content warning: mentions of suicide, self-harm, sexual assault, & drug abuse.

Different, a kind way to describe my grandmother. You always picture grandparents living in kitchy little homes, knitting and going to bed at 7:30. Quaint and quiet. Fragile and loving.

Not my grandmother.

In my earliest memories of her, she’s wild. Tattooed from head to toe with short spiky purple hair and a handbag shaped like a bird or a butterfly. She wore Hello Kitty earrings and costume rings. She spoke with a thick city accent and an unmistakable air of fuck it.

Her house wasn’t the outdated, but cozy little cottage of my other grandparents. Her’s was, quite literally, a zoo.

Peeling wallpaper discolored by years of cigarette smoke lined her living room, which was filled to the brim with urns containing former pets, stacks and stacks of newspapers, chachskis, figurines, stacked bags of cat litter and dog food, photos from her life, and just about anything else sold by QVC.

7 cats

2 dogs

1 duck

1 hedgehog

3 parrots

6 hampsters

4 bunnies

and I can’t even tell you how many birds.

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It smelled like smoke, animals, decay, and lemon squares thanks to the candle she always burned just for me. She’d have covered a chair with towels and plugged in her overworked air purifier near my chair. Even so, her precautions did nothing in the fight between her many animals and my allergies.

She’d never make me eat; we’d just sip her signature diet iced tea with half a lemon partially squeezed into the tall glasses.

And we’d talk.

Her stories were unfathomable to my impressionable, young, sheltered self.

She told me how she met my grandpa when she was 15, and they gave up their first child at 17. How her parents sent her to a nunnery to have the child, and then they pried it from her arms to never be seen or heard from again. They told their friends she was at a fat camp.

While she was there, her older sister and her 3-year-old nephew were killed while walking down the road in their neighborhood by a drunk driver. No one came to tell her; she didn’t get to go to the funeral.

I didn’t recognize it until later, but she became emotionally stuck at the age of 17. Certainly due to this trauma and the way it was handled by her family. She was bipolar before that would be recognized or diagnosed in a civilized, middle-class suburban community.

My grandpa was a gangster. Probably a relatively low-stakes one, but I’ve seen the house my dad grew up in. I’ve heard stories of him coming home to stacks of cash on the kitchen table and of the general don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that ruled their family dynamics.

My dad was my grandmother’s raison d’être, her world. I have a theory about moms and their eldest sons. If you know any, consider it for a moment. There is something about that firstborn son that seems to do mothers, at least from this era, in. Obsessed and unhealthy devotion, molding them into the man they never experienced in their own youth. I suppose technically my dad wasn’t the eldest son, but it was the son she got to keep and raise (for lack of a more applicable term for her parenting style).

Being someone’s reason for living when they hate living isn’t exactly a point of pride. My grandmother lived purely to spite death. We used to joke that she had 9 lives like her many cats. How she lived to the age she did (nearly 80) without serious complications from her lifestyle was forever a mystery to us. How she survived multiple suicide attempts, 10 years as a crack addict in her 50s, alcohol dependency, a failed attempt at marrying a woman, an abusive ex-husband, and all with absolutely $0 to her name is still a mystery to me.

In my dad’s senior year of high school, the same high school I eventually came to call my own alma mater, my grandparents were separated, and my grandmother was in a relationship with my dad’s best friend. A mentally unstable, drug-abusing 18-year-old.

Right before graduation, he took his own life. And in the letter he wrote just before, addressed to my grandmother, he blamed it all on her.

She spiraled, doing lines of coke on her living room coffee table and in between each telling my dad it was all his fault that she was like this.

Then, she drove to the motel my grandfather was staying at in the aftermath of their separation, checked into the room right below his, and started shooting recklessly up into the ceiling.

When I was sick, the day before they checked me into my first in-patient facility, I was dropped at my grandmother’s door. She held me, told me she understood, and couldn’t believe they were taking me away, like they too had taken her away many times before. I guess that’s how I ended up there, my dad relating me to her, conflating us together as like things. Problems.

I went, and I wept, and I felt seen.

I think she liked me best this way, though, sick and stripped of my autonomy. Because I recovered in ways she never did, I started going to her house not to tell her of my hospital experiences but to tell her about how a bitchy girl at my school stole my dream college from me. How the first boy I was newly dating might be the one. You know, normal teenager things.

That’s when she turned on me.

Sitting in her living room, the last time I ever saw her, I had just graduated from college and was about to move to California. I was worried about my relationship surviving the move, and I was hitting a personal limit with my dad and his B.S.

“Oh you’re so spoiled.”

… Excuse me?

“You and your sister are such brats getting everything you want, and I can’t even afford to eat dinner.” (Not true, my dad financially sustained her and her cohort of animals).

Well, I am moving to California by myself without their help…

“Right, so you can ride off into the sunset and leave us all behind,” she says, cigarette between her aged, yellow teeth, “I know you’ve always hated us all.”

She went on to tell me I had never really been through anything because I’d never been raped by someone I cared about, and she hoped California would show me what the real world was like. Cruel and unforgiving, a thing to be hated and feared.

I had not found this conclusion as a result of my earlier traumas, and because of this, I had failed her.

Coward. The best adjective I can lend to my wayward excuse for a father. If you’ve read my open letter to him, you know most of our tale.

