It’s funny how the feeling of a holiday changes as you grow up. An innocence lost or a hardness gained. I always think back to my first meaningful Halloween. I was in fourth or fifth grade in our small town in Rhode Island. Kids had free rein of the island on that night, and I was finally feeling like it was home and not just a place to rest before we moved again. I had a painfully strong crush on a boy in my grade. The feelings were mutual, but I wasn’t ready to grow up and be a girl who liked boys.

I was dressed as a dead beauty queen. We got this pink dress, a sash, and dropped lines of blood from my mouth and eyes. I felt immaculate and spooky. I went trick or treating with the boy I loved and a few friends. Pillowcases in hand, we took the streets by storm, demanding bigger and bigger bars as the night crept in.

There was one house in particular that every kid on island waited for each year. A retired schoolteacher and her husband put on a real show. You’d knock on the door and she’d greet you in a deeper voice than normal. She’d take you into her house covered in fake spider webs and bats. She’d tell you a story about a killer on the loose. I don’t remember much about the story, to be honest; I was always too focused on how close my crush and I were standing. If our arms were touching, mine was on fire.

When we’d leave the house, pillowcase a little heavier, we’d feel a chill up our spines. As we walked to the gate of their white picket fence, her husband would come from behind the house with a chainsaw. He’d rev it a few times and we’d go running, quickly unlatching the gate and getting to the safety of the dimly lit street. We’d collapse in laughter and screams, catching our breath before moving to the next house on the block.

We’d end the night at the firehouse where they set up an overflowing foam maze. As kids, the foam reached above our heads. We’d walk through, scream, and come out the other end covered in bubbles. We’d throw foam at each other, sneak a piece of candy, then return to our homes to count our loot.

It’s weird to write about my favorite holiday, because Halloween hasn’t felt much like Halloween since those days being chased by a chainsaw and covered in foam. In my mind, it makes sense. Trick or treating becomes taboo at a certain age, and costumes become increasingly less about scare factor and more about how hot you can look dressed up as a cat or dog or librarian (all costumes I’ve worn). And the gluttonous freedom of the day turns into a different kind of greed. Not for candy, but for attention maybe. The look in someone’s eyes when you succeeded in creating an adequately sexy or funny or niche costume.

My first year of college I dressed up as a Soundcloud rapper. I wore my best hype beast outfit (camo pants, a sports bra, and platform sneakers) and covered my face and body with fake tattoos made from eyeliner. One of my cheeks had a cross, the other had a massive “69.” It was funny and topical and low effort. My friends and I drank white claws and vodka out of water bottles and headed to the frat it seemed like everyone was going to. The music was blasting and the floor was sticky.

I had one of my first college DFMO’s at that party. If you don’t know what DFMO is, it’s a Dance Floor Make-Out. I loved a good DFMO, especially on Halloween. You’d catch eyes with someone in an inflatable dinosaur costume or cowboy hat and make your way across the room until you were dancing up against them. If you turned your head just right, you’d make eye contact with them and the DFMO would begin. I remember who I was dancing with that night. He was in my grade, cute, and dressed in a denim button-down and denim jorts. I still don’t know what he was supposed to be.

We danced and made out and I remember putting my hands on his chest. Bodies were jammed into the tiny house, and when my fingers touched the denim on his body it was soaked through with sweat. I remember whispering in his ear, “Your shirt is super wet.” He slurred his words as he said, “Well, you can take it off me.” I left the party alone.

Each year I try to recapture the feeling of childhood Halloween, and each year I fail. I go pumpkin picking, walk around Spirit Halloween, and eat copious amounts of candy corn. And still it feels empty. Or I guess not empty. But different. I guess there’s a safety you feel as a child during October that dissipates as you get older. The spookiness of the month was always cut with my mom’s cooking or watching The Nightmare Before Christmas in school or secretly holding hands with my crush behind a bookshelf. But as an adult, those small safeties fade away. The chainsaw is real, and the gate won’t open.

In recent years though, my roommate and I have started a tradition in creating the most obscure costumes we can think of and making people at bars guess who we are. Two years ago, we went as the tennis balls from Challengers. This year we’re cooking up something topical, special, but incredibly niche. It’s fun to look people in the eyes and pretend they’re crazy for not knowing who we are. Harmless gaslighting. No one really finds it as funny as we do. But our giggles have become a new small safety. Now October feels warm with friendship and inside jokes.

This October has felt warmer than the ones before, but I think it’s because of an active effort I’ve put in to try to create the feeling I’ve missed all these years. I bought a cinnamon and sage candle, I picked a perfect pumpkin, I gave myself a stomach ache from candy corn. And I’m debuting Off-Broadway on Halloween. So this year, I feel closer to my young self than before. I’m pursuing my dreams of being on stage and in costume, ready to drink with my friends and ask people to guess who we are. It’s a different kind of foam pit, where I’ll come out the other side hungover, but still laughing with my friends.

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Each time I open my phone, I meet a new person. They can’t see me. They have no idea who the stranger is hearing their stories. But it feels less like voyeurism and more like being in on a secret you don’t care that much about. Constant streams of information I don’t need. Fights I won’t fight. Sorrow I can watch safely from the sidelines. And the people I meet feel increasingly young. It’s hard to watch a girl get ready for school and not want to reach through the screen and tell her privacy is sacred. Tell her what I know from being a middle school girl. Tell her that the world isn’t friendly.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about middle school. I moved to New Jersey when I was on the cusp of seventh-grade. I was coming from a small town in Rhode Island — the kind that had one stop-light and a collective drinking problem. I loved that small island. What an idyllic way to have spent the remainder of my childhood. And when I landed in New Jersey, I felt fresh and new. My years of biking to hidden beaches or bonfires or manhunt games coated me in an innocence I wanted to keep. But after I put on my new school uniform, I felt an anxious grime slathered on my skin. I wasn’t ready for what this change would bring.

We all know middle school girls can be mean. I actually believe if we want to study methods of torture, we need to talk to thirteen year-old girls. Their ways are viciously smart. I had heard about cyber bullying before, but mostly in the context of chatrooms and message boards — an art that was dying out with MySpace as I made my Instagram account.

A few months into the year, the bullying started. It was classic; a canon-event if you will. I was the new girl who got attention in a way that felt threatening. Mostly from boys who would stop by my house afterschool just to ‘say hi.’ I was ambitious and kind and funny and trusting. But by the time I had to start therapy for what was happening, I’d been called a whore, a slut, hairy, and inauthentic. That one felt like a punch to the gut. I’d been called mean things before, but being told I seem fake fucked with my head. I questioned every interaction I had. I tried on new faces, new intonations, new words. I wanted to be seen as real and not performative in the way I was being viewed. So I isolated myself as the girls laughed behind my back.

Of course there was a ring leader, who happened to also be new to the school that year. We were best friends on the first day, and enemies going into winter break. She was so different than the kids at my old school. She cursed and laughed loudly and truly seemed to have no fear. I admired that about her. If I was inauthentic, she was the real deal.

She used to text me things like, “what’s up slut?” And we would go back and forth calling each other mean things as a joke, until one of us ran out of words in our limited vulgar vocabulary. I never really knew what to say, and I remember one time she had already called me slut and whore, so I knew I needed something new and funny. So, I called her a prostitute. We laughed via sms and then the conversation shifted to something stupid like boys or One Direction or the other girls at school. A typical conversation for two girls trying to manufacture who they are to others.

A few weeks later I woke up to text messages from other kids at school. They all had the same screenshot of the text I had sent to my so-called best friend calling her a prostitute. You’re so mean. You’re a bitch. How could you say that to her? I had to field all these questions with the knowledge that my words were taken out of context. But no one believed me. My tears were worth nothing while hers held the weight of gold.

After that the bullying ramped up. Girls whispered when I was around. I heard they were planning on giving me a set of tweezers and nose hair clippers for Christmas. They laughed and laughed and I waxed my eyebrows and inspected my nostrils until I was clean of any ammunition they could grab. And as they giggled through the turmoil, I was chauffeured to therapy twice a week.

My therapist looked like Amy Adams and always took me seriously. Her room was dimly lit and cozy. I’d hold a pillow over my stomach and tell her about that weeks warfare. She’d tell me to stay strong and then I’d join my mom in the car for our 45-minute drive home, blasting Ed Sheeran.

The thing that doesn’t get brought up much when we talk about middle school bullying is where the bullied goes after exile. Maybe they’ll venture off on their own, creating a nation of one through the remainders of Bar Mitzvah’s and dances. But for the majority of girls, there’s a group of outliers waiting for new friends. A suicide club, if you will.

The club would meet at recess to commiserate. We’d sit in a circle and one-by-one state our diagnoses. I have anxiety, one would say. I have extreme anxiety and bulimia, the next would echo. I have severe depression and really really bad anxiety and anorexia and bulimia and suicidal-thoughts. It would go on like this until each girl had a new diagnosis; an “extreme” added at the front of it. But within this group of odd ducklings, we found community. Girls who got the fear and anger and hate and sadness.

But recess couldn’t contain us, and we moved our club online. We all made instagram accounts dedicated to our suffering. We’d share images of sad quotes, self-harm, proposed dates of suicide. And we’d follow other girls who shared the same. No one wanted help, but we all shouted our hurt into the void, letting it echo off our friend’s accounts.

It wasn’t unheard of for girls to develop real, true companionship with strangers online. But we’d all heard the horror stories of girls meeting online boyfriends only to realize they’re actually a 50 year-old men. I was safe with who I spoke to online — I never reached out to anyone I didn’t know in person. But when I got a message asking for help from an account with bloody wrists as a profile picture, my twelve-year-old heart couldn’t let it go.

Me and my mystery friend moved our conversation to Kik. They told me they were going to kill themselves because they were bullied and raped and unsafe at home. I tried to help as best as I could, but what did I know? All I could do was listen and try to understand. We spoke for a while, and I tried to say all of the right things because it felt as though this strangers life was in my hands. And then they asked me why I was so depressed. I told them about the bullying. I told them about feeling lost in this new territory. I told them about feeling hated and disposed of and scared. The final messages I got from them read,

You’ve never been through anything.

There’s a difference between going through actual hardships and just being a whiny bitch.

Then, silence.

