→ Read part 3 of this serial here.

→ Name/person key at the bottom of this article.

Safe to say puppy parenting duty had sufficiently worn us out. Juniper was a monster. Now I love dogs far, far more than the average, but she was a nightmare.

That’s what they say, right? If you have the perfect first child, your second will do you in.

Juniper, maybe in true like mother like daughter fashion, could not be contained. I spent the first month of her life sleeping next to her crate on our hard wooden floor with a hand awkwardly wedged between the metal bars and her nose pressed up against me like I was the only source of oxygen left to her. Drama. Queen.

Like a true baby, for one hour a day, she’d be left in silence to nap peacefully in her crate. We’d play soft classical music and had the white noise machine going, and I’d wait until she was practically twitching in her sleep anyway to leave the room. But the minute that door would shut, her screaming would begin.

This is not a traumatized dog. This is a born-and-bred princess. She knew what she wanted from day one, and if you’ve seen her face, then you know she deserves it.

Once I caved on floor sleeping, we tried to start anew. We moved her crate into the living room and made it a haven of snuggly toys and hidden treats. It was available to her all day long, and at night she would be shut in while someone slept next to her, but this time on the couch.

Needless to say, we were exhausted. Between this inconsolable monster we’d invited into our home and the wake of destruction we were constantly managing in her wake, trying to stay relevant in our new-ish friend group, my familial estrangement, and the recent passing of my older brother, it’s fair to say we didn’t need more new faces to enter our orbit.

Yet we caved to E’s pleading to meet C & S, and I appreciated the accommodations she made to help us get baby Juniper to the function so we didn’t have to rush home after an hour.

“It’ll be super lowkey, everyone is bringing a board game, you should bring Stir the Pot again, that was so fun.. okay, see you tonight!”

We were a little desperate for a parents’ night out. So we packed up the doggy playpen and the pee absorbent blankets and the pile of entertainment chew toys we’d amassed and piled into the car, puppy in tow, and sweet Theo thrilled as we were to be leaving the house on an adventure.

We set up Juniper, and Theo ran off with their dog, Cinnamon, and we graciously accepted glasses of wine and took our spots on their oversized brown sofa. T & D were already there and T immediately started grilling me on puppy parenting and how tired I looked. D gave R a hazy nod and wan smile but otherwise remained unmoving.

E, ever the hostess, was puttering in her kitchen, and L picked up a quick conversation with R about how he was missing their shenanigans and something about their upcoming trip to LA to see a football game, L’s gift to R for his recently passed birthday.

We hear footsteps and chatter from outside, and E runs to the door to greet C & S and do the polite thing in facilitating the introductions.

C is plain, friendly, and looks a tad shy to be walking into a room where it’s clear everyone else feels right at home.

S is short and also somewhat plain (which makes me sound terrible to say, but of this entire group, these are the two who ultimately had the least impact on my memory), and a little too eager as he sizes up the space.

We make polite hellos, and they accept wine glasses of their own as they find spots on the C-shaped sofa. If we went around from left to right, the arrangement would go: R, me, S, C, E, T, & D - L seated on the floor facing us all. This will come to matter.

R is uncomfortable beside me. He’s usually suspicious of new faces, but I think he might be picking up on the same oddly forward and slightly obnoxious energy from S. To be fair, in this initial moment it is all a little awkward, because how could it not be, and I’ll let you in on a little secret: this is a group that never would’ve come about organically. Thank you to the divine intervention that is Bumble (and Hinge, which brought all three couples together, save for R and me).

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We play a few of the games, and then come back to good ole Stir the Pot. Let me in on the premise. It’s similar to Cards Against Humanity in that you have a large deck of cards, each of which says something on it like “who is the most likely to…” or “who do you think has….”

When it’s your turn, you pick up a card and read it privately to yourself. Then you point at someone, mind you no one knows why you’ve chosen this person based on the cards’s contents.

Then you flip a coin in which the two sides say to either Tell or Don’t Tell. In the event of a Tell, you reveal the card to everyone in the room, thus explaining why you chose that person. In the event of a Don’t Tell, you show the card to everyone in the group except the person you pointed at. Then you hand them the card face down to be revealed later.

In a group of people you know intimately - and friends only, as this is not a family-friendly deck of cards - I recommend this game 10/10 times. However, if you find yourself in a group of insecure strangers, new and partial strangers, the game can only function 100% on assumptions. And you know what they say about judging a book by its cover…

The game begins.

This was over two years ago, and I’d be insane to remember the full gameplay and how it unfolded, but I will tell you that we got 85% Don’t Tells flipped, much to everyone’s enjoyment, and for some reason, S, seated beside me, liked to pick on me.

Slightly odd considering we hadn’t even spoken more than a polite “hi, nice to meet you” in the three hours we’d been seated next to one another, but okay, sure.

Every time he pulled a card, he pointed at me, flipped a Don’t Tell, revealed the card to the group to general gasps and snickers, always a tight-lipped stare from R beside me, and the game continued.

You play until you have all had enough, and let me tell you, I had quite a stack of unrevealed cards in my pile by the time we called uncle. Everyone had been talking about how they couldn’t wait to see my reaction as I revealed my cards, particularly the ones from S.

Slowly, I flip them one after another, a few nondescript generic ones with no offense intended or taken. One about how I was the most likely to dye my hair, change my name, and run away, valid. Then an odd one, “most likely to not be wearing underwear right now,” from none other than my new friend S, his girlfriend seated right beside him. Everyone giggles so I giggle too, not reading too much into it.

Then I flip the next card from S, “Who here do you think has slept with the most people?” (??)

Then another, “Who is secretly the kinkiest” (???)

Then another, “Who is the most likely to sell feet pics for money" (????)

Dare I go on…

This man, a complete and utter stranger to me, was out here making some WILD accusations. And I promise you that no one else had cards even remotely as wild as these awaiting them, because, in good common sense, we had allowed skipping of cards that didn’t make sense in a room of couples.

These were cards this man willingly chose to give to me AND to reveal to his girlfriend, and my then-boyfriend of 7 years.

Nice to meet you, too, S.

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Nothing I learned or heard about S, even after this day, made me like him any more.

Starting with his birthday a few months later. He wanted us all to go to the San Diego Wave FC game starting at midday tailgate in their parking lot. We all went to C & S’s apartment and in two cars drove over to the lot, everyone ignoring my questions about how exactly we planned to get home later, knowing how this group could drink.

At this point, I wasn’t drinking and was already facing the social consequences of this decision, and I don’t just mean that you’re unlikely to find me at a sporting event and certainly not soberly.

But we were deep in the trenches now. R was a mess for lack of a better way of explaining things; his actions were ruled now fully out of his root insecurity about losing his top of the totem status as L’s preferred bestie. E and T were catching on that I might not be like them, my mask slipping as the hangouts wore on my psyche and my insecurities too.

So here we were, pulling into the Wave’s game parking lot, the men already hammered at 3 PM (women opting to be the DDs - on the way there that is). We pull up and unload a liquor store’s worth of buzz balls, pre-mixed margs, beer, nips, and who knows what else. A table for pong, because though I was by far the youngest of this group, some of the older crowd among us still felt it necessary to relive the glory days of college (*cough* L & S *cough*).

By the time the horn buzzed and the gates opened to the stadium, there simply was no point. 66% of this group was not going to remember the rest of this day in the slightest. L jumped up on R’s back from behind out of nowhere, sending them both tumbling to the pavement, and subsequently, though we didn’t know it yet, fracturing R’s rib. And onward we marched to our seats, ladies in front, boys in back. The boys immediately disappeared for more beer while the ladies launched into semi-incoherent babbling gossip (about who, considering everyone collectively knew was right there). I yawned and checked my watch. 5:30PM. It’s going to be a long night.

I popped the 2.5mg weed gummy I stashed in my bag to take the edge off my suffocating social anxiety. The men got louder as they got drunker, to the point where an attendant came twice in a vain effort to get them to please shut the fuck up.

It seemed like the game would never end; none of our group had any idea what was even happening in the match. E, T, and C were pouring over some celebrities' Instagram, and I was trying to get R’s attention so he would go with me to get food (and some much-needed air), but unfortunately, being drunk in this particular crowd made R uncharacteristically mean. He told me to go get one myself and bring him another beer (something he would never do before or after this period). Fuck him.

We had to carry our men out. They could barely remain upright, let alone form full sentences, let alone remember where the cars were parked, let alone listen to the utter insistence that I would be getting in NO ONE’s car under these conditions.

I pull R aside and give it to him straight. I’m not dying tonight, and neither is he. We’re Ubering.

“No nooooo, we’re fine, it’s fine. Can’t you drive, you’re sober?” he slurs at me while flipping L off and laughing.

“Um, absolutely fucking not. I took a weed gummy, and none of those girls are sober either.”

“You took that hours ago…”

“Are you hearing yourself?!”

Clearly not, because he wandered over to the boys and offered to let me drive S’s car home. T, light drinker and objectively most sober, or so she insists, will drive the girls.

I stand my ground. Nope. But I volunteered to pay for our Uber because I’m getting desperate.

Then it is 4 on 1, 4 incoherent men whining and pleading with me to just drive them home. It’s only 10 minutes away. R included. Then L turns to the men and stumbles over his words as he says, “I’ve got it guys, I’ll drive.” S tosses him the keys, and R opens the passenger seat door.

I stared at him incredulously, and probably because I too was not fully sober, and in a move I truly (and I mean seriously, I’m tearing up as I write this), grabbed the keys from L and climbed into the driver’s seat of S’s car. I’m holding back tears and panic because every fiber of my moral being knows this is absolutely the wrong thing to do. But if L drives, they're all dead.

I drive about 30 on a California highway all the way home. Berates and jeers at my caution, filling the too-hot car. L starts a chant for me to “gun it,” and they all chime in. Lucky for me, it’s dark enough, and they're drunk enough that they don’t see me crying. We get to their house safely with the girls’ car right ahead of us. They all want to keep the party going, but I fake a stomach ache and run home.

I hear R coming in a few hours later. I hear him stumble over the coffee table in our cramped living room. I pretend to be asleep as he climbs into bed next to me without bothering to take off his clothes. I cry again because I don’t know who he is or what we’ve gotten ourselves into, but I know that it only gets worse from here.

to be continued…

yes, there’s more. so much more.

Friendship Key:

• June - me

• R - my husband (then boyfriend)

Together 7 years (at this point): socially awkward, a little co-dependent, generally great communication, hadn’t made new friends since the start of college.

Couple #1, E & L

• E - first girl I met on Bumble BFF: basic & cheugy, very surface level, obsessed with T-Swift & The Bachelor

• L - E’s boyfriend: a little dark, drinks too much, withholding, big unhealed trauma energy, gamer

Together 2 Years: E made the rules. L probably didn’t like her. Group kingpins, and they liked it that way. Big spenders,

Couple #2, T & D:

• T - girl E met on Bumble BFF: quiet, shy, cat lover, probably closeted gay

• D - T’s boyfriend: always high, long hair, deadbeat

Together 5 years: Foodies, travelers, kind of boring. BIG malicious gossips. Big spenders.

Couple #3, C & S:

• C - E’s semi-friend from college: friendly, impersonal, cat lover

• S - C’s boyfriend: chatty in a foot-in-mouth kind of way, short and overcompensating for it, obnoxious, unclear if he’s all that into C.

Together, 1 year maybe: travelers, goofy, frugal.

anyway, here it is…

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

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unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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“when i moved to california i met this guy who i had this sorta situationship with- it was tumultuous, and after a couple months he broke it off after saying some nasty stuff to me. we didn’t talk for a long time, but our friends crossed over and eventually we became close again. it was a lovely friendship, but we both ended up moving away from california. we stayed in touch for a bit, but after a few months he stopped responding. i made a lot of efforts to reach out, thinking he was probably struggling with the move, but i inevitably got nervous it was something i did. i asked what the silence was about and he finally responded, saying it wasn’t my fault, and he missed our friendship, and he was indeed struggling with the move. he said he would try to keep in touch better, but still to no avail. im wondering if i should just stop trying, regardless of my concern for him? i’ve tried (one sided) to stay in touch and offer support, and at this point it just feels silly”

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Dear friend,

I want to start by applauding your effort to reach back out to understand what the silence was about. So many of us can too easily sit and let our brains accuse us of being the problem — let the separation grow and the belief that it was all our fault fester.

It’s harder than it looks to ask a question that you know you might not like the answer to, but to know you need it for yourself anyway. Whether with someone you know well or someone you are less confident in, this is never easy.

The central point being, you did this for yourself. Sure, you care about this person and their well-being, too, and that is an altruistic part of your dilemma, but ultimately, you are only responsible for and in control of yourself. If you want this person in your orbit because they are a net positive in your life, I think you have every right to pursue them until they set the explicit boundaries and communication they need for themselves at this time.

But instead of showing up with questions and requests of them, at a time when they might not be capable of responding adequately, or at all, I would encourage you to just pop in from time to time with a short message of support and care. It is always nice to know that people care about you with no strings attached.

Can you send him a 1x/mo message that you’re thinking about him and hope he’s well?

Or maybe you just send him a photo of something you saw that could make him smile from an inside joke you share.

Nothing to ask of him, nothing you need from him, just a small reminder that you will be there on the other side of what he is going through. This doesn’t cost you much to do, and if he never responds or comes back around, then you have your answer, but you know you stayed true to yourself and lent someone a kindness in the process.

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I’ll tell you a story (a little advance on a future part of my friendship serial). There was a guy, B, who became part of our group solo, no girlfriend in a group of established couples. R, my husband, found him and worked hard to bring him into the group. B became friends with L, too — another male in the group — and would come to events and gatherings when he was free.

Then, he quite literally fell off the grid. More details on that to come in my story, but R couldn’t let it go. He just went poof, never to be seen or heard from again. R would text him every now and then, trying to prompt him out of silence to join him for an online gaming session.

Finally, B texts R back and says, “I’ve left San Diego, and honestly, I have never felt so undervalued as a person as my life with this group of people made me feel. I didn’t owe anyone an explanation, and don’t want to offer one. I’m going through it with my mental health, so I’m not sure if I’ll want to game again. I need a clean break.”

Mind you, this guy was a peripheral part of this friend group for maybe 3 months. They really were that awful.