He was raised a cynic, a skeptic, a pessimist, a hater. He was raised to believe that he alone was both the messiah and the anti-Christ of this life. He alone could get away with murder, sabotage, cheating, and deception while remaining a being worthy of reverence and worship.

He knew he would have a throne in hell awaiting him upon death, and that made him untouchable in life.

My friends all thought he was in the mob, but he was too white and too lame for that. Spy perhaps? Still seemed cooler than he deserved. But he was a successful cheater, a card-counting gambler, a CEO, and a high-functioning alcoholic. He has businesses under various names, and I don’t think he’s paid his fair share of taxes in at least the last 25 years. He regularly needs access to public wifi which always reminded me of The Sopranos, his favorite show, and their regular use of pay phones.

And his dad was a gangster, so… who knows.

What I do know is that he would offer me $500 to get an A in math, knowing all too well I couldn’t do it. He wrote essays for me on the rise and fall of the Holy Roman Empire, not because I asked him to, but because it’s his favorite topic. He falls asleep to plane crash documentaries on YouTube, and his favorite movie is Halloween because he says he “can empathize with Mike Myers.”

I learned as a kid to relate to his darkness. It was the only thing that got him to pay attention. A sarcastic remark about how meaningless life is or a quip about how we are all just cogs in the government’s machine anyway.

He loved that I left for California. He missed his chance to escape his life at my age; I could tell he wanted that for me.

He came to visit me once before we stopped talking; we spent a weekend lounging poolside at an overpriced hotel. Got margaritas in the gay neighborhood of San Diego, and he complimented our waiter’s ass. We toured two open houses for condos on the coast, and I narrowly talked him into putting an offer on one of them. It was the best weekend I’ve ever spent with him.

Then I told him I didn’t want to hear about or talk to D, my step-monster, anymore. While being careful to avoid the language that constitutes an ultimatum, I effectively handed him one. Her or me.

He chose her.

When we finally reconnected years later, I was moving back from California to East Coast suburbia. I was engaged to be married. I was a manager at my job. I was trying to buy a house.

No pride found his eyes as I caught him up on all that he missed.

“Why would you ever want to come back here? You got out.”

because I was lonely.

“Better than being boring.”

He didn’t want anything to do with a wedding. It took him over a year to finally come see my house. He had nothing nice to say about it. Every time we talk, he tells me the weather in San Diego and asks if I miss it…

Guess I failed him, too.

Subtle. That’s my mom.

So subtle that in 15 years of therapy, I’ve never once brought her up. Until recently.

I was her eldest boy (gender notwithstanding). I was her savior. Born unto her in the midst of a failing, miserable marriage, I was her hope. She didn’t just want me, she needed me. She played her part in life as far as I knew. The daughter with bows in her hair, the young and eager wife, the devoted mother.

What I didn’t know was that to her mother, she was the spare. A pale second to her mother’s eldest son. The golden boy who could do no wrong. And my mom was the punching bag for the undiagnosed borderline personality disorder that dictated their home life.

Once we were watching Freaks and Geeks, and I asked my mom which one she was in high school. She hesitated, but she knew that I knew she was no geek.

“Freak,” she admitted.

NO WAY you were a back-alley, ditch class, pothead.

“Yup.”

That’s all I got.

Non-confrontational as anyone, my mom was easy for me to push around as a kid. The angst that roiled within me was taken out on her. Because she didn’t keep me from my dad’s house or my stepmother’s wrath. Because she didn’t intervene when my dad took me away from her at the height of my eating disorder in a move that nearly killed me. Because she didn’t listen when I spoke, my emotions were too big, too loud, too scary. Because she didn’t take care of me in the way I needed her to.

When I was sick with my eating disorder, I contemplated taking my life. She knew it, but we never talked about it. The hospital just took me away with no warning during a family therapy session. Neither parent looked me in the eye as I thrashed and screamed and was carried from the room.

Once she came home from a trip and spotted the new gold hoop in my nose, she kicked me out. Sent me packing to my dad’s house. Only talking to me again to let me know we were moving (again), and I needed to come back and pack up my belongings.

My senior year of high school, after a drunken night at one of my dad’s parties, I came home wearing a pretty bad hangover and some too-short shorts. They revealed the blood-stained bandages covering my self-harm scars. She stared in panicked silence before muttering, “If you stop now, I won’t tell anyone or bring it up ever again.”

True to her word, we never talked about it again.

I moved to California, and she made me believe I’d ripped her heart out. All she had done for me. All she had endured for me. And this is how I repay her.

And when it was time to leave California, I moved 2 miles from her. And yet, it’s still never enough.

Because now she sees me regularly, including after new tattoos adorn my body, a new set of colorful overalls joins my wardrobe, or whenever I stand up for myself at work and vent to her about it.

I let her down over and over again.

Savior turned failure.

Despite my best attempts, I fear I’ve let you down.

I tried. I really and truly tried.

I’ve shown up time and time again for you, and yet.

And yet.

So, I’m tapping out.

White flag waving.

Because the person I have failed most in my attempt to satisfy you

Is me.

I’ve let me down.

Cast myself aside.

Diminished my perspective.

Disregarded my needs.

And for what?

Now I find myself wondering if

Maybe

Just maybe

It was you who let me down

All along.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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4 months ago · 10118 likes · 152 comments · Sherry Ning

Trying to tell you who I am in isolation is a more terrifying challenge than telling you about my darkest day or misbegotten friendships.