I remember having a panic attack. This person reached out to me for help and I couldn’t give it well enough. I pictured them in their room, legs swinging above a kicked over chair. Or in the bathroom with foamy bile spilling from their cold lips. And I couldn’t tell anyone. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers on the internet. How could I tell my parents that I did just that and now I have blood on my hands.

For months I was haunted by this suicide I believed I caused. I’d wake up anxious, try to stay out of everyone’s way at school, then go to bed crying. It was in these months my mom and I started considering transferring me somewhere else. I begged and begged, but I knew that even if I switched schools, this strangers suicide would stay on my conscience.

At the end of the school year, the bullying softened a bit. I guess they found a new punching bag. Things were feeling better. I had deleted my depression instagram account. I only needed therapy once a week. I was on the mend.

My best friend had stayed by her side during the worst parts of the year, but we found each other again after the turmoil died down. I remember standing in her room and her looking at me timidly. Then, she told me about something my bully had done a few months before. She had made a fake instagram account and reached out to me pretending to be suicidal. Apparently she went over to my best friend’s house the next day and laughed as she told her. And just like that, the blood evaporated from my hands and boiled into a pit of pure rage in my stomach.

The school was already heavily involved in the conflict between us, so I told them what I’d heard. They brought us in for a meeting to talk about it. My bully vehemently denied doing anything wrong. But I trusted my best friend for than her. So I know, deep down, that she had done it.

I think about this a lot honestly. Yes it happened more than a decade before, but that feeling of truly, genuinely thinking I was part of the reason someone took their own life is a hard thing to shake. I’ve been thinking about it more and more with every young girl that comes onto my screen when I scroll. If that happened in 2012, what is happening in 2026?

Emotional warfare is different now, I’m assuming. You can say anything to a screen, and that truly scares me for the post-quarantine generation. I don’t know if they fully understand the implications of having an online presence.

And it’s weird when you really think about what’s happening right now. Like in this exact moment. Right now, you’re reading my thoughts. You’re reading a vulnerable part of my life I don’t share very often. You’re reading about who I was as a young girl. You’re in my mind. But in reality, I could be saying anything. This could all be fake, and you wouldn’t know. Can you tell when someone’s being authentic? Do I ooze inauthenticity? I think that’s what scares me most about kids being in this realm; who is there to tell them when something or someone isn’t real?

I also wonder where the bullied go now? If social suicide led me to a club that fantasized about the real deal, what do the outskirts of middle schools look like in this exact moment? It all feels violent and uneasy. And I don’t blame these kids for the anger they feel. It’s a cruel world, and that cruelty can feel suffocating when it exists online. I’m lucky that my online community wasn’t the only one I had. But I think it must be harder and harder for kids to find community in person when everything seems to be happening virtually.

I’m lucky I got out of seventh grade without losing any friends to the sadness we commiserated over. But I think about that time a lot. And now, you can too.

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You, in this scenario, are my mother. Luigina Vecchione. I know, a very Italian name for a very Italian woman. She turns 62 today. I’ve wanted to write about my mom for a long time and felt today would be the best time to try to put her into words. She’s so much that it’s hard to summarize her in a simple blog post. But I’ll try my hardest to give her her flowers, because she deserves each petal.

My mom has always been a performer at heart. One time, as we walked on a moving platform in the Geneva airport after landing to visit our old home, I looked over at my mom and saw a sparkle in her eye. I observed her for a little while as we walked. She had her head tilted up, looking around the airport with a slight smile on her lips. She walked with a posture I’d never seen before, and not just because of her ridiculous scoliosis. She was holding herself with purpose — as if she was floating through the terminal with an ulterior motive. As if she had just landed to reconnect with an old lover, or to eat, pray, love herself through Switzerland, or to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. And I remember thinking to myself, I know that look in her eyes. And in that moment, I turned to her and said, “You’re pretending you’re in a movie aren’t you?” My observation caught her by surprise, but she laughed and exclaimed, “Get out of my head!” She asked me later how I knew what she was doing, and I think I just said I could see it in her eyes. But the truth is, I caught her playing make-believe so easily because I do it too.

In Rhode Island, we had to drive across a long bridge to get off the tiny island we called home. It was our only way to get to doctor’s appointments, dance class, basketball games, so it became a constant in our lives. Over the bridge to whatever extracurricular my brother or I had, then back over the bridge for dinner. My mom strove to fill my childhood with whimsy and play. Sometimes that entailed setting up pots as a makeshift drum set for my brother, or creating a fake drive-thru restaurant with our big kitchen window. So when the bridge became mundane, a symbol of work to be done, she decided to make it more interesting.

“Okay, kids, by the time we get to the other side of this bridge, we will be completely different people,” she’d say.

My brother and I would groan. We were getting to our hormonal years, ones that would be filled with bickering and tears. But in that moment, all of our annoyance would fall onto the woman driving the car, and as we crossed the end of the bridge, we’d hear a gasp from her. And then:

“WHO ARE YOU TWO???”

She took make-believe very seriously. It was hard to stay jaded when your mom is pretending she just swapped consciousness with someone else. She’d go on and on, ignoring our fatigued objections, until we all burst into fits of laughter. And then she’d return, as if her job was finished. Our mom was back.

My mom is gifted at creating worlds, anyone who knows her would say the same. She made universes for my brother and me to play, try, fail, succeed — always being there to help us if we slipped or fell. She taught us that it’s okay to mess up as long as we’re putting our all into the task at hand. She held us while we made mistakes, cheered us on when we were victorious, put a gentle foot down when we didn’t want to try at all. She gave us a world filled with hope and a soft landing spot in her arms.

It made sense that she would find her way to writing novels. Her inner life is rich with material, and seeing her give life to fictional worlds has felt right. And, if I may add, she is a damn good writer. But that comes with being who she is: empathetic, imaginative, and resilient.

Now, my mom and I are in the same city living parallel lives. She’s an author, navigating her way through the publishing industry. I’m an actress, trying to find my footing in the entertainment industry. We go to pilates and grab coffee most weeks, and she talks through the book she’s working on while I tell her about all the tasks I need to get done but haven’t started. She’s my best friend and biggest inspiration. And all I want in life is to create a world for her in the way she’s done for me. One that’s as vibrant as she is, filled with support, love, and a safe place to rest when she’s done. I love you, mama. Happy birthday.

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Now, I’m no saint, and I’ll always be the first one to admit that. But having been told I seem to hate men so often, I’ve had to really think about what my answer is to that. Do I hate men? Do I hate all men? Does this make me just as bad as the men I hate? Does this make me worse? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m not a hateful person. I can be bitter and frustrated and righteous - but I don’t often hate people. I guess it just means the people I usually hate are men. And what frustrates me the most is how the rhetoric that I hate men excuses a lot of inexcusable behavior. It puts the anger on me. I am hateful. I am mean. I am a bitch. So I never know how to respond to that comment, because there are really only two options for me: double down or repeal.

I can either say “yes, I do hate men.” Which almost always ends with me giving reasons as to why I should be able to say that. Reasons I shouldn’t have to share with every man who tells me what they perceive as my “feminist frustrations.”

Or, I can say that’s not true. I don’t hate ALL men. And then spend the rest of the conversation giving flowers to the men in my life I love (which there are a lot of!), ending the conversation by saying, “but you’re one of the good ones! Don’t worry, I don’t hate you.”

And the truth lies in between these two responses, a grey area nice guys seem to forget about. An area with boundaries, reflection, accountability. But honestly, no matter how I respond, I know it’s falling on closed ears. Because how do you defend yourself from a projection someone places onto you?

There’s a reason I don’t openly say I hate men. I say it to friends after I hear about something shitty a man did. I say it to myself when I get called a bitch. I scream it into the void when I find out my assaulter is a father. I cry it into my pillow when I realize I get significantly more traction in life when men think they can fuck me. It’s a sadness I keep in a part of my heart. A hurt held onto so I can remember it’s there. Something that doesn’t go away by finding the right man. Doesn’t fade with every loving conversation with my partner, my dad, my brother.

And as I sit here writing this, I’m scared to share these thoughts because I know someone will read this and not hear what I’m saying. I know this will fall into the hands of a man who thinks “wow, she really does hate men.” But I don’t care anymore! And let’s be honest, not a lot of men actually read what I write. I think a very small percentage of men who have seen me naked even know I have a Substack. Because it’s not about what’s in my mind really, is it?

This doesn’t feel finished, but that’s all the time I have. Love u all. xx.

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I’ve been walking dogs for about a year. I originally started at a company where I walked ten to twelve miles a day for 17/hr. My back hurt. My feet hurt. My legs hurt. But my mind felt pretty free, at first. Hours and hours every day where I didn’t have to talk to anyone but the creature attached to the leash I held. I say creature, because honestly some of these dogs felt more like distant relatives of the canine family. Tiny poodles with a wardrobe bigger than mine. Rescue dogs with deep-seated trauma. Enormous beings that definitely should NOT be living in New York. No matter the animal, we had the same routine. Easiest job in the world.

I thought what would lift the veil on this new job would be the dogs themselves. I know I’m not the most demanding presence, and I expected the dogs to sense that and give me an especially hard time. But what actually put me through the wringer wasn’t the job at all, but the city that surrounded me.

A week before I left the company to start my own private walking business, I was walking along East 72nd and came across caution tape for the first time. Blocking the road, a fire truck parked on the street, extending its hose to the workers beside it. They were spraying the pavement with water. Clear water that turned crimson as it touched the tar. I didn’t know what I was looking at at first, but as I saw bits of meaty fat wash away in the red water, it struck me that I wasn’t looking at something, but someone. I was watching them wash someone away, down into the sewers with the waste of all New Yorkers.

It hit me more than I thought it would. All I could picture were the emotionless faces of those who cleaned the scene. So desensitized to the violence of our city. The blood and guts. The loss.

I cried a lot as I finished up that walk. I had five more walks that day, and everything started to feel really dark. I pictured who may have died on every street. It felt bleak, and I’d never wanted to move away so badly.

Things got better once I started walking privately. My main dog is a bernadoodle who I love like a daughter. I spend two hours with her every day. She seems to understand me when I tell her things. I like to tell her what life as a human is like. She hasn’t been able to tell me what dog life is like yet, but knowing how the world is advancing, her time to speak will come someday. We walk along the same loop in Central Park every day. She has friends we meet up with on the grass, a cohort of real dog owners and I standing and chatting while our children play.