R responds, saying he knows exactly what B means and that we have been struggling in the group as well. He’ll give him space, but if B ever wants to be friends virtually, he was here.

A few months go by, and R tells me he tried again, not about gaming this time, instead he just sent B a message that he was thinking about him. He hadn’t told anyone in the group that he and B had been in contact and never would.

No answer.

We’re probably 6-8 months out from moving out of SD (don’t know it yet), and R gives it one more shot, not wanting to be a pain in the ass to someone who is trying to move on. He sends one last text saying he’ll back off, but he’s not going anywhere if B ever wants a friend in him. He hopes B is doing better; he’s always here to talk.

B responds.

They have been gaming together from across the country, now 1-2x a month, for the last two years.

I don’t know your story or your relationship with this person enough to say for sure. Of course, I don’t encourage anyone who has treated you unkindly in the past to have a built-in place in your life, but we’ve all been there with people, and I do believe in grace and growth.

It may feel silly to keep reaching out, maybe it is. That definition is up to you. But if something keeps calling you back, it is never silly to let people know you love them.

Your care is valid. Your concern is valid. Your hesitancy is valid.

Think about what you would want and need in this situation. Then think about what others in your life would want and need. It looks different for everyone, but we all want to know that we have people on our side and in our corner. And when we’re struggling to stay afloat, it’s even nicer to know these people will be here when we come around again.

That being said, don’t cross your own boundaries. Look inward first at where they are for you. What can you get out of this friendship, the person, this waiting? Is your support unconditional, or does it need more to sustain it? Check in with yourself before you reach out to make sure it’s what is right for you, not just for him.

Some relationships weather all storms, and some drift apart across the sea.

Neither is more virtuous or right.

What matters is how you let yourself feel, process, and paddle on.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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art by the incomparable talent on Pinterest

no one answered.

entailing, entitled

mirroring, mirage

are you there?

*

i spoke your name today,

no one looked up.

sensing, senseless

mutilating, mute

did you hear me?

*

i saw you today,

no one noticed.

losing, lost

grieving, grief

where are you?

gone.

***

We can’t talk about it. Does that make it more real? If we talk about you, are you somehow more gone?

Your birthday passed. Did anyone wish you a happy birthday, wherever you are?

Dad told me he wishes he were dead, too. Does that make you more alive again?

We feel you in tortured waves, current and wind moving asynchronously. We’re at its mercy. Are you drowning, too?

I see you in the purple flowers that bloom across my neighborhood. Where do you see me?

You’re there, behind our eyes and in our hearts. Is that enough?

I write for you. Do you read my words?

We didn’t know each other, I thought.

Or did we, all too well?

anyway, here it is…

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

Submit Anonymously

your next read →

art by the incomparable talent on Pinterest

→ Read part 2 of this serial here.

→ Name/person key at the bottom of this article.

On the whole, I’m not so naïve as to think that we had found our soul couple in E and L. That the four of us would ride off into the San Diego sunset and live happily ever after with no outside interference and no other humans involved in our love story… nah.

E wasn’t necessarily my type, nothing wrong with that, except we couldn’t hold a conversation one-on-one for more than a few minutes. I was also growing increasingly concerned by the day at the dynamic unfolding between R and L. R was having me read and reread every text message before he sent it to L, and if L didn’t answer right away…. let’s just say I was having flashbacks to high school watching my friends agonize about the situationships that existed more in their heads than IRL.

Not to mention the drinking. We’d been hanging out for maybe 6 months at this point, and I’m not sure we’d been sober for any of it. It was making me sick; I didn’t even get drunk anymore, skipping straight to the headache and nausea stage instead.

So, the introduction to T & D wasn’t entirely unwelcome. Dilution could be just what we needed. Three couples felt balanced. Easier to hang out in smaller groups with less pressure, still small enough that we can reasonably go out in the world together without trouble.

I meet T, alongside E, at the same bar we went to on the first friend date. This time, there is a line to get in, so we’re making idle small talk together as we wait. T can’t stop talking about whatever I’m wearing, a nice compliment, but she seems insecure in her khakis and striped navy and white sweater.

E and T fill me in on their first hangout together, and I nod politely and appreciate their willingness to fill me in. But I’m feeling something build in my chest… maybe insecurity of my own, maybe an already-building frustration about how we can’t seem to get past the superficial.

When we finally get seated and place our drink orders, I declare, rather boldly, “So I don’t really care what you do for work, tell me about how you are fucked up from your childhood” (my inner bitch really winning out right off the bat, yikes). T is visibly taken aback at the question, and I have the presence of mind to clarify somewhat, “sorry, I just want to really know people and love to talk traumas, you don’t have to answer though.”

She sits there, undoubtedly trying to digest the socially acceptable way to proceed. E is looking off into the distance uncomfortably, but also with a small smirk on her face that told me she was happy I had made things weird before she could.

T tells me she isn’t really sure, “I don’t think I was all that fucked up by my childhood? I’m Ukrainian, so that’s something.” (We will come to discover that, as for everyone, this is distinctly untrue, but I can’t blame her for not wanting to share more with a stranger she has known for 15 minutes)

Reprieve in the form of our drinks comes, and we suck them down in thick silence for a few minutes until E chimes in and redirects the conversation back to T being a fan of the Bachelor, too. Woohoo.

Important context on me at this time, I am going through it personally with my family. My dad and I have been estranged for a few months at this point, but I’m still getting more than I bargained for in terms of information from my grandmother and my sister. So, unfortunately, family trauma is just on the brain.

I knew a bit about E’s mom being an alcoholic and their own strained relationship, so, being me but fortified by seeing the bottom of my glass, I steer the conversation back. This time to me.

I start trauma vomiting all over that table.

To their credit, a little alcohol lubricating their social capacity as well, they take in my stories with awe and polite reverie. But don’t offer much in reciprocation.

I go home frustrated.

I liked T, but she could’ve just as easily not been at that table for all I walked away knowing about her.

E texts me later, “Didn’t you love T?”

I guess?

Then we meet D. It’s at a late fall hangout around E and L’s patio firepit. Long hair, somewhat dopey (literally because he was high as F) expression, very Scandinavian look. The guys were calling him Haden, as in Christensen, which personally I didn’t see, but that gives you an idea.

T and D have been together for about 4 years at this point. They met on a dating app, went on a first date where T hated D, until he invited her abroad for a work trip — something of an insane thing to offer to a stranger — and she accepted because hey, free vacation.

They came back together, and I suppose you could say the rest was history. T was vegan, a bonding point we had in common as I was still vegan at this time too. T moved herself and D to San Diego a year ago when, in her words, D finally stopped being a religious conservative a-hole.

“Okay, D, elaborate for us, will you?” we prompt around the fire.

“Ya man, I was kind of the worst. Raised super catholic, but the kind of catholic where I hated gay people and voted for Trump. It wasn’t really until I discovered weed that I started to realize how messed up that all was.”

Whoa okay here is some trauma lore to spice things up.

“When was this?” someone asks.

“Honestly, not even that long ago, I’ve been unraveling lies for a while now,” D responds with that same unbothered smile on his face.

I think we all agreed that it was pretty cool of him to admit, share, and work through. I liked D at first. I thought I could see that he got it. He, too, had been disillusioned by his upbringing, and it led him to the same place that led me.

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T was showing her colors ever so slightly as the hang-outs wore on. We started to go to yoga together every week. Not exactly a talking activity, but we would chat before class started on our walk home. T loved to gossip. That much was pretty clear off the bat. I fueled her fire with my insistence on vulnerability as a means of creating connection.

These are my friends, I told myself, and somewhere along the way, I’ll share enough that they will be willing to share back.

Oof

Not a misguided mentality, really, but in this group of people, I essentially was shooting myself in the foot repeatedly.

On my 25th birthday, we were all going out. Starting at a bar nearby and then onto a rooftop sushi dinner downtown. R and I get to the bar early and are chatting while I wonder why everyone is so late. When they arrive, we squeeze into the booth and are merrily chatting and amping ourselves up for a night of shenanigans.

We are Ubering downtown from my apartment after because we need to feed our dog, Theo, so we head back there, and when we walk into the space, there are big birthday balloons and presents and cupcakes baked by E, and I feel so loved.

This is exactly what I hoped to find by making friends here. It felt like pieces of the puzzle finally falling into place.

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My dad texts me the night of my birthday, asking if we can talk again. I tell him candidly no. For the first time in a long time, I’m feeling free and happy, and I don’t see how he fits into that right now.

It’s December, my favorite time of year, and I’m content to spend the season with my newfound family here.

R, L, and D are bros. Hanging out, watching football, getting high. E, T, and I are trying new pilates studios and coffee shops, we’re decorating our homes for Christmas, and I’m keeping up with the celebrity tea just for them.

Ya, it’s awkward still sometimes, but I’m confident in time that the weirdness will pass if we just keep logging hours together.

Sure, R keeps coming home drunk and kind of angry at something that he can’t seem to explain. He’s threatened by D joining the bro-mance between himself and L, but again, this too shall pass, right?

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We get a puppy, Juniper, the day before Christmas. I forgot how much work puppies are, especially when you have no yard and no way to take them outside before their shots are finished.

Our friends accommodated for a while, coming to our house for a New Year's Eve spent tamely indoors. We play a card game given to me by E for my birthday, Stir the Pot, and yes, if you let it, it will indeed stir the pot. I love it though, we’re learning more about each other, exposing secrets and passing baby Juniper from lap to lap.

L is complaining because he wants to go out and get beligerently drunk in a crowd somewhere, T and D are the oldies of the bunch, and want to be home by 10 pm. R wants to do anything L wants to do, but only to save face. He’s trying to get me to stay home with E and Juniper (who is a nightmare of a puppy) — absolutely not happening.

E is babbling about a peripheral friend of hers from college who is moving to town in January, and about her quasi-cousin, whom she just found out about, who is in the area.

“Ya! Dude, the friend group grooooows,” yells L as he raises his glass.

This sounds far-fetched to me, and Juniper just peed on the sofa for the umpteenth time, and D is on our balcony, lighting up in front of our neighbors’ open window — they have a newborn baby inside — T is half asleep on the sofa, and R is babbling for L’s attention about the next drink he’s going to make.

I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t think this group needs to grow, as it is already chaotic, and I like it that way. It’s manageable, and I have a role.

“We are stuck on Juniper duty until March,” I tell E… implying we won't be available for meeting with new people until then. Internally, I’m hoping she hears the plea in my words to drop it.

“Oh, that’s fine. I’m sure we will figure it out. You can always bring her to our house!”

And so we do, two months later, we pack up a playpen for our own newborn and head to E and L’s house to meet C and S.

to be continued…

this story gets out of hand quickly.

Friendship Key:

• June - me

• R - my husband (then boyfriend)

Together 7 years (at this point): socially awkward, a little co-dependent, generally great communication, hadn’t made new friends since the start of college.

Couple #1, E & L

• E - first girl I met on Bumble BFF: basic & cheugy, very surface level, obsessed with T-Swift & The Bachelor

• L - E’s boyfriend: a little dark, drinks too much, withholding, big unhealed trauma energy, gamer

Together 2 Years: E made the rules. L probably didn’t like her. Group kingpins, and they liked it that way. Big spenders,

Couple #2, T & D:

• T - girl E met on Bumble BFF: quiet, shy, cat lover, probably closeted gay

• D - T’s boyfriend: always high, long hair, deadbeat

Together 5 years: Foodies, travelers, kind of boring. BIG malicious gossips. Big spenders.

Couple #3, C & S:

• C - E’s semi-friend from college: friendly, impersonal, cat lover

• S - C’s boyfriend: chatty in a foot-in-mouth kind of way, short and overcompensating for it, obnoxious, unclear if he’s all that into C.

Together, 1 year maybe: travelers, goofy, frugal.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Content warning: Eating disorder mention.

Dear June,

“I’ve hated my body for my entire life. I had an eating disorder when I was a teenager. I don’t anymore. I know this sounds bad but I often think: I’m too lazy to have one now. I have the same thoughts but don’t have the same level of effort to restrict, which in hindsight, is a good thing. I spend the entirety of summer indoors, every year, as I cannot bare the thought of wearing clothes that don’t fully cover me. I’m constantly at war with myself and I’ve come to accept that I’ll always feel this way.”

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Dear friend,

I want you to know I’ve been sitting with this one. It hits home for me as I, too, spent the majority of my life thus far hating my body. Looking in every mirror or reflective surface and immediately spotting 10 flaws that would make me want to crawl out of my own skin. This is an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It’s brutal and relentless. In a world obsessed with the unattainable body, it doesn’t help when your brain turns that obsession inward and uses it to inflict mental pain on your physical being.

It’s important, I think, to note that if laziness is what keeps you from acting on the pull towards restriction, we’ll take it. Your reasoning for not acting on sickness or addiction is irrelevant if it means you’re avoiding the thing itself and ultimately protecting yourself.

I might even wonder if this “laziness” isn’t exactly as you’ve labeled it.

It is exhausting to feel the way you describe feeling. It is a daily struggle to exist in a body that you perceive to be so abhorrent. I’m not going to sit here and tell you to be grateful for all that your body does for you or any of the other clichés that, while possessing merit in their own right, don’t actually make you feel better or see your reflection any differently.

I imagine for you, as it was and can still be at time for me, that facing the day knowing the mental battle rages on leaves you fatigued from the moment your feet hit the floor.

Let alone that walk into the bathroom to address the aftermath of 6-10 hours in bed.

Then to the closet where you figure out what of your wardrobe can provide any solace for what the day holds.

Then onto whatever your day holds, where no doubt you will encounter the bitter taste of comparison around every corner, behind every screen, and even maybe on the street.

Countless routine body checks and the subsequent shame wave that follows.

Meal-time chaos where, though you are eating, you’re considering the pros and cons of every bite. Recommittment and fuck-it energies duking it out as you chew and swallow, chew and swallow.

Each season brings a host of new challenges to navigate, but none quite like the defrost into summer.

Ads of skinny, beautiful bikini-bound babes swirling.

Conflicting social media posts are consuming feeds with mixed messages of self-love, the next celeb to fall victim to Ozempic, a greens powder that will change the game, mindful eating, and the pros and cons of HIIT vs low-impact exercising for weight loss.