If there is a theme to my writing, and the intentions that brought me here, it’s identity, or more accurately, a lack thereof.

I could give you the facts…

28

Female

USA

Wife

Sister

Dog-Mom

Amateur Potter

Wanna-be-Yogi

But what do those things tell you about me, except that there is a digestible version of me that exists within society?

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I want to tell you that I am you, and I am not you.

I have trauma and the scars it left behind.

I have a heart and the great yearnings that accompany it.

I have a body that has stayed despite the pain I’ve inflicted upon it.

My life is imperfect, though I often wish it to be otherwise.

My relationships have bonds and holes, and I spend a great deal of time navigating both with care.

My brain feels ever at odds with my reality.

My life costs money. I do nothing glamorous to sustain its insatiable hunger.

My life has love. I work hard to never take that for granted.

There is a quiet torture in my soul. I honor it the best I know how.

I have been a caged bird, longing to fly free.

I have been a free bird, missing the safety of its former cage.

I am not special.

But sometimes I feel special.

Sometimes I see what others cannot or choose not to.

Sometimes I know what others cannot or choose not to.

Sometimes I hear the truth behind spoken words.

Sometimes I hurt from the isolation this casts upon me.

Sometimes I long for ignorance and satisfaction.

But I have never been satisfied a day in my life.

Content and complacency know no home in my bones.

I push. I strive. I change. I try.

Never enough.

Never enough.

Never enough.

I push boundaries.

I hold boundaries.

I say what I think.

I will call out your contradictory bullshit.

You will lose me if you continue to hurt me so.

But if you should fall to your knees in plea and regret,

I will hold the imperfect parts of you still.

I will honor your truth if you offer it to me.

I will tend to your wounds, hoping for nothing in return but to see you smile again.

And my love is the unconditional sacrifice I vow to you.

Should you appear before me naked and defenseless, I, too, will respond in equal measure.

Should someone threaten our love, I will fight until my final breath for you and for us.

Should you need leave from the intensity of this thing we’ve forged together, I shall let you go, but always know I love you still.

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I hold in my body a unique ecosystem.

It won’t be familiar to you at first.

It may never be for you at all.

My power is potent.

It will expose your weakness.

It will threaten your identity.

It will force a reconciliation of the self.

But should you weather my storm,

I will make you whole.

I will regrow you with the power of my sun.

I will harvest the best of you.

I will reignite your spirit.

This is to say, both with and without ego.

Because like you, I, too, take pride in my work.

But my pride is found only in the knowledge that you knew me, and I knew you,

And we both were made better for it.

So, who does this tell you I am?

Do you know me better now than you did before?

My job, my age, or where I live can’t tell you what I’ve laid bare here. They do not reflect me as much as they reflect the concessions I make to belong.

Here you may see the core of my nature. More exposed than if you were to come face-to-face with me one random day. First impressions don’t often reveal so much.

When I tell you I see you, I mean this version of you, too. I see the you that is beneath the concessions and the performance. I see the you behind the mask.

& that is who I long to know.

Now it’s your turn. Who are you?

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anyway, here I am…

-June

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Dear June,

“I just read your latest article, and you mentioned having had a long distance boyfriend in college. I’m at the precipice of figuring out if that’s something I should do. He’s been one of my best friends basically my entire life. Long story short, we finally both like each other, but we’re also about to graduate high school. On top of that, I’m headed to the east coast and he’s staying in the west. We are not in a relationship, but we’re going to figure it out very very soon (because at this point, we are very clearly more than friends). Part of me thinks - he treats me so nice, I feel safe, and this could be something real. Should distance and timing matter if you really care about each other? The other half of me is being less idealistic, mostly because I know myself. I get really (anxiously) attached, and I know I’d prioritize calls, communication and seeing him over all else. I don’t know if I want my college experience-especially because this is something I’ve been dreaming of and working towards-to be defined by a remote, brand new relationship. The worst part is I know he would literally do anything for me and to make me feel okay. Is it insane to not know if that’s enough? yikes okay sorry for the essay. Hopefully you have some pearls of wisdom: should I ruin the friendship? lots of love 💕💕”

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Dear friend,

This one has me smiling wryly at my screen because I am quite soundly of two very different minds about this particular topic, having gone through it, and truly through it, myself.

That being said, this is not an advice column or an instructive/predictive space. I don’t know you or the boy in question here, so I won’t pretend that there is any overlap for us other than the quiet longing to have it all and to have it all be okay.

I am so happy for you that your life features a person with whom you feel sound and safe. That is a gift and a joy, and you deserve every bit of what this relationship — romantic or otherwise — offers you.

I am also proud of you for embarking on a new and unique college experience, and I take it that you're doing it in a place you didn't grow up in. This takes immense courage. You’re very cool for this, and for even asking yourself the hard questions to honor that commitment.

At this point, and I hope you don’t take this as an ignorant statement, but you have very little perspective. It’s a right of passage! Part of the wonder of the college experience is not what you learn in class or whatever you decide to major in, that you may very likely forego the minute you graduate — it’s the trials of independence. Managing your own schedule, feeding yourself, dealing with roommates, trying on new friends, maybe getting a little too drunk sometimes, or failing a final. It’s the feeling halfway through that you know yourself better now than you did at 18 and want to completely change your path, change your name, etc. The beauty of this time is that you get to try it all. You will quickly find a lot of what isn’t for you, and along the way, you will pick up pieces and people who are for you. It’s weird. It’s hard. But even I, as someone also with no perspective (who thought I had quite a bit more than my peers), can look back appreciatively on everything that it both was and wasn’t.