People often don’t assume I’m a dog walker. In fact, when I told a woman the other day that I’m a dog walker, she said “dog walker? but you’re so pretty”. I’ll take the compliment, but I know what she really means is wow, you’re not what i expect a service worker to look like. I’ve caught onto this a lot. Everyone expects this to be a temporary thing. Oh, but what do you ACTUALLY want to do? It’s hard to come to terms with. This assumption is so deeply rooted in classism and racism that it angers me to admit that they’re right. Dog walking will not be my magnum opus. But every starving artist needs a survival job, and I just happen to love mine.

Around my birthday, I encountered caution tape again, this time in a wooded area I walk past twice a day every day. It felt like I had stumbled onto the set of Law & Order. Detectives in suits chatted with men in full body PPE. Someone has frozen to death in the blizzard from the week before. They found him after the ice had thawed.

I watched as they stuffed this John Doe’s belongings into a trash bag. A white sheet was mounted between trees to cover the body from the growing crowd of spectators. I stood there, two dogs in hand, surrounded by tourists taking photos of their “New York City experience”. This time, I felt like the emotionless one. Numb to the gawking crowd and barricade tape. Feeling a deep rage at the bottom of my heart.

As spring turned into summer, the heat moved in a suffocated us all. I have a theory that bad men become worse when it hits 90. Just for doing my job (AKA walking), I’ve been called a disgusting bitch and a freak by strangers. There’s something about a woman existing that threatens them. I imagine their minds to be blank, safe for the vile exclamations they reserve for feminine presences.

My theory of bad men and heat doesn’t stop at aggression - they also get hornier. Even if it’s 100 degrees out, each outfit of mine is carefully crafted to cover as much of my body as possible without giving myself heatstroke. I never wore a bra before last year, when I genuinely had the thought if people are gonna stare and make comments about my phenomenal tits, I should just cage em up. And so the cage is a part of my daily routine, along with padded socks, and moisture-wicking underwear. Unfortunately, this only helps slightly. Last week I had a man pass me and yell “you got all that ass”. I turned and said ew as loudly as possible. He heard me and yelled back “what do you even have that for?” It felt like such a genuine question. But I know the underlying meaning: your ass is community property. If you’re not gonna use it for the men around you, why do you have it? And honestly? Take it! I can lock up my boobs, but unfortunately, my ass can’t be tamed.

It’s been 40 minutes since I started writing, and I think it’s driving me insane that this piece doesn’t have a point yet. I love writing things that wrap up in a neat bow. A concept I introduce in the first paragraph reappearing in later ones and then finally being synthesized and defended in a tight conclusion. But I guess I wouldn’t know how to unify everything I’ve said. This feels like venting. This feels meaningless. This feels exactly like dog walking.

What the job has given me is hours every day where all I can do is observe the city and people around me. And when I get home, what can I possibly do with everything I’ve seen that day? It sits in my mind and burrows into my conscience. It’s dulled my fight. The cry I let out after my first encounter with that yellow boundary has shifted into silence.

To be honest, these aren’t the only crime scenes I’ve stumbled upon in the city. But in recent weeks, I’ve begun to walk right by them. I don’t need to know everything.

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I guess that’s not true. My divine intervention came in the form of a really shitty year. A layoff where I realized I was just a personality hire, a gun shot in my direction with my back turned, death upon death upon death. I always felt like a shock to the system would be good for me. I thought it would bring me back to myself, or at least to the dreamer that has always been inside me. I just thought the shock would be in my control, and not at the hands of others who don’t care about my livelihood or life in general. I don’t remember my point.

I’ve been full-force pursuing acting for the past four months, and it is exhausting. I got my Equity card and have spent my days sprinting between walking dogs and the Actors’ Equity building or Pearl Studios just for the chance to be seen by people who matter for two minutes. For those two minutes, they are mine. They have to watch. They have to listen. They have to see me. But I’ve been struggling with how I want to be seen as I navigate a world where being seen is the only way to sustain a career. I’ve felt insecure, sad, angry, frustrated, hopeless, too big, too loud, not loud enough, and an overwhelming sense of never quite getting anything right. But I’ve also felt so much hope and inspiration. It’s like I’m wading in dark water and the only voice that’s guiding me is my own from when I was ten, making up monologues in my bedroom.

Too much. That was the main critique I would get as a child. An awful thing to hear when you’re developing who you are. Too much of what? Was I too loud? Too opinionated? Too annoying? Too creative? Too stupid? I believed it was all of those at once. Not too much of one thing, but too much of everything all at once.

When parent-teacher conferences would happen every year, my teachers would always tell me to be less distracting and talkative for the other kids in class. They would also tell my closest friends to start surrounding themselves with other, non-too-much kids. My friends would tell me that the teachers said that. That they should be surrounded by better influences. People who kept their mouths shut and their dreams quiet. It hurt every single time.

I started to pursue acting professional at the age of 12. My mom would take me out of school to go into the city for auditions and meetings and the occasional shoot. I had a manager and a headshot and a resume. My friends would make jokes that school was a “part-time gig” for me. They weren’t completely wrong. With every audition I went to, I would get the same feedback. You’re very good, but you look too old for your age. This wasn’t a surprise for someone who got her period at the age of 9 and has had birthing hips ever since. But it seemed like I was constantly hitting a wall of “too”’s. Too loud. Too old-looking but too young to actually play the age I looked. Too much.

And then, I started to realize that the other kids from my school didn’t look at me pursuing my dreams as something admirable. In fact, they thought it just made me stupid. And look, I didn’t like school at the time. I hated math, could never seem to get my essays right, all while being called a slut constantly precisely because of looking too old for my age. There was a rumor I was caught at someone’s Bat Mitzvah with my dress off in a closet. There was another that I gave my boyfriend a handjob at our seventh-grade class picnic. And don’t even get me started on the fiasco that was me kissing a boy when I was 13 while I was in the rumored handjob relationship. That gave me a whole new identity: “cheaty.” I guess that one stayed with me for a while and developed into me now being three and a half years into an ENM relationship.

I used to always tell myself “this year I’ll fly under the radar,” but that promise wasn’t in my hands, and with every year a new way for me to stick out was created. When I was 17, I found my friends’ yearbook from seventh-grade. I searched for my picture, a shitty photo of me in my school polo with my hair in a ponytail and a fake smile across my face. I found it next to pictures of the rest of my class, but my face was scribbled over in purple pen. A giant X slashed my eyes and mouth and underneath my name was the word “IRRELEVANT”. I guess my dream of anonymity was realized, and all I could do was laugh.

I was fine with being called a slut. I was fine with being called “too much”. But when I heard people call me stupid, I believed it. And I set out on a journey of proving everyone wrong, leaving my dreams in the dust and picking up a new passion for environmental science.

If you’re reading this and went to my high school, you probably remember me talking about climate change, composting, cows, methane, CO2, the Green New Deal, and literally anything else related to the environment. I got straight A’s my sophomore year even though I had mono and missed a month of school. I did mock trial, edited our arts newspaper, took the AP Environmental Science exam without even taking the class. All while pushing down this dream I had always had. This vision of myself doing what I actually truly loved.

I still performed in every show my school had. In my four years of high school, I did 12 productions. I think it’s the only reason I made it through all the way. I was never happier than when I was onstage. Even through my facade of “being smart”, I never cared more about anything than when the cast list came out (which almost always involved me puking from nerves). Or opening night (which almost always involved me crying thinking about what I need to change about my performance for the rest of the run). I knew deep down that if I ever wanted to be happy, I would need to find a way to continue that struggle for the rest of my life, puke and tears and all.

I went to college for Environmental Science, but switched to being a History major after my first class with my favorite professor. In History, stories were everywhere. It felt like reading plays and watching performances over and over again despite the fact that I was researching real events from a real time.

Still, I was never ready to give myself fully to the visions I’d had of performing forever. The tiny voice in my head that said you’re stupid and will never do anything in life grew with the years, and I found myself testing out more and more plan B’s. I worked for the U.S. Congress, thinking I’d make a good political campaign manager or immigration paralegal. I grappled with the idea of going to law school, because as every opinionated woman has heard, the men in my life started to think I would “make a great lawyer”. I worked in marketing for a year and a half until I realized I didn’t want to be investing time and energy into consumerism and selling women an unattainable version of themselves. I also got laid off, which was tragic when it happened but the biggest blessing I could have gotten at the age of 25. I was a barista, and honestly if it weren’t for that job then I would have never met my favorite regulars who turned out to be my future acting teacher and his family. If it weren’t for that job, I would have never performed at The Actors Studio in front of playwrights and directors I admire. I guess my God did visit me at a coffee shop like every aspiring actress hopes for.

Now, I feel closer to the person I am going to become than I’ve ever been. Sure I’m still lost, but the path feels more illuminated. It’s a shitty path. No guarantees that I’ll even get to the end I’ve dreamt about. But if I don’t go down this broken road then I’ll never know the peace that comes with trying.

And even now I’m scared I’ll be too much. I can’t stop thinking about how I’m perceived. And at the ripe new age of 26, I feel 16 again, trying to figure out how I present myself to the world in the most palatable way. But if I’m truly 16 again, then I’ll tell myself every day to forget about everyone who has looked down at me from their self-made pedestals. I’ll let myself be loud, opinionated, happy, funny, annoying at times, and too much of everything.

I was going to apologize for how rambling this piece is, but I won’t. I have a lot to say but have stuck to staying quiet so I don’t bother people. I’m finally letting it all out. Happy birthday to this blog. Thanks for hanging on with me.

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Her cold coffee sat next to her as she opened her journal. A leather-bound book she received as a Christmas gift a few years earlier. The entries are sporadic. A few days of reflection followed by months of silent pages until she tried again. This would be her fourth attempt to restart the habit, and when she lifted her pen she hadn’t a clue this would be her last. A fatal series of ink on paper.

I got laid off today and I’ve never felt more like a failure. I’m a lowly, slob of a person who can’t keep a job without feeling like crawling out of my skin. And you know what the most infuriating thing is? I was just waiting to quit. Waiting for the moment that I had enough security somewhere else to finally say goodbye to soul sucking corporate check-ins, lunches, deadlines. My only concern is my livelihood. How will I pay my rent? How will I explain this to people? How will I deal with the shift in peoples eyes when I say “laid off” and they hear “fired”. I never cared about semantics before now. I guess this is awakening a rage I haven’t felt in a while. A disposability I always felt was innate to my being validated by a simple Zoom call. Because this morning I was someone, and now all I am is failure.