Suffocating and unrelenting, and yet, maybe this tip or that fad will do the trick this time. Who can blame us for holding out hope after all this time… not when the alternative feels destitute?

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My friend, of course, you are tired. You are carrying a weight that is not yours to be carrying, and your nervous system is terrified at how unfamiliar it would be to put even a fraction of it down. I see you. I sit with you. And I offer you my shoulder with which to offload some of that weight.

Bear with me as I offer a statement that I myself believed to be SUCH bullshit as I crumbled underneath the weight of this that I carried, too, for so many years.

There is no solution but to find peace within yourself.

I hope I don’t lose you here… younger versions of me would have been lost here, so I won’t hold it against you if you read this and say fuck-off. I only hope you come back here when you’re ready again.

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There is a reason you hate your body. It didn’t happen all at once; it likely formed via a series of experiences before you were aware, all confirming the same message to you: your body is wrong.

And with no defense, no language, and no understanding of how utterly impossible that statement actually is, your subconscious adopted it as truth and built a survival mechanism, your eating disorder, around it.

In case no one has ever told you otherwise, I am glad it did this for you. It was a cry for help in the face of a belief that was rooted within you but that you wouldn’t, couldn’t accept. It was — as much as I know it didn’t feel like it at the time, and likely doesn’t to this day — an act of rebellion.

You are strong.

I didn’t believe this for myself until very recently, 13 years post the eating disorder that nearly took my life. 13 years of quietly hating myself and my body as I idly performed that which was expected of me in recovery and my entrance into adulthood. Of feeling wrong and somehow too much but never enough, still, despite having “recovered.” 13 years of perfectionism that robbed me of a personal identity to the point where I felt like I had very little to live for.

What exactly had I recovered from then? The risk of heart failure, osteoarthritis, hair loss…. Certainly all worthy accomplishments, but not any that made my brain feel the kind of validation and acceptance it so desperately needed for survival.

You can still hate yourself without taking it out on your body physically.

And therein lies where I invite you to get curious with me.

You don’t actually lack the ideal body. Whether you believe it or not, you have an ideal body because you are alive on this earth.

So, what, then, does your soul need?

What did your inner child require that was never offered to her?

This is a very hard thing to answer, which is why it is an exploration of curiosity and has no singular right answer.

Think about patterns in your life… with food, with your body, with other people, with the little things you quietly struggle with and the loud things that attract you most.

Is there a theme?

What feels good to you? Meaning, what catches your eye and your heart and your soul in a way that you can’t help but move closer to.

What feels bad to you? Where are you hiding and what are you hiding from? What do you avoid like the plague, such that mere tangential reminders send your heart racing and skin crawling?

Is there a pattern?

Spend time here. Let it take time. It took many years to get here, didn’t it? Don’t give yourself anything less than the time you personally require to undo and relearn.

If the choice is to get curious about who you are and what you deserve emotionally or hate yourself, I invite you to not choose to live in hate any further.

Non-judgemental (to the best of your ability, this grows with time) curiosity. That’s how you begin.

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This is not random. You are fundamentally meant to be here just as you are.

There cannot, nor is there any possibility that your body — the one that carries your soul, your spirit, your mind, your pain, your memories, generations of trauma and sacrifice, grief and heartache, potential and capacity, joy and love — could ever be worthy of hate. Nor can the you that exists within and in spite of the physical.

You may carry false narratives about yourself. We all do.

You likely believe untrue things learned in your youth. We all do.

You bear the scars of wounds long healed and the leech the blood of wounds yet unhealed. We all do.

You hope and live on just the same. We all do.

You are energy.

You are light.

You are love.

When you finally see yourself for all that you are and all that you possess. When you claim the power of your birthright as bound by those odds, 1 in 10 to the 45,000th, you will heal. You can make peace with your existence for better and for, occasionally, worse. You can, and you are capable of loving what your body may never represent to you properly, your self.

It is a journey. Maybe one we set off on and never come to the end of.

There are highlights and lowlights. Good days and bad.

You can carry both. You are strong enough to feel love and the echo of that misplaced hatred. You can be angry and compassionate. You can be strong and weak.

You can be.

In all that you are.

It starts with a simple step. Instead of believing the narrative and cycle of hate that drains color from your everyday, I offer you the option to quietly, and perhaps even meekly at first, challenge the validity of those beliefs with questions of curiosity and wonder.

What if my body is not the problem?

What else is happening in this moment?

What can I learn from the sensations present in my body right now?

How can I do one small but mighty act to honor my body instead of re-confirming to the voice in my head that it is right?

That voice is a long-learned, well-reinforced survival mechanism. Find love and curiosity in your heart for this, too. What has this protected you from? What does it do for you? Why do you need it? Do you need it?

And I wish for you that someday, as you wander down this unfamiliar path, you find yourself wondering what it might look like to finally let it go.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

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unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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Sometimes I am a song. Undulating and indeterminate. My tune is guttural and evocative. My melody precise and unpredictable. My lyrics forgettable, but my harmony haunting.

Are you desperate to hum my notes?

Do pieces of me linger in your mind long after I’ve faded away?

Sometimes I am a mite, swirling at the taste of your exhale, glittering in the sunlight. As if I were more than death and decay, dancing hopelessly at the mercy of unrelenting gravity, pulling me ever closer to sure extinction.

To some, I am a star shining bright in memoriam. Too far. Already gone. Beauty in the eye of the beholder who lives and dies, bewildered by the echo of my perilous shadow.

Today I am a flame. My insatiable hunger careening recklessly towards all you’ve taken for granted. You forgot to breathe, so I devoured all of the oxygen. Never looking back, but then again, direction is futile to the all-encompassing.

A blight.

A blinding light.

Blind.

And unkind.

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Tomorrow, I’ll be an apology. An empty word. An unfulfilled wish. A shattered promise. An open wound, singed and scorched. Sick with grief and frenzied with regret, I’ll walk on the ashes of all that I once loved, incinerated by disillusionment and temper.

and in my isolation, I’ll wonder

if it was

really

all for nothing

and if

the incomprehensibility

of nothingness

of nonbeing

of nonexistance

is all of the meaning

I ever needed.

anyway, here it is…

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

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unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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Content warning: Mentions of eating disorders, self-harm, and sexual assault.

I was 6 years old when I first became aware that my body could be a problem.

Mid-morning, one meaningless summer day, my step-mom D (always my summer caretaker) stops me on the stair landing before I reach the bottom and says, “Absolutely not.”

“What?!”

“Do you see yourself? You look ridiculous. Go change.”

I’m 6 years old. I’m on my way to our neighbors’ house to play in the woods with their children.

At this point, I’ve already learned to do as D says. I march back upstairs.

It takes 4 more attempts to get D’s approval before I run out of the house, tears streaming down my face.

I have no language for this. I have no understanding of this. All I know is that somehow, I was very, very wrong.

Same timeframe and I’m going into the kitchen to tell D I’m hungry. Ever the risky ask, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to feed myself from her kitchen.

D asks me the same question every time: “Is your mouth hungry or your stomach?”

I would sit there and hem and haw and try to remember which one got me real food and which one got me a stick of gum and the hours until dinnertime

“Mouth,” I muttered tentatively.

“Classic,” D replies as she walks to her purse and pulls out a stick of Polar Ice Extra gum. “Dinner is in 5 hours.”

Now I’m a little older, sitting at D’s dinner table, and she’s made something disgusting as usual. I’m picking around at it, like I always do, until she snaps.

“Take a bite and get your elbows off the table.” What is it with the whole elbows thing…?

I take my reluctant bite, taste buds and anxiety screaming in protest because what the actual F did I just put in my mouth?

“You get one good meal a week because I know your mom can’t cook. So you’ll eat it, and you’ll like it.” And I’ll claim moral superiority and get high off of my own control… the part she said only to herself. My dad hides behind the screen of his BlackBerry, always devoid of responsibility.

I’m pre-pubescant now, longer and leaner but scawny still. Girls at school are stuffing their bras and starting to mingle with boys.

I have a crush on a boy. We exchange nervous glances in Science class. Friends have told me he likes me back. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I go to a birthday party. Since when were boys invited to a girl's birthday party?

He’s there.

The whole night is comprised of his friends trying to get him to talk to me, and mine trying to get me to talk to him. We’re all in the same room, completely aware of what’s going on. This boy and I, to this day, have never spoken a word to each other.

Now I’m going to sleep away camp for the first time at 12. I’m terrified. The plane lost my carefully packed luggage, so I’m in an uncomfortable, very not-me outfit from the only Target we could find. My mom leaves me with the parting line, “smile, you look like a bitch.”

At camp, the girls feel cooler than I do. They’ve done this before, they’ve kissed boys, they have trendy clothes, and flattering bathing suits. Highlights in their hair and secret cell phones they smuggled into their luggage.

They get camp boyfriends and proclaim them to be the loves of their lives.

I go home and tell all of my school friends, too, that I had my first kiss. I didn’t.

After camp, I’m on vacation with my family. Awkward and insecure as ever. My cousin shows up, she’s one of those cool girls, but only 1 month my senior in life. She’s skinny. She’s praised for it.

“How did you do it?” everyone asks her.

“I don’t know, I guess I just stopped snacking.”

Well shit. I could do that.

It’s 6 months later, December, a few days before my birthday trip to NYC. My mom makes me green eggs (no ham). I ask her what the hell is wrong with the eggs.

She tells me she’s worried about how thin I’ve become.

I snap back at her, out of sheer denial and defense, to make me normal eggs and mind her own business. She cries. I tell my friends she’s being insane. We don’t talk for two weeks.

Meanwhile, I’m exercising in my room for hours a night, skipping meals, and feeling prettier every. damn. day.

It’s a few months later, and I’m on a specific food plan but ignoring it, bitterness in my heart and frailty in my bones. We’re shopping with friends for my 8th-grade graduation dress. Nothing fits me. I catch my mom crying on the car ride home.

I make it to that graduation, but I’m on a day pass from the inpatient hospital I was admitted to just a few months earlier.

I was evicted due to insurance denial at the start of that summer. My parents took my best friend and me on vacation. Everyone loved her, and no one would look at me. Scared of what I had become. I spent the entire vacation desperate and came home suicidal. I went back into the hospital a week later.

This time around, I met a girl there, maybe 17. She seemed like everything I wanted to be. Personable, cool, beautiful, funny. She was the light of that dejected place. I admired her. We played her favorite song on repeat, she drew us pictures, and told us our futures.

Three weeks after being discharged from the hospital, I saw on Facebook that she had died in a car accident. Meaningless and random.

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I went back to school and was confronted by a friend who suspected her other best friend might be having similar problems to me. Can I talk to her?

Of course.

The girl denies it. It’s awkward.

I go to our dean and tell her I think my peers could benefit from a discussion with a thought leader on mental health, specifically for girls.

Instead, we get Angela Duckworth, who gives a speech on GRIT. She is intense. She talks about how we are all destined for greatness if we forgo our wants and strive only for academic success. It will pay off, she promises us. Happiness isn’t everything, just look at her.

I have a panic attack and leave halfway through her presentation.

I make it a few more months before it all falls apart again.

Back to the hospital. At least this time the doors are not locked.

Three hospitals. All women.

Young, maybe 11. Too old, maybe 70s?

Women of all demographics and all walks of life and all experiences, each with different traumas that all led them to this same dismal reality.

On my first day in this new hospital, an extremely emaciated woman, maybe in her late 20s but looking like she was on the brink of death, throws a fit at dinner and walks out.

No one goes after her.

She returns 3 days later and collapses in the doorway. (She is fine to this day, we’re FB friends).

I met a best friend here, a kindred soul, a surrogate caretaker. Maternal to her core, but 19, sick, and reckless in the same way I was, too. She snuck us out one night late to run around on the lawn. The first time I had felt alive in years.

I met another friend here, one who made me laugh every day despite the dire state she arrived in. The first time I laughed in years.

I met a girl who pierced all of our ears in her bathroom. Now we’re sisters for life, she said. First time I felt a part of something in years.

These are the women who saved me. They were not all saved in return.

I’m back in my life, anxious and depressed, but treading above water, smiling for the camera, so to speak. My friends all have boyfriends. They’ve started wearing makeup and wearing their hair in new ways. They’ve made friends with guys and girls from other schools and started to go to their parties. They’re dumbing themselves down for acceptance. They can’t hold a deep conversation, see my pain, or acknowledge their own, but can talk for hours on end about him.

One day, a friend came to me thinking she was pregnant. She’s freaking out - and so am I, because when did we all start having sex?

Turns out she had neither sex nor a proper sexual education.

I’m angry all of the time. Angry at my upbringing. Angry at how it was handled. Angry that everyone around me is drinking a Kool-Aid I was just severely detoxed from.

I’m seeing the truth in advertising all around me. Billions of dollars spent selling women on first the problem, then the solution. No one listens to me when I try to point this out. My anger is too much, unwelcome. I need to shut up and do as I’m told.

We can't win. One day, it was silly bandz and mismatched socks with our uniforms; the next, identical North Face backpacks and Nike mid-calf socks. Since when did these arbitrary items become demarcations of our worth?

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One day, I showed up to school, my hair dyed red. Not ginger red, red red. I’m carrying a pretty purple Herschel backpack. I have 9 piercings between my two ears. I am desperate for a sense of individuality in this conformist institution, where they care more about my academic success and ability to fit in than about my well-being.

I nearly died. Multiple times, and yet here I was maintaining straight As in classes I hadn’t even been present for and being praised for it. Priorities.

I’ve already been branded for my otherness because the depths of my mental illness could not be so easily masked by conformity.

But let me tell you a little secret. The popular girl who spread rumors about me, why I left school, and how my eating disorder was a cry for attention… she was coming out of my therapist’s office (who specialized in eating disorders) as I was going in for my appointment.

We stared at each other. I smiled slightly in wry acknowledgment of the irony that built in that liminal space between us. She ran out. I never saw her there again.

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Tumblr slowly influenced me to become vegan with the promise of long blonde hair, a skinny body (that was more acceptable than my first attempt, apparently), life by the beach, and an overwhelming abundance of fruit. I adapt.

Now I’m lightening my long brunette hair, doing yoga after school, drinking smoothies with 9 bananas, eating a sweet potato for dinner, and regularly looking in the mirror for that promised glow. For what?