There is no right way or wrong way to go about this period of your life.

I dive bombed through it, tumultuous long-distance relationship in tow, and graduated the day I was eligible to.

My freshman roommate, 10 years later, is still in school. She changed her major maybe 16 times, did a few years of law school, and is now about to graduate from PA school.

My sister? Dropped out after freshman year and three years later decided this was her time to try again one class at a time.

My best friend from college? Pre-med & dedicated to the library? Now she wants to quit her job and buy a farm.

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What is this all to say? That it will be okay. There are no bad choices when you’re trying on life. (Except for maybe doing hard drugs or being unkind.)

For most of college. I did not believe it would be okay, which is to say that it’s natural to wonder and worry in the face of the unknown. I didn’t enter my college years with a stellar teenage experience, but I did enter them with my first boyfriend. 3 months in.

Two years older than me, though he was, he had less perspective than I did, and he did not handle the transition from summer love to a long-distance commitment well. We broke up probably 1 month into my freshman year, and I was devastated. As you read in that piece, I handled it how I handled it. No need for judgment, though I felt a lot of it back then as I was living through it.

My world crumbled around me. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Eventually, I set myself a New Year’s resolution to delete him on Find My Friends and move the fuck on, but I dreaded the days leading to the new year like I was headed off the edge of a cliff. Then, on holiday break back home, I saw him. We came face to face in his kitchen (and that’s on dating your best friend’s older brother), having not seen or spoken to each other since early October.

We got back together 2 days later.

Come the next fall, his senior year and my sophomore year, he went to study abroad in London. I hung photos of us in my dorm room, but I brought backup photos with no trace of him… just in case. He became deeply depressed abroad, and I started to literally go to class with one airpod in just to be with him and make sure he wasn’t spiraling alone.

Do I remember classes? No.

Do I remember what my friends were doing during this time? No.

Was I immersed in the college experience? Definitely not.

My friends would call me out for it, too. Hours spent alone in my room facetimeing R. Not doing my homework, not socializing, not moving, just living in that liminal space that only we could understand.

Most of my college experience amounts to a narrative along these lines. But to say I regret it would be a complicated question. Why? Because I literally didn’t know any better. I had no perspective; I was creating it for myself.

You have to go through things, whatever they are, to learn who you are and how you feel about living.

And hey, I married R. Undoubtably a niche outcome, and it was hard fought, but I wouldn’t trade the sacrifices I made along the way for anything now that I have seen where they took me.

That might be your answer: to live and to learn. To embrace that every choice and every action has a consequence, you can’t always see what that is at the moment of deciding.

Life is one leap of faith after another, but if you honor yourself, your feelings, and your boundaries, it will work out.

Don’t be afraid to act on the knowledge you have now, just know in your heart that whatever happens, it will all be okay — if not in the way you imagined.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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art by Jiayue Liu

For those who read my piece, an open letter to my soulmate, this piece will be a rather raw reflection of what it can sometimes take to choose someone over and over again.

Our 10-year anniversary was quiet. We got married in Paris last September, which was lovely and expensive, and we’ve opted to be frugal this summer after a series of costly moments in our lives happened back-to-back-to-back.

It was Thursday; we both had work, but R was off on Friday, so we agreed to postpone any festivities until Friday, when the promise of a nice weekend would bolster our enthusiasm. (Spoilers: it didn’t).

R and I are not the same. Despite the fact that we agree on most things and are undeniably tethered to one another, we maybe have only grown more the same on the surface in our 10 years. Eating the same foods, occasionally dressing alike for the same function, a love of the same music, a disdain for the same types of drama in the world.

We went through a pretty aggressive period of codependency from the start of COVID in 2020 through 2024, when I decided it was time to leave San Diego because things were only getting worse. Since then, it’s been a daily exercise in love and patience as we’ve both committed to individual growth and identity reformation. But in most ways, we’re happier than we’ve been and closer than we could’ve thought it was possible to get when spending every day together. There are stutters, and our growth has neither been linear nor on pace with one another, and some days are harder than others.

This day, this weekend, was one of those not-so-easy periods.

We spent most of Friday hanging out and idly playing video games between my work calls, enjoying the relaxing atmosphere. But there, underneath the moment, I could sense that R wasn’t quite himself. So, when it came time to get ready for our planned celebratory evening excursion, I passively suggested we just stay in instead. It took about half an hour of R hemming and hawing over the options — me standing half-dressed in our closet as he changed his mind every 30 seconds about whether we were going out — before deciding that he wanted to take me out. I nodded, slid my feet into a pair of heels, and out the door we went.

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We arrived at a bar we enjoy for its somewhat upscale, trendy French atmosphere in our little corner of the world, and, given its lack of TV screens showing the US World Cup game, it was completely deserted. Fine by us, as we grabbed the best high-top table by the window to dog-watch on the street and were treated to prompt service over drinks and a cheese plate. I settled into the moment nicely, feeling present and in my love for R, but unfortunately, he was somewhere else.

“Tell me something sweet…” I prompted, hoping to bring him into the moment with me.

“What?”

“I don’t know… tell me how you’re feeling about 10 years.”