I think I’m taken aback by how relieved I feel. I don’t have to wake up tomorrow dreading another week of flattering egos so I can keep my paycheck. One months severance won’t go a long way, and the unemployment office has no record of my short stay in hell so that one month paycheck will have to last me until it can’t anymore. Until New York is ripped from my cold, depressed hands. Until my apartment is reclaimed by the rats and landlords (though no one can be sure they’re not cut from the same cloth, right?). 25 with nothing to show of my years on this earth. I calculated my life insurance the other day for shits and gigs and you know what it said? It told me all I’ll need is 9,000 dollars for my funeral. 9k that I don’t have. I guess I’ll be buried with no coffin, no walls to differentiate my body from the dirt and worms. There’s a comfort in knowing I won’t be alone in death with nothing separating myself from the organic matter surrounding my body. At least I won’t have to pay for a room in hell.

I don’t want to die. The last thing I want is for someone to read this and think “i never knew she struggled so much”. The awful truth is I have so much to live for, just nothing to show of it. Because the virtues I hold so close to me don’t count for anything in today’s society. The laughter and conversations. The collages I make for myself in my home. The contents of my notes app. In order for any of that to mean something, I have to figure out a way to monetize my soul. To be honest, I even opened my TikTok and contemplated recording myself crying today. I thought “wow, people will really resonate with my vulnerability and maybe give me a path through this muck.” I thought if I could sell my sadness maybe I could pay my rent. Maybe I’ll finally be worth more than 9k for a coffin, flowers, and weeping relatives when I go. What a load of shit.

Even if I wanted to tell the world about how I feel, the anti-defamation clause in my employment contract says I can’t. A claw from my former boss still sunk into the flesh of my back. Maybe I could say it’s fiction, become the actress I’ve always wanted to be. But I shouldn’t tempt fate. Especially when fate has lip filler and a money piece.

I keep telling myself “You’re on your own now kid” as if that helps. I picture a different, stronger version of myself saying this. Maybe I even have a cowboy hat and a wisp of wheat hanging from my front teeth.

It’s molting season, and I-

The pen slips from her hand just as a shriek escapes her lips. A pain emerges at the base of her spine, as if each vertebra had just awoken. Her hands grasp for the sides of the table in front of her, knocking her coffee over, spilling the cold brown liquid. Her forehead hits the pages of ink, her eyes wide and close to the thoughts she’d written. Pupils gaping at the words they can see: rent. 9k. defamation.

She tries to stand but her knees buckle beneath her. Her arms’ steady hold on the table weakens as an earth-shattering split burst through her back. Her elbows go slack, falling to her side. Each finger loses contact with the table, becoming a dangle of digits a foot from the hardwood floor. The flesh lining her spine opens—a gash of red blood and ivory bone bursting to reveal vivid color. A wing, and then another.

For a moment, she contemplates flying, thrashing her new appendages until her limp body soars over her studio apartment.

Her eyes still grasp into the words in front of them: unemployment. hell. die. But the pain she felt subsides into a catharsis of calm. Her eyes lift away from the pages, lifting out of the body she just shed. Her wings bat her new self into the air. And there she is, crumpled on the table below. But there is no blood. No cracked bone jutting out of her back. Just her old body, lifeless, smashed into her open journal.

From her new vantage point, she sees her life from above. She sees all she hasn’t done—all the mistakes and victories that led her to this little death at her table. She looks towards the window, a glint of sunlight creeping in. A breeze entering the room from a slight crack in the window panes. An escape she unknowingly left for herself.

She takes herself in one final time before turning to the light and fluttering towards the world.

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This is a work of fiction. All events, characteristics, places, and incidents are products of my imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or to real events is purely coincidental. This story explores themes of identity, loss, and transformation through fictional narrative and is not intended to depict or comment on any specific individual, company, or real-life circumstances.

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6/12/2025

The cashier at Trader Joe’s made me cry yesterday. Not immediately. Probably six hours later, actually. But his question and my response stuck with me, lodged between my eyelids and pupils, creating a pressure that needed to burst into a wet explosion of salty tears.

Got anything going on this week?

A simple question that left me completely empty. I stood there with my mouth agape, trying to think of anything. Grasping for something to tell him about. And after about a minute of silence, I let out a simple “nope.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question. When I was in college, I’d frequent Dutch Bros, a drive-thru coffee shop that (similarly to Trader Joe’s) left every customer wondering was that barista flirting with me? They always asked the question. And I always had an answer, because I had classes, plays, parties, jobs, responsibilities. I was a full human at that point in my life. Though I’m not sure college-aged me would have agreed.

Before, when the Trader Joe’s employee would ask me this, I’d just say “Ugh, work, ya know.” And we’d have a moment of mutual commiseration at our positions on the corporate ladder. And in my heart, I would feel a moment of selfish joy. A gross superiority. I had a job. A real one. One with a salary and PTO. A 10 to 6 that offered me the ability to say “I’m so tired, I worked so much today” at the end of the day, whether or not I actually did. But now, that’s gone.

It’s been about a month of unemployment, and I’m learning more about myself than ever before. Or maybe not actually learning more, but coming to terms with more. Actually hearing the voice in my head instead of letting it be drowned out by music and podcasts and meetings and Zooms.

When I cried about this Trader Joe’s reality check, my partner held me and let me sob. I’ve been filled to the brim with “I should”s, and maybe I haven’t been able to fully grieve the part of me that had stability and a “real life”. A “real job”. I’ve been filled with anger and frustration and sadness and contentment. But I haven’t examined any of these emotions further than “Oh yeah, I’m feeling that but I know I’ll be fine.” And yesterday, realizing all of my weekly plans don’t actually matter to anyone but myself, it struck me that I’m in a period of my life where my only responsibilities are to myself. And that is so scary.

I think I’ve gotten a bit repetitive in my pieces, but what else am I supposed to write about when writing is me working through the hard feelings I’m having every day. My favorite posts are the ones where I hear from other people about how they feel the same way. But at what point am I just putting sadness into my universe rather than moving on?

WOAH everyone this piece is shifting a lot. Two days ago, at the wrong place and the wrong time, I found myself running from a man with a loaded gun. I’ve had nightmares about this exact situation countless times in my life (especially in the past few weeks). And as they say: never meet your heroes. I feel permanently changed as a person.

Rereading this Trader Joe’s saga puts a lot into perspective after having the experience of really thinking I was going to die. I think I’ll write a piece about the event itself, but for now, I would be remiss not to put it into conversation with the sadness I was feeling not even a week ago.

My only responsibilities are to myself, but why does that make them less important? Why do I wake up every morning thinking about how to make my life more meaningful, when the fact that I’m alive does that no matter what I do each day. I’m lost, broke, sad, and insecure, but I’m finding that the sunlight on my skin feels warmer. The coffee I drink is stronger. The breaths I take feel fuller. The mornings feel sweeter. I guess when your back is turned to a loaded gun, what’s in front of you feels that much more precious.

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I’m not sure what I was going to say in that last sentence. I don’t think I’ll ever know.

It’s hard to be nonchalant about losing your job. I crack jokes, tell people I’ll be fine, and take deep breaths. But in reality, I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me. A salaried safety net pulled from underneath my feet. It’s like a breakup on good terms. No one did anything wrong. But it’s hard to feel not disposable when you were just disposed of.

I know I’ll land on my feet, but reading my past writing back feels hard. I know the piece was going to end with me being content with where I was at in life. I had a job, I was slowly inching towards a more substantial acting career, and I was starting to accept that nonchalance won’t make me successful, but earnestness might. Now, one of those things is gone, and I feel like a sailboat with no sails.

The entirety of Friday was weird. I woke up at 9 AM to my landlord asking for a check for the plumber. In a freak accident, one of my hair dryer attachments fell into the toilet just as I flushed. I didn’t expect it to flush all the way down, but it did, and the plumber had to come take the toilet off the ground and get it out of the pipes.

After I paid my dues (a now gut wrenching $450), I began work. I worked remote, which I loved at first but in recent months have felt a bit “cabin fever”-y. A few emails, some edits in Airtable, slack messages. I had a slight hangover from a big family dinner the night before where I dabbled in mixing negroni’s with espresso martinis with beer with tequila sodas (verdict is: you will get drunk). At around 11, my mom called me.

Mom: Jo? Where are you?

Me: Working.

Mom: Did you just wake up?

Me: No, I’ve been working.

Mom: You sound hungover. Have you been sleeping?

Me: Yes, I am hungover. No, I’ve been working.

Mom: So you’re not going to your 11:30 OBGYN appointment?

Fuck.

My hour-long lunch break turned into a visit to the gyno. When I got out of the Uber on Spring street, the driver turned around, looked me in the eyes and said, “Hey, Happy Mother’s Day!” I can’t remember if I said thank you, but the smile on his face was so earnest I just played along. The bloat from my hangover serving as my fake baby for the moment.

The best way I can describe a gyno appointment is like being fisted by a distant relative who you only see at family reunions. They ask you questions, pass slight judgements on your choices, you have to answer questions about if you’re seeing any men (and in my case, come out to them with a meek “and women”). The only difference between my gyno and an aunt, is that only one of them has felt my uterus with her own hands and it’s not a relative.

On the way home I stopped to pick up dry mouth medicine. I was having a flare up of what I would call the stupidest thing I’ve ever been diagnosed with. Burning Mouth Syndrome — and “diagnosed” is a loose term. After an urgent care visit in 2018, my inflamed tongue became a medical mystery until my dentist looked it up on her phone and said “I think it’s this.” So now, every once in a while, my tongue feels like it’s on fire for a few days. And that was happening when I got the slack message:

My stomach sank reading the words, but I had gotten some reassurance earlier in the week that I was doing a good job, so I had hope that it wouldn’t be my last call.

I tried not to sob on the call, but my tears threw themselves out of me and onto my cheeks. I tried to keep a smile on my face the whole time, but it was difficult to watch myself get this life-altering news in the self-view on Zoom.

It’s been almost a week since it happened, and it’s all felt like one long day. But at dinner with my dad last night he asked me plainly, what do you want to do? I said I don’t know at first, but I do know. I know exactly what I want to do. I wrote it in the piece that sits at the top of this one. I’ve always known.