I’m still silently crying in my bathroom as I slice into my skin because this endless demand for perfection is ruthless, and I am desperate for release.

It’s the summer before senior year. My dad threw his usual $50K summer party and pulled out all of the stops. Alcohol is everywhere; it’s seeping out of our skin. My friends and I are emptying Coke cans in my bathtub and filling them up with vodka.

At the end of the night, I’m lying on my bedroom floor, ceiling spinning, and my friends are finally revealing to me how unwell they are, too. Hurting themselves, drinking too much, hating their bodies… hating themselves.

All of my friends after high school came out as queer. I love this for them, and hate this for their sad inner children that did not find safety and turned their pain inward.

I woke up to notes they had written on little pieces of paper, confessing things to me. I don’t remember why, who, or how.

We never spoke about it again.

Then, I get my own boyfriend. And I get it. I’m watering myself down for his approval. I’m catering to his emotions. I’m bending to his will.

I’m constantly waiting for him to text me back. To acknowledge me, but of course, on his schedule.

I leave for college, and he pretends I don’t exist. We had told each other we loved one another just two weeks earlier. One day, he calls me and tells me he cheated on me with a girl at a party over the weekend. I’m crushed. We break up.

I start drinking at parties because who the f*ck cares anymore anyway. Accidentally bumping myself into the least offensive boy in the bunch. We almost always ended up making out.

That is, until I come to consciousness in an unfamiliar bathroom, my shirt off, bra unsnapped, his hands down my pants, and tongue in my mouth. I don’t know how I got here. I scream and run out, half-naked, back into the party to find my friends. They had left.

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Now we have a child rapist as president. Chosen over a woman. Who’s surprised?

The boys at school think it’s funny. I am crying and shaking as I wake up to the news. People will die, most will be women. I mourn them. I mourn me.

I’m tragically unwell. For many reasons. My boyfriend (ya, the same one who I forgave after he told me he made it all up and missed me…) calls me crazy when I tell him I can’t stop crying for some reason. I believe him.

I trudge through college. Luckily, I’m graduating early, good riddance.

I take my last semester of classes online. My final exam is unfortunately the same day as my grandfather’s wake. I finish college in a New Hampshire motel room and go into the next room to tell my parents what I’ve just accomplished. They don’t even say congratulations.

My mom didn’t graduate college until she was 35, because she was raised to think her purpose was marriage. Maybe deep down, she thinks mine is too?

Now I’m boarding a one-way plane to take me far, far away. My dad buys me flowers. My friends send me sappy texts. My boyfriend booked a flight to come see me in two months, promising he’s on his way to a more permanent move soon. Suddenly, with the threat of my impending absence, people decide to show up. That’s cool, I guess.

I’m far far away, at a yoga teacher training. All women of all ages. But our teacher is psychotic. She’s unsatisfied with my posture. Why do my knees turn in like that? I don’t tell her about the eating disorder that riddled my bones just a few years prior. I just contort per her request. At least until a doctor forces me to sit out the remainder of the training.

She starts taking long breaks in class to tell us about her wild conspiracies.

She got pregnant while celibate in an ashram. (?)

She doesn’t believe the holocaust was real. (??)

She thinks they will kill her for her enlightenment, and we should all be so wary. (???)

We know she’s nuts; girlhood shows up in the form of us all going to lunch together every day to talk about this wild experience we are all sharing and to collectively denounce her words.

Until her rhetoric turns racist, it’s hurting people in the class. And I am the only one willing to stand up against it.

I tell the studio owner. A white man.

Now he’s patronizing me; even going so far as to pat my shoulder as I leave his office, and nothing comes of the meeting.

What did I expect from a white ex-finance bro from NYC who relocated to San Diego, opened a yoga studio, and renamed himself Sujantra?

I still manage to give the best final yoga class out of anyone, despite not being able to practice myself. I don’t remember it, though; I blacked out.

I’m seated at my first job. A team of capable young women, led by… a white man. He ignores meetings, makes more than all of us combined, and only danes to pop in for face time when the CEO is around. He used to be the international marketing head of Taco Bell, and for some reason, we must all bow down to him before this accolade.

They ask me to make all of the content for our Black History Month, in the middle of Black Lives Matter being everywhere. I refuse, because I am not black.

There are hundreds of team members who work for us. Can I reach out to them, celebrate their work, and tell their story?

No.
My white, blonde, and acting some type of way in her cultural ignorance boss has to do it for me. And now I’m in trouble.

Fine, I quit.

Onto job number two. Another team of capable women. But wait? The business is built on the backbone of making other women feel insecure about themselves. Now I’m writing ads for boob-jobs and tummy tucks at the bequest of some rich white male surgeons.

Okay, I’ll make a difference here, find a way to do it better.

Denied.

Two years and only so many ways to sell face lifts to women who are already beautiful.

Now my boss is telling me that layoffs are coming. It’ll be her or me, and she already knows it’s her. They called me in for a meeting to tell me my work was unsatisfactory, so they wouldn’t have to pay severance if they fired me.

Fine, I quit.

Job number 3, a crafting start-up led and run, again, by women! Creative women, no less!

Oh, wait, deeply insecure women. Insecurity that we are now taking out on… each other?

Why are we always fighting?

There are 5 people working here; we can’t waste time tearing each other down. The world needs female-run start-ups like this. You started this for mothers who lost touch with their creativity. What do you mean you’re buying your tools on Amazon, calling them handcrafted, and upselling them at ridiculous prices? Who is that helping?

Oh, and now you want me to go freelance for a few hundred dollars a month, but do the same job as three people I was doing before, and you don’t understand why I’m passing on that tempting offer.

Fine, I quit.

Are we no better than the men?

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At least now I have some friends. All I wanted was two girls to go to picnics and the beach with. Nothing complicated. I want more people to love.

Now you’re copying how I dress…?

Why are you looking at me like that?

Hey, I told you that in confidence!

I heard what you said about me behind my back…

Are you laughing at me for struggling mentally?

Oh, now I’m uninvited.

Who are you?

Who are we?

Who am I?

I am my fiance’s keeper.

I am my father’s chew toy.

I am my mother’s collateral damage.

I am my friend’s burden.

I am no one.

Because all of this longing to be, this molding to fit, this hope… I’ve given it all away to be liked by people only interested in themselves.

I no longer trust myself or anyone else, for that matter.

And how could I, could we?

The world demands all from women.

The ignorance and incompetence of men are all around us.

We are born deferring to them.

We grow up catering to their egos.

We look up longingly at glass ceilings, not realizing until we get closer that they are nothing more than bulletproof facades.

Did your parents, too, tell you that if a boy is mean to you in school, that means he likes you?

Have you ever been told that boys are naturally more immature? The implication being that we women must compensate in some way for their chosen ineptitude.

Have you ever said something over and over again, and had even the women in your space not listen until a man says the exact same thing?

Have you ever had your existence become the object of someone else’s objectification?

Have you ever had a man call you crazy or weak for feeling the immense impact of all that it is to be a woman in this world, and god forbid, faltering for one moment because of it?

Have you ever gone to a second-in-command woman who desperately clings to her Beta status for the authority it mirages as and asked her to hear you? See you? Stick up for you? Only to have her hide behind a man because he isn’t expected to empathize or care.

Have your friends ever (and I am guilty of this, too) bailed on you for a boy who barely gives them the time of day?

Have you ever given yourself to a boy who barely gives you the time of day?

It’s not your fault. It’s never been. Any of us.

The world is not kind to the women who birth it, who tend to it until our skin is raw and our bodies ragged. Women who give and give and ask for nothing but to reap a modecum of the reward for their work, only to see that a man has already razed it all to the ground, stripped the delicate resources, and built an empire atop it as big as his ego and as unimpressive as his d*ck.

The standards that make you an allowable woman in this world are contradictory and limiting.

Be delicate, but never break.

Be a trailblazer, but never overshadow a man.

Be an advocate and an ally, but don’t endanger a culture of normativity.

Be a friend, but not yourself in that friendship.

Be a lover, and by giving all and taking only what you get in return.

Be a daughter, perfect and infallible for daddy.

Complete the empty spaces in others, but never whole within yourself.

We are bred and raised to fill only the gaps in which we are needed by men.

We attribute our worth to our ability to contort and fill these spaces with quiet grace and whispered apologies.

We are taught to cut each other down because there is only so much space to go around.

They sensed our power early on. Long before you or I were even a possibility. They took it away, they kept us apart, they held us down. Isolated in homes. Overworked to the point of exhaustion, but never compensated because money has always been freedom.

Because they knew that if we came together, we’d be unstoppable and very likely not-for-profit.

So it really is no wonder we don’t trust anyone, not even ourselves.

But who gives us life? A Woman.

Who rises to every occasion because she knows she must? A Woman.

Who does what she is asked without thanks or respect? A Woman.

Who bears her soul for a world that offers nothing in return? A Woman.

Who holds hope unconditionally, still sensing that power within and strength in numbers?

Women.

I love you, here it is…

-June

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“I’m in my twenties and have no friends. I live with my partner and see my family often, but lack female friendships. I used to have many, but the pandemic turned me into a recluse, and I found it impossible to adjust back to normal life, even all these years later.”

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Dear friend,

I think I speak for so many when I tell you that you are far from alone in this experience. I have even written about how my inner recluse, too, enjoyed the solidarity and the minimal expectations for existing as a social creature in this world that the pandemic time had to offer.

And, without judgment (to whatever degree is available to you), I invite you to consider what this time did for you as well.

The loss of friendships can come from many things, hopefully most of which require no blame. It can be a simple parting of the ways from a friendship formed by circumstance, and when circumstances change, the camaraderie and necessity that formed your connection change, too.

Or perhaps these friendships were formed by earlier versions of you. A different you who defined friendship and its role in your being as something that may no longer align with the you who went through and now lives on following the pandemic.

Curiosity is crucial here. Curiosity invites possibility and insight without the need for protection by judgment and criticism.

I am curious about you…

What role have friends played in your life?

What kind of friend do you long to be?

What makes you feel safe and seen in relationships?

Can you picture it? Can you picture her, your first new friend?

Can you then poke holes in her because we must also give grace to the fallibility of our fellow humans? No one is as perfect in reality as they are in our mind’s eye.

What flaws do your future female friends possess that you hope to love them for?

What might you do together? Become together?

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I might invite you to start with the question:

What are you making the lack of female friendships and your experience of a post-pandemic reality mean about you, your life, your capabilities, and your worth today?

The meanings we apply to our current situations are potent and instructive. It becomes very difficult to separate the feelings they evoke from the fears they protect us from. Like looking through distorted glass and not pausing to wonder why everything looks wrong.

There are no concrete answers to who we are and what we need. The truth that lingers in the contemplation of these questions ebbs and flows with time and our shifting capacity to simply be in the present with all that we like and dislike in our lives and of ourselves.

And beyond the question-and-answer schema, these queries may look like what they do when written out above; they are, at their core, an offering, a mirror. A gateway to revealing your truest self.

You have love in your life. It’s important to remember this is proof that you are lovable.

You have cultivated friendships in the past. Proof, once again, that the capacity remains within you.

You also, as we all did, lived through something traumatic for several years. Though the world may have trudged along in the wake of a worldwide lockdown and the death toll it incurred, doesn’t mean our nervous systems have moved on in lock step.

If you are not yet recovered from this, that is okay. Let it be okay. Let it take time.

Your recluse state is likely a means of protection, derived from both body and mind, to help you survive.

Thank yourself for this.

Love yourself for this.

Nurture and tend to your life in a way that reveals to your body that survival is not the primary objective anymore. Listen to its signals and respond with kindness. Lean into certainty where you can find it, and lean into trust and faith in yourself when you cannot.

You can and will, over time, show your body and soul that it is time again to reopen the doors, to remove the mask, and rejoin the world in whatever manner calls to your spirit.

But baby steps, my friend, you have all of the time in the world with which to exercise this newfound curiosity and hope.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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Content warning: Eating Disorders

Over this past weekend, I decided to stop bringing my phone into my bedroom. Not to force myself into some technological withdrawal or to punish myself for grossly out-of-hand screen-time metrics. But I have been struggling mentally, and as I work in small increments every day to get in touch with how certain thoughts, behaviors, and experiences show up in my body – overthinking them all as aside as I can manage – I am starting to notice where certain habits are not helping.

While I’ve long since ceased being a bedtime doomscroller, my phone is still the last thing I touch at night and the first thing I touch in the morning.

I let metrics from my Oura ring tell me what kind of day I’m going to have.

I let the New York Times tell me how doomed I am.

I let the pile of notifications waiting for attention steal away any potential for peace the morning could offer.

I open Substack, and I scroll, and I scroll, and I think about how all I’d like to do is lie under the covers and exist only in this safe space.

Then I am defeated before the day even begins, knowing just how not an option this kind of safety is for me today.

So, in a fit of inspiration over the weekend, most likely fueled by the lovely and omnipresent Sunday Scaries pressing in on my consciousness, I moved one of our home’s Google Hubs onto my nightstand and moved my phone charger to the hallway.

And on Sunday night, my first phone-free night in my bedroom, I turned all of the lights red and sprawled out on the floor (there is truly nothing like lying on the floor when you are overwhelmed, don’t ask me why, just try it).

As I lay there, limbs splayed, soul bare, anxiety crept in with the onslaught of thoughts that love nothing more than to fill a silent space. I rallied all that I know about breathing and connecting with my body – a never-ending struggle – and I allowed this back-and-forth war between body and mind to be. Discomfort and all, just let it be.

Then, quite suddenly, I was overcome by the need for a pen.

Now I am not a journaler… though I suppose I consider my presence on this app a medium akin to journalling. I certainly am here, rawly expressing my inner woes.

But never once in my life have I felt the need to log my feelings in a notebook.

Here I am, though, learning to listen to my body. I don’t judge the impulse, but quietly get up, find a pen and a long-neglected notebook on my bookshelf that was likely given to me 10 years ago as a gift.

I crawl into bed and touch pen to paper. Here is what came out of me:

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This wasn’t surprising; if anything, it felt like a small window of clarity after a series of days where the weight of my existence was more than I felt capable of holding.

A few days earlier in the week, my husband confronted me in a way that activated a very, very personal trauma.

