Lettitor

Dearest Reader,

We hope that you’ll revel in this edition's absolute SPILL of jokes, confession, and secrets that occur when we make decisions under the influence. To our understanding, “influence” can mean a plethora of things. Our writers, editors, and artists aimed to capture intoxication in all its forms—even beyond a late night at Stair House. What’s intoxicating in our lives? And what makes influences so seductive? Based on this round of submissions, and some touch-and-go talks among the editors… we still don’t have a definitive answer. Influences are tantalizing fantasies living at the edge of the night, they’re sweet delusions piled on top of grey truths, but they always drive us to dream. Our influences drag us along for a ride from where we think we are, to where we dream to be. And from the bottom of our hearts, we hope this issue invites you to cherish your own blurry-night dreams, and enjoy others from our talented writers.

When it comes to writing, it seems like the easiest route in recounting a moment of intoxication would be recalling being so drunk in the streets of Colorado Springs that you cry over breaking a pair of two dollar sunglasses from the ARC. And believe me, that is certainly present in this issue. But even more so, these pieces take on college beyond Selena Gomez’s “Spring Breakers” rendition of a bender. One piece we love formulates a sequenced list of events that marks where drunk fantasies take you, and when to acknowledge they’re just that. Logan Smith writes on the tender moments between drunk comedy and drunk tragedy, a line as old as emotion itself, which can become incredibly blurry under the influence. Married by catchphrases and undying mutual-love with the people closest to her, she yet comes back to reality. Leyla Kramarsky starts her story at 14 years old, when the allure to escape into another reality—the one known as “adulthood”—compels her to explore a New York night with her childhood best friend. Her story takes us on a coming-of-age journey, as she galivants around her hometown in search of a restaurant that doesn’t card for a lychee cosmo. One of our anonymous authors explores the dark, cavernous depths of unknown intoxication from a society all-too-quick to encourage ADHD meds for children. All of these pieces, we realize, distract us from our perceived limitations, whether it be inadequacy, puberty, boredom, or insecurity, these moments under the influence occasionally deliver us to our divine wishes.

This issue brings a lot of our stories, often unheard and relegated to dreams and our closest friends, into light—read with pleasure and care! We hope you enjoy all the juice (and gin) spilled in this grandiose mess, and keep your drunken dreams close to your heart.

Sincerely,

Joe and the Cipher Team

Rave From Hell

Rave From Hell

Depraved Dance and Drug in the Jungle of Tulum

Article by Hank Bedingfield, art by Alex Wollinka 

The Tuluminati, a wandering flock of serial over-payers and plastic surgery addicts, dance and fuck in the Mayan jungle for a 12-hour, nine-to-nine, EDM-fueled binge. Undisclosed locations, aimless shuttles, buckets of cocaine, and the hired paramilitary supplying it: welcome to Set Underground, the monthly organizers of raves and all things illicit for this nomadic horde of depravity.

I was drawn from my comfort zone into the world of EDM and jungle raves by pure naivete, woefully unaware that a night of dancing and good times was far from my reach.

After a hastily wired transaction of just under $100, I wandered from my Airbnb to a WhatsApp location where my night was set to begin. An anonymous number provided it to me upon the purchase of my ticket. A mile on foot from the center of Tulum to the supermarket and I’d be on a shuttle to the jungle, ready to dance, sweat, and drug myself into a frenzy for the acclaimed underground cenote rave. I stumbled, drunkenly, into something much more vile and cruel: the dark, illicitly trafficked underbelly of international rave culture. I was a lightweight and a fool, completely naive to the ugly surreality of this operation.

The vans were packed with giddy Europeans, each sweating out their own combination of MDMA, LSD, booze, weed, and enough cocaine to make Joe Biden lucid, at least in appearance.

The driver was silent and the shuttle was tense with an awkward anticipation of the night to come; there was questioning and concerned jabbering in a handful of languages I could barely make out.

The van rumbled off, out of town and out of service, stabbing its way through the jungle. After two or three unmarked exits, we finally arrived at the venue.

Past paramilitary checkpoints, the exchange of walkie-talkie commands, and a few lonely fireside, gun-toting mercenaries, we had finally made it.

A couple of pat downs later and the paranoia was rearing at me already, that Fear and Loathing I’d read about but only felt a number of times. I had to strap in and keep things level as the jungle and my strange company traced in and out before me, chasing after a stray puppy in a drug-fueled frenzy, and the ground dropped, tipped, and reappeared at random.

What a cruel trap I’d walked into. Checking my phone was no help—a reminder that without service, in the middle of a Mexican jungle, I was doomed to the swine. I had to break for the bar if I was to beat back the evil tonight. And that’s what I did.

I weaved through mermaid body suits, mesh dresses, near-plastic faces, and surgically altered and enhanced everything-you-can-imagine, with a wonky gait and rabid stare. I knew I had been taken to a land where I was woefully outmatched.

I had no idea where I was but looking around, I was suddenly surrounded by the disciples of Coachella and Burning Man, the Aspen-goers, the Hamptons-owners, the cocaine lovers.

And there was plenty of cocaine. Duffle bags full of it, served out in overpriced dime bags by the same security force that patted me down and lingered a little too long around my inner thigh. The paramilitary mercenaries were conveniently monopolizing the market and taking full advantage of the money around them. Drugs were everywhere, music was loud and psychedelic, and appropriative Mayan-esque patterns illuminated the cenote which we circled and the jungle backdrop behind.

I blew 60 USD immediately on Palomas, desperately trying to ground myself in the comfort of a reliable drunkness. That comfort would elude me, no match for the oppressive forces already spinning my head. I was truly forlorn. The paranoid reality of glitter, house-music, and the loosely-tied kimonos of those around me would soon slap me in the face and leave me crying for my bed as I stumbled home.

A couple of hours in that thick, perverse dream and I’d had it. Though I had experienced one beautiful moment with a potato-shaped Miami contractor in his mid-thirties tweaking off of molly, sheets of sweat pouring from his face as he babbled unintelligibly. He gifted me a vape and darted off in some light up, hype-beast style mask (not COVID-related) with a parting spew about his need to dance.

Terror and disgust gripped me like a vice. I, at the same time, realized the dire weight of my situation. I’d left on a shuttle from a grocery store to an unknown location in the middle of the jungle where I now stood with $20 to my name, in a country an unknown number of miles from home. What would my mother think? How would I get home?

As influencers and their humanoid folk poured in, surrounding me, I clawed for a way out. I was a fish swimming upstream and the current of nouveau riche millennials was crushing, inescapable, and purely repulsive. I circled the venue for an exit, clawing at humid air and swatting away the hype-beasts of the night, trapped by the same vendors and faces.

There was no exit.

Instead, where the boujee and depraved funneled in, I hailed a security guard while foaming at the mouth and begging to be led to the shuttle that had dropped me off so easily.

They spoke no English, and through my broken Spanish, I pleaded with audible desperation.

“I have no money. I won’t be taken to an ATM. I’m not in the crowd here; I’m not enjoying the Colombian sugar or $20 joints. I’m a man who doesn’t belong here and can’t afford to get out.”

A taxi appeared and offered me a $50 ride. Even in my state of total, desperate vulnerability, I wouldn’t fall for such blatant extortion.

After a few angry exchanges, the taxi man realized I wasn’t the money pit he was promised and I returned to the strung-out and disinterested security guard in search of a more economically-feasible alternative.

After much waiting and confusion, one appeared. As the rusted-out minivan pulled up, so did the panic, and I realized the cab might’ve been a better call, at any cost.

I knew now what kind of a racket I had foolishly walked into — take the rich tourists from a shuttle in town and drop them in the middle of the jungle with no way back except some sleazy taxis. Whoever had planned this event was weaponizing chaos and exploiting the drug-riddled and vacation-happy. I couldn’t blame them. I would also be smiling if I were fleasing such an undeserving and undesirable crowd.

But for me, someone with a light wallet, apparently out-dated fashion, and too few drugs in my system to last till sunrise, I was far from home and stranded.

The van before me was a garbage truck of sorts, packed with the unlucky, financially unendowed, and the incoherently drunk. My only company, hastily shoved into this glorified minivan, couldn’t support his own weight or say his name. His personhood was rapidly evaporating and his cheery friends, eager to rejoin the party, dumped him into the van without a parting word. God knows where he ended up.

Stepping in, the van was perfectly casted for a True Crime podcast. My new driver was fat and drooling, with a Big Gulp equivalent in his holster. He slurred a spit-blurred dialect into a tightly clutched radio as I climbed into his dilapidated minivan. 1920s lullabies from the staticy CD he popped in filled my ears and I knew I was fucked. This was the end. Forget about the Tuluminati, I was now destined to end up in this man’s basement until the end of eternity.

The doors clicked and locked.

After making it only a couple hundred feet down the dirt road, a panic set in and I demanded that the doors be unlocked. It couldn’t be the end for me. I got out of that van for good. And with a strange soul and full head, I knew exactly the kind of nightmare I’d be subjected to if I hadn’t, and the horrors that would likely befall the semi-conscious partner I had to leave behind.

So I went back to cry and plead, with no money, no backing, and a name worth forgetting, desperate to get back to the town from which I had kidnapped myself.

Eventually, sufficiently exhausted by my ranting, one kind mercenary security guard called a waiting shuttle, exchanged hasty words with the driver, and gestured me on. I took the ride and found my way home.