So in my unemployment, I’m going to try to be as earnest as possible about what I think will make me the happiest. It feels like a new era, one that I’m paving myself. I’m going to leave embarrassment in the dust. I’m going to remind myself I am not disposable. I am going to remember that I am “excited to a fault and unassumingly intense”, and wrap the little girl who was made to feel bad about her earnestness in my arms. I’m really fucking scared, but I have spent so long pretending like I outgrew the most intense passion of my life. My new job is to be true to myself. It pays like shit but at least I might be happy.

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P.S. If anyone needs a young brunette girl for any film or theater projects, look no further—I was the Yellow Brick Road in my community theater’s production of The Wizard of Oz.

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When I was little, sleep felt like an end I wasn’t ready for, no matter how tired I was. I would cling to the fading sun, as if I could hold it in the sky longer than nature would allow. It never worked. When the sun set, the creaks and shuffles of whatever house I lay in would come alive and creep into my room. I would hear conversations between the furnace and the wood floor. I would hear mischief on the roof. I would feel footsteps ascending and descending the stairs. Most nights, I would wake up my mom so she could sit in my room with me, drawing circles on my back in an effort to quiet the noise.

In second grade, my science teacher told our class that one day the sky would turn bright red and we would all be engulfed by the sun. “But that won’t be for millions and millions of years.” I didn’t believe her. To me, the explosion of the sun was imminent, and for the rest of the year, I sat next to the window in my bedroom and watched the night sky, waiting for it to turn red.

In adulthood, I’ve got sleeping down to a science. My bedroom is crisp, with either a window open or the A/C on. My air purifier is on blast, and my weighted blanket lies on top of me but underneath my duvet. I take 5 mg of melatonin alongside my Zoloft, and I drink a large glass of water. I turn on white noise. I go to the bathroom, then lotion my hands and feet before slipping under the covers. I do a paint-by-numbers or play a card game on my phone. I go to the bathroom again and re-lotion my hands and feet. I repeat this process over and over until my eyes start to gain weight and whatever’s on my phone stops entertaining my brain. And then, I sleep (if I don’t have to pee and reapply lotion again).

I love my bedtime routine. It’s a consistency in my life that I crave as I wind down from each day. But the adoration I have for this simple comfort has made it difficult for me to sleep anywhere but in my bed—with my A/C and my weighted blanket and my white noise and my melatonin and my lotion. I think I value comfort over most things. Maybe that makes me selfish.

The comfort I feel falling asleep now is one I didn’t get when I watched the sky, waiting for the sun. I think that’s why I cherish it as much as I do. It’s a cold blanket on my warm body at the end of the day. A tight hug from someone I love. The lullaby my mom used to sing.

And as the night progresses, I feel my hands dry up, but I know I’ll wake up happy that I get to lather them in lotion once again.

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Eggs. This section was always the coldest. When Mary joins him, he always makes sure to bring her a sweater in case her skin starts to sprout bumps and her bones shake. He looks between the six and twelve packs of free-range eggs. Mary prefers pasture raised, but he decides on a six pack of his favorite large brown eggs. 

Milk. Since his stomach started to react to dairy a few months ago, he’s started to choose lactose-free options. But today he wants the real thing. Mary would scold him for his choice of whole milk, but he’ll be okay. 

Bread. Sprouted grain sourdough. He’s gotten the same loaf every week since he and Mary moved in. 

Crackers. Mary prefers oyster, but he’s partial to saltines. He picks up a box and checks over the nutritional facts to make sure they’re unsalted. Only recently did his doctor tell him to limit his sodium intake. Maybe that’s why his tears have tasted like water. 

Soup. Chicken noodle or split pea. Sometime an occasional italian wedding. But never lentil. 

Celery. Mary coats them in peanut butter and raisins, a child’s after-school snack that he only picked up after his 80th birthday. 

Carrots. For his dog Ginny. 

Once his cart was filled he strolled over to the bakery section. Laying his eyes on what he came for, he picked up the muffin and slowly began to unwrap it. His first bite hit his tongue with a burst of sweet, a chocolate chip lodging itself between the crowns on his molars. As he walked and ate, he thought of this tradition he’d creating with himself on his weekly grocery trips. Mary told him sugar would increase his risk of a heart attack, and swore off his favorite treat for good. So every other day of the week he would abide by her rules. No candy bars, no licorice, not too much fruit, and absolutely no chocolate chunk muffins from the deli on the corner. But this trip was different, because Mary wouldn’t be at home to smell his breath afterwards. He wouldn’t have to pick up a pack of gum on his way home to cover the scent of chocolate. He didn’t have to buy oyster crackers or lactose-free milk. He didn’t have to paint his sweet tooth gold and pretend it wasn't there. 

Before going to the cashier he made another stop at the bakery. He stood in front of the muffins, one of them still lining the inside of his throat. He picked up one, then two, then three, and stuffed them into his cart. He looked behind him and noticed sugar cookies, a pack of twelve. He grabbed them and placed them next to the carton of six eggs. He made his way to the candy section and grabbed chocolates, gummies, licorice, cookies, biscuits, and more. And then he checked out. 

All to celebrate the sweetness that she was.

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As my frontal lobe develops (I’m on the cusp of my 25th birthday), I’m starting to see through the transparency of these thoughts. And to be honest, even writing this right now is me reaching for enough. I’m taking care of my mom after her surgery yesterday — which really means I’m sitting and watching movies, occasionally moving from my recliner to the kitchen (about five feet) to get her something. So I’m writing this to reassure myself that I’ve done something for myself today.

I don’t post often on here because I want my thoughts to be cohesive, laid out perfectly to enter your mind with ease. But my thoughts don’t even exist that way in my own mind. In reality, every thought catapults itself onto another, creating a porridge of half-ideas — a base of thick beliefs, sprinkled with experiences and feelings.

So is my writing even for myself if I’m trying to package it into a neat little bow for the 60-some of you who read this? I don’t know.

All I know is that right now, I feel as young as I’ll ever be. I’m trying to learn to be steady in who I am — not just in what I do. I have ideas, dreams, thoughts, and feelings, and I’m learning that everything takes time. What’s most important is understanding who I am, no matter how imperfect that is. Oh god, that sounds so corny. But who cares, right?

I’m thinking of publishing this without looking it over again—except for grammatical errors, because I need to check those. Writing is my job, after all, and what kind of writer would I be if I misused commas or the possessive?

And tonight, I’ll eat the food my dad made while sitting with my mom, and I’ll feel like a little girl again. But I’ll remember — growing up doesn’t have to happen all at once.

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I’ve been working on my jealousy, and the internalized misogyny that comes with it, when I see women my age or younger achieve the dreams I’ve had since I was young. Reframing my I hate that she’s better than me to Wow, that’s amazing for her. But sometimes it falls short, and the anger and frustration—at both me and her—boils into a spot in my throat that feels like I’ve swallowed a balloon that’s now being inflated. And while I choke on the air I’m breathing, she rests comfortably in ignorance that her success means my failure. How unfair is that?

Even now, I’m pushing myself to create something that feels meaningful in a short piece about my insecurity. But in reality, even as I publish this, I won’t feel satisfied because I seem to only write about my insecurities. Is that the only material I have? Or do I only write about them because it legitimizes the fact that I’m trying? Because it shows my readers that anything bad they’ve thought about me or my writing, I have already thought tenfold?

I don’t think this is productive for me. I think this self-editing simply knocks me down enough to never try. A cycle of confidence and insecurity that will never let me rise to where I could be. Where, deep, deep down, I know I deserve to be. But even this thought was fleshed out in a piece I published this summer. My originality has escaped me.

Directly after this piece, I am going to publish the first piece of fiction I will have ever shared with the world. A short story I wrote early this summer and submitted to one singular literary magazine. It was rejected four months later. But it’s something I wrote that I felt was my attempt at poignancy. A small success in fictionalizing my experience with men on dating apps. I was proud of it then, regardless of its rejection. So I would ask you to take care of it while it exists on this platform. No rotten tomatoes or booing.

I’m just baring my soul to you, aren’t I?

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I knew a hole was forming in the sheer fabric—a stark reminder my skin touches instead of sticking closer to my bone. My dress was borrowed from my roommate, as were the kitten heels on my feet. When I wear anything sleek or sexy, it’s a safe bet that it came from the closet next door.

He told me to meet him at Beouf, a steakhouse in Chelsea. The kind with A-list regulars and table service after midnight. I felt out of my element—a chicken stuffed in sausage casing. I was to arrive at 7, and him at 7:30. He told me this would give me time to think. I was to leave my phone with the hostess. To order a red wine and a negroni and finish them by 7:30. To take my shoes off under the table and leave them next to his chair. To sit and wait.

The rules were what intrigued me. The final rule was what locked me in. Once I arrive, the night is yours for the taking. I will do anything. It is whatever you desire. My only request: inspire me.

His profile was bland. Grey hair slicked back. Gut protruding over his waistband. His Rolex visible. In each picture, he stood somewhere new. Somewhere exotic. In a vineyard in Tuscany. On a boat in the Maldives. In Tokyo. In Berlin. In New York. His eyes were the kind of blue that only come from contact lenses—frosty. He wasn’t unattractive. For 53, he seemed young. His occupation: “author.” His bio was simple, only three words. Be my muse.

I knew I was perfect prey for this kind of thing. A 23-year-old girl. Fresh out of seminars and essays. Jaded beyond her years. New to New York. Working a service job with no upward mobility. Spending most mornings staring at herself, wondering if there’s more. Wondering if this is all she’s ever wanted or when things will start to happen to her. Watching friends settle into happy lives. Meet people. Get salaried. Get engaged. Go viral. All while feeling jealous and nauseous.

I ran the date by my roommate—creating a list of pros and cons.

Pro: I get a free dinner at a fancy restaurant. Con: He was 30 when I was born. Pro: I get a bit of validation. Con: I could get murdered. Pro: I’ll finally have something to write about. Con: …

I knew what he was doing from his bio—mining for a story. Scrolling on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, we hear about what extraordinary, serendipitous, traumatic things happen to those around us and catch ourselves thinking fuck, I wish that happened to me. I feel it every day, an aching for a more interesting life. That’s why I came to New York. To be interesting.