He had been out of town over the weekend and now back at home, gazing into the fridge for what to make us for dinner, he called to me curiously, “Did you eat anything out of the fridge while I was away?”

I hadn’t even opened it.

This is not to say I didn’t eat; I did. I just didn’t go out of my way in the process.

He came into the living room, sat next to me, and told me this seemed like a problem.

What I heard: I have a problem. I AM a problem.

A younger part of me sat there and heard a tale as old as time. And there I was, back in my mother’s living room with 4 parents glaring down at me, telling me how I had failed. This younger me felt instantly threatened, confused, and unlovable.

My husband wasn’t, obviously, around in those days. He doesn’t understand how his words landed in my body, and I didn’t blame him for the confrontation. He loves me and worries about me, and for that, I am truly blessed.

But, good intentions notwithstanding, I spiraled around his words and all that they implied. The denial and the what ifs and every former consequence I had ever faced for not eating as a way to cope with my anxiety came crawling out of hiding and up my skin.

A part of me liked it, and they sensed that willingness.

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For a long time, my eating disorder was a cry for help. A tool that, at the time, served to show the severity of my suffering in a way my caretakers could actually legitimize.

I suppose the same appeal has persisted, but I’ve become better at not acting on my darker inclinations simply for external validation.

But in these past few days, feeling again what that teenage girl felt many years ago, I’ve allowed her to whisper in my ear that what worked for her might work again now for me.

Tempting.

Terrifying.

Do I dare?

Could I even?

Am I already, and I didn’t realize?

Being sick gave validity to my pain. It gave me action and control. It made people take care of me. It made me pitiable. It absolved me of culpability. It washed away every other responsibility outside of simply surviving.

And at least surviving is something I’ve always been good at.

Thus, as you see on my frantic journal page, I fractured right down the middle.

My inner and former selves teaming up with my nervous system to seductively tug me towards familiar self-sabotage.

And then, dangling precariously on the other end of that same rope, the barely formed self that I have spent many months (and years truly) working oh so hard for now clutches with all of the strength she can muster. She pleads her case, but with far less proof of concept to back her up.

So I lay prone on the rough grey carpeting and let it all in.

The fear.

The temptation.

The longing.

The disgust.

Guilt.

Regret.

Hope.

Need.

Chaos.

Clarity.

And then, I needed a pen.

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I suppose this is growth…

Messy and complicated.

Contradictory.

Slow.

Demanding trust.

Forcing patience.

Igniting grief.

Leaving me with nothing but the present in which to make a different choice.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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The irony is baked right into the title of this piece because, truly, every age has been held together by a profusion of anxiety carefully working its magic to hold my existence steady on this earth.

Anxiety has always been momentum. The wind beneath my sails, so to speak.

Fuel when I refused to eat.

Friend when I had none.

Refuge when raucous instability churns around me.

In the depths of my eating disorder, I was often offered medicine in various forms to squelch the onslaught of imbalanced neurochemicals and thoughts that were the very antithesis of what recovery required of me.

But I always declined, knowing that I needed Anxiety and nothing could replace her.

She kept the depression away. Or, I suppose, when depression came knocking, Anxiety was the only one convincing enough to get me out of bed.

Anxiety fueled the disordered behavior I clung to. Grueling rules to keep me thin were strictly enforced by this omnipresent dictator.

Sitting through the discomfort it raised in my body – tight chest, shallow breathing, untamed electricity pulsing through my veins – seemed a small price to pay for the control it ushered. Conducting life seamlessly, while I watched from the sidelines in awe. Sure, I felt left out from time to time, and often I longed to jump into the action, confident that I had a thought or opinion that could be of crucial assistance.

But Anxiety always turned me down. I was a novice after all. Nothing more than a scared little girl who knew nothing of the horrors that lay beyond my sideline safe haven.

Anxiety saved me from choices and their consequences. It navigated the churning sea with deft confidence. It wove the tapestry of my life with nimble fingers.

All it asked for in return was my silence & submission.

Don’t get in the way, little girl.

Then Anxiety almost killed us both, power-hungry insanity sinking the ship, and I had to claw my way free from its delusional antics and fight like hell to keep my head above water.

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Therapy has kept me treading water, yes. It has even taught me how to swim, to some degree.

It’s given me language and knowledge, and I do believe that knowledge is a sword. But what therapy has never given me, until maybe recently, is any training on how to wield said sword, and who I should be aiming for when I do.

So often, I feel that I am my own worst enemy. That to punish myself is to punish away my pain. As if depriving myself will somehow lead me to clarity instead of just diminishing me to nothingness. For years, I didn’t know how to fight, only to defend.

A smaller target is harder to hit.

Without a shield or a weapon with which to fight back, my best choice was to hide. And the best way to hide was by letting Anxiety mask me, protect me, guide me, save me.

Friend or foe, then?

This wicked thing.

This unforgivable curse.

This neighbor.

This adversary.

This savior.

This sentence.

This regret.

It’s all fun and games watching from the sidelines until you realize how desperately you wish to be playing too.

So slowly, and quietly, and not all at once, and sometimes not at all, I’ve been memorizing the moves. Mapping out plays. Learning my opponents. Strengthening my emaciated muscles.

I’ve been reopening old wounds in therapy and in writing. I have been weathering the onslaught of heretofore unfelt feelings bleeding profusely from these gaping wounds.

Therapy teaches me not to frantically and haphazardly stitch but to instead will the infection to drain away, so that these wounds might finally begin to heal.

This is how I grow strong. Strong enough, I hope, to finally play in the game, too.

28 years in, I finally worked up the courage to ask Anxiety if I could show her what I’m worth now.

Put me in, coach.

And then I realized, in her menacing leer, in the gleam of her claws, in the show of her teeth, who the real opponent was all along.

She’s never intended to let me set foot on this battlefield.

And recognizing my newfound strength and swordsmanship, she now sees me, as I see her. An enemy to be vanquished.

We’re in the midst of a teetering stand-off this very minute, as I write. Somewhere, deep in my soul, I can feel just how pivotal the outcome of this war will be.

And she is playing dirty.

She knows me well.

She has years on me and of me.

She knows exactly which strings to pull.

She’s already got me eating less, to slowly deplete and confuse my will.

I’m caving in on myself bit by bit as her advantage gains on the narrow space between us.

I’m pulling away from Hope as she throws the full force of her might like a razor-sharp wedge between us.

Reality is dancing in and out of focus.

The waters churn in her wrath.

The air is depleting of oxygen.

I’m dizzy when I stand.

My fledgling muscles tremble on the edge of failure.

Maybe I wasn’t strong enough for this fight after all…

It’s all in my head, yet it rings in my bones. The ache, the seductive pull from my nervous system to make a tactical retreat. My brain is scrambling for that sword of knowledge. It’s there.

Adrenaline builds just enough that I might get in one last fateful swipe at her.

But first, I must remember:

How. To. Breathe.

Because if I’m going down, this time, I’m going down swinging. Hard.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, Part 3 of my Friendship Serial (catch up here), to bring you a drunk at 2 am recap of my 10-year high school reunion.

For the record, I have neither edited nor even re-read this since I wrote it Sunday morning, and I do not remember what it says. I’ll find out when it lands in my inbox, as you’ve now found it in yours.

Apologies if I repeat myself in this preface, but I feel it’s important to provide some sober context for this experience…

I was unequivocally one of the least likely people to attend this particular function – save maybe only for that one kid who never spoke a word in 6 years and walked to and from campus every day on the side of the highway… we all thought he carried a gun in his backpack, but I digress – I spent most of high school trying to survive what was happening in my head and at home, so though my graduating class was quite small even by exclusive uptight private school standards, I probably could pick maybe 30 or so students out of a lineup.

I am not advocating for anyone to go to an event like this, because to each their own. High school itself was not a major player in my trauma, though it may have at times added to the pile. I feel like the list of attendees fits this description, too, based on what little I know about them.

Anyway, this is all just to illuminate the uncharacteristic nature of whatever is splayed out below.

I welcome questions in the comments to give more context or just more gossip, too!

Now onto the show…

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Drunk thoughts at 2am from my 10 year high school reunion:

First, some very important context — I married my high school best friends older brother. It was unexpected and seemed like a summer fling at the time right as we were graduating high school, until it turned into a 10year relationship, bi-continental moves, two shared dogs, buying a house together, and then marriage. Oops.

Anyway, so said high school best friend, C, and I graduated in 2016 (really aging myself here but oh well). And at the time we were nearly inseparable. Co-editor-in-chief of our high school yearbook, besties, head of the yoga club (that didn’t actually exist), you get the idea.

Then at a post-grad week at the beach, I went on my first date with her brother, R. She knew, kind of, but it was quite a tale- for another time- but this is all to say, we graduated on the same day in June 10 years ago.

Also a story for another time but I was, troubled, as you may have gleaned from my other writing, in high school. I was undeniably a loner- oh I had my friends and was involved on paper- but I graduated with 144 people in my class, and I think I could pick 30 or so out in a lineup.

I am your stereotypical anti-candidate for reunion attendance at any age. But somehow, my sister in law/ former best friend was on the planning committee for just this occasion and I ended up facing a very uncomfortable two text exchange and two years of subsequent grief- or two hours in an awkwardly lit and empty restaurant in our home town with 40 people I went to high school with, and many not on my lineup list.

Needless to say, I was anxious. Not to mention, C and I haven’t had a real conversation in several years ourselves. And here we are, playing dress-up like nothing has changed since 2016.

We end up being the first people there, equally a nightmare, and head straight to the bar. You do not get through a night like this sober.

(and for those of you who have noted themes of sobriety in my previous work, I was sober for a very long time purely out of personal choice and preference, not due to dependency or problem…. So now i go in and out of phases with drinking probably for better and for worse.)

Pinot grigios in hand, C and I go greet some of the first people to show up. C was much more sociable in high school than I was. At some point in this night I asked her how many of the current attendees she had kissed. More than 20%.

So no surprises as people smiled somewhat unknowingly at me and then gave C big hugs with enthusiasm. This neither bugged me nor surprised me.

We end up in a conversation with my best friend, M’s, two exes, one who was on C’s kiss list, for a little too long for comfort. 10 years may have passed but we’re still us, right?

We make the rounds and by person number 5, I have talked to more of my classmates in my 20s than I ever had in the 20 years we spent together prior. No matter. The wine cures all.

A girl I used to know well - in the 3rd grade - is there and I go up to her, emboldened by adrehnaline and alcohol, and tell her I see her on social media from time to time and think she is so cool.

“Oh that’s all fake" she tells me in mock humility.

“All social media is” I reply.

But then she goes on to tell me, I think unexpectedly candid herself, that she had been rereading my instagram captions and thinking about how I am a really good writer.

Fuck ya, best compliment. Love her.

Then C and I move on to strike up a conversation with my another former friend of mine from my bus in 3rd and 4th grade. She is undeniably the coolest in the room but it’s clear it wasn’t effortless.

I hug her uncomfortably and we have the same comcersation I’ve already had with all of these other losers… “where do you live?” “What do you do for work?”

Like a $250K education couldn’t buy any of us an original thought.

Glass of wine no.3 and suddenly these faces seem less threatening. I’m reminding two boys that we once got burritos together in freshman year of college and taking a hit off of a girl I played Barbie’s with but haven’t talked to in 15 years’ vape.

“I have become the biggest stoner.” She tells me as I am coughing at whatever the fuck I just inhaled.

Then shit gets surreal. Like I am having an out of body experience acting as a version of myself that is undeniably attempting to mask my uncomfortability and intoxication.

It does a pretty good job because suddenly…

I’m bubbly.

I’m chatty.

I’m telling stories.

I’m fitting in.

I end up in a conversation with M’s former friend group (M and I were somehow best friends without ever really having the same friends), a group of girls I always thought were hierarchically above me in high school.

A girl, the girl, M asked me to talk to when she suspected this girl too of developing an eating disorder. (a bit more on her in a story to be released soon)

She’s telling me about fucking 57 year old men and how apparently the nerdiest guy in our grade is now hot shit to all of the single girls here tonight. And I’m nodding and laughing along like I’ve always belonged here. Like I had the potential in me all along to be less than the outcast I was in high school.

Buuuuut, I don’t. Because her laugh is fake, her lifestyle scares me, and I’m pretty sure she’s high on coke. I’m nodding along but I’m thinking about my bed and what my husband is doing and when the last time I got this drunk was and she’s thinking about DW.’s dick and telling me how fucked up she got last night.

And I’m laughing with her like there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

I see C is stuck in a conversation about the love lost between a boy who she has formerly made out with and his current gf who he lives with. He doesn’t love her, but should he tell her?

Duh.

And C is clearly uncomfortable and her other former ex won’t leave her alone and I’m having an extremely weird conversation now with the former love of M’s life who I used to be insanely jealous of for stealing her from me (drama queen party of 1) and I’m telling him what hot shit she is now (because he’s only ever dated girls that look just like M since they broke up and he recently got engaged) and M is definitely not hot shit but I love her and fuck him because I remember the day he broke her heart. I remind him how I slapped him in the 6th grade, something M has never let me forget, because he was being insufferable and wouldn’t give me my folder back and what’s an 11 year old girl to do in these conditions.

C and I finally make eye contact and I give her a pleading look to get me the fuck out of here because the alcohol may be talking for me now but I still know I’ve had about all of this crowd I can handle for at least the next 10 years.

I’m 6, and I’m 16, and I’m 28 all at once so basically I have no idea what is going on here and if we don’t leave now I’m going to lose my shit.

C and I are ubering home and saying sweet things to each other that we probably mean but will be too ashamed of to talk about again in the morning. We were best friends how the fuck did a man, who just so happened to be the love of my life and her brother, end up getting in our way.

We get home and C’s mom, my mother in law is awake still and hovering around as C putters to make us pasta considering all we ate for dinner were 3 focaccia squares because oh wait- our reunion was in a bread factory of all places.

C (and R’s) mom is intense. One of those women you know you’ll never get it right with. She only likes me because I’m quiet and flattering as a default whenever she’s near. C is eyeing me like “can she just fucking go to bed” and eventually she does in time for C’s dad, also an absolute wild card of a man, gets home from work.

He looks in the fridge, mutters about how he guessed he just won’t eat today, pours himself a drink, and then excuses himself for bed. Ozempic got him and it shows.