“Hmmm”

a too-long period of silence

“I feel very on the spot right now,” was all he said.

“Okay, okay, that’s fine, let’s play 20-questions!” I offer in the hopes of distracting him with something less abstract. “I have a word, you guess.”

We played, each in turn being the keeper of the elusive word and the guesser, and for a few minutes there, I thought I saw him come back. But it was short-lived as the games subsided and his discomfort grew heavier in the space between us across that little table.

We left in silence and drove home largely in silence, my nervous system acutely on edge and teetering further with every passing minute. R suggested another bar closer to home, but I vetoed, feeling like home was a safer place to be and probably the only chance we had of salvaging the evening. (Spoiler: It didn’t)

I put on some of our favorite songs and poured each of us a glass of wine to enjoy on the patio in the late-evening sun. Our dogs were overjoyed at our return, and I felt hopeful again that we could get back on track. I brought out our cards for one another.

I read him the letter I had posted the day before to Substack… his only response… “wow, it’s weird you put together all of these patterns because I don’t do that.”

Ouch.

R has never been one to process. He’s much more of a bury it deep and pretend he’s never had a problem a day in his life type. It’s probably our biggest disparity as a couple. I’ve been in therapy and acutely aware of my traumas and my ill-advised coping mechanisms since I was 13. I have also just been acutely aware in general since I was born. I can’t ignore anything. I see every pattern. I sense the larger issue behind the smaller one that gets talked about. I can read the emotional climate of a room so potently I feel like Jasper from Twilight a good majority of the time.

This is my own cross to bear. I know it’s not my responsibility to make others see things as I do, and now more than ever, I’ve embraced that it’s only my responsibility to honor and be with the emotions that come up for me in any particular room.

This is a part of my growth these last two years that is significantly out of pace with R’s own. He lives perpetually moment to moment, to erred by the past and too afraid of the future for it to be healthy, though. This makes him a slave to the impulses of his nervous system to defend and protect from a million perceived threats in any given moment. It’s rare to see him relaxed because even relaxation feels wrong and threatening to his body.

It’s gut-wrenching to watch and hard to live with. It would be a whole separate article to go into the many nuanced ways this has shown up in our relationship over the last 10 years, but the main point I struggle with most is that I see and feel all 10 years of it, yet R only acknowledges it right now, today, and forever deems his woes as fleeting — not worth helping.

Big moments are tough then because they carry the weight of high expectations, and this is especially true for someone who feels, viscerally, that the worst-case scenario awaits in every next moment of every day.

So in this moment, like many I’ve seen before, the R I know and love was locked inside of his own mind. No amount of prodding on my part could resurrect him from that dark place. But I didn’t feel safe enough to go for the jugular and outright ask what was going on.

My own nervous system trauma responses screamed at me to stay quiet and tread lightly in the face of this unknown emotional climate. It had THREAT written all over it, and all of my tools, knowledge, and personal reassurance tactics were rendered useless.

It continued into the weekend until R finally cracked on Sunday afternoon over something stupid that was indelibly the final straw. And, as anticipated, it was all my fault.

I was being too impulsive.

I was making him spend too much money.

I was moving to quickly.

I was too in his space.

I was too much.

Well, no. I wasn’t. Enough of my growth and our time together has taught me that just because I am the person here physically when he’s going through the result of not processing his own issues and emotions does NOT make me personally responsible for them.

I shut that right down.

I am not impulsive because I make fast choices.

I am not forcing him to buy $15 worth of fruit that he picked out for himself.

I am moving at my natural pace.

I live in this space too.

I am right as I am.

I am not responsible for his choices.

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As much as I love him, the problem is in the pattern that he refuses to look clearly at, but I’m not going to waste our time talking about fruit when there are far larger issues at play.

He feels identiless.

He feels stuck.

He feels misaligned with his body.

He’s not acting in accordance with his personhood.

He’s feeling the effects in every moment of every day of all of these things; of course, it’s easier to blame it on the fruit.

But 10 years in and I know better.

He shut down halfway through the conversation, and I let it go because it’s not in my power to control. I made a very conscious and heavy choice to not ruminate about this for the rest of my day (my usual MO as an anxious person). It was there in the background and continues to be, but I regathered my tools and focused more on what I needed in the face of so much uncertainty.

And so we continued until Monday night. I spent a therapy session talking about exactly this weekend, and came home to an outright irate R absolutely losing it over some poorly cooked rice.

Nervous system overload.

Though the advice of my therapist was to do nothing but take care of myself, I’m not so empowered by my own peace that I could not react to this mounting tension of our shared environment.

This time I asked more bluntly, “What are you so upset about, because I know it’s not the rice?”

And the conversation spiraled into me in tears on the floor and him saying he was “here,” to which I only sobbed harder and responded, “but for how long.”

How long before he retreats back into his head and leaves me alone in my own confusion and fear?

How long before we can’t talk about it again until the next time his bottled emotions blow the lid off?

How long before I’m at fault again for something I had no part in and was only trying to help?

How long?

We sat in silence at that. He knew what I meant, and I knew he had no answer.

He curled up next to me on the floor. I rested my head on his shoulder. And all we could do was be in it together again. Not at odds, not on defense, not alone with our fears. Just together with no answers and the knowledge that 10 years has afforded us that everything will be alright again.