Where I grew up, I was the first person to get a tattoo. The first to wear a pink pussy hat. The first to openly admit to wanting more in life. I was an anomaly to everyone but myself. But in New York, I’m bland.

This date was a fresh start. A chance at being interesting. A chance to be what someone else desires. A break in waiting to discover who I am.

He may be mining, but I am fracking—ready to suck out all things provocative, taboo, average, electrifying. This is my date to be had.

He arrived at 7:30 on the dot and looked nothing like his picture. The gut on his profile was faded into an emptiness beneath his button-down shirt. His hair more silvery than grey. His Rolex gone from his wrist. The only inkling of the man on my phone were his eyes. Icy as his profile, and as he inched closer, I could tell they weren’t contacts. Frozen irises that were all real.

He introduced himself and spread his arms for a hug. I stood to meet him and quickly remembered my shoes were sat next to his chair as my bare feet hit the cold tile of the restaurant floor. We sat down.

“Off to a good start,” he stated, motioning to the empty glasses in front of me.

When I had first sat down, I drank the glass of wine. Taking gulps as I looked at the people sitting around me. When my glass was finished, I stared at the negroni. My head already felt light, and the descent from tipsy to sloshed was staring back at me as red liquid with an orange peel. I asked the waitress where the restroom was and took my heavy glass with me. The negroni painted the inside of the toilet a sunset red as I flushed it down, orange peel and all.

He ordered whiskey on the rocks with a salt rim. He explained that sodium brings out the “undercurrents” of flavor in the drink. I ordered a Diet Coke.

We started with a caviar tasting. Four six-ounce cups filled with little beads of black sat between us. The caviar popped in my mouth.

“First time?” he smirked, looking at my unsure eyes.

I swallowed the bed of popped spheres lying on my tongue and lied.

Sitting on my twin bed, my roommate and I made a list of potential “inspirations.” In bubble letters at the top of a blank page, I wrote Potential Musings. We passed a bottle of orange wine back and forth, each addition to the list reflecting our levels of drunkenness. Who is a muse to a male writer?

We started tame. Late-night movie at the IFC Center. Sit and drink at the waterfront. Go to a comedy show. Boring. We kept going. Axe throwing. The Cloisters. Take him to Bergdorf Goodman and make him buy me the most expensive item in the store. We slumped back on my pillows, feeling the wine travel in our veins.

“Why don’t you have really, really good sex with him?” my roommate mumbled. I felt my spine stiffen.

Another hour of lukewarm ideas—birdwatching. Burlesque show. Get high in Tompkins Square Park.

“What if I just didn’t do anything?”

I sat up on my elbows and felt the blood rush to my head. I looked down at the blonde hair next to me.

“I could just shake his hand after dinner and leave.”

“Isn’t that the complete opposite of what he wants?”

“I guess. I didn’t realize it would be so hard to become a caricature of myself.”

“Well, who are you?”

Who am I? The idea hit me in the face. I picked up my phone and made a call.

The rest of the dinner passed quickly as he spoke about a collection of short stories he was working on. He told me there was no set plot, but a general concept the book revolved around: the violence of aging.

He told me about his ex-wife and their two daughters together. How he became a writer after one of his friends stole his personal journal in college and submitted it to the school newspaper. He said he had offers from every major publication when he graduated because of the vulnerability of his pieces. He thinks of writing as giving himself to the world.

I hadn’t said a word in over an hour besides the occasional yes, but I found his voice soothing—his confidence in who he was comforting. It was nice to be around such stability.

When he finally asked me who I was, the red wine had faded into a low hum in the back of my head. “You’ll see,” was all I could say.

My ears went hot with the spark in his eyes from my response.

After he paid the bill, we stood on the sidewalk and looked at each other. He had allowed me to put my shoes back on when dessert was served—a thick mousse swimming in a liquid of cherries. He told me he’d always had this fantasy of a girl arriving barefoot to a fancy dinner. And now, we stood with shoes on our feet and food in our stomachs out in the cool spring breeze.

I thought about giving him a hug and leaving, but I knew what I had planned would be worth it. I was ready to be seen.

He asked me where we were headed. I motioned for his phone. Opening the Uber app, I called a car headed to the Lower East Side. I insisted on staying silent during the ride, not acknowledging his words. Wow, I haven’t gone this low in Manhattan in years. You didn’t want to get an Uber Black? The food at that place is usually better. I grinned.

I could tell as we passed comedy clubs and jazz bars he was hopeful for the night. He looked at the driver each time we passed a lit-up café or marquee. When we finally turned onto the dark street of our destination, his previously restless knee came to a halt. I got out of the car, and he tepidly followed.

She welcomed us in after one knock on her door. An entrance that I had seen countless times before felt exotic in the nighttime, as if I were exploring an abandoned hospital or amusement park—somewhere I shouldn’t be.

She brought us into the same room I enter alone every Thursday, motioning for us to sit on the couch. When I lowered myself onto the velvet, I felt the difference in the gravity of the cushions now that someone was sat beside me. I felt lighter than ever.

“What is this?” he finally asked.

I looked towards the familiar face across from me.

“I’m her therapist,” she said in a voice close to the one I’m used to, but not quite the same. He shifted on the couch. He looked at me, his eyes trying to reach into my psyche—screaming this was right and wrong simultaneously.

“Now, we can do this a number of ways,” she started again. “You can ask me about her, and I’ll answer truthfully. She can be in the room with us, or she can wait outside. Or, if you’d like to use this hour differently, we can talk about you. Same options—she can stay or wait outside. What would you prefer?”

The air in the room fell silent and dry. Each particle of dust captured in the still atmosphere of her basement office.

“Let’s just get into it, shall we? So, I was informed that you’re looking for a muse, correct?”

A few months pass, and I am met with his face in a store at the airport. On a display table surrounded by new fiction, I picked up the heavy book. Against a black background, Genesis is splattered in red lettering. His name, almost as large as the title, lined the bottom of the cover. I didn’t have to open the book to understand I was holding a part of myself. But when I finally leafed through the pages, I landed on a short story near the end. From Therapy.

It was all there, starting with my bare feet at the steakhouse.

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I planned this adventure while preparing to be unemployed. I felt disappointed in myself for not pursuing my dreams, for yearning for a corporate salary and a stable schedule, for feeling desperate for a life I didn’t even want. I woke up every morning with a sense of doom that loomed over my Brooklyn bedroom—an anxious complacency that drained my energy with every passing minute. Coming to Italy to hike 100 miles felt like the jolt to the system I needed. I had just watched La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher for the first time, a stunning film that transported me back to my childhood in Italy. Masterfully written, filmed, and acted, it inspired me to experience the same terrain as the film. I wanted to step into Alice’s shoes for a moment, immersing myself in the Italian that I am and, at the risk of sounding like a cliché Italian-American, reconnecting with my roots. But I didn’t think through the difference between being alone and being lonely, and I truly didn’t anticipate the panic attacks that lay ahead.

When I was 16, I had to spend three days and two nights alone in the woods. I was attending a semester school, living in a wood cabin with five other girls on the coast of Maine, and each student had to complete a solo trip to finish the program. Equipped with a gallon of water, a sack of various foods, and a tarp to make a tent, I headed out into the Maine woods. But anxiety filled my stomach, and I couldn’t eat anything. I was told to leave my watch behind, so I couldn’t track the time. This not only prevented me from counting the minutes of my loneliness but also led me to go to bed at 3 pm, just waiting for the sun to set. I was also told to bring a book, so I brought my favorite at the time: The Lord of the Flies. But the moment I opened its pages, I realized a book about children stranded in the woods was the last thing I wanted to read. After a horrible night of rain in my flooding tarp/tent and a 24-hour panic attack, I hitchhiked home and spent the night and the next few weeks feeling like a total wimp. Why couldn’t I do something so simple?

I’m now on my sixth day of being alone in Italy. I’ve hiked almost 20 miles so far, and the panic didn’t subside until today. I’ve taken Klonopin every day, trying to slow my heart rate enough to actually see where I am, hear the sounds of the olive trees, the traffic, the Italian language, smell the espresso and cigarette smoke, and feel the sun on my skin. I thought I should go home. I couldn’t eat anything except for a piece of focaccia. I missed home and speaking English, and I started to hate the whole concept of Italy.

Eight miles into my 15-mile hike yesterday, the tears wouldn’t stop, and the panic wouldn’t ease. I didn’t have any fuel in my body due to the pit that filled my stomach. I felt like I was going to faint in the middle of olive groves with no one around. I found an agriturismo on the side of the trail and decided to ask for help.

I’m no stranger to agriturismos. When I was young in Puglia, my family would go to the same one every year to eat their thinly sliced potatoes and drink their fresh wine. For a few years in a row, my cousins and I found a stray dog that lived on the grounds and named him Friday (mostly because we were obsessed with the movie Hotel for Dogs). On a visit when I was 13, we stumbled upon another location that was hosting a karaoke night for all the locals. After listening to old Italian men expertly sing Andrea Bocelli, my cousin and I decided to get up and bless the audience with our rendition of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that song was about the Troubles in Ireland, and I came to terms with how very, very weird it was of us. But everyone applauded, and after our performance, it felt like we had become family with everyone in the room.

At the agriturismo I entered yesterday, I felt the same sense of community. I knew I would be taken care of. After some horribly spoken Italian, the people at the agriturismo understood that I needed to be driven to the next town over, and they took me into their home, tears and all.

I found myself sitting at a table in the dining room of Tommy and Domenica, a kind Italian couple who lived in a small apartment at the agriturismo. Domenica made me orecchiette pomodoro (my absolute favorite), and Tommy sat with me while I ate, asking questions about my journey. They had a dog named Max, who tried to get into my backpack in search of any food I might have, and about 10 stray cats lived on their porch. They took care of me as if I were their own, though they don’t speak English and I barely speak Italian. Still, the panic lingered, hiding in a dark corner of my body. After lunch, Domenica drove me to my next B&B and sent me off into loneliness with the blow of a kiss.

At the B&B, the owner’s wife met me with a kind smile and a hug, bringing me into my room and using Google Translate to give me all the necessary information. She upgraded me because the room I was supposed to be in had a window in the bathroom, and as a young woman traveling alone, she didn’t think that was ideal. After a nap and more tears, I went to a grocery store and picked up anything I felt I could eat. Following my partner’s advice, this was mostly baby food—applesauce and cookies. I went back, panicked more, and decided that today I wouldn’t hike, but take a bus to the next town.