C and I go up to her room which I haven’t been in since senior prom and she’s revealing some of her family woes to me — a first.

I’m drunk as shit but keeping up with her and encouraging her. Trying to show her she’s not alone by telling her similar stories about how R feels about their family and how it breaks my heart.

But trying not to take it too far because our newfound camaraderie is tenuous and C can be unforgiving if you push her too far.

And then we parted ways. Me to sleep in her brother’s bedroom that I was once scolded at by their mom for being inside of at all.

I’m washing my face and thinking about the former versions of me that might wake up tomorrow and be ashamed to face what drunk current me said or did, and then quietly realizing I didn’t do anything but exist for once in a crowd of people I used to be unable to be seen by — to the point of physical illness.

What a wild and wonderful thing to exist here on this earth. And to experience that living in infinite ways that you never expected.

I almost didn’t make it out of high school alive. But here I am, like my tattoo says, living despite (and, I’d now argue, in spite) of it all…

This is a raw, unedited and unfiltered drunk take on one of the weirdness nights of my life.

Here’s to finding healing in spontaneous moments a decade later.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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“I’m 26 and have no friends. And I truly mean, zero friends. I don’t mean I have a few acquaintances that I catch up with from time to time, but no close friends. No. I mean, if I died today, only a handful of people (all blood related) would attend my funeral. That sounds like a morbid thought, I know. But this time last year, almost to the day, I came scarily close to dying. I was battling multiple organ failure in a coma, recovering for months. So the funeral thought is one that has entered my mind many times over the last year. The thing is, it wasn’t always like this. In fact, I had an abundance of close friends from the age of 18 to 21. I moved to another city for university and formed friendshios that were more like sisterhoods. It was so bizarre though. The pandemic hit, and we all moved back to our home towns across the country. At first, we exchanged texts and the occasional call. But it wasn’t long before we all ceased to forget about each other’s entire existence. I think, they had friends waiting for them back home. Whereas the friends I had at home weren’t really friends; they were toxic so I distanced myself from them. And from that moment, 5 years ago, I have lived a life completely void of female friendships… The other main problem being, I have always been self-employed, working from home, so I also never had the opportunity to make ‘work friends’. I also gave up drinking entirely since leaving University as I simply didn’t like it anymore. That factor alone makes it harder to gain and maintain friendships than people realise. I live with my fiancé who I have loved for almost a decade now. He’s my best friend, and I am truly blessed. I’m incredibly close with my mum, my dad and my older sister. I am surrounded by love, and I never take that for granted. That being said, there are moments where a wave pulls me under and I suddenly feel incredibly lonely. It’s the moments where I want to do something girly; like go to a Sabrina Carpenter concert, fan-girl over the new Taylor Swift album, go to get my nails done, gossip over the new reality TV show. Once every few months when it really hits, I find myself curled up in bed, in my fiancè’s arms, sobbing over how much I want a friendship group. I made attempt to reconnect with my old friends, but it instantly slipped through the cracks; they were either uninterested or busy with other things in life. I suppose we have all changed a great deal in five years. With it being my reality for so many years, I have grown used to it. I am comfortable in my own company; in fact, I really enjoy it. And with being a shy person, being alone is often more comfortable than not. But whenever I wonder: who would be the bridesmaids at my wedding? I find myself in a puddle of tears again.”

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Dear friend,

First, I must acknowledge the hurt that rings out in your words, I am sorry you are feeling this way. Your feelings are valid, I see them. And I see you. I also see in you the gratitude and hope you maintain despite what weighs on you today. You are strong.

What you have been through in the last year is life-altering, self-altering. You have come face-to-face with your own mortality, and I can say from experience that this is something many can never truly relate to. I am so glad you are here today, sharing this earth with me.

I wrote a piece recently, maybe you have read it, where I liken this type of experience to an awakening. A shine that certain people have, where the illusions that protect us and allow us to live comfortably in the world and get along with others easily, if superficially, are stripped away as a result of living through something that makes you realize what is important in life.

Not the latest clothes.

Not looking cool for social media.

Not being caught up with celebrity gossip.

Not career promotions.

Not even money made.

(Thought all of these things have a valid space in our lives and can be fun.)

But you, I imagine, are now connected most to living a life well spent.

Experiencing emotion.

Finding moments of joy.

Exploring yourself.

Loving with a fierce tenacity.

Finding beauty in moments big and small, hedonism be damned.

You have stared at your mortality and had the meaning of life reflected back at you.

This takes power. This takes courage. This takes all of you.

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You said it yourself, you, at one time in your life, had an abundance of friendships. This tells me you are capable of connection, likable, and well worth knowing (I could’ve guessed this myself). I would count myself lucky to be among your inner circle.

You remind me of me, of the once-close friendships. The isolation of working from home. The sobriety by choice makes it ever harder to align with your peers. A longtime partner who has stood by you, but I wonder if you, too, have found this isolating at times, too?

These are all tangible proofs that you know how to choose yourself and maintain your boundaries, at least in what you will accept in relationships. Regardless, I recognize and honor the insecurities that can arise when straying from the conventional path.

You are capable of finding connections, though maybe they will not come in the ways you expect.

You have merit and a unique soul that interests and inspires others.

You have power in not settling for less than you deserve.

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I encourage you to first, perhaps, to consider befriending yourself. What do you love to do? What have you always wanted to try? Where have you always wanted to go?

Can you date yourself, become comfortable and confident (certainly not at first if we are anything alike) with doing all that you hope to do someday with others, first with yourself?

Can you walk hand in hand with yourself down new paths?

Explore new places, and it’s likely that you will find new people.

And instead of seeing all of the wasted opportunity in those new people and your own inability to connect (which is not an inability at all, it’s just a fear we all carry in the face of the unknown), can you empathize that those people too are out here with themselves trying to find their place in this wild and unpredictable experience of living.

Can you lend a small smile or a compliment to someone who is also standing out in the crowd alone and wary?

Can you lend that same kindness to yourself, then, too?

Maybe you find a place you like to go, a hobby, or an experience that becomes routine in your life. Maybe there you find new souls who are on a path that led them, too, to this place. Maybe with repetition, they become more familiar. Maybe in the shared trying, you find yourself reaching out to them more. Maybe one day you will offer to meet them outside of this safe space and get to know them better.

Maybe they are a ship in the night, or maybe they are your new friend.

We are all afraid to be judged by others. We have all been hurt by people once upon a time, and we learned to build defenses and protect ourselves from feeling hurt again.

We are all unsure at times of what makes us worthy of love and attention. We all cling to the familiarity of our comfort zones.

We are all always discovering more about who we are, what we want, and what we need.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

-wise words from a therapist who saved my life

Though not everyone you meet will be for you, it is important to remember that you have not yet met all of the important people in your life.

This possibility is always there. You cannot lose it by spending 6 months or 6 years to yourself.

If you know your worth and lead with the authenticity that rings true in your heart, you will never be led astray. Trust that you are worth knowing.

Trust that there is someone, and likely someones, unknown out there looking for you too.

You create the opportunity to find them simply by putting yourself out in the world as you are.

The safety to do this starts first from within. Let this take time. It is the foundation for accessing and accepting all that the universe has ready for you.

The love you develop for yourself will attract those destined to love you, too.

And you don’t have 0 friends, for we are friends, and I will be here for you.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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I tried to find a home in work for many years, hiding in it when life around me felt too overwhelming and uncharted to throw my energy at. All I reaped in return was burnout and a forgotten identity.

I’m not naïve enough to overlook the influence that our work lives have, though. The toll it can take on the body. It’s ability to kick up old wounds in new ways. The ever-present politics of people.

So I came into therapy chewing on a truly ridiculous situation that had been playing out in my workplace over the last few weeks. One I loathed to spend my precious hour on, but one that I felt in my mounting anxiety would sit, unprocessed, until I let it go.

On a need-to-know level, I am a Director of Marketing for a small to mid-sized e-commerce company. This allows me to make decisions for new programs and features on our website. I set one such program in motion months ago, and as launch approached, those responsible for executing the vision missed the mark. It happens. I forgive. We move on.

A new launch date is set, and in the week leading up to it, somehow, chaos ensues. I am remote, and most of the company is not, so it sounded to me like office chatter snowballed to the point where people were going into other offices to belittle and degrade those who had been working on this project (a very inconsequential project, mind). My boss, the leader of the crusade, then abruptly canceled the program launch against my protest and offered no good explanation to those who had worked quite hard on it.

Then, subsequent meetings were held to talk about how my team and I had hurt her feelings because, in the process of killing the program, she felt like she was being a bully.

She was?

I am a big girl; I have no qualms or ill will about an executive business decision that does not impact my life in any way. I do, however, have a problem with how this played out on a human level.

Secret conversations, conspiring, unwillingness to listen, unnecessary personal attacking, and office cliques ganging up on the team members that make this company run.

“I hate work,” I stated matter-of-factly to Dr. K.

Not because of the work itself, but because of the hierarchy that allows for superiority complexes to run rampant. No empathy, no compassion, just “do this or else”.

I do not play nicely in these spaces. I am not afraid to be confrontational. I’m not aggressive about it, but I am highly aware and articulate, so I will point out the contradictions in your words or actions. But this does not always serve me well at work, and, logically, I know from years of childhood experiences trying to reason with the unreasonable adults to whom I was subordinate that it’s a waste of breath every time.

The old wound and the present injustice are activated regardless of logic, for try as I might, logic does not negate feeling.

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The wise Dr. K reminds me that hate is personally inflicted poison. It does nothing but ensure I spend 40+ hours a week living in a state of hatred.

She asks me how I feel… defeated, useless, angry, frustrated, etc.

“How does that show up in your body?”

Tense, jittery, impulsive, heavy, empty. And usually, I am out of energy for work or anything else by Wednesday morning.

“Can you just kiss ass and cash your paycheck?”

No.

“Why do you think that is?”

Because I grew up the powerless victim of a narcissistic tyrant. I spent 22 years kissing her ass as a survival mechanism. Doing so now feels like defeat.

“That is a teenage part of you talking - can you hear her?”

…

“Think about it. You are an adult. You are employed at will. You are rewarded for this with a paycheck.

A job is just a job; it does not reflect more about your life than what you are willing to do for money, which is something we all need.”

I hear you. I know you are right. And something inside me can’t accept it.

“Right, because that teenage girl is unhealed and went unheard. Your boss is not listening when you speak, which makes her feel threatened. It makes sense.”

I am trying, I reassure her. Previous versions of me would have quit already. When this week of unnecessary drama unfolded, I was activated. My feelings and traumas were stirred, and my nervous system told me I was not safe here anymore.

Run it urged.

Hide it begged.

Fight it offered.

I managed to do none of the above, with difficulty.

We got on those meetings where, somehow, it was my fault my boss had been acting like a bully, and I didn’t react.

She wanted me to react.

By doing and saying nothing at all except listing our pragmatic next steps, sans emotion or opinion, I maintained control of my power.

“Your nervous system pulls you towards what is familiar, what it knows. That is not always the path to safety or success. Growth begins when you feel that pull and choose to go a different direction,” Dr. K responds.

Or if you choose to do nothing at all.

“Exactly.”

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And it’s true. Silence is a superpower. The ability to know you are activated, know your body is pulling for fight or for flight, and to sit with it while doing nothing at all.

People lose control over you. Their persuasion and influence decline. But they have nothing but their own internal nervous system responses to your silence to contend with because you’ve offered them nothing to respond to, nothing to argue, nothing to blame.

If they hold your silence, your lack of reaction, against you, then the joke is kind of on them? It seems a little nuts to be mad at someone for doing nothing at all.

It is unsatisfying to the body and brain, of course. The carefully crafted rebuttal that was sure to knock your opponent on their ass has to sit inside of you, begging for an exit strategy. And you want to be heard. You want to be seen. Silence can feel like it accomplishes neither of these things.

But, and here I’ll argue with myself, I think it rather does accomplish both hearing and seeing yourself. Knowing that your peace is yours to keep and to honor. And in silence, you honor your right to remain at peace.

Instead of living in anguish and hate, live in your peace so determinately that the actions, words, and judgments of others find no purchase in your soul.

-June

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“Here goes, my relationship has lost its luster. We live together, but we couldn't be farther away from each other. Working with my friend has ruined our friendship because she's a terrible manager.”

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Dear friend,

Losing a loved one, in whatever way, is a terrible thing to experience. I am sorry to hear you are in the midst of drifting away from a person who, it sounds like, was once central to your life.

So much so that you built your life around theirs to an extent, it seems.

I honor and hold you in this time of confusion and grief.

I can acknowledge from experience the difficulties of both living and working with someone you care about. There is, then, both at home and at work, a tenuous hierarchy between you both, I imagine. One that didn’t just spring into being but has perhaps developed as circumstances have shaped you both in unexpected ways.

When friendships begin, they mostly start on equal footing. At least to some degree, as both parties must make certain concessions and adaptations in order to fit two mismatched lives together.

It’s never seamless, of course, because we humans are flawed. We live in a flawed system. We are forced to compete for resources that could (and should) be accessible to us in abundance. We are insecure, often seeing first in others the qualities we feel we lack.

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And yet, to live is to love. We yearn for it. Like a vital nutrient, our bodies crave Love and the potent acceptance it offers.

Every relationship carries this potential. It’s why we form bonds and are drawn to people like moths to a flame. And this is why when it is good, it is great. And when it is bad, it is awful.

Because to get the love we so desperately desire, we must be vulnerable. It is the sacrifice real love demands in return for all it bestows.

It is why love hurts more than anything as it falls apart. As our ability to maintain consistent vulnerability wanes in the face of trial and conflict, so does the love it begets.

We slowly lose that acceptance and our ability to offer it back. Conditions seep in and weigh down what once was light and easy. The heft breeds resentment; the ever-growing distance allows comparison and strife to rise again like barriers between you both. The nervous system recognizes the need for caution in the face of this threat, and there you are.

Strangers to lovers.

To strangers again.

The only way back is to claw back instinct and again touch the vulnerability beneath. If not for this person’s sake, then certainly for your own. Ask yourself if this person can still be to you what they once were.

And if so, what conditions must change for you both to reignite the flame?

And if not, what conditions must change for your heart to move on and be free again?