This weekend didn’t define us. It certainly highlighted some of the consistent struggles in our relationship. 2 imperfect people with 2 different experiences of every day and every situation. 2 different histories with 2 different outcomes for our bodies and minds. 2 people who care so deeply that at times, it’s downright overwhelming.

I told him at one point on Monday that I had just as much experience in this life as he did, and just as much in this relationship. I didn’t know if I was showing up correctly any more than he did. It seemed to wake both of us up a little to put that out there and remember that we are in this together because we choose to be, not because we know how to be with absolute certainty.

10 years.

10 years of being together, yes. But maybe more impactful is 10 years of being flawed people who continue to adapt to the changes in one another. To coexist even when it’s a challenge. To let love remind us that we are safe here, with each other, even when every impulse in our bodies struggles to find safety in a chaotic life.

10 years of reconciliation, compassion, uncertainty, joy, anxiety, bliss, and sadness.

10 years of carrying two contradictory truths at the same time.

10 years of trusting that it’s okay to be weak and let someone else carry you.

10 years of learning how to best carry one another.

10 years of accepting all that we cannot change about one another.

10 years of weekends like these, interspersed with the happiest moments of my life.

10 years of faith in one another.

10 years of choosing to show up for whatever the day holds.

10 years.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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We’d known each other for a few years already, but I think this was the first moment we really saw one another. You standing there in your kitchen finding just the right 60s R&B tune for the moment, and me sitting on the little sofa waiting for your sister, my best friend, to come back while relentlessly mocking your antiquated song choices.

It always felt easy; we always felt easy. I didn’t have that with many people in my life; every thought turned spoken word was a choice and a hurdle, even amongst my longest friends. Time and trauma had hardened me so thoroughly that even this day felt like one I resented my own presence and participation in. But this moment, with you, felt easy. You made me laugh in spite of myself. You made me feel light, as I’ve told you a million times before, like the sun finally shone on places within that had long since resigned to shadow.

Your presence warmed me.

You actually saw me.

When I left the room to go get ready for the prom, the familiar cold returned, but my mind still lingered on you.

And there you stayed as we met for our first date on the beach a week later. You in bright red swim trunks and me, shy and forever uncomfortable in my body — that is, until you held me in your arms a few hours later, half-submerged in the chilly water. Or until I kissed you unprompted as we lay there in the sand, your body protecting mine from the wind. You were talking, but I was watching your lips, wondering all the while what they would taste like on mine.

Sweet as honey and soft as roses. From that moment on, I was yours, and you mine.

June 18th, 2016

It didn’t take us long to become an us. And an us we’ve stayed. I have been telling you for years, as promised, that I kissed you first. I remember it still, I always will.

We were kids. I just 18 and you, 20. Years meant so little to us then. We measured time in weeks and months, if not days and hours. All of my time was filled thinking of you.

To be fair, it often still is.

The phases of us unfold like heady chapters of a yet-to-be-written memoir. Whether 733 miles (the distance between our schools), 2,630 miles (the distance between us when I left for California), .42 of a mile (the distance between our San Diego apartments), 10 feet (the furthest we could stand apart in our first apartment), or 1 foot (the space of the dogs between us in bed every night), the tethers of our love have kept us whole.

10 years.

The coming-of-age years at that.

And I have never been alone in all this time, because wherever I go, there you are. And wherever you go, I’m there too.

So it has always been, and so it shall always be. We have lived so many lives, been so many versions of ourselves, and every day I wake up to a choice so easy to make, I do it now without thought — you. Always & forever, you.

For our last 10 years… a thank you.

I found you early. As if the universe saw us and recognized all we had endured alone until that fateful afternoon in your kitchen. It offered us a moment, a window into a life we each had held on for without ever really knowing that it, too, was waiting for us. I am forever grateful that we didn’t miss it or each other.

Life with you is joy.

Silly competition over board games I’m destined to lose forever. And the absolute lack of satisfaction you offer me if and when I ever do find a way to beat you.

That feeling we share, watching the babies play together. Juni’s loud grumbles as she takes on her brother, who can barely deign to get off the couch and engage with her antics.

Date nights with delicious meals, holding hands across the table, and lingering until we are full on food, each other, and the richness of the moment.

Countless worlds forged together through an embarrassing number of hours spent in the land of Stardew Valley.

Endless hobbies and hats tried on by us both, each supported and cared for with tender recognition of an attempt worth making in our mutual quest to discover who we are and what we love.

Sunflowers planted when I’m away. Harry Potter viewings when I’m sad. Laughing endlessly at It’s Always Sunny. Spontaneously painted walls. Well-timed forehead kisses. Road trips with endless singing along, each of us taking turns at being the loudest when the songs we’re best at come on. Home-cooked meals made with love and a little chaos. Little weekday errands run together for no reason other than enjoying each other’s company. Quiet togetherness at the end of every day. Your tolerance of me never knowing what I want to eat. My tolerance of you never knowing what you want to do. Finding favorite spots and going a million times until suddenly we never go again. Becoming quite the packing aficionados after who knows how many moves together. Throwing the ball for our boy. Tossing socks to our girl. Epic hide-and-seek games that leave everyone out of breath and unable to find me ;). Taking care of each other seamlessly at social gatherings we wish we weren’t attending. Exploring little shops in whatever quaint towns we find ourselves in. My knowing when it’s time to feed you. You knowing when I’m overdue to feed myself. Restaurant selfies. Pictures of the best meals you’ve made us recently. Pokémon obsessions and the 15+ badly thrown bowls I made in pottery lining the shelves of your office. The way your hands feel on my body. The way you look at me and tell me I’m beautiful without uttering a word. Your cute, round butt. Your soft blue eyes. Small spats because we’re taking things too seriously, or maybe because we just care that much. Our mutual admiration for a day well spent.

The safety of being your little spoon. The love of watching Theo nonstop lick your face. Listening to you sing in the shower to your new hyperfixation song. Seeing the gears spin in your head as you work on a joke. The laugh you only give the dogs. The singular dimple when you smile. The constellation of freckles on your back. The way you act when you’re feeling sexy. The insistence on carrying me piggyback when we’re walking, and you’re feeling happy. The way you get quiet when I sing a song I like, and I know you’re listening more to me than the music. The way you always read my mind, let me tell you you’re wrong, and then me immediately proving you right. The way I let you overthink something and I listen to your worries, and the way you let me tell you I told you so when it all turns out okay. Long hair. Short hair. And everything in between. Weekend househunters over my attempt at making us breakfast, or your perfect challah french toast. The way you danced with baby Juni. The stupid grin you get on your face when you’re in your element, and you know it. The older-brother style ragging that none of my friends are immune from. The little cross you make on your chest when you’re refreshing your work or a plane is landing — despite you being Jewish. The way you let Christmas throw up all over our lives for two months every year and insist we get the biggest and best tree we can find.

Giving me your bread. Getting mad when I show up for everyone, and no one shows up for me. Reading my writing and hyping me up every time. Finding Waldo before bed or helping me find the words I would never think of in the NYT Spelling Bee. Letting me sleep in when all you want to do is wake me up. Making me dance with you whenever live music is playing. Saving hundreds of Reels curated just for me and watching them together until we’re breathless from laughter. 6 years working together in the same house and still finding that we missed each other at the end of the day. Knowing I influenced your music taste, and you mine. That gummy bear morphing meme from long ago. Ranting about family members or the little inside jokes that forever stay only between us. Doing our handshake anytime, anywhere to signal we’re on the same wavelength. The perfect way you proposed. Getting sweaty together. The way you call me your wife.

How I never doubt for one second that you’ll choose me, show up for me, defend me, and see me.

How we never stop being better, together.

& every single moment in between…

My love, you shine.

On my darkest days, you shine for me. You sit with me, we feel together. For this, I know I will never be alone.

My love, you sing.

Every word is a note, every sentence a melody, and every day my song, our song, comes from your lips and echoes in the chambers of my heart. For this, I know my life will always be lived.

My love, you soar.

What a gift it is to watch you fly. Higher and higher it seems with each passing year. I hope you always know that should you falter, I’m always here to catch you.

For the next 10 years… a wish.

That I can add to the list above in a million new ways. That we expand our definitions of possible. That we continue to be the very epitome of love for one another, no matter what we face, where we go, or who we become next.

I wish for you to set yourself free. To trust that every thought you have isn’t an edict to avoid peril. For you to see and believe that this life is beautiful and rich simply because it is ours, and no one can ever take that away from us. I want you to shine on yourself the way you have so long shone on me. I wish for peace and the promise of a better tomorrow. I wish to add wrinkles to our skin and art to our bodies and presence to our souls, such that we might become the living embodiment of all that we love in and about one another and this life we share. I wish for adventures, big and small, that make us tingle and remind us just how great it feels to be alive together.

I want uncompromisable joy to be the predominant color of the thread that binds us. May that joy give us strength and hope and a shared home to shelter us from any storm. May that joy reveal to us what else of this life we have yet to explore. May it ignite our curiosity and fuel our fire to never stop growing. May it lead us wherever we are meant to go and protect us from energy that is not ours to carry.

I wish to live next to our friends and look out our back windows at the sun sparkling on the water. I wish for long days spent outside with the sun on our skin and our bodies close enough to amplify the heat. I wish for lazy mornings spent in bed, admiring one another. I wish for laughter found in unexpected places, connection in unexpected people, and purpose in unexpected moments. I wish for the courage to face down our fears. Awareness to admit when we’re wrong. Compassion when it’s all there is left to give.

I wish for hard times to challenge what we know and reinforce what we believe.

I wish for luck to leave its mark.

I wish for hope to feed us and gratitude to ground us.

I wish to hold your hand every day for the rest of my life.

Just to know that you’re here with me and I with you, such that not even death could dare part us.

I love you more & more & most.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Preface: I am an imperfect being. I am a judgmental being. I am an insecure being. Thank you for sharing this space with me anyway.

I have never thrived in groups. Not the big, lost in the sea of people I’ll never know type of groups. And not in large groups of people I know well.

It’s that sweet spot where people I don’t know, but know of, congregate, that, for some reason, lights my nervous system on fire.

I’ve written about this before. My long-standing relationship with social anxiety. How it kept me from going to school or involving myself at a normal social level in college. Or how it manifested in complicated ways within a friend group I helped form but never felt like part of.

Sometimes, I can just be one with the pack, usually under the influence of some socially lubricating substance, but sometimes, I can access the level they are enjoying themselves on and find myself enjoying it too. Most of the time, however, I am the awkward girl standing on the outside looking in at something I don’t understand, being asked to converse in a language I never learned how to speak.