I collapsed onto my bed, paralized by equal parts shock and fear. Life seemed beautiful and violently ephemeral all at once. Finally emancipated from the horrible comedown, I vowed never to dance with such swine again.

What did I learn? What’s the moral here? The world is uglier than you can imagine and the closest thing to reality are the nightmares we write off as fiction. EDM just isn’t my kind of music.

Dance or Die

Dance or Die

Broken sunglasses are probably worse than a broken ankle

Article by Logan Smith, art by Emmaline Hawley

Content Warning: Sexual assault, mental illness

I think a lot about the first-years who watched me, limping on a drunk-running-induced sprained ankle, sobbing about breaking $2 sunglasses I got from the ARC earlier that day. There were other things to cry about too—there always are when dipping in and out of sweaty houses—but I sat on a porch table, swinging my limp, bloated ankle in the face of anyone who would look at it. I asked so many drunk strangers if it was broken, none of whom could provide me with a sufficient answer. I clutched those broken sunglasses the whole night and super glued them back together the next morning, only to have them break again a day later.

I think about the aloof soft boy who laughed when he told me, “I woke up inside of you.” I laughed too, even though it wasn’t funny. That whole day, I felt hollow. Not hungover-empty-head kind of hollow. It was everywhere and I walked around feeling light in a scary way. When he asked me how I wanted to “proceed,” I said we could forget about it. We hung out for another month or so and then never talked again.

On nights out, I run blocks ahead of my friends, lungs inflating and deflating so quickly that I end up crouching beside someone’s Subaru Outback to cry, again, and hyperventilate. Fellow drunk runners don’t notice me as they pass by and I watch them bounce up and down, ankles flailing dangerously off-kilter. I always squint at their shirt collars and fists, checking for sunglasses.

At work, I clean glassware and take shots that taste like candy. The bartenders joke about being alcoholics. I laugh, even though it’s not funny. One announces to the rest of us that he’s doing “Sober October” (he’s a lukewarm liberal who spends all of his time at the gym). He makes it three days in and then switches out his soda with a bottle of Fernet Branca. He tells me Joe Rogan didn’t follow through with Sober October, so why should he? I don’t have an answer for him and I don’t want to talk about Joe Rogan, ever. We take a shot together.

Unfortunately, Joe Rogan reminds me of every white cis-man ever and one disappointing ex in particular. When we stopped dating, I felt that same hollowness I’ve felt before, but only for a few weeks. I realize now that I miss his mom more than I miss him. I thought about calling her when I broke my sunglasses. I’m not sure what I would’ve said. Hi. It’s been a while. I broke my sunglasses. Maybe, Hi. I don’t want to talk about the breakup. I want to talk about my broken sunglasses and about your art and about the lake. Is it still smoky up there? My friends took my phone away to keep me from drunk-dialing my ex’s mom.

I think about my ex again, though, the day I receive a type-written love note from someone I barely know, tucked between brownies wrapped in tinfoil and a tupperware full of gelato. It’s something my ex would’ve done—something he did do, often. I recycle the love note and tell the handsome stranger I can’t see him like that anymore. Slowly, I’m learning how to tell people what I don’t want.

My roommate and I practice conversations I’ll have with lovers, exes, friends who think we’re more than that. I’m tired of not talking about what I need, but being tired doesn’t make initiating these conversations any less scary. She reminds me that they always go smoother than I think they will.

I imagine me and my housemates as one huge creature with 20 akimbo limbs, swaying this and that way, filling every space with mass amounts of noise. It’s a sometimes-concerning, sometimes-joyful melding together. Our neighbors know when we aren’t home because it’s the only time of day (and night) when our house isn’t emanating laughter or scream-singing. We go through a 25-pack of Coronas in a week. Our fridge broke and now the only thing left in it is beer and Smirnoff Ice (for Ice wars, not enjoyment). There are always garlic skins scattered across our kitchen floor and our plants are dying on the living room windowsill. We joke about how the state of our house reflects our collective mental health. It hasn’t been clean since we moved in.

When I became single again, I couldn’t remember how to ask for hugs. I couldn’t remember how to hold hands with people I wasn’t fucking. I don’t think I fully realized I could be held by my friends until this year. I like spooning my platonic lovers. It isn’t tense; the care is never conditional or dependent on sex. Platonic intimacy has become an important part of my life. The cuddle piles materialize just about anywhere—the front lawn, two-person loveseats, even Cowboys (which we no longer frequent for reasons you’d likely expect). My roommate described us as falling in love with each other. These are the healthiest relationships I’ve been in in a long time.

Amber Mark’s cover of “Thong Song” is the current ass-shaking anthem of my house. Amber blows Sisqo out of the water with her heavenly voice. I’ve scream-sung the word “thong” probably a few hundred times this semester. Remi Wolf’s “Liz” works for any occasion—shots, drives to Target, stops at the gas station, brunch prep. Alabama Shakes’ “Heavy Chevy” is a phenomenal dance song for utilizing every single limb. We’re also big into power ballads by femmes who’ve been wronged. Olivia Rodrigo offers us probably too much solace these days. If you’ve ever passed Pillar House, heard faint music coming from my ten-year-old speaker, and been told to “dance or die,” that was us. We realized probably too late how that might come across as threatening, especially at night, especially while walking home drunk. Apologies if we’ve ever scared you. However, the next time you hear it, you better come dance with us.

As my hangovers begin to stretch across entire days, I am reminded of the fact that I’m an “adult.” But I don't feel like one. I feel four-years-old when I take three-hour-long naps in the afternoon. Sometimes, I grow up to about 17. I go home for breaks and eat buttered noodles out of one of my mom’s plethora of pots. At my house, we only have one. Our recipes are limited.

Monday morning mimosas are losing their luster. Tony’s Tuesdays make me nauseous. Alliteration can only take you so far when applied to heavy drinking. Alcohol doesn’t fight off anxiety. It doesn’t mix well with antidepressants either, not that I’m necessarily deterred by these truths.

I think about the bong I shared with my roommate sophomore year. We named her Rhea after the Roman Goddess of motherhood. We joked that she was our “college mom,” an instant source of comfort whenever things felt too hard. Weed made time slow down, made my skin tingle, made me focus on my entire body, every strand of hair on my head. It made everything funny. My friends’ smiles made me laugh, how they walked, the way they stared off into space. Visualizing my own body slumped on the couch made me laugh too. But I don’t smoke anymore.

I think about the night we spent in purgatory (Denny’s) after a concert at Red Rocks. I watched the unbearably sweet milkshake in front of me sweat—tiny beads of condensation creeping down the side of the glass. I watched a woman in a wedding dress lug her skirt up and head to the bathroom. She didn’t come out for twenty minutes and I wondered about her for the rest of the night. I liked imagining a honeymoon at Denny’s. Two of my friends and I sat in our sticky booth until 2 a.m. The food was bad. I chugged coffee in hopes of clearing my fuzzy, beer-fogged head. I realize now that Denny’s is worse than IHOP.

When I’m drunk, I love doing dishes. I could stand in the kitchen and plunge my hands into dirty sink water for hours. An exercise in finger swimming. An exercise in learning to keep a kitchen “tidy.” Playing house with other babies.

Sometimes, I feel helpless here and other times I feel like I’m coming into my own. Here, we figure things out slowly. We call our parents a lot, but probably not as much as we should. I disclose my drunk injuries to them, which is always a bit funny but mostly mortifying. I thought the sprained ankle would be the first and last drunken injury, then I was sure falling down all of the stairs leading into my basement bedroom had to be the last. As I write this, in the midst of publication week chaos, I’m newly on crutches. No biggie. I feel really good about it. I feel even better about the fact that I fucked my knee up while dancing on my porch. I remember being spun around by a friend and then crashing to the floor, which was really fun to explain to Penrose Hospital staff. I hope that this will actually be my last drunk injury. Realistically, I know it won’t be. I feel like next time, I’ll probably shoot for a damaged wrist just to switch it up a bit.

Despite the sleep deprivation, the copious drinking, and the severe lack of motivation, I haven’t had a panic attack in months. And that feels new. And good. I eat a Trader Joe’s ice cream sandwich every single night, lose every house key I’ve ever touched, and spill so many water glasses at work, but it’s the first time in a long time that I feel good in my body. Slowly, I’m beginning to trust myself.

My sunglasses are still sitting in two pieces on my kitchen countertop. For whatever reason, I can’t bring myself to throw them out. At this point, they’re covered in an impenetrably thick layer of superglue. I think they’ll sit there for a while, bearing witness to a kitchen counter covered in dirty shot glasses and dried up limes, feeling the vibrations of happy, drunken feet pounding on kitchen tiles.

Lyrics Girl

Lyrics Girl

Learning to hear music again

Article by Tasha Finkelstein, art by Natasha Yskamp

Content Warning: Mental illness

We always said I pay attention to the lyrics, you pay attention to how the music sounds.

I don’t know how to explain what it feels like when you can’t hear what’s going on around you anymore: music, footsteps, voices. The closest thing I can think of is hide and seek; you see everything but you can’t make a sound. The sounds you do hear are either huge and scary, or so small that you ask yourself, am I imagining this? A squeak in the floorboard could be the seeker coming to get you, or a smile from a friend could be them laughing at you. It’s an everyone-for-themselves, kill-or-be-killed type of game. If someone takes your hiding spot, too bad. Find a new one.