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When you have your answer, I caution you to act not.

Pause & sit with it first.

Reflect on it.

Feel it.

Ask yourself again.

Be curious about what either choice might look like when it comes time to act.

Be compassionate for yourself and for this person. There likely was no intent to harm on either side.

Be patient with your heart as it relearns how to trust.

Be confident that you deserve to heal and love again.

Be first to yourself what this friend has not recently been for you.

In that authenticity, bravery, and vulnerability, you will have your answer and know what to do with it.

with gratitude,

-June

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→ Read part 1 of this serial here.

→ Name/person key at the bottom of this article.

Friendships are hard when you’re a seer (and I don’t mean a woo-woo seer like Prof. Trelawney in Harry Potter).

When you have seen more of the world and more of yourself in a few short years than most of your peers, you see things. Patterns, delusions, and often lies people tell themselves and others to be better accepted, to better belong.

My dad, masochist that he is, calls this “the shining,” yes, in reference to the Stephen King novel.

I see it most in people who have been confronted with their own mortality young, for whom the rose-colored glasses on life have been removed, the glass shattered.

Some people get it, and some people are content to never see clearly.

Ignorance is bliss after all.

Some of us are not destined to reside in bliss forever. Awareness seeps in and makes living infinitely more complicated. Though infinitely richer in equal measure, I’d argue.

You may or may not be aware of a statistic from a few years ago suggesting that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% truly are.

Terrifying as that statistic feels, if you’re among the 10-15% with “the shining,” this probably feels about right.

How often are you driving only for someone to pull some crazy stunt right in front of your car?

How often does someone reach over you or step in front of you at the supermarket?

How often do you find yourself over-explaining a basic sentiment to blank stares and deaf ears?

This is all to say that for the 10-15% to find each other, recognize the shine, and be well-suited for friendship is rare.

Most of us have maybe a handful of one-off friendships forged through shared experience or adversity, where mutual respect and vulnerability are the foundation – or so, anyway, do R (my husband) and I.

Neither of us was popular, nor were we unpopular. But we respectively never chose to be surrounded by a group of people we barely knew and call ourselves cool for it.

We both harbor insecurities about this. Particularly in college, I felt that the time I spent talking on the phone or on FaceTime to R, and my own recluse proclivities, kept me from expanding my social circle. I developed a preverbial chip on my shoulder because of this.

R, too, has a similar chip, perhaps one we bonded over filling for each other. The seer in me has always recognized the seer in him.

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It was rather uncharacteristic of me to put myself in uncertainty’s way by going on that first friend-date with E. I know how to mask well, better than I realized, as we yapped enthusiastically about the bachelor (which I only watched because of R, actually), and serial TV shows we both loved like One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl.

Then onto our gamer boyfriends, both tall, opinionated, slightly traumatized, and possessors of big personalities. We couldn’t believe it, “are we dating the same person???” We laughed at this shared identity that lessened the space between two strangers.

We parted ways in agreement that we would go out next as a foursome.

And so we did.

R and I primped nervously, fighting over our one full-length mirror as the time to meet for our first-ever double date loomed nearer by the hour.

We nervously gamed planned points of conversation. I relayed similarities E had mentioned about her boyfriend, L, that I thought might resonate with R.

Anxiety bubbled in us both as we walked the two blocks to one of our favorite bars, conveniently located on our turf to give us the home-field advantage.

We sat nervously across from E and L, the lively atmosphere around us occasionally breaking our awkward silences as we muttered through introductions and gazed at the menu a little longer than necessary.

Eventually, E and I struck up a conversation while R and L sized each other up... boys.

That is, until she and I were the ones sent to walk next door to pick up our food, and the children were left to fend for themselves.

“I hope they don’t just stare at each other the whole time we are gone,” I laughed to E.

“Ugh, I warned L that he needed to talk tonight; he’s quiet around strangers,” she vexed back.

But our fears were unfounded as we made our way back to the table, a new round of drinks in front of our men, as they furiously discussed some game they both couldn’t beat.

E and I exchanged hopeful glances as we quietly dug into our food.

Hope and anticipation buzzed stronger than our drinks as R and I stumbled home that night. Friends.

The potential rang out infinitely before us.

A series of hang-outs followed throughout the summer, each one a blur of nervous laughter, new experiences, slightly forced conversation, and alcohol. A lot of alcohol.

L and R had a quick camaraderie. L was a bit of a bad influence in a way that I thought R really needed. It quickly became a practice for both of the boys to surreptitiously steal something from wherever we went: candles, glasses, coasters, anything they could pocket inconspicuously.

Then, as the nights recapped at whoever’s apartment before we parted ways, the illicit goods were exchanged to be kept by the other.

Everywhere we went, we started to spot the same red candle, and E and I even noticed it as a prop on TV shows we watched. So we made a pact to each steal “the red candle”, without the other’s noticing – which all four of us did eventually accomplish, and I’m sure still have to this day…(you may recognize it).

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R and I had a comical drunk photo of L that we printed out with “Have you seen this man?” in bold lettering beneath, which we proceeded to plaster all over their neighborhood on his birthday.

L was a prankster too and probably got R countless times with fake phone calls over the summer (R is for sure too gullible for his own good).

Some hangouts were tamer, board games or singing along to 2000s bangers on YouTube from the couch.

But regardless of what we were doing, it was alcohol that forged the friendship forward.

As the summer faded to fall, though really fall everywhere else was peak summer in San Diego, L started to talk about expanding the group.

One afternoon, L, sprawled on our living room floor, said, “I have a goal for each of us by the end of the year. We all have to go out and find 2 people and bring them into the group.”

“What?” went E, R, and I from the sofa.

“Ya, I think we need to take this to the next level, we need more people.”

“You want us to just go find two randos to be friends with?” I asked incredulously. Anxiety building in me at the very prospect.

“Ya, I want to know so many people that I’m just lost in the crowd, you know, then we can all go out and just not know what’s even going on.”

Not L’s first red flag, but E brushed him off, and to be fair, he did say a lot of out-of-pocket things like this that she easily dismissed.

But for R and me, the threat was deposited, noted, and filed away in those dark boxes of our fears.

Were we not enough? Decades of life experience and deep-seated insecurities resurfaced as an ever-present undercurrent in the following months.

And then, one otherwise mundane afternoon, E texted me, “Hey!! We went out last night with this cool couple. I met the girl on bumble bff last week, and then we all went out last night, and I think she and her boyfriend will get along with all of us really well. When are you and R free?”

Enter T & D.

to be continued…

this story gets out of hand quickly.

Friendship Key:

• June - me

• R - my husband (then boyfriend)

Together 7 years (at this point): socially awkward, a little co-dependent, generally great communication, hadn’t made new friends since the start of college.

Couple #1, E & L

• E - first girl I met on Bumble BFF: basic & cheugy, very surface level, obsessed with T-Swift & The Bachelor

• L - E’s boyfriend: a little dark, drinks too much, withholding, big unhealed trauma energy, gamer

Together 2 Years: E made the rules. L probably didn’t like her. Group kingpins, and they liked it that way.

Couple #2, T & D:

• T - girl E met on Bumble BFF: quiet, shy, cat lover, probably closeted gay

• D - T’s boyfriend: always high, long hair, deadbeat

Together 5 years: Foodies, travelers, kind of boring. BIG malicious gossips.

-June

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My first word was “f*ck,” I’ve been told (epic, I know), as a ball I was playing with rolled off the deck of our childhood home.

When my step-dad first met me, he worried my mom abused me, based on the myriad of bruises and scratches that covered my little body. It took him 5 minutes of watching unruly toddler June gravitate like a magnet to every sharp corner in the house to quickly dispel the concern.

I never crawled as a baby. I skipped straight to walking. A move my knees are paying for as I creep ever closer to 30.

Chaos and conviction have shadowed me through life.

Ballerina lessons, nope.

Gymnastics classes, nope.

Piano, hell no (6 years and 14 teachers before my parents finally gave up on this one, if that tells you anything).

I was rough. We would go to my aunt and uncle's house, and I would spend hours wrestling with my same-age male cousin until he caved and admitted defeat.

I was loud. Forever reprimanded for not using my “inside voice.” My stepmom, D, would literally charge me money from my petulant joke of an allowance for stomping around her house (and leaving lights on, and yelling, and incorrectly answering impromptu multiplication questions, etc.)

“Bull in the china shop” was a commonly used phrase as childhood play would inevitably end in a broken lamp or a cut knee. They laughed at me. They did not embrace me.

I was synical, catering to the masochism of my father in an attempt to garner his validation.

I made my mom cry; the angst and insecurity I bottled at my dad’s house (for survival there) would spill over into harsh words and unnecessary anger directed at my mom.

At 11 years old, I was dropped off at sleepaway camp for the first and only time. My mom’s parting words to me were terrifying: “Don’t leave your face like that, you look like a bitch. Smile.” And while I can’t disagree with her advice, it was probably warranted, that may not have been the best way to convey the message.

Nothing about me has ever been delicate, ladylike, or remotely soft. None of those qualities were innate, nor would they have served me well, but it didn’t take long for me to become supremely aware of how much space these qualities took up where there wasn’t any room for me.

I began to gravitate towards tall girls as my friends; they made me feel small, safe, and cared for.

Because I saw myself so dysmorphically, I felt larger than life. HUGE.

I became acutely aware of my presence wherever I went.

I started to compare myself to other girls for whom puberty was similarly striking, but, unlike for me, it looked elegant on them, draping their petite figures in soft curves and newfound length.

Comparison planted its seed in my eyes and grew to eclipse all clarity. It tangled with the reprimands of my youth…

Too loud

Too clumsy

Too emotional

Too sharp

Too much

Too much

Too much

And yet, somehow never enough?

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So I erased myself.

Not all at once.

Just little moments here and there where I chose to cloak my body, stifle my words, hide my feelings, defer my needs.

Like a chameleon, I took on just enough of those around me to cater seamlessly to whatever responses I intuited they coveted most.

In college, my friends would see me around campus and try to wave or say hi. But behind my ever-present sunglasses and noise-canceling headphones, their enthusiasm was for not.

I masked my shame and shrank my body until I could awkwardly squeeze into whatever space there was left to me.

But, much like shoving a square-edged peg into an organically shaped hole, there was friction and resistance. Imperfection barked at my aching angles. My hardness did not lessen as I ceased to exist.

If anything, it fortified as my color and joy drained, and all that remained was the hand-laid brick wall around my heart constructed in my youth.

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Happiness and hope scared me. Unfamiliar as they were, they became forbidden fruit to my starving soul. I was the one who despaired, whose harsh sarcasm was good for a laugh or a leer behind the back of someone who no doubt deserved the biting criticism. I could protect and defend, but not nurture.

I knew how to hurt with my words; it was a rite of passage in my upbringing. Targeting vulnerabilities and using them as deflections against those who threatened my own.

I was only ever taught to hurt people with my hurt. I attracted darkness in others who divulged their fears and wounds to me, but rarely their hopes and loves.

I was known for a good wallow or gripe, but if I shared a nice word or sentiment, my friends would meet it with surprise and a ragging comment on “what did I do with June.”

I came to embrace it. If this is what makes me desirable and friend-worthy, I guess it’s all I have a right to be.

Cognitive dissonance chewed me up and spat me out mangled and unidentifiable. My deeply tangled sense of identity found itself in a state of perpetual siege.

For the entirety of my 20s, a battle has raged in my mind between who I want to be and all that I am not. All of my tryings and failings to belong, and my far and few attempts to actually become.

I tried on friends like hats, but in the end, my inability to bring anything to the table and my insecurity that they would someday recognize this led me to push connections away or form bad ones that only fueled my inner discontent.

I shied away from color, curating apartments with neat, beige perfection.

I washed my bruised and battered identity in the same.

I was supremely boring.

No longer too much, but far, far too little.

Too insignificant.

Too forgettable.

Too curated.

Too empty.

The harsh cuts I made to my once jagged corners of self had widdled me into oblivion.

I no longer had substance left to fit anywhere at all.

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So I’m starting from the beginning. Rebuilding this time only myself, no walls necessary.

Instead of inflexible bricks to support my new home, I’m choosing color. I’m choosing joy. I’m choosing soft fabrics and floral patterns. I’m constructing large stained-glass windows that let in the light. I’m building doors for friends, new and old, lookouts for spying, and gardens for musing, and lakes for swimming.

I want hidden passageways, disco balls, sunlight, and fields to run in.

I want sprawling blank space so that I might fill in more of my world as I grow BIG.

I want wildflowers to bloom where I step and rain to fall when I’m kissed.

I want to be warm and spread warmth with my touch.

I want to smile and make the world a better place for it.

I want to believe in the unbelievable.

I want to grow like Alice by embracing all that I might never make sense of, all that I am, all that I can be, and all that I am becoming.

I want to become so much that I might one day belong undilutedly and uncompromisingly to myself.

In recent months, I have painted the walls of my home green, blue, purple, and yellow.

I display momentos once relegated to drawers and bins with pride and care.

I walk past mirrors with blissful ignorance, content to be who I want to be rather than look how others expect me to look.

For once in my adult life, I find myself able to keep the plants alive and thriving.

Yesterday, I hung disco balls in my living room window. They refract the light streaming in, making it dance for me. May they dance their way into the depths of my soul, so that I, too, can live and thrive here.

Forever a work in progress, but now at least, a work of art.

-June

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“Was there really a lifetime waiting for us somewhere? Was there a world — quiet and kind — where I was yours, and you were mine, without the weight of doubt or the shadow of what we could never become?”

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Dear friend,

There were infinite lives spent together.

There were days filled with laughter and sun,

Where we danced and played hand in hand.

There were moments of tear-filled sorrow,

Where we held each other and wept in tandem.

There were infinite becomings together.

Where our souls spun the tapestry of life.

Where music and magic spilled from our love.

Where abundance could never overstay its welcome.

There were infinite loves, like ours.

Expanding the universe.

Brightening the stars.

Melding the worlds between us.

We were infinite.

Such that though we never met,

You were mine.

And, I was irrevocably yours.