And in all of my growth into adulthood, and for all that I feel largely content with my spot in life, I still feel the deep pang of insecurity in spaces like a bachelorette weekend for one of my best friends.

I became friends with B in my sophomore year of college when she transferred in, and the only person she knew was my friend and roommate, A. A told my other two roommates and me about B on the first day of school that year, asking if we would be okay with her coming over for a few hours. We agreed and, innocently enough, spent the evening playing Monopoly, which we had not so innocently adapted into a drinking game. And well, we must have sucked because the rest of that evening is a blur none of us can remember. What I do know is, from that night on, B and I were fast friends.

B has an aura that attracts. It certainly attracted me, and as our friendship unfolded into drunk nights dancing together in frat house basements or drinking wine sitting by the nearby river, it became clear the attraction was there for all who she met and collected along the way. Bubbly, gorgeous, and wild, to be in her presence was to feel alive and free.

B and I maintained a long-distance friendship outside of college, somewhat miraculously. Her younger sister went to San Diego State, so she was a frequent enough visitor. And each visit carried the same excited, alive buzz, and each night would be epic and adventurous.

But, with all of the memories that fortify our friendship, I am quite certain that had I stayed in the city, where B still lives, after college, our friendship would not have lasted long. Because B has anger issues, and nothing triggers them more than her deep insecurity around friendship.

Her friendship with A, her longest and most loyal friend, is tumultuous and survives only because A keeps showing up regardless of what B does to her. I have heard more stories than I can count of B deciding a person was dead to her because that friend couldn’t attend one of her parties or otherwise disrespected her via mild and unintentional inconvenience.

B once visited me, and though I took her to 3 of the coolest spots I knew in San Diego consecutively in one night, she still threw a very public and intense fit on the side of the road downtown when R, I, and her partner of 10+ years decided we were ready to go home. She refused to get in the Uber, and when she finally did, she didn’t talk to anyone the rest of the night.

Our relationship became strained when I started to pull back on drinking and stopped finding enjoyment in long nights on the town. Her visits became infrequent, as did my own, but still I was one of three people invited to surprise her during her engagement.

Then, one day, rather abruptly, B decided she was going to be someone who woke up at 5am to journal and do yoga. She stopped using her phone as much as possible and started to only eat vegetables. Conversations with her shifted from stories of parties thrown and nights out to meditation and personal awakening. She became a different kind of difficult, because now, you couldn’t have a genuine conversation with her at all. She had no tolerance for negativity in her space, and if you came to her for a vent, she would tell you to smell a flower and write in your gratitude journal (not bad advice, but from her, it was a wild and unbalanced pivot).

She cried for hours to me after a birthday picnic one year because her “friends”, formed before this newfound sense of woo entered the chat, brought cocktails and a raucous energy to her quiet birthday celebration in the park.

B visited me a few months ago, ever in her era of performative enlightenment. We drank tea on my patio, went on walks to admire spring in full force, and talked about all things big and small.

One of those things being B’s dating life. A bit of a surprise, as she’s been in a relationship with the same guy since her sophomore year of high school. But there we were, driving to nowhere in particular, when B turns to me and tells me she’s dating — women.

After swallowing my shock so as not to make her feel instantly uncomfortable about sharing something so personal, I asked what that meant. She told me she’d confronted her fiancé about a month ago to tell him she needed to explore her interest in women. And much to his credit or his insanity (jury is definitely out on this), he received her openly, and they figured out how it would work for them. B told me her first date was to be the following week.

Fast forward now several months, and B'’s been seeing the same girl — who is also in a heterosexual committed relationship as well outside of this fling with B… because I guess there is an app for that — and she’s told me in no uncertain terms that if she weren’t so committed to her fiancé, she would not even consider dating a man from this point forward.

And honestly, we love a girl figuring out what she wants in life and what sexually fulfills her. I think what B did was incredibly brave and likely terrifying because she knew what she was risking by getting curious about and exploring her truth. Not all of us have the moxy.

What dampens my happiness for her is the somewhat elusive attachment she describes with her fiancé. He is a great guy, everyone loves him, and for many, their 15-year relationship sets the standard. But behind the scenes, B has cheated several times, much earlier on in their relationship (all of which her partner knows about and has forgiven her for). They also have never seemed to like or be interested in much of the same lifestyle, each adapting to the other, but always, I’ve thought, with a bit too much sacrifice of their own. And I’m hard-pressed to see how such a long relationship formed in the bowels of adolescence avoids some level of co-dependency.

But with her fiancé well aware of her choices and a mutual understanding between them, she’s not technically doing anything wrong.

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So here we are, at the long-awaited bachelorette weekend. There are 15 (!!) of us in attendance. Mostly names I’ve heard and faces I’ve seen but never met. Various factions of B’s life come together in her honor to stay in one of her favorite places in the world.

A and I were already dreading it. We aren’t really cut out for this type of socializing. Generally, I had kept my morale up, committed to going with the flow and not letting my own woeful anticipation bring me down early. A had no such commitment and had already complained about every single thing she could think of to anticipate the weekend as we drove together Friday morning.

We arrive to the maid-of-honor and her sister smoking a joint on the deck, and everyone else out on a walk. A little confused by the disjointed start to the day, we found our room, put our stuff down, and then shrugged at each other and decided to go get a donut at a place we passed on the way in.

They were all gathered around the back porch of the house when we got back, talking lively about the night before…? And this confused us because, