jelly and Peanut Butter where it was after hours we shouldn’t be at school anymore and yet we were.

4. A safe dark space (The whale at the natural history museum…movie theaters…the shimmer...the song “God is Alive”…the twinkle ringtone on my phone…the look of the logs in the river…stars on the beach…auras [whatever that means])

5. My friend’s old living room where I first felt your chapped lips against mine. It was November and your roughness pulled me in close. He moved houses a few months later.

6. I moved only a five-minute car ride away from my old home but every room in that apartment lingers in my mind as a heaven I try to remember but I can't remember what the hell were the colors of the tile in the bathroom.

7. Is every good room a place you know that you will never be able to return to? Or at least somewhere you know you won’t be for a long, long time…?

On the first of every month, I say rabbit rabbit hoping things will be different.

Every day I pick my pair of socks hoping I picked the right pair, not the cursed pair.

I count in threes until I lose track if I’m on one two or three and have to start over again.

When numbers make me nauseous, I think about the scene in my favorite movie where frogs fall from the sky and start to feel okay about it all. I feel okay when I remember that all it really comes down to is an itch. An itch that can never fully be scratched, an itch that makes me wonder if the objects in my left and right pocket are even. Tissues do not weigh much so even if I have three items in one pocket and two in the other it’s okay. I keep telling myself that the tissues in my pocket are okay. And that there’s nothing wrong with painting my nails three times in one day even if the nail polish remover seeps into my papercuts. I have an itch I need to scratch so I decide to take a walk instead. Isn’t it nice when the traffic lights are on your side? 

When it’s August and it’s raining, I spend the night following traffic lights in a daze of my own creation. I cover my ears with headphones and watch as taxis glisten against drenched asphalt on my way to Sundaes and Cones. Only every once in a while do my steps line up with the silver pedestrian’s. But it’s okay. Eventually new visions take over and I sit outside in the rain alone with my banana split like I’m the female lead in someone else’s movie. Please believe me when I say it wasn’t sad (I sat under an awning and didn’t get rained on). I was just immersing myself in what my best friend keeps telling me is the moment. After I lost track of the traffic lights the moment became more than a moment: it became an ice cream stain on my dress that I had to walk home and make conversation with. Luckily, the stain turned out to be a great conversationalist and made everything more great. More real. I never thought of great and real as the same. That makes a lot of sense now.  

Names for my memoir/collection of essays

1. The faint whisper of a squeak

2. I can’t think of anything else I just wanted to share that one 

How it felt to make you eggs

I wanted to be sweet and make you breakfast so I decided to make sunny side up eggs because I thought they would be fast and easy. When I broke both of them at the end my fried heart swam into the pan and came out liquid. Apparently, I was using the wrong spatula. You still ate the eggs (put them on toast and turned them into a sandwich) and told me they were great. It’s not a reach for me to say that you are the only person I would make breakfast for. Making you eggs was like those first few moments of the day between dream and reality when I forget what our voices sound like and everything is new again. At 9:30 the air is filled with puffy eyes as soft as clouds and a room as warm as a heating pad or hot soup. I don’t want you to think it's overwhelmingly warm like stuffiness under the covers. It’s more like the other side of your pillow. 

Remember when we walked to the Brooklyn Bridge so I could experience darkness as it's meant to be experienced? Our feet carried us to a destination far off and away that I thought we would never make it to. We passed South Street Seaport, and I caught a glimpse of the narrow ramp that led up to the bridge where walkers walked and bikers biked and lovers may or may not have loved. Once we reached this far off destination our (my) feet turned around. I wanted to be able to walk the bridge at night, but I realized it didn’t matter if I couldn’t walk safely without you there. I didn’t want to use you as the moat to my castle (as if you were a moat, as if I were a castle). If I couldn’t walk the bridge with my own two feet, I didn’t want to walk at all. 

I am walking on my own now, something I had always hoped to do. I want to walk I want to dance I want to move in the trance of my own creation but I don’t know whose shoes I’m wearing and you’re nowhere to be found. Something digging into my heels whispers that the bridge is not a bridge but merely a dance floor I am fading into the floorboards of. I bend down to peer into the cracks of myself for anything more than ground to gain footing on. In my quest for something solid, all I find is dust. 

I met a DJ who looked a bit like you. I don’t remember his face; I just remember he had hair that reminded me of yours, so I wanted him. He didn't play any of the songs you would play, in fact he didn’t play any songs at all. He didn't look at me, my feet stayed glued to ground that surpassed the feel of what “sticky” connotes, and that’s when it hit me: this is not a bridge, it is a dance floor. 

I don’t know who you will meet when I’m not there, but I hope you remember what I told you: you can only tell if a person is The Real Thing if they are the same when you wake them up in the middle of the night as they are at all other times of the day. Please don’t wake anyone else up in the middle of the night.

Love Between the Lyrics

Love Between the Lyrics

Article by Anonymous, art by Maren Greene

1. Deer Necklace

My friend had a crush. This became clear when she laid face-down on my dorm

room floor, buried in my white shag rug.

“He’s just so sweet! He walked me home and we kissed and he was such a good kisser. And so good at sex.”

I could have predicted it. The saga had started a week before, when she had pointed to two white, vaguely bearded, and symmetrical faces on her class zoom screen. Him and Another Guy. “Which one should be my block crush?”

I chose The Other Guy for his European-sounding name and glasses which made it look like he knew large and important things, like What To Do To a Woman in Bed (and he would definitely call it ‘in bed’).

“He has a girlfriend.”

“Oh, well then, him I guess.”

I pointed to Him, with a slightly less European-sounding name and no glasses.

“Yes, I think that’s the right choice. I think he’ll be my block crush.”

That was a week ago and now she is

in pain. Self-inflicted, though excruciating pain. Tied to my rug, prisoner to her own impulses. To double-text him, or worse yet, call and see what

he was up to. To stalk his art account, full of watercolors of his artfully nude girlfriend. I tried to distract her with information about manifestation, the law of attraction, attachment theory, and anything that didn’t involve direct communication with a man who seemed intent on ghosting her. It was information (if you can call it that) gleaned from my time as a historically accurate representation of the classical figure of the yearning teenage girl.

“Affirmations!”

“Focus on your self-concept!”

“What you think is what you receive!” Nothing was sticking with Ella, who was still face-down on my rug, now in a fetal position.

I switched to my next prepared line of attack.

“Let’s make a crush playlist!”

She shifted her cheek up, slightly, to look at me.

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a vision board, but with music, so you can listen to it and think about him.”

Think was the key word here, as thinking is famously harmless as long as it is not followed by acting.

“Oooh!”

She swung her legs around so she was lying on her stomach and propped up her cheeks on her hands. Her eyes had the overzealous enthusiasm of a middle schooler who had just learned the word ‘cunt.’

“Yes, I think we should do that.”

I joined her on the rug and we lay, foreheads pressing into each other, Spotify in my palm.

First, we needed a name.

“What about ‘crushing?’”

“No, no, that’s way too on the nose. It has to be...obscure.”

“Right. So like, something about him. Something he does.”

“He used a magic wand on my clit.” 

“Hmmm. That’s great. But I was thinking, like, a hobby.”

“Oh. I know. He makes necklaces out of deer teeth.”

Necklaces out of deer teeth. Yes, we could work with that. I created a new playlist and named it “Deer Necklace.” Now for the songs.

“Crush Culture” for obvious reasons. “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” but the Squirrel Flower version, which is slower and more conducive to lying in a Twin XL bed and staring at the ceiling. “Marlboro Nights” for the moments of classroom hyperfixation. “Sex (Acoustic Version)” for when the yearning turned to torniness, the emotion we coined that combines both tiredness and horniness.

The result was an amalgamation of different forms of pain. Excited chest pangs, sorrowful yearning. Pain from having someone you love and pain from never having them at all. I watched on the Spotify sidebar as Ella listened to the playlist until two in

the morning (He, thankfully, didn’t follow her). I woke up to texts from her – screenshots of songs by Conan Gray and girl in red – “thiiiiiiissss.”

Two weeks later, when his intent to ghost her became impossible to deny, Ella once again buried her face into my shag rug.

I said – “Let’s make a heartbreak playlist.”

If nothing else, it got her to sit up.

2. I And Love And You

I say “I love you” for the first time through a song. Or rather, through my fingers, weaving through his and sitting idly on my lap in the way I would impulsively reach for them whenever

I was in his passenger seat. We are driving through the mountains, the car nearly tipping off the edge of Monarch pass. The song is “I and Love and You,” by the Avett Brothers. I tell him it speaks to me because it’s about coming home, when home is where I’m from. 

Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in, are you aware the shape I’m in.

I listened to it on the car ride from LaGuardia. I came home from college in the winter, battered from weeks spent at the intersection of delirium and crisis. Through Williamsburg warehouses and past the warm-toned brownstone windows. Where roast chicken comes out of the oven and sourdough starter rises on clean, marble counters.

Take me in.

There’s only so much a city can do. Especially Brooklyn, with its threat of

rats and underfunded subways. But I needed it to do everything. I needed the air in Prospect Park to supply my body with fresh oxygen. Grand Army Plaza Market to feed me with fruits and vegetables to redeem a threatened liver. My family to shelter me with the knowledge that I can scream or not talk at all, and they will still love me. On the first day back, my mom puts chlorophyll in my water and tells me I’m not myself. A foggy, damp version of the girl I used to be. When it hurts, I know it’s true. I’m terrified of not being myself. But if I’m not, this is the only place to be.

Are you aware of the shape I’m in?

It’s a challenge to the city, to practice forgiveness, but now it is a challenge to him: Will you be my Brooklyn?

Three words that became hard to say. So hard I can’t say them, at least not before him. So, I test them with my fingers.

I tap

And Love 

tap

And You 

tap.

There’s a silence in the car. The song still plays but the silence is louder. It could make me anxious or it could give me bliss. I have yet to figure out which is true.

The song circles to the chorus. The familiar words once again.

Three words that became hard to say. 

My mind is in my fingers now, but they are no longer speaking. Now, they listen through the silence.

I tap

And Love tap

And You tap.

I know the song will never be Brooklyn again.