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with gratitude,

-June

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“Sometimes I wish I could be on my own. Just looking after me. The constant thinking about how others will react to anything I do or say and trying so hard to be true to me, is a clash that reverberates through my soul. I do choose them over and over again because this is life, but in my dreams and my wanderings of the mind, I have a small cottage on a Scottish hill and I write, paint and teach to my hearts content. But maybe having this mind scape is enough. Because in the end, love will always win.”

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Dear friend,

Thank you for entrusting this space with your dreams and your fears. I see you, I am you.

I, too, have a mind scape that looks much like yours. A dreamy cottage, an overgrown garden, and ducks wandering both inside and out.

It’s a happy place where responsibilities amount to caring for animals and tending the vegetable patch. To cross-stitching, writing, and gazing off into the sunset at the end of each restful day.

Surely, a worthy mental escape, and perhaps a goal that the sum of your actions will someday lead you to if this is the life that truly lives in your heart. As you said, “love will always win.”

I do believe that what is meant for us will always find us. Certainly not what we think we want for ourselves, but what is right has a way of attracting us in the end.

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I wonder for you (and myself) what it would be like to tend to ourselves where we are currently planted first. Though the conditions might not be ideal, the soil rough and dry, we persist in reaching hungrily towards the sun.

Other flowers may bloom and grow around us, and we may feel too eager to prove ourselves among them, but it is not in our control how and when we bloom. It is only in the consistency to which we try, only for ourselves, to stretch into the light that we find it reaching back to pull us up in equal measure.

In my own life, and I am no expert yet at this, I have been working to pause before I speak or react to those in my company. The pause allows me to hear my automatic response, the one I think will please the original speaker, and then to hear - however fleetingly - how that response makes me feel internally.

Do I feel discord, knowing I am lying to fuel their ego?

Do I regret knowing that, in my immediate reaction, I would compromise something of myself?

Do I feel assured that my response aligns with my beliefs?

Do I feel acceptance, that though my response might be for their benefit, I know they need it, and it costs me nothing to lend them this kindness?

Do I feel like this is worth my response at all? Do I recognize a lost cause when I see one, and perhaps silence hurts me less?

It’s a moment, not always an accessible one, but I find that when I can allow for it, it helps differentiate the anxious reaction from the feelings attached to it.

Before I give away a piece of myself to be more digestible to others, can I perhaps honor that I deserve protection and peace more than they deserve my catering response?

I have struggled with this feeling for most of my life. My value has historically been tied to how acceptable I am to others. I am right if I made them laugh. I am valid if they agree with what I have to say. I am safer to hide parts of myself that I know they will not like or understand.

I write about this often.

There is nothing wrong with these parts of us that learned protection through adaptation in this, or any, manner.

Somewhere along the way, this was how you survived in the world, and how could survival be wrong?

Your mental escape tells me that you crave a space to show up for yourself. Not that your sole desire is to be alone on a hillside (lovely as this sounds), but that it is to be safe in who and how you are. Protected from the opinions of others that threaten to hurt your inner child or present-day identity.

That protection is within you. The love you have for yourself will keep you safe; it will indeed always win. It will be that cottage you find reprieve and comfort in. It will be rich and lovely and earthy and grounded. It will see storms pass and delight you with the safety of a home well cared for. One that no one can take away and no one can enter without your permission.

You build this cottage stone by stone, each time you choose yourself and realize you were okay & safe doing so.

I am rooting for you every step of the way.

with gratitude,

-June

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I had arrived on the doorstep of my future.

I cried during most of the flight (much to the horror of the middle-aged man seated next to me), reading little notes my family had sent me off with. I am a sentimental sap through and through, so I felt the weight of each and every goodbye. Friends texted me as I boarded the plane with congratulations and well-wishes. I felt loved.

I had no job, no plan, and though I was going to be living with my brother, I still owed him a rent amount higher than I’d ever been responsible for in my life. But something else seeped into my nerves and nostalgia… regret?

I had worked hard to get to the place I was leaving behind. It was no small effort to silently mask the scars left behind by my youth. To adopt adulthood with dignity. To swallow my emotions, as seemed to be what adults did, and march unto the breach (gilmore girls fans will get it) without looking back.

I didn’t feel particularly connected to my family, having traversed the growing-up process largely in spite of them. I had known for years that the West called to my spirit with whispered promises of detachment, independence, and long-coveted freedom.

My friends from school all had a year left to go, whereas I had graduated early due to my distaste for college as a concept.

Nothing was left for me on the East Coast; I had played my part well, and now it was my turn to be somewhere I was sure I belonged.

I stepped off my 6-hour flight and into paradise. My brother picked me up and drove us from the airport around the blue, glistening harbor and through the gleaming city that encompassed it.

And all I could think was holy shit. I live here.

I had imagined this day since I first decided I wanted to apply to UC schools back in my junior year of high school. Who I would be. The friends I would make. The tan I would get. The adventures I would go on.

That I would eat healthy, work out, and glow like the girls on Instagram.

And for a while, that’s exactly who I was.

I started shopping exclusively at the local farmers’ market.

I started a 200 hr yoga teacher training. (Truly a story that may come out soon because that was a wild ride of conspiracy theorists and cultural appropriation.)

I watched spectacular sunsets.

I didn’t bother to unpack the girl I was.

In the beginning, friends called to keep up. My then-boyfriend (now husband) R was contemplating his own path west. The girls in the yoga training were, on the whole, lovely. We ate lunch together every day at a little cafe down the block. Talking all the while about the bat-shit crazy things our teacher had said so far that day.

It was the closest sense of community I had possibly ever felt.

I wasn’t doing anything in particular to earn it either; I was just showing up. So I thought.

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But then the yoga teacher nearly broke both of my knees, and I was forced to sit out two of the four training weeks. Then, eventually, those weeks came to a close altogether, and as it turns out, most of those lovely girls I’d met were due to leave the area for one reason or another.

August rolled around, and my school friends became preoccupied with the impending school year.

I didn’t have a reason anymore to go somewhere every day, so I started to edge back into the all too familiar habit of keeping to my room. My brother and I were never particularly close, and neither of us was an extrovert. Aside from a daily “hey” when he’d get home from work, that relationship didn’t offer much reprieve from the loneliness that slowly set in.

I started to wonder if I’d make it here. My people, the ones I had worked so hard for, masked too well to preserve, were slipping away as a lack of shared experience distanced us more than even the 3000 miles between us.

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Thankfully, R came in the end. (Again, a story for another time. But if you’ve seen Good Will Hunting, that’s basically the premise.)

His presence was everything. I was no longer alone, because there he was, living just down the road from my brother and me.

After 3+ years of long-distance, the closeness and novelty of this city we now both called home thrust our relationship into a honeymoon renaissance period. We shared long days at the beach, tried new restaurants, took late-night walks to get ice cream, had sleepovers, and went apartment hunting.

I didn’t need friends to call or even friends to make. I had R.

Enter, March 2020.

R and I had moved into our little craphole 1-bed apartment just 2 weeks before the world went silent. We got our sofa delivered 1 DAY before, and thank god too, because can you imagine being couchless during the pandemic?

R and I were certainly in the privileged minority who mostly enjoyed lockdown. We both were cut to part-time at work, but unemployment benefits more than made up the difference. We played games and watched shows, and shared dinner dates at our intimate kitchen island. We got a puppy who spiced up the monotonous days and filled all 500sqft of our quarantine with joy (and pee).

This time was the ultimate permission for our recluse inclinations and mutual co-dependency to thrive, uninhibited.

2021 rolled through, and we sank further into our ways. Connections to faraway friends dwindled, and the novelty of our seclusion wore off. We affixed ourselves to a way of living that was passable, but undeniably unhealthy. We enabled each other to forgo individual exploration in favor of the safe confines of our shared space.

We disconnected further from our families, preferring our little trio and its bliss to the unsavory schema of our former families. We counted certain friends lost due to distance and time. And the isolation made us cling to each other that much harder.

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In 2022, I cracked. I was working three jobs, all remote and online. R had taken up online game streaming, which had him confined to his office for hours at a time. I was no longer speaking to my dad’s side of the family, and my mom’s side of the family suffered a tragic loss that made them distant, bordering on unreachable.

So, in my desperation for connection, I downloaded Bumble BFF. I made myself a profile and started swiping.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. I have no experience with “dating” apps, but I found the profiles of friendless humans in my area neatly curated for mass appeal, making it pretty hard to find a connection that went beyond the superficial. Not to mention, I had no idea what I wanted in a friendship; my other friends made young and clung to mostly out of necessity. Dearly as I love them all to this day, there are few of them for a reason, and no two are really anything alike.

Eventually, though, after a month of small talk with random humans over DM, I had a match with potential. An unassuming, kind-looking girl, E, around my age who moved to San Diego with her boyfriend, L, too. They were from the East Coast, she was from the city where I went to college, and we even had 1-2 mutual connections on Instagram.

I swiped yes, and we set up a first date; one I came back from positively buzzing. We talked for hours, and, best of all, we realized our boyfriends were basically the same person.

I rushed home to R, interrupted his gaming session to tell him, “I just found us new friends! We’re going to double date next week, it’ll be great.” (famous last words probably immortalized on a vod of his somewhere)

And thus, a foursome was born.

continued here

-June

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Somewhere, early on, I have to think I was a child who hoped, a child who approached the beauty in the world with bemused awe. I assume I didn’t always fear the gaze of strangers, and I could probably ramble on about my little girl hopes and dreams, never fathoming that one day others would use those things against me.

I used to have stuffed animals lining my bed. I slept with all of them. They all had names and lives and little personalities. They kept me company; I told them my secrets, and they told me their stories.

I loved them all. In the unabashed, wholehearted way that kids can love anything.

Love as a child has no consequence; it’s innate, it’s happy, it’s safe. Or at least it is when directed towards a cohort of cute inanimate objects.

I was loved as a child by my parents, smothered by my mother, who used to write me these cute notes about missing me when I was away at my dad’s house.

And to the best of his capability, my dad loved me too.

But it was different from one day to the next, from one house to the next; it changed. Love didn’t show up the same in both homes. It was, at most times, rather starkly unbalanced. And I don’t remember it being this way. But I can feel the two halves of self within who were raised entirely separately. I couldn’t tell you how child me made sense of these differences she perceived but had no language to explain.

Mostly, I felt alone. Countless grandparents, 4 parents, 3 peripheral siblings, two houses, different friends in different neighborhoods. People surrounded me, overwhelmed me with their incohesion, and the ephemeral way in which they popped in and out of my life. So, protectively, I coiled inward.

The ever-present narrative in my head, that voice that cuts and dissects the world around me and jumbles up my perspective of reality - that’s always been with me. Guiding me, motivating me, torturing me, yes. But my primary companion all the same.

Sure, it’s panicked in the face of fears; it’s offered little grace to mistakes big and small. It’s warped my relationship with my body and my understanding of self.

It’s not always been a friend, more often than not I’d consider it foe.

It lives to serve, though, protecting me in its ironclad embrace.

I spent many nights as a young girl sitting in bed, crying softly to myself and imagining the physical labor of building up my mental walls. Brick by brick.

I would reassure myself that no one could reach me here. No one could hurt me here.

I built us an infallible tower to call home. Just me and the voice together. It promised there we’d always be safe.

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My companion started as an external monologue. When I was 3, my mom lost a child that would’ve been my younger brother in earnest. Someone to traverse these two worlds by my side, someone who, I imagined, would be my real-life companion. Someone who would know all of me.

It started with him. I would babble to him at night, willing him to be there with me. Willing him to see that I was unhappy. Willing him to answer and tell me it would all be okay.

Over time, the monologue became my own as childish abstractions gave way to grander truths about life. And my companion donned a proper name, befitting of its control on my psyche.

Anxiety.

And even the rich childhood whimsy that cloaked the ever-present voice in something friendly crumbled before the diagnosis.

Anxiety.

So it really was just all in my head.

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Maybe I was a sensitive kid. Maybe I was an empathizer beyond my stature. Maybe I was particularly vulnerable by nature and not just by nurture.

It seems silly and dramatic to write about my childhood woes when they came with an abundance of care and privilege. But when those very privileges are weaponized against you and used to invalidate your existence, they breed guilt and submission just the same.

Who am I to be so unhappy?

I could intuit the flaws in the system that raised me, but they comprised my life. They didn’t feel loud or dramatic. There is no one moment of trauma or abuse that explains it all away.

I was simply raised in the perfect storm of people and their insecurities. They whirled like tornadoes around me, battering me, throwing me up and down, left and right, until I could do no more than resign to whatever came next.

Chaos churned the waters I swam in. Lies, deceptions, cowardice, and guilt raised one half of me. Sugarcoating, passiveness, spoiled allowance, and devotion raised the other.

I suppose that makes it unsurprising that I don’t remember anything but surviving. That I struggle to make sense of who I am.

Loved and yet left.

A pride and yet a sorrow.

Seen and yet unseen.

I had no right to hurt; I never could find the words to convey how or why I felt the way I did. I left too many exploitable gaps in my explanations. My fault.

But before you pity me, fret not. Anxiety talked me through it all.

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Kids are black and white. There is right, and there is wrong. There is mine, and there is yours. There is happy, and there is sad. We’re raised that way because it’s the simplest way for adults to elucidate what it means to be alive in this world.

It’s only when you finally emerge into the grey murky waters of autonomy that you realize, wait, I was never taught how to swim.

Kids sense nuance and disturbance far more perceptibly than adults, so I’ve never understood how adults can be so naïve as to think their kids don’t see through them as easily as looking through glass.

Or maybe that’s just it, kids see too deeply into their parents, reflecting back all that they fear so deeply. The only thing they can manage to do with that vulnerability is what their childhood taught them, and shut it down.

But the subtlety with which dismissal comes does not negate the impact of its blow.

Even I have grown accustomed to dismissing my inner child. Her needs are tired and stale. Her whining is exasperating. Her interests are inane. And too often she asks me to rehash old wounds.

Old wounds that I reopen anyway by shrugging her off.

She gets it, though; ignorance being an all too familiar space. She never complains.

That is, until adult me is treated like child me once was. Only then does she kick up one hell of a storm on our behalf. Anger, shame, regret, defiance, sorrow, deflection, guilt… she presses on them all in her fit to be acknowledged.

I try to tame her, to contain her, to smother her in logic and half-hearted placations.

Shhhhh, I say, this isn’t the time.

It never is, she whispers back.

-June

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