I don’t really know how to explain the absence so I’ll try to explain the presence instead.

I’m on a new drug: Sertraline. The doctor says it takes about a month to kick in. It’s only been three weeks but I keep asking myself if I feel any different. I don’t know what it feels like to listen to music and hear anything but white noise. All I know now is that when I’m with you (on a different drug), even when I feel hot coals scorching down my throat, I know it’s going to be okay. I am not actually on fire, I will not die, and the cloud we are under is not leaving.

We’re sitting in a kitchen that isn’t ours, crouching under a stove that we’ve just met for the first time. You find a jar of chamomile on a shelf and make us tea but forget that loose leaf needs an infuser. And so, we chew on bitter tea leaves that float freely in our cups until we can’t take it anymore, losing our minds and mouths to laughter. We’re small again, the way we hide away late at night and hope our moms don’t hear us. It feels like hide and seek used to, but even in this old house, I’m not scared because the kitchen light is on and you’re right next to me. What used to be staying up past a curfew turns into eyes too red. Whatever it is, it’s the mischief that counts.

In Woodstock I couldn’t hear the music, only the genre. You put on your playlist in the car and I was glad you did, but all the songs sounded the same to me. When it’s been a while since the last time I’ve seen you, we always trade music and I’m always asking for the names of the songs you play so I can listen to them later. But here in the car, I couldn’t tell what was louder: the silence of the car speaker or the silence of my voice not asking any questions. I took my turn later and played music for us while making dinner. The speaker was too close and too loud; I couldn’t hear the music, only the volume. My ears were fine even though my head felt like it was going to explode.

What happens when we acknowledge Woodstock was weird? Not weird as in bad, but weird as in not us. I don’t tell you that maybe it was weird because everything feels weird for me right now, but I just started this pill like three weeks ago so maybe I won’t be weird—maybe I’ll feel better soon. All you have to do is say it was a little weird (a little not us) and I feel better because I know you hear me in the noise. You help me pack and we paint our toenails and it’s not weird, it’s just good.

I feel sand in my toes and I see the speckles on yours. And finally, I hear sounds that aren’t just a buzz in my ears. The waves are big and loud, and I feel like they might kill me but at least I can hear them. And the lyrics! I hear words that aren’t just someone talking to me but really talking about themselves. Sharon Van Etten is on the speaker and she’s talking to a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old me who drives on the bridge and can actually see the reflection of the city on the water. This time, I’m not on a bridge but on a beach. For the first time in a long time, I see texture. When you can’t hear much, you have to rely on your sight. But what do you do when your sight isn’t reliable? What do you do when everyone around you is commenting on how beautiful the city is, but, for the life of you, you just can’t see it? It’s spring break in New Orleans and instead of noticing how charming the French Quarter is, all you can notice is how ugly the Walgreens on the corner looks. Here though, lying in the rough sand, hit by a striking sun, I know I can see clearly. Everyone around me seems to be affected by some magical glow that makes them shine just a little bit brighter. The woman sitting on a chair nearby talking on the phone isn’t annoying, it’s the most interesting movie scene I’ve ever watched. The little boy taking a nap in the sun looks so peaceful, so at ease. And we are not being lazy, or stupid, or silly, we are seeing things for the first time in a while.

We get ice cream. Lots of it. There’s a food truck in the parking lot of the beach we didn’t realize was there. For our first round of ice cream, you come back with a Chipwich for me and an ice cream sandwich for you. The cookie/cream combination is just about the best thing I’ve tasted but the sandwiches are small. Way too small. Luckily, you admit you want more. I volunteer to get it this time and end up coming back with three sandwiches for the two of us. “You just always know how to take care of it,” you tell me. It’s funny that you say that because I never feel like I can take care of anything. But you tell me how good of a problem solver I am.

“Most people would never think to just go get more ice cream and then we’d sit here and be thinking about how hungry we are. But you just decided to go take the walk and get us some ice cream.” Maybe I do know how to take care of things.

When the high wears off and we don’t want it to, we'll just go outside again. You’re a pro at this stuff, which your mom would probably hate if she really knew. It takes you longer than me to feel the effects of smoking, so I constantly wonder if we’re on the same page. I wonder if what I feel like when I’m high is the right way to be high. I wonder if I get high in the embarrassing-low-tolerance-way. You say we should take a video of ourselves. I immediately ask what of. Just existing, you say. Huh, I’ve never even thought of that.

And so for a little while, we exist. I don’t know how to act once the camera starts rolling because I know I’m going to hate the way I look and talk and move the moment I see it played back. Eventually though, I forget the phone is even there. It’s just us, talking like we always have. I don’t want to talk about anything bad or sad because these moments are precious and we only have so many. The same feeling from when we were eight years old comes rushing back: there are only so many hours of the night when our parents are asleep and the moon is in the sky.

It’s a Friday in Jenny’s class and I’m squirming in my seat, waiting for the day to be over so we can walk over to your house. You have a drawer full of snacks my mom would never buy, a TV you are allowed to use at any hour of the day, and a paper mache pterodactyl that hangs from your bedroom ceiling and protects us from ghosts. Best of all, your mom lets us use her iMac. In third grade, Photo Booth is our only other friend and iCarly is our bible. Our show is called iNillie for Billie and Natasha. We’re starting to come into ourselves, noticing what parts of our faces we like, and what parts of our faces we don’t. I’m learning the concept of “weird” and “annoying” and trying my best to be neither. But when it’s time for iNillie, all bets are off. “This is Billie and this is Natasha and you’re watching iNillie,” our squeaky voices shout into the camera. We turn into young comedians, acting out skits, singing parody songs, and dancing like maniacs in front of the camera. One of our running gags is trying to trick the audience into thinking that I am really Billie and you are really Natasha. When I see your impression of me I cringe a little and then I don’t mind it.

Watching the Woodstock video back now makes me laugh. I can’t even tell if the way I look, talk, or move is strange because I am too busy listening to the words. We are sitting in the dim light in our pajamas with our legs crossed, facing each other like talk show hosts who have very important things to say. But we are not talk show hosts; we are just high.

N: I feel like I just got into your mind and thought like you for a second.

B: You really empathized with me! And I cannot empathize. I like don’t have it. I don’t have empathy.

N: Billie! All kinds of people have empathy.

B: No, I think I have like sympathy. I like, really don’t understand people’s emotions. Lowkey, I’m a sociopath I like, can’t empathize. Like, if you are mad at me, I really don’t know why and I’m mad at you! If we’re mad at each other, I just sometimes can’t empathize. Not us...

N: No, but I feel like if you hear a story—like for example the TV show “Girls”—

B: No lowkey though, everyone’s like, “oh my god Lena Dunham only cares about herself on ‘Girls’.” I never caught that. (bursts out laughing)

N: The way you said that! That was hilarious. (laughs more) I feel like every story I tell you though, you really understand. Woah. Maybe WE just empathize.

B: Yeahhhh! I just can’t empathize with certain people. It’s a lot more rare for me I think.

N: I’m so—I think it just depends… oh my god. You just put into words something so surface level and made it so deep. It’s like, why can’t I really connect with this person? Because I can’t really empathize with them. I don’t really understand them.

B: YEAH.

N: That’s insane.

B: Also people that I empathize with less I also get annoyed at more. The ones that I really empathize with I can’t stay mad at for too long ‘cause they always get me and I get them.

N: Yeahhh cause they totally know what you’re thinking.

B: Woahhh.

N: I really want, like, Tate’s Cookies.

B: You wanna make some tea and put something on? (burps) Excuse me.

It’s the end of summer. Your mom hugs me in a doorway that suddenly feels too small for us. I don’t want to hug you because you’re my best friend, not my second mom. Tomorrow I’ll walk to the corner and you’ll meet me there so we can walk the rest of the way to school together. But for now, neither of our legs are moving. You’re at home and I’m sitting in the car watching leaves that feel too green and a sun that feels too bright for either of them to be going away anytime soon. I put in headphones because I can hear songs now. I text you a link to one of the songs that we learned on guitar together and you respond right away. You hear it and I hear it too.

I’m walking alone now, with a throat unscorched, listening to the playlist you made for me in May 2020. My Quarantine Birthday. You got us Pinkberry, a Saturday afternoon tradition continued, and we sat in the park for hours until the yogurt was no longer yogurt, but sweet soup swirling around in paper cups. I’m walking on Nevada Avenue now and couldn’t be further from the park benches. The sky is gray, no traces of blue because the whole of it is drenched in cloud. It’s hazy but there’s a little spot where a circle forms. Light gets in and a moon appears out of the shadow, a little orb glowing in the midst of grayness. I’m walking nowhere now, listening to the playlist you made for me, and I can hear every lyric.

You’re far away from home but never far away from me and it’s all for the best.

Today, you’re not far away from home. I wait for you in a coffee shop garden in a November New York City. My hands are starting to get limp and cold and I’ve finished my latte but then I spot a very familiar pair of headphones and winter coat and you walk in. Even the overhead lamps notice you! They radiate the deepest orange and the most golden brown, buzzing and making the whole cafe warm again.

Blue Ghosts

Blue Ghost

A night out scrolling

Article and art by Katie Kamino

I stand in a stupor of decision(s). What now? I don’t want to do homework. I don’t want to cook food. I’m sick of checking my email. I’m not in an art mood. And I definitely don’t want to go for a run. My body feels hollow and my brain is operating as if it were in a vat of syrup. I need to press pause on the day, even though at this point, it is closer to night and the sun in the wintry sky has already set. I finally sit on the edge of my bed in surrender; look at my phone.

I start with a pull of my Instagram feed, downing the endless scroll of pictures and videos. I chug reels as each influencer spins stories of wanderlust into my head and drink it in avidly as someone skydives down an amber-ale narrow canyon. Just one minute, one scroll, one check of my notifications. The first taste of Instagram goes down quickly and I feel the bubbliness of all the new posts. Just like when you go out and tell yourself one drink and find yourself ordering another, I tell myself one more minute.

Even though I know I shouldn’t like Instagram, I do. I like the bright pictures, seeing people I know, knew, and the glossy landscapes of places I one day hope to go. Just one more minute, I tell myself as the soft aesthetics of posts slips into my mind. Just one more. A sip of wintry greens matched with cream whites, a sip of burnt oranges over sandy tan, a sip of soft yellow and baby blue. I find myself giddy and needing just one more minute.

Wrapping the blankets around me, I realize I don’t just have to scroll Instagram when I have TikTok too. The buzz starts when I switch over and scroll endless miles, watching videos I’ll have no recollection of later. I guzzle influencer’s tips on productivity.I tell myself that yes, I should wake up earlier and strictly take cold showers. My mind spins in circles, twisting into cat videos and then stumbling into fashion hauls. As I gulp down memes, music recommendations, life hacks, I find that my eyes are starting to hurt, but what else do I have going on?

I’m intoxicated with interest. I’m stumbling into murder mysteries and horse videos. As I pour content into my eyes, I feel it bubbling up, making my brain cloudy. Here in bed, time is skipping in bursts and stops. I start considering the time. How did it get so late? I’ll stop after another minute, I tell myself.

I raise the phone to my face and switch videos. I take a pull of Booktok, book lovers’ TikTok. And I get excited about all the endless books. I try to commit titles to memory, but my brain is turned off. I spend so much time excited about books, possibilities, and worlds I can step into. I take a long drag. My eyelids are heavy, yet my mind wants more, and, therefore, I continue looking on.

Then, the tang of guilt rushes over me as I realize how long I’ve spent on my phone and I put it down. A wave of nausea churns in my stomach. And I feel the effects of all that blue light like the aftermath post a long night out. I pull myself up to get ready for bed, my brain spinning. And I fall asleep with the blue ghost of light still reflecting in my eyelids. I don’t dream

Smiley Faces

Smiley Faces

Getting a little bit better

Article by Anonymous, art by Alex Wollinka

Content Warning: Mental illness, disordered eating

After I was diagnosed with ADHD in fourth grade, I was given a clipboard full of pink worksheets. Every day, I had to fill in a smiley or frowny face bubble for each subject. The faces had no correlation to mood, of course. A smiley face meant I did a good job paying attention and a frowny face meant I did a good job keeping track of the birds that landed on the tree by the window. If other kids asked me what it was for, I gave a convoluted excuse about how it wasn’t mine. For a few days, I stayed under the radar. But I didn’t get very far.

It was craft time and I was cutting out a paper thermometer with a face, the type of face that seemed to be plastered on everything for kids—that big, stupid grin with those close-set eyes. I glanced away for a moment, but my scissors went off track and I cut right into its cheek. As soon as the teacher's assistant noticed, she scolded me sharply and told me to fill in the sad-face bubble.

I remember one girl turned to me, wide-eyed, and asked, “Is that sheet for you?”

I insisted that it wasn’t, but I was unable to look up from my hands. I had nothing to explain myself with and my burning face gave me away.

If the teacher’s assistant noticed my embarrassment, she didn’t show it. “Fill in a frowny-face, please,” she reminded me, more firmly this time. In her mind, my failure to follow directions chalked up to inattentiveness, a fact that might have warranted a second frowny-face if it were possible.

I was already an easy target-- in addition to being labelled as dumb, I was incredibly shy. I didn’t come from the same cookie-cutter American home that most of the popular girls in my school seemed to be from, but I was desperate to fit in. I wanted blonde hair and bubblegum lip gloss, I wanted new clothes instead of my oversized hand-me-downs, I wanted to sing along to the same songs and talk about the same things as them. The more I wanted to be accepted, the less I stood up for myself. Even though I knew when I was being made fun of, I had the idea that my classmates might like me if I was nice enough, if I pretended they were laughing with me instead of at me. As many people may know, this only made me more fun to tease. So when my classmates found out I took medication, I never heard the end of it. Even the people who were normally kind to me didn’t want me in their group projects and some students took it upon themselves to “check whether I was paying attention” in class. The teacher didn’t see any issue with it; she would thank them for helping me. I thought adults just didn’t understand how mean kids could be. I figured they just forgot it as they grew up. But now that I’m older, it’s hard to imagine forgetting.

I’ve been told that ADHD is a scam used to line the wallets of corporations, or that it’s an excuse to be lazy and that I just need to push through like everyone else. Other people refer to ADHD as a gift and tell me that meds will dim my true personality, dismissing the struggles that come with untreated ADHD as the cost of being “unique”. On the other hand, many people in favor of medication argue that meds are necessary for me to live a happy, successful life. The claim that medication is either a sign of weak willpower or meant to fix something broken is ultimately what made my relationship with it a toxic one for a large part of my life.

Everyone experiences ADHD and medication in a radically different way, so the decision to take meds is a very personal one. In many ways, my meds help me manage symptoms of ADHD that affect me negatively-- I can think more clearly, stay on top of day-to-day responsibilities, and handle stressful situations and sensory overload in a much healthier way. However, my relationship with medication had a rocky start. As soon as I was diagnosed, my mom wanted to seek treatment. My dad didn’t want me on meds because he believed it would change my personality, but she convinced him otherwise, and as soon as I started taking them, my academic performance skyrocketed. I was no longer the kid who got yelled at for zoning out. I didn’t have to spend recess time indoors while impatient teachers explained long division time and time again. I was no longer the one frantically searching for my crumpled homework while other kids giggled and whispered. My mom said it was an answer to her prayers and she was rigorous about making sure I took my pill, even if it meant bringing it to me at school. I was “smart” now. I was reaching my potential. She told me she knew all along I wouldn’t just be a C-student. I couldn’t pin down what frustrated me so much about those comments, but in my ten-year-old mind, part of me was screaming, It’s still me, isn’t it? Am I smart enough on my own?

Although my meds helped me a lot once I started taking them, I had been told nothing about ADHD other than that it made me unable to focus. No one explained that it was rooted in dopamine deficiency, or that it had all kinds of symptoms that weren’t related to focus at all. My attention was what showed up on my report cards. My attention was what people wanted. Whenever I seemed to start struggling with school again, my mom would bring up increasing the dosage of my medication. If I forgot my notebooks and my room was messy and the teacher said I had my head in the clouds, the question was immediately on the table: "Do you think you need a higher dose?"

I didn’t have a concept of how the pills should feel-—if I wasn’t focusing, I figured they must not be working. And so, my dosage routinely increased as I grew older, climbing every year or so. I didn’t know much about mental illness, and I didn’t consider that it could affect me, or my ability to do well in school, just as much as ADHD could. Most of what I heard on the topic was from the adults in my life. Adults who tsssked and whispered about mental illness being responsible for homelessness and school shootings, adults who gossiped about each other’s kids and spouses at church, adults who laughed at the whiny “snowflakes” of the younger generations.

I came to understand that the smiley faces and frowny faces were a representation of how others felt about me, and how they thought I should feel about myself. My worth was measured through a binary of failure and success, and that way of thinking stuck with me long past fourth grade. Starting middle school, I had frequent anxiety attacks and stomach cramps so persistent I would worry I was getting my period and check my underwear for pink spots. I didn't know that my medication could make these feelings worse. I didn't see anxiety as something that was hurting me, I saw it as a friend—something I needed to motivate myself, something that kept me in the parameters of who I needed to be. It felt like a part of myself that I couldn't and shouldn't get rid of.

Once I hit seventh grade, I was partially taking my meds for focus, but mostly as an appetite suppressant. Controlling my body became one of the coping mechanisms I latched onto. Seeing how long I could go without food was a game that never ended, a goal that was always reliably just out of reach, and I became eager to agree to every suggestion that I needed a higher dose. I even suggested it myself, telling my parents and doctor that I needed a secondary prescription to make the effects last throughout the day.

By senior year of high school, I was on a high dose in the mornings and two lower ones in the afternoon, which continued into college as well. Since I was rarely allowed to go out with friends in high school, I was looking forward to meeting people freshman year, but making friends seemed more and more impossible. Isolation made my newfound freedom feel like cold water, too big and too empty. I told my new doctor about the sharp pain in my ear and jaw that made it hurt to open my mouth more than a crack. The ache had been building up over time, making simple things like chewing, yawning, or smiling hard to do. My last doctor had said it might be a symptom of an ear infection. This one told me I was just clenching my jaw too much. He said my prescription was extremely high, and suggested I lower it to see if that helped me sleep. So I decreased my morning dose, and I found I didn’t get the usual heart-pounding and dizziness in the mornings. In addition, I clenched my jaw a little less, and the ear pain subdued.

I knew the effect the meds had on me, but I still felt like I needed a higher dose to function. I wasn’t thinking about focus anymore—the medication compensated for my tiredness, suppressed my appetite, and made me feel detached from my emotions. It made it easy to sit blank-faced and silent, watching the world from a bubble of superficial calmness.

I had several extra bottles of my supplementary meds on hand, since I hadn’t taken them over summer, and as my mental health declined, I depended more and more on the bubble of silence that overmedicating brought me. It kept my mind off things, and at that time in my life, there were a lot I wanted to avoid thinking about. As long as I was on my meds, my thoughts went in tight, repetitive circles within the lines of what I wanted—safely contained, instead of scrawling rampant across the page. I started taking them later in the day than I knew I should, taking more than I knew I was supposed to. The effect was a cycle that didn’t seem like it would end. The less I slept, the more I needed them to function. Five hours of sleep slipped into less than four, and all-nighters became routine, even when I was taking sleeping pills out of desperation. It felt like I was perpetually taking one to cancel out the effects of the other, always having both in my system. I hated the looks I got in public when I could hardly walk in a straight line, or when my hands shook, or when I started to feel my breath getting shallow. Coupled with my anxiety about eating in general, suppressing my appetite became far easier than leaving the sanctuary of my room to get food. I kept telling myself it was what I wanted. I wanted to believe that running on nothing meant I was succeeding. I wanted to fill in a happy face and move on.

When I was around people, I got more familiar with the hands waving in my face and people saying I was zoning out. Usually I wasn't; it just took too much energy to move my eyes and change my expression. But that was harder to explain. As time slipped by, classwork took up all my energy, and the rest of life melded together into a haze. I didn’t think I was going to get better. I was waking up with chest pains and losing consciousness more often, and my eyes felt like they had been erased and redrawn too many times, red-rimmed and dark-shadowed. In the back of my mind, part of me kept wondering when and how things would end.

One night in late March, I suddenly couldn’t stay cooped up inside any longer. I pulled on a winter coat and headed out at 2 a.m. I wasn’t sure where I was going until I stumbled down to the side of the river west of campus, where I sat with my heels digging into the bank.

I didn’t feel like the person I envisioned myself being in college, I felt like a haphazard mass of all the things I was taught to feel ashamed of. But I knew I wanted to live. I had come up with endless lists of little things I wanted to do in life—I wanted to finish writing my disorganized novel even though I knew it was packed with plot holes and random pointless scenes, and I wanted to figure out where to put the stickers I’d been saving, and to finally wear the dress I bought for the school dance that was cancelled last spring.

Even if I never ended up being who I wanted to be, I decided it was worth fighting to make life just a little better. Just to have a little more room to breathe.

That’s how it always starts, I think. With wanting to get just a little bit better.

I knew using my meds to cope with anxiety was never going to end well, but it took a long time to change my mindset. It started with keeping myself alive. I needed to eat, I needed to sleep. I had to acknowledge my right to have my needs met, whether or not I felt like I earned it. That was the first step in being aware of the smaller things I needed in order to function—taking breaks when I was burned out, grounding myself when I was overwhelmed, and guiding myself away from an all-or-nothing mentality. I had always thought I had to just push through, be strong, and make myself do things, like I had always been told. But I didn’t need strength. I needed gentleness. I could see myself apart from anxiety, I started to respect myself enough to see that I deserved to get better.

I had thought I would rather just wake up and be fully recovered without having to do any of the work myself, but it turns out that feeling myself heal, day by day, was the best part. I wanted to live through the small and difficult victories, to notice the first times and to live through new experiences. Even when I feel like I’m back where I started, I know it won’t last forever.

Now that I've started taking the right amount for the right reasons, I don’t mind mentioning that I use medication as casually as someone might mention wearing contacts. Even backhanded responses never bother me as much as I expected. I have nothing to hide. And there’s nothing they could say to take away that part of me.

Even now, I'm still adjusting to how I feel and act with the right prescription. I still sometimes forget that my facial expression changes on its own, after having to consciously align it with emotions for so long. I sometimes catch myself unintentionally scrunching up my face or smiling while I’m in public, and a lot of times I can’t stop my initial reactions from being completely readable. I no longer force myself to smile the right way, to fill in the right bubble. But for now, I don't mind wearing my heart on my sleeve.

List

List

Being so, so drunk 

Article by Anonymous

1. My once-not-boyfriend’s first time getting drunk is at my place with our friends. It starts off with nice, fleeting touches and long, open conversation about his parents, maybe, possibly divorcing. His best friend, Emir, and I watch, entranced, as he rambles on, words spilling out all over my printed sheets. Usually closed off and stiff as a rod, now laid raw and open.

It ends with him turned inside out, puking everywhere. He tells me he loves me and I pretend he says it to Emir, mop up orange-brown vomit and scrub my hands clean.

I do not kiss him that night.

2. The first time I get tipsy is when I’m at a grungy roadside eatery with my theater crew. It’s the brink of Valentine's day and when I stumble back onto campus, I opt to send an anonymous rose to Sadie from my English class. Scrawl “To Sadie,” with my left hand so nobody will recognize it, nothing else. A little pink slip, not enough to capture the extent of my longing in the four classes I share with her.

It’s no matter. I think of her slim ankles and smooth hair and the boyfriend hoodie she wears fucking everywhere and send it anyway.

3. My best friend’s first time getting high is with me. I’m crossed, she’s buzzed, and when I teasingly say, “Come here,” she does. She meets me halfway in a clumsy kiss, and I jump back, burnt.

“I just stole your first kiss,” I say, horrified. My lips are so, so dry.

“I don’t want it to be a big deal,” she insists, and we’re back into it. The vodka and weed have slowed my brain and I pour all my focus into her slightly parted lips and lace my fingers into her hair. She’s hurried about it, clinical, but I hold her waist and urge her to slow down, move with me.

Our three friends are sprawled next to us, watching intently. It’s voyeuristic.

“Did you enjoy that?” I ask, just a little anxious, when we pull apart.

“Yes? I have nothing to compare it to. I don’t like you… like that… but I—I enjoyed it.”

Kisses are disposable things, so I do not consider the semantics (or the consequences) of teaching your best friend how to make out. I do not consider the clichéd nature of it. I do not consider any of it until a month later, until we are at a club together, and I want to do it all over again.

4. The first time I kiss kiss a girl is when I am so, so drunk. At my friend’s day party, a girl was talking to the boy I like; and then, she’s dancing. With me. She’s very American, with wavy sunlight hair and elongated syllables. Her eyeliner is cute, all neon pink and blue. Her pale skin can pull it off.

She’s close now. The music is good.

“I’m a lesbian!” she shouts, randomly. I catch it in the air between stray notes. “Don’t worry!”

Something in my brain stutters, falls shut.

“Oh? Ok.”

We keep dancing. Her long fingers are now intertwined with mine, lovely manicured nails catching light. I’m so drunk I’m floating along, on top of the clouds.

I’ve been told I give people the eyes when I’m floating. I do that now, catch her eyes once, twice, thrice. There’s heat. I’m dizzy.

She holds my shoulders. Pulls me imperceptibly closer. Her blonde hair brushes my neck. I love long hair.

“Wanna go make out for fun?” she shouts. She’s direct like a knife. And I do want to make out. So badly. The “for fun” is unnecessary.

I do not respond, just nod, smile (with heat), and tug her along. The sun beats down.

I kiss her on the front porch where everybody can see. I kiss her until I’m anxious that she hates it. I kiss her until I realize I’m sloppy with alcohol.

5. I show up at his, drunk. A few shots of liquid courage. Earlier tonight, he asked me if we were going to the same party, so naturally, I knew in my gut that he would kiss me. Maybe.

We sit on his bed. My brain is lagging. I tell him things about my night, ask him a question or two, but what really matters is that we’re touching. Often, I will touch a boy, speak into his ear, look at him with the eyes, and he will kiss me—no doubt about it. This one, though, he comes too close sometimes and other times, he inches away immediately. The alcohol sloshes around inside of me. I’m itchy, feeling a tantrum rise from my stomach.

At some point, we lie down, melded together, for what feels like a long fucking time. I can feel his breath, yet he draws away. We lie there for so long that I sober up, slow and painful, shame creeping up my throat.

His face is close to my chest, my lips in his hair. I shoot my last shot, press a kiss into his forehead. He does not move. I do it again, more deliberately this time. More sound, more of a smack, so he does not miss it. No response. I draw away, in disbelief. What did I read wrong?

Silence stretches out like fabric being pulled apart.

Then: “Are you sober?”

His voice is soft, hesitant. Slightly hopeful.

I break out into a smile, radiant with relief, as I clamber on top of him. Dip in, close,

“Sure.”

Fist Fight With a Mirror

Fist Fight With a Mirror

Why I cry everytime I’m on shrooms

Article by Anonymous, art by Ben Hoyle

Content Warning: Substance abuse

The last time I did shrooms I was at Trump’s golf course. I guess I wasn’t on the actual course—we parked in his lot then hiked down to a beach—but it was a pretty whack way to start any day, let alone one on drugs. The ocean fog made everything in front of us virtually invisible; we had driven an hour out of LA to drink tea on a beautiful shore away from Venice’s crowded sands and, instead, we were greeted by utter greyness.

Given that the last time I had done shrooms was on the grass outside of the library in the middle of campus surrounded by sober people, I’d take anything this time, even this gloomy day. Once we found our little spot, we layed out our towels, set up our umbrella, and drank our tea.

I stretched out with my eyes closed and let my hands fall into the sand, waiting for the usual 30-minute come-up. I could hear whatever music was playing, as well as someone’s departure from our spot, but I kept my eyes closed. I wondered what this trip would be like and wondered if I should set intentions. I’ve never really been much of a nature tripper, I rarely see fractals or feel the wind in a euphoric way—I am more of a high cryer. I can’t think of a time I haven’t sobbed on shrooms. I always feel grabbed by my throat until anything lodged in there is spat out in rhythmic weeps. I wondered if this time would be different, if this time I wouldn’t start thinking about my family or my childhood—times that make me feel so small and fragile and free and helpless and hopeful that I can’t control any emotions. Maybe this time, I’d look at rocks or run my hands through water and feel like I was being reborn. Maybe this time, I could detach myself from my neverending repressed internal monologue and just feel what was around me.

It was at this point that I started to feel my body sink into the sand. It had hardly been five minutes; I couldn’t be coming up yet, could I? I sat up and the whole day had changed: the sun was soaring high, all of the fog had cleared, and the waves roared. Every sensation was amplified and I felt myself smiling. I looked around the group and so was everyone else.

I walked to the shore and felt the waves wash against my feet. I looked around, tracking everyone I was with. It was a weird summer—we had all just finished two months of Covid isolation after being kicked off campus—and here I was on a foreign beach, surrounded by three of my closest college friends and my best friend from home, in a new city, tripping on shrooms. My best friend from college made her way to me and we began talking. The conversation slowly moved into the bad, the moments at school that made us feel itchy and insecure. I started to feel irritated by the sand as we spoke, each speckle felt like a bug crawling up my skin. I didn’t want to feel this way, I didn’t want to talk about the things that made us sad, but I couldn’t find the words to express this to her. Luckily, my best friend from home made her way over, and interrupted our conversation with an old Vine reference. The three of us began talking about childhood stories, each of us melting into each other’s, until every experience was universal. Until each of us were on that Blackberry Bridge.

I sat with my knees to my chest, crying lightly between two people from separate spheres of my life, both of whom I love dearly. I felt so soft and tender in that moment, like I could connect with anyone, like I could share anything I was feeling. Tears streamed down my face and my eyesight was fragmented by the wet glitter on my cheeks, causing the sun to sparkle in the most particular way. Talk about parents began, my best friend from home reflecting on vague memories of her mother in rehab when she was a child. I listened to her intently, and began thinking about my own parents.

I wanted to call them; I knew I was tripping. I knew my speech wasn’t the most coherent, but I could hardly fight the urge. I felt like I could tell my parents anything in that moment, and that, amidst my sobs, they would understand me better than they ever had before. I’ve always had issues with telling my parents how I feel, particularly about them and my childhood. When I share things with my mum, she usually pulls the whole, “oh well I am so sorry for being such a horrible mother” card. And my dad usually just gaslights me, telling me my memories are wrong. Or he just gets really angry. He tells me I’m full of shit, or that I’ve been brainwashed by my mum. The whole thing just feels like this endless cycle, them never settling shit with their own parents, then putting the blame back on us, then me fearing that one day I’ll do the same to my own kids because I’m not brave/smart/strong enough to settle things with them.

But sometimes, like when I was tripping on that beach, I feel like I can connect all the dots of my familial trauma. Sometimes, I am in touch with emotions and memories that I’ve shut myself off from for years of waking life and I think I could just call them. On that beach, I turned to my two friends and told them I was going to call my dad, and they nodded to me. I walked back to our little camp, picked up my phone, and instantly became terrified when I saw my own reflection on the black screen.

I saw my current self, glitter streaming down my cheeks, Hawaiian shirt-clad, eyes puffy. I got a glance at my past self: a little girl with long hair and innocent eyes, as well as a look at my future self: drooping skin and crow’s feet. How was I, at any iteration of myself, prepared to speak to my dad? Prepared to ask him questions I’ve never uttered to myself?

When I was a kid, people always told me I looked just like him. As I grew older, people told me I acted just like him. They said I had inherited his sense of warmth and ease, that I could make anyone feel welcomed and comfortable, just as he does. I always held this close to my heart, I saw the way people spoke about and looked at him, with admiration and respect, with love and warmth, and that’s how I wanted people to think of me.

I love my dad. We haven’t spoken in months and the last time we did, he told me I was full of shit and needed to fuck off, but I still love him. That love is what kept me in a place of willful ignorance throughout the past 22 years. My parents were married until I was seven; I always favored him. Mum was pretty temperamental, especially while we were kids. If I had an accident at night, I was sure to tiptoe into their room and wake up my dad without disturbing her. As I got older and got in trouble for drinking or drugs, I would speak honestly with my dad, because he was empathetic and understanding, not just upset with me. I once thought of this understanding camecoming from care, and now I realize it came from guilt.

My dad was always there for me in ways that other people weren’t. He talked to me about school and my passions and my life with a genuine interest, which felt so good. He maintained a good relationship with my friends and the people I loved, always wanting to take people out to dinner and have them over for parties. As I got older, I started to feel our relationship shift toward a friendship. He once texted me that he was so lucky to have a daughter with whom he could share so much with and see as a friend, and I almost missed my flight because I was sobbing so hard in the airport bathroom.

This isn’t to say our relationship leading up to this past July was perfect. Not at all. The first time I saw my dad intoxicated, I didn’t have a word to match the behavior. I was eight, spending the weekend at his house with my brothers. I heard my two-year-old brother crying in his room. When I walked in, my brother was on the floor, playing with wires; my dad was dead asleep. I tried to shake him awake, but he kept shushing me. I went and got my 11-year-old brother and we woke him up together. As soon as he started speaking, his words were slurred. He got up to walk to the bathroom and almost fell over. I was crying so hard, telling him I was scared. He told us he had a glass of wine, forgetting he wasn’t supposed to drink on his medication, and assured us he would be fine in the morning. And he was. I stopped thinking about that night. But, now, after more experiences of molasses-mouthed words and unsteady footsteps, those memories are clear as day to me. There’s no way that one glass of wine on one medication could have that effect.

As time went on, these states became more frequent. They were never too consistent, but they would always find their way back into my life. By the time I was twelve 12, I had coined this state of my dad’s as his “night mode.” At that point, I knew about addiction, probably even knew about high-functioning addicts, but was still too proud to ever think it possible that my dad was one. He rarely drank, and drugs? No way. He just got tired. As I got older that tiredness also began to encompass his stress, which usually manifested itself through irritability and anger. My brother and I would be on our phones at dinner, or disagree with him politically, and all of a sudden we would be the scene of a restaurant: a father screaming at his teenage kids, us looking back at him like deer in headlights. God forbid a waiter come by and ask us about the meal, because then there would be one more person to yell at. We got used to being told to “just get out” at dinners every once in a while, where we would then trudge back to our apartment alone, hear him stumble in a few hours later, and pretend like nothing happened the next day.

I can’t tell you why I couldn’t just call him out then. I was in my late teens, I knew he was an addict. I had seen him in his night mode far too many times to plead ignorance at that point; had too many dinners with him repeating stories to my friends, received too many slurred-speech accusatory late night calls, and had grown accustomed to him going out to run “errands” and coming back a different person. Even if I wasn’t able to confront him about it, I don’t know why I couldn’t tell anyone else. Not even my mum, who I kept on getting closer with as I grew older. Perhaps I didn't want her to hold it over me, to have that I told you so moment after I’ve spent my whole life defending him.

I remember one time in high school, my friend broke down to me and said her dad was in rehab. I looked at her and told her my dad was also an alcoholic. It was my first time admitting that to anyone, including myself.

The first time I ever confronted my dad was May 2020. He had spent months away from my special needs, nonverbal younger brother. He was turning fifteen15 at the time, and the two of them were finally reunited for a weekend. I knew how hard the separation was for both of them. My younger brother’s life depends on structure, he doesn’t understand the world the same way many of us are privileged to. His life rested on consistency of school, meals, playtime, and the split custody between my parents.He lost all of that during the pandemic and given he can’t communicate or comprehend the way other people can, he grew quite angry. My dad, on the other hand, grew sadder and sadder. I was so excited for the two of them to be back together, and when he called me late one night, I was looking forward to hearing about their weekend.

When I answered the phone, the liquor was bouncing off of his voice. It was that same slur of disjointed facts, unrelated ideas endlessly drifting through his intoxicated mind. I was angry. By this point, I had accepted his addiction (even if I was never brave enough to bring it up), but I somehow thought his love for my incredibly special brother would surpass whatever made him take substances. What the fuck was he doing? How was he fucked up while taking care of a child who can’t even speak for himself? I gave a couple unenthused, half answers on the phone and we hung up. Directly afterwards he texted me:

“Have I done something to make you upset? Or are you just in a bad mood?”

I texted back: “I just don’t like hearing that you’re drunk when you’re with my brother.”

My phone started ringing immediately after hitting send, and my ears were flooded with a symphony of yelling and frustrated laughter. Oh, so your mom has finally convinced you I’m the devil now? Oh so you think I would take care of my son drunk? I was virtually silent the whole call, and that’s when he launched into his mental health. He told me that when I was younger, he tried to commit suicide, and went to a treatment center for a week. He said the only time in his life he’s ever taken Xanax was for my high school graduation, because I stressed him out so much. I sobbed and apologized, my anger turning to guilt turning to shame.

I found out, definitively, that all of this was bullshit this past July. I was visiting him for a couple weeks after spending most of the year abroad. During this time, I felt immense guilt that I had spent more months with my mum than him, so I was happy to be there. I had started driving again, my first time after an accident two years prior, and he would help me practice every day. We decided it was time for me to buy a car so I didn’t lose the skill again and could be more independent back at school. We went to the Subaru dealership, settled on a car, and agreed to meet back there at 9 a.m. the next morning to complete the transaction.

He showed up four hours late and fucked up. He was instantly irritable, mumbling that it was bullshit we had to wait for the salesman to finish a meeting before talking with him. We sat at a table in the middle of the store, completely visible to those around us, and he kept on falling asleep and jolting awake in front of me. His hands were shaking. I asked him what was going on and he said he didn’t sleep well the night before. I asked him if he was okay and he repeated, this is bullshit, before getting up and bursting into the salesman’s office and demanding that he be paid attention to right away.

When we sat down with the salesman, my dad continued to verbally abuse him; calling him incompeotent. At one point, before he slipped out to the bathroom in his usual fashion, my dad turned to me and said, this is how people get stuck in jobs like this, because they’re idiots. As soon as he left the room I began apologizing profusely to the man and he said he dealt with it all the time. When my dad returned, more intoxicated than he was before, the salesman asked him about payment. In his typical tone, my dad muttered, fuck, and began calling people: his girlfriend, his managers, my grandma. The conversations were hard to follow with his slurred words, but most of them ended with, no it’s FINE, I’ll handle it myself, like I have to do with everything else!

He had forgotten a check. He handed me his keys to drive back to my grandma’s and get one from her. We both Ubered here. Your car isn’t here, I reminded him. He burst into another series of swears. Eventually, my saint of a salesman volunteered to drive us to my grandmother’s and collect the check. My dad insisted I drive the car. He passed out in the backseat within moments. I stayed silent and tried to make myself invisible to the car salesman, the man who witnessed the worst day of my life and the deepest embarrassment I’ve ever felt.

I had been texting my aunt (who was also staying at my grandmother’s with my uncle and two little cousins) throughout the whole affair. When I pulled up to the house, I was instantly met by my uncle (my father’s younger brother) asking me what was going on.

“He seems really fucked up. I don’t want to be in the car alone with him.”

I was still quite new to driving and needed someone telling me what to do. He was not capable of this in his state. I was his kid and I needed him and he could not provide the help I needed due to his own illness.

My uncle told me he was going to send my dad home and we would pick up the car tomorrow. Suddenly, my dad was at the door, telling me to get back in the car. My uncle stood between us, saying that my dad should just go home and we would handle everything tomorrow. My dad forced his way into the house and tried to force me to go with him, but my uncle refused to let him get by. One thing led to another and my dad tried to shove my uncle, the chaos causing my little cousins to run upstairs to call the police. My dad left, keeping the Subaru salesman an accidental hostage.

The next few days felt like a blur. There were hardly any tears, only tools of survival. Somehow my dad had managed to purchase the car that day, and between leaving the dealership and arriving back at his house, where he hit two cars in the driveway, he had consumeddruank three quarters of a bottle of Jim Bean and stopped at a bar for three martinis. The next day, I spoke to his girlfriend on the phone and she told me about her hellish night with him, and said that he was drunk at the time I was calling as well. I decided I was not safe to go there and retrieve my things alone, so I was escorted by the police into his home. He never came down to see me. As I was fleeing, I just heard his yells from upstairs.

I flew to Colorado the next morning. My uncle and aunt had rebooked my flight and organized a way to get me to the airport. Three of my best friends picked me up. On the way back to the Springs, we ate In-N-Out and listened to the Arctic Monkeys. Florida felt so far, but I knew this event would reverberate throughout time. The next morning, I called my mum and told her everything. She was horrified, as someone who lived through my dad’s intoxicated rage more than anyone else, she was terrified of what could have happened to me. I told her she could not give my dad custody of my little brother, something they had previously agreed on, and she agreed.

I spoke to my dad for the first time since the incident a few weeks later, after extensive planning with my therapist. He started the call off by apologizing for putting me in that situation, and I started to describe how terrible every point of that day made me feel. He stopped me quickly: Hon, I can’t change the past, all I can do is make sure it will never happen again in the future. In hindsight, I should have known he wasn’t actually dedicated to getting better, even if that meant losing my brother. Towards the end of the call, his voice started to break, and he talked about how sad it made him that I came to his house with the police. I understand I must have made you feel really scared to think that was necessary, but, couldn’t you remember the good things? Couldn’t you remember the good person, the good dad I am?

Truthfully, I couldn’t remember. This past July clarified every part of my life and every aspect of my relationship with my father. It has felt indescribably icky. Suddenly, endless memories with him have been tainted. Was he drunk that night we had a weird dinner? Was that trip he took me on out of guilt? Was I safe with him as a child? Has my brother ever been safe with him? I started to feel crazy, not having access to any of these answers and not having any trust in whatever he would tell me. We continued talking once a week for a month or so—he would tell me about his AA and NA meetings, I’d ask him about rehab, he’d tell me he was busy.

We had a really shitty phone call back in September and I haven’t talked to him on the phone since. Afterwards, I walked into my backyard and sobbed to my housemates, knowing that this issue is never going to leave my life, that his addiction is leaving bloody fingerprints on all of my memories, self image, and interactions with other people. I told him a week later I would not be coming home for Thanksgiving.

I hate how guilty I feel writing all of this… feeling all of this. I hate that I feel like I have betrayed my dad by taking care of myself, and I hate that people in his life are thinking of me as a villain, as a mini version of my mother. A couple of weeks ago my grandmother called me and said I need to just forgive him, said he has taken care of me my whole life and I am being ungrateful for needing distance. I know addiction is a disease, and conceptually I feel so much sympathy for those who are struggling, but it is so hard to extend that sympathy to someone who is causing me so much pain in my own life. I still love him so much, and the fact that I don’t know when/if we will ever be okay again breaks my heart. I have nightmares of him dying from his disease, or killing himself and blaming it on me, and I just don’t know what to do. I can’t talk to him before he gets better, but what if not talking to him causes him to get worse? I am constantly being pulled in different directions with it, my grandmother and his girlfriend’s family constantly telling me to be a part of his life, my mum and uncle telling me he has no place in mine. It all feels so hard and never- ending, a constant space of dread and anxiety, a situation that will never simply resolve itself.

As scary as it all feels, I am here, and I am okay. I live in a house with people I love dearly, in a place that always feels bright and beautiful. I take classes in subjects I love and I cook for the people I care about. I am about to spend a month with the person I love the most in the world, and I am so blessed in so many ways. Even if I can’t talk to my dad, even if, right now, I can’t remember the good with him, I have California beaches, Blackberry Bridges, and Colorado Bluebird Skies on my side all of the time. I have a life that is full of love, and, I hope, one day that love can extend back to a man who taught me what it was.

Deadweight

Deadweight

Grappling with a forgotten night

Article by Katie Rowley, art by Sarah Bedell

Content Warning: Allusion to violence

Friday, September 3. The first weekend of sophomore year. An unopened handle of Stolichnaya vodka. The night began at Sigma Chi, or maybe it didn’t. I don’t remember the first part of the night. My friends filled me in; we made it to some parties, ones that weren’t fun with only the two shots of vodka we burned off during the walk to East Campus. So we went to get more. Trekked all the way back to my apartment so the night could actually begin.

Last year, I took my first shot alone in my parents’ basement. Before, my alcohol consumption had been limited to White Claws at a New Year’s Eve party, one in which I spent the entire night despondent that the girl my boyfriend was cheating on me with was there. I fell asleep on a couch just a few feet away from her, and when I woke up the next morning with a splitting headache, I thought it best to slip out to avoid seeing her face any longer. Safe to say, the introduction to intoxication was not welcoming. That didn’t stop me from trying again though. After a disappointing start to college, two weeks locked in my room and a week of freedom interrupted by an order to repack my room and move home, I decided I would just have to create my own college experience. So, I took a shot. And eventually, that turned into a lot of shots on a lot of nights. Which eventually led to throwing up on the side of my bed and swearing to never drink again. But, like most who say that, I did not keep my word, though I did lose the ability to take a shot.

This proved to be consequential. As long as I added enough water or orange juice or lemonade to drown out the poisonous taste of vodka, I could lose track of how much alcohol I was actually consuming, which is exactly what I was in the middle of doing. The 99 cent plastic Target water bottle I had bought for the sole purpose of mixed drinks was filled with much more vodka than I realized. I filled up the rest of the bottle with orange juice stolen from one of my roommates.

It wasn’t long until the room started to spin and I found myself much more comfortable lying on the kitchen floor. The flickering yellow light filled my vision. It beamed down on me like the sun but its rays provided no warmth. Of course, the blanket of alcohol was enough to keep any cold air from seeping into my bones. My friends, who were still in the process of sliding shots down their throats, stepped over me. I felt heavy. All of my bones sank into the floor. I couldn’t move. Deadweight.

The only thing that could shock life back into my body and pull my bones from their final resting place was the overwhelming need to pee. At the New Year’s Eve party—the one where I got tipsy for the first time ever—my friends, who had spent the entirety of their high school weekends drinking, advised me not to pee when drunk. “It sobers you up faster.” But it’s hard to ignore the urge of your bladder when you're already wasted, so I made my way to the bathroom.

Next thing I knew, I was lying on the grass outside of Bemis Hall. I’m not sure how I got there or why. I was flat on my back. Deadweight, once again. But instead of the kitchen’s artificial sun beaming down on me, my vision was filled with night sky. I have no clue what time it was. I have no clue where my friends went. All I could see was the sky’s purple hue impeded only by the trees and shadowed in darkness. I couldn’t see clearly enough to make out constellations so instead, I drew them with my mind. Suddenly, I felt six again, my dad standing in our driveway, holding me in one arm, pointing out the Big Dipper. I desperately searched for it. I searched for any remnants of my childhood innocence; it had been strung out of me that year. No shreds to hold onto. There is nothing to hold onto. There is no one.

I lay there forever. My friends hadn’t abandoned me. They returned to gather me. To shock life into my body once again. They helped peel my bones up from the ground, and together, we stumbled into Bemis. I fought with each step in the stairwell. We just had to make it to the third floor. My bones wanted to sink into the ground. My feet cemented to each stair and caught the edges when I mustered enough strength to pull them up. I was dizzy. We just had to make it to the third floor. Then down the hallway. Then I could lie back down.

I made it up. But not without emptying my guts into the trashcan at the top of the stairwell. The cocktail of vodka, orange juice, and stomach acid burned the back of my throat. I stared down into the trash can, unable to see anything I just puked up, which was probably for the best.

I squeezed my eyes shut, in an attempt to block out the dizziness and the uncontrollable feeling that my legs were about to give out. When I opened them again, I was lying on the floor of my friend’s room.

Hardwood floors are surprisingly comfortable. Or maybe it was the rug I was on top of. Or maybe it was the drunken state tricking me into thinking any place where I was lying down could be comfortable. My bones once again sunk into the floorboards, and I felt determined to stay in this spot.

I lay in peaceful contentment. The room was silent, the perfect environment for sleep to finally overtake my body. And it did. The fog grew, interrupting any thoughts from forming and settling heavy on my eyelids. They shut, blocking out the fluorescent overhead light. Completely out. Deadweight.

My eyes flickered open at the sound of my friend hysterically sobbing while pacing around her room. The room is only illuminated by her desk light. It’s pointed at where she’s pacing, like a spotlight. I wondered if she's acting; if her own drunken state drove her to perform a one-woman drama, with an audience composed only of her passed-out friend. Her sobs are too real, though. And, I could not tell if she’s talking to me, or about me. Whoever she was talking to, she kept bringing up calling the hospital and how “she” looked dead. I didn’t think I was that drunk. I tilted my eyes up, trying to establish if her focus is on me. I could barely stay awake long enough to determine what she was so distressed over. Did I throw up more in my unconscious state? Was I really that drunk?

It’s not me she was so worried about. I figured this out when she left the room again. Or at least, I assumed she does. I didn’t actually see her leave, but the sound of her sobs faded from the room and I was able to drift back to sleep.

I felt a presence next to me on the ground prompting me to open my eyes. I was staring at my sobbing friend, lying face down, trying to call her parents. I found myself mustering up the energy to ask her what’s going on, and as she incoherently divulged the events of the evening I have missed out on, I interrupted her, begging her to lay on her side. The funny thing about being drunk is that I am always convinced other people around me are as intoxicated as I am. So, if I needed to be laying on my side so I wouldn’t choke on vomit, she needed to be on her side too. I think she complied. I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open, and I completely stopped listening to the story.

Our one-way conversation was interrupted by a knock at the door. EMS was here. My friend got up to talk to them. I could go to sleep now. Before sleep got the chance to overtake me, I wondered if EMS was here for me. They wouldn’t be, right? Before the almost sober part of my subconscious could rationally answer this question, I fell asleep again.

I woke again to the feeling of a hand on my leg and the voices of all of my friends. They were trying to debrief what happened to them that night. I didn’t open my eyes. I just listened. Trying to piece everything together through the fog. It was too thick. Hours had passed since the fog first took over, and I was ready to let it fully consume me. I was ready to close my eyes and never open them again. To become deadweight forever.

Instead, I laid on the floor of my friend’s dorm room, waiting for the crying and detoxing to subside. Waiting for the quiet to return. Waiting to be caught up on everything over brunch tomorrow. Waiting.

Two months later and I’m still waiting. Every minute of the night has been described to me in vivid detail, but I still feel like I’m missing something. I’m the only one who gets too drunk to walk or who throws up on the floor of the lax house. I’m the only one who is not cautious. I’m the only one who wasn’t there. And I cannot go back in time and make myself drink less. I can’t be there.

Lychee Cosmos

Lychee Cosmos

Growing together from afar

Article and art by Leyla Kramarsky

Sophia came to high school orientation wearing mascara. It was clumpy and thick, but to fourteen-year-old me, it signaled something profound. My best friend had grown up over the summer. She had kissed boys and gotten dizzy off an alcoholic seltzer and when she pushed her hair behind her ear, I noticed the shining gold of a cartilage piercing. I glanced down at my sneakers, sterile with the white newness of a purchase made specifically for the first day of school. My mother and I had spent an hour in Foot Locker the week before trying to choose the perfect trendy (yet versatile) sneaker. I loved them, and opened their box every afternoon to peek at their black Nike swooshes. But, standing in the school lobby, they looked embarrassingly self aware next to Sophia’s perfectly scuffed platform converse. She hugged me and she smelled like sweet perfume.

Sophia had always been pretty in an easy way. Where my nose intruded on my face, too large for my young features, hers sloped delicately. Where my limbs grew clumsily from my body, wielded as if they were somehow too heavy, she moved gracefully like the ballerina she was. It never mattered. It was like, until that September morning, neither of us had noticed.

We left for our school orientation trip—a feeble attempt to encourage bonding among an incoming freshman class that had been attending school together since kindergarten. She put eye makeup on me while we sat in a summer camp cabin. It felt heavy on my face, and I wiped it off in the bathroom after she left, leaving a dark shadow underneath my eyes. I was painfully aware that I was being left behind, so two weeks later when she asked me to get dinner on a Saturday night, it felt like a chance to prove my legitimacy as a high schooler. When she asked if I wanted to go to a place that “didn’t card,” I felt something shift in my chest. I hoped that my “sure!” was cool.

The restaurant was an ugly sushi place on the Upper East Side. A chandelier dripping in plastic crystals hung from the ceiling and linoleum tiling lined the floor. It looked like someone had accidentally ordered a few pounds of raw fish to a diner and panicked, desperate to sell it to oblivious customers before its expiration. But, as Sophia assured me, the draw wasn’t the sushi. The draw, it turned out, was two decadent lychee cosmos each, the canned juice almost masking the sharp sting of alcohol. Halfway through my first one I felt my body slide into newness. A rush of warmth to my face. An awareness of my pulse in places I had never known it existed. Halfway through my second, words were falling out of my mouth before I knew what they meant. The strange buzz in my formerly gangly limbs had turned into the arms of someone sophisticated and worldly. Nerves shifted into adrenaline, taking on a life of their own.

We stumbled into the New York night as if we had lived our whole lives perched in the sticky, red booth, giddy with the enormity of adulthood. Standing on the street corner, teetering on the precipice, I was ready to take on whatever adventures lay in store for me before my ten o’clock curfew. But unfortunately and appropriately, the thing about being a drunk fourteen-year-old is that you are fourteen, and there is not very much to do. So, we got cookies.

Sophia moved to Seattle after sophomore year. Through empty promises of reunions and a failed attempt at an “olden times” pen pal relationship, I began to miss the moments that filled her life. I missed her acceptance into one of the best dance companies in the country and her initial encounter with her first boyfriend. I missed when she moved out of her parents’ home and into her own apartment. I missed when that first boyfriend became her first heartbreak. And she missed mine. She missed my first braceless smile, running my tongue over smooth teeth and examining a reflection in the mirror that maybe, one day, could be pretty. The mascara I had once rubbed off my face became familiar. My uncomfortable limbs grew strong when I realized that I loved to run. Wine convinced me to spend a night on a friend of a friend’s couch crying over a boy who I thought could never like me. Tequila convinced me to kiss him. She missed watching as that first drunken night transformed into weekends of parties that I slowly learned to navigate, harnessing alcohol’s synthetic confidence to befriend people that had intimidated even Sophia. But never, not once, did I miss her birthday. And she never missed mine. Our texts now are a series of exchanged birthday messages, increasingly simple as each year passes. But, on every June 7th and December 23rd, I remember our lychee cosmos. I remember running down the street with her, hysterical laughter scoring our steps, the feeling that I would never be as old as I was right then. I remember, most of all, strolling into school the next day armed with a secret that the whole adult world shared. Somehow, Sophia has whispered it in my ear, showing me that growing up is not an exclusive club. There’s no password, no indiscernible language. There is, instead, an amalgamation of firsts and of lasts. And that first, with her, proved to me that I was capable of learning adulthood, of choosing when to be drunk, when to be beautiful, when to be old. So, our birthday texts mean something to me. I don’t know anything about adult Sophia, college Sophia, Sophia now. But I do know that we continue to grow up together, year after year. And for that, I am grateful.