My cousin is coming to join me today. I thought I could do this alone, but after six days, I’ve shown myself that I can’t, and I’m trying to be okay with that. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that if I can’t eat, I can’t hike. At least with someone I love traveling between towns, I can feel safe knowing I have company at the end of the day.

So today I woke up calm, something I haven’t experienced in six long days. I had an espresso at a small café in Cassano Delle Murge and spoke with a man named Mario in broken Italian. When he asked my age and I told him I was 24, he said, “Hai il mondo.” I have the world. And I know he’s right.

I embarked on this trip as a shock to the system, pressuring myself to write or act or get a job. I wanted to come back with my own La Chimera idea—a story or script that would transform my life into the one I actually wanted. But what I’ve found is my own chimera, something hoped for or wished for but ultimately illusory and impossible to achieve. By trying to shock myself out of contentment with my life at home, I’ve started to realize that it’s okay to be happy with what I have at 24. Although I’m not where I thought I would be a decade ago, I am where I need to be now. And now Italy can feel like Italy, and I can turn my disappointment into strength. Besides, La Chimera has already been done. Though I love Alice Rohrwacher, I know I’ll have other stories to tell.

*Proud to say I wrote this five days ago and my trip has greatly improved. 50 miles later, I’m about to enter my last city before leaving. I have more to say, but for now I’ll just experience the journey without putting it into words.

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I arrived in Bari yesterday after a long day of traveling. A turbulent flight to Munich led to a five-hour layover, during which I broke in the portable keyboard I bought for this trip (the one I’m using now!!). I landed in Italy a little after 5 pm, and as I did, it hit me: I am completely alone. I chose to solo travel. Many people asked to join, but I turned them away. I wanted to do this alone. I needed to do this alone. But the minute I arrived, the weight of it planted itself in my heart, and I panicked.

I’m prone to panic attacks. They got so bad during my senior year of college that I was prescribed Klonopin, which changed my life. I hadn’t taken one in years — until last night, after I spent five minutes trying to catch my breath while sitting still in bed. It slowed my mind, helping me retrace the reality of my situation apart from the catastrophes I had created.

I am in Italy to walk. A lot. Equipped with a backpack, hiking poles, and boots, I’ll be walking for a week, stopping in towns every night, with two rest days interspersed. And yes, I’m scared.

What got to me yesterday were the messages I received from friends and family: “Good luck,” “Stay safe,” “Make good decisions.” These distant concerns and prayers for my wellbeing took me aback. How scared should I be?

I grew up visiting this region of Italy once a year. My family has a house on a hill called La Villa Penza, named after my grandfather’s old restaurant in Asbury Park, New Jersey. My Nonna grew up in Rome and maintained her thick Italian accent until she died in 2021. I was always upset with myself for not learning Italian before she passed. I always dreamt of surprising her with a full conversation in Italian. How happy she would have been while she corrected my grammar. Our visits to Villa Penza were filled with family: Zias and Zios, distant relatives whom I still don’t know how I’m related to. Music, wine, good food, and lots of loud conversations. I always felt at home. And I know that yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve been scared in this region because I remember my sleepless nights after watching The Sixth Sense on our old TV when I was eight. It was one of the only English VCR tapes we owned, and I wanted to prove to my older brother that I was brave.

I think I’m so scared because I’ve never been here without at least three other people with me. I know there’s a reason I chose to be alone, but right now, it’s hard to remember. Maybe I’m just realizing how much this place reminds me of my family, so being by myself just feels wrong.

So, I’m still not sure how scared I should be as I embark on this adventure of solitude, but I do know that writing daily here may help the loneliness dissipate, at least for a moment. Because no matter how scared or alone I feel right now, tomorrow I will wake up with the sun, put on my hiking boots and my new headband, and head out into the Puglian horizon.

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I’m not sure why it’s so hard to accept the body I live in. My stomach protrudes from my waistband. My chest sags lower than it used to. The backs of my legs are filled with divots and marks. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see who I am but what I am: a pile of skin, bones, muscle, and fat lumped together by nothing. When I lay down in bed, it feels as though my stomach is coming out of my body, dripping slowly from my abdomen. I use a pillow to hold it all in.

I’ve had body dysmorphia for as long as I can remember. I’ve never chosen the correct size for myself, always grabbing what’s too big or too small. I’ve used others to base what I look like on. If I was the same size as a friend, I would automatically assume that must be what my body looked like. But if I was the same size as two friends, my heart rate would rise, and I would sink even deeper into an unknowing pit. And to be completely honest, every day when I walk around, I guess what size other people are. Most of the time, it’s subconscious, but sometimes it comes out of me: a little voice in my head. 12, 2, 4, 10, 8.

The voice is trying to figure out where I stand with other people — how my body fits into the spectrum I’ve created. But I can never seem to figure it out. I told my partner recently that I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone with my body type. I told him that I examine everyone around me just to see if there’s a chance I might look like them, but I’ve never found a match. I told him I have no idea what I look like.

His reassurance was needed but ultimately obsolete. Of course, he thinks I have a normal, amazing, beautiful figure. He loves me, and I love him too. But can I say the same about myself if I can’t even tell what I look like?

Something no one tells you about recovering from an eating disorder is how exhausting it is to be the one everyone has to watch themselves around. When people use fat as a derogatory term in front of me, I feel the air leave the room. Necks tense up, and breaths are inhaled sharply. All eyes go to me, and I can feel each pair driving themselves into my skin. When I try on clothes in front of others and don’t like the style or fit or whatever, I see the eyes behind me go wide. What are you talking about?? You look beautiful! It’s so good on you! You have such a good body! You are so beautiful! It makes me want to scream, "I NEVER SAID I WASN’T!"

Being in recovery means everyone around you polices themselves for your benefit, even though you haven’t told them to. Everyone is trying to help, but in doing so, they try to other you into a realm they themselves won’t join — one of backhanded confidence and body neutrality and acceptance. And with body dysmorphia, this realm means I’m supposed to accept a body I don’t even know. I know the functions it performs, but I have no idea how the skin attaches itself to the bone. I have no idea how the fat around my stomach sags or lifts. I have no idea if it’s wrinkled or smooth, bloated or sucked dry, small or big.

Small or big is always what it comes down to. I still catch myself in the mirror praying to be smaller, to take up less space. And living in a body that I do not know means these pleas will never be heard. Because even if they are, I will not realize it. I didn’t realize it when I was underweight, and I won’t realize it now. So maybe this realm I feel tossed into isn’t the worst place for me; I just wish it didn’t feel so lonely. I wish it didn’t feel like I’m in a glass case at a circus, my marquee stating “COME SEE WHAT YOU’RE SO SCARED OF LOOKING LIKE, BUT SHHH DON’T TELL HER THAT.”

For now, I’ll take it one step at a time: three meals and snacks, moving my body for endorphins, not punishment, buying clothes that fit me. It’s weird how common sense these things sound when I list them out. Shouldn’t it always be this way?

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“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I asked followers on my instagram what I should write about because of the rut I’m in. I have upwards of twenty pieces I’ve been trying to finish. But every time I get near the end of an essay I stop myself. My throat seems to close. I feel pressure on my chest. My mouth goes dry. I usually exit out of the draft and let it live there forever. An unfinished moment in my life. A story with no end.

My lovely friend Jane suggested I write about the fig tree metaphor from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I am hesitant to write about this because I have never read The Bell Jar (so sorry). However after reading the quote I’ve left at the top of this piece, I feel like I can speak a bit about my own fig tree.

From my vantage point, the figs lowest to the ground are the least appetizing. To me, their juice is weakened. Mold sprouts from their stems ready to infect me. They shrivel by the minute.

The middle tier of figs is only okay. Perfect looking but average on the inside. Store-bought. The kind of fruit I relish the thought of, not the taste.

The height of my tree is bare, save for two or three plump figs. For me, they’re the figs that grow in Puglia, Italy, at the home I spent most summers when I was growing up. Filled with the sweet nectar of gods I don’t worship but wish to be. Idyllic, perfect, satisfying.

I’ve always thought by fig options were limited due to accessibility not indecisiveness — the ladder I have being broken down and impossible to climb. I’ve felt like I’m standing deep in the ground, only my arms exiting the earth grasping for fruit.

Watching those on stable ground taste their dreams infuriates me, as do those who carry crates to stand on, passed down by their loved ones waiting for them at the top.

But as I’ve become more introspective I’ve realized I’ve been the one digging the hole beneath me, setting the highest branches further and further out of my own reach.

The issue then is not accessibility, it’s the fact that I can’t decide on how much of an idiot I’m willing to be perceived as. In order to reach the top I’ll need as many height reinforcements as possible. I’ll stand on chairs and tables. Books and magazines. The backs of my family and friends. And I have to be prepared for people to watch me scramble.

They’ll watch me climb and fall. They might think I look pathetic or crazy. But I know I’m just trying to feed myself with the fruits I’ve always longed for.

I could sit here and write about my similarity to Sylvia — bot of us not knowing who we want to be. But unfortunately, I do know. And I say unfortunately because nothing I want will come easy - I’ve always known that. But I have always been the only one in my way. The hand I feel clasped around my throat as I near the end of this essay stems from my own arm. I am all of the onlookers laughing as I scramble up the tree of my life.

I’m at the end of this piece and I feel the pressure on my lungs all too well. But instead of setting these thoughts back into the safety of my drafts, I’ll let them float into the world and become something of their own.

** For reference this is what I think my fig tree consists of (not in any order) based off of decisions I have and haven’t made. I won’t specify which tier each is on.

• Wife

• Stay at home mom

• Marine Biologist

• Teacher

• Broadway star

• Tour guide

• Hotel owner

• Farmer

• Ecologist

• Environmental scientists

• Writer

• Veterinary

• Pilates instructor

• Actor

• Candle maker

• Dolphin

• Political campaign manager

• Lawyer

• Explorer

• Child star

• Politician

• Surrogate

• And what I currently am now, copywriter

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When I entered the used bookstore last Friday, I was looking for plays. I recently started a scene study acting workshop and I needed a monologue to perform for the class the following Monday. I browsed the shelves filled with Neil Simon, August Wilson, Sam Shepard — picking up a collection of plays by the latter. I like the way Shepard works within the taboo. His plays make my skin crawl — a feeling I, personally, love. I read “Fool for Love” in one sitting, blasting through the sharp dialogue and uncomfortable subject matter. I wanted to watch it acted out. See the love and regret between the two main characters as they balance their relationship as former lovers and half-siblings. It made me feel queasy.

After looking through “True Crime” and “Psychological Thrillers” I browsed the “Young Adult” section, one of my favorites. I read a lot growing up. From Judy Moody to John Green, I had a habit of getting sucked into the world of a book and letting it consume who I was. What I wore, how I spoke, who I liked. I remember during my Hunger Games phase I wore my hair in a side braid for weeks, wearing combat boots and all-black outfits to give my eleven-year-old self the air of Katniss Everdeen. When I sat down at the dinner table, I would look at the forks and knives as if I had never seen utensils before. I made a point of glaring at people who smiled too much, spoke too loudly, or laughed at all. I remember going to the mall with my mom one weekend and looking for new clothes. She kept choosing bright shirts and trendy pants. I kept scowling and scoffing, telling her every item she picked out was gross. You’re just being mean Jolie, she said. I reevaluated my idea of who Katniss was at that point. I let my hair out of the braid.

Sat atop a row of books was the novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. The cover was familiar, a girl’s face with a tree superimposed on top. Red leaves scattered on the branches. They look like lips.

In 1999 Anderson published Speak, a novel about a thirteen-year-old girl dealing with life after rape. I remember students holding this book while walking through the halls of my middle school. I heard kids talk about how they were reading it in English class. I knew what it was about, but at this point in my life, rape seemed like a far-off topic. Something I wouldn’t have to worry about. I was excited to read the book though, when my time came.

The book was never taught to me in school. I don’t know if it was banned or replaced with a less controversial book, but I know I had never held it in my hands until last Friday at the used bookstore.

My school did a terrible job teaching students about consent. It wasn’t brought up until Junior year of high school when we had one health class session about rape on college campuses. We sat in a dark room with our gym teacher and watched a documentary about a few girls who were raped after a night of drinking and boys who assured their parents, their friends, and themselves that they had been falsely accused. The incidents were always the same. A girl goes out and drinks. She gets raped. She tells people and they care more about what she was wearing, how much she drank, or if she said “no” loudly or clearly enough than the fact that a boy took advantage of her while she was drunk. When the documentary ended I was scared to go to college. The message screamed in my face, “IF YOU GO TO COLLEGE AND DRINK IN A SHORT SKIRT YOU WILL BE RAPED AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO BUT COVER UP AND STAY SOBER.”

The lights in the health room came up and all of the girls in the class were pale. We gathered with each other and talked about our fear, holding a space for this shared experience that felt inevitable. A boy from our class came over. You guys think you’re scared? WE’RE the ones who should be scared that someone will FALSELY accuse us! The rest of the day I was nauseous. How could that be someone’s takeaway from the documentary? Consent was never talked about again.

One of the worst parts of that class was the fact that rape and assault were treated as something that surely could have never happened to us before. A future trauma, not something any of us would experience until our days of frat parties and jungle juice. We weren’t told that consent should exist before college, that our budding sexualities should be treated with respect and care even in high school. I could have used that conversation.

I’ve never been raped, and I’m obviously very happy about that. But when I say that’s a rarity, it’s true. I’ve never been raped, but I have been assaulted. I have been groomed. I have been preyed upon by older men. But I had never been told that what happened to me was wrong. I lived for a decade under the impression that I could have prevented it. That I was at fault. That it wasn’t bad enough for me to tell anyone.

The most troubling aspect of Speak is the fact that the main character has to interact with her rapist every day at school. He’s an older popular student who is beloved by girls and protected by boys. She interacts with him throughout the book in ways that make my skin crawl. Giving her a look or whispering in her ear. She watches everyone praise him. She watches her best friend fall into his trap. She watches him continue to be a person, loudly acknowledged by all, while she remains silently excluded.

When I was assaulted I didn’t tell anyone. I knew what had happened was wrong, but in my mind, I was the culprit and he was merely an accomplice. I was 14. We were on an annual trip with family friends, something that had been going on since I was six years old. I couldn’t break up tradition. I couldn’t let everyone down. So I stayed silent and interacted with him every year for almost a decade until I finally broke.

Seeing my assaulter after the fact is the most complicated thing I have ever had to deal with. Oh, this is normal, why was I so nervous? He’s not really a bad guy. Maybe this was just a misunderstanding. Why did I overreact? I should just forget it. The normalcy of how everyone interacted with him mitigated the initial feelings I had. They all loved him. He was a good guy. I felt dramatic. Certainly, it wasn’t as bad as I had made it out to be. There’s no need to still feel uncomfortable. I will be fine. I was fine. I am fine. It’s okay.

When I finally told my therapist about what happened, eight years after the fact, I started to realize the weight of it all. I felt uncomfortable because I was. I wasn’t fine. I wouldn’t be fine. Nothing was fine. In reality, the older I got the worse I felt about what happened. I think because the older I get the younger 14 seems, and I start to understand the gravity of a 28-year-old doing what was done to me.

I couldn’t continue to watch this man get away with something so vile. This wasn’t a Sam Shepard play. This wasn’t something distant yet troubling. This was something I was living. Something horrific I felt every day.

I finally spoke up last last year, after nearly a decade of staying silent. I told my family first, and I was met with pure rage. Not at me of course, but for me. I didn’t have to explain myself or tell them I was fine. They took what I said wholeheartedly and used every emotion they had to protect me.

I don’t know if I would have reacted differently if I had been taught about consent earlier in life — if rape and assault hadn’t felt so inevitable but far-off. But it did, so I deemed it a canon event I simply had to live with. But I do wish I had been told that being touched, kissed, told “I love you” by a person much older than myself was wrong. I wish my health teachers would have said that no matter what, being put into that situation by someone twice my age was considered assault. I wish I hadn’t been made to think of it so casually.

Almost every woman I know has been raped or assaulted. But the rape and assault I was taught about in health class is rarely realistic to the rape and assault I know. For many of us, it comes from people we’ve known our whole lives. Neighbors, friends, family members. For many, it happens sober. For many, it isn’t aggressive and happens under the age of consent, by much older people. But we were never warned. We were never told that those closest to us could be the perpetrators. So we are made to believe that what happened can’t be assault or rape. We are made to excuse these acts. How were we supposed to know that it was wrong when it didn’t fit into the framework we were always taught?

I do think that if I had read Speak at a younger age I would have felt seen in a way that I needed to be. It by no means is a perfect book, but reading it at 24 made me realize how much I needed to see representation of realistic assault when I was younger. I imagine myself reading it at the age of 14 and realizing I didn’t have to pretend to be the protagonist the way I did with The Hunger Games. I already was her, and I could change my own narrative in a way that she couldn’t. I could speak up early. I could stop protecting him. I could feel full again. I could grow.

If you have been or believe you have been assaulted or put into an uncomfortable situation here are a few resources. I am always here to talk. You are not alone.

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The wall washing took as long as my therapy session did, so now I know that it takes about the same amount of time to scrub graffiti off of brick for me to talk about a panic attack I had on Friday and how much I wish I could hug my younger self. The wall washing takes two people though. Me talking takes no one. I wasn’t even paying attention to what I said.

I turn 24 in a few weeks, and I keep thinking about how what once felt like a sprint is now feeling like a snail’s crawl. I don’t want to keep aging. It’s too fast. With each year I’m farther and farther from being “exceptional for my age,” and that is so scary. It’s so hard to reconcile with the fact that this is life. What I’m experiencing now is what I’ve been waiting for. It’s amazing and beautiful and euphoric but also deeply unsettling. This is what I prepared for. This is actually happening. So, in honor of my 24th year, I wanted to write advice I wish I had gotten for each year of my life. I don’t know if this will resonate with you, and for many of these years, I really hope it doesn’t. But this feels like a good way to scrape off regret like thick spray paint off of an orange wall.

00 - Go easy on your parents. You won’t be able to understand that, but it’ll make sense when you’re older.

01 - Object permanence is crazy. Try to make your first word something good.

02 - Develop a British accent - you will be so much cooler with it.

03 - You have nothing to worry about.

04 - French is so scary, don’t psych yourself out about it. Keep speaking up about how weird it is that people keep commenting on your looks and not your personality - you’re right, it is weird.

05 - Pretending to be hurt on the playground will not make boys like you. If they stop playing and take care of you, they are doing the bare minimum. Don’t read into it.

06 - Moving is scary, but you don’t have to make the world’s most depressing drawings for your mom. She does not need to see you crying on an airplane depicted in crayon.

07 - You do not have to be friends with everyone.

08 - The Jonas Brothers will not care if you look like a little boy with your new haircut.

09 - You do not need to wear all black every time you have your period.

10 - You’re not growing up too fast. It’s okay.

11 - You don’t always have to have a crush on someone. Also, that girl who called you a lesbian in gym class? She might be onto something (don’t worry, you don’t have to choose between guys and girls, there’s a secret third option.)

12 - It’s not embarrassing to like One Direction. Give your parents an enormous hug. Go easy on your mom.

13 - Question why everyone has been calling you a slut, whore, cheater, etc. You’re 13, that’s insane. Question absolutely everything.

14 - Just because he’s older than Harry Styles does not make it okay for him to kiss you. It’s not your fault. Tell someone.

15 - Don’t let an acting teacher make you give up on your passion. Tell someone about your nightmares.

16 - It’s your body. Who cares what anyone else says.

17 - No contact is key for a breakup (you will be friends again later in life).

18 - Nothing is casual about what is happening with him. Don’t let yourself be in a real-life Normal People scenario, it’s actually not romantic at all. Also, if someone likes you, you do not have to like them back.

19 - Eat something, you’re turning into a monster. Being skinny doesn’t make you a better actress, you’re just delusional.

20 - Hug your family so tightly.

21 - This change will be the best decision of your life. Also, get a Klonopin prescription. You are not alone.

22 - No notes. Best year of your life thus far. Congrats.

23 - Nothing matters! It’s your life! You can do anything!

I have high hopes for my 24th year. I don’t know why, but I do. My dad recently told me that my pieces have started to get sadder, but I disagree. I am filled to the brim with hope. Nothing matters in the best way possible. Anyway, love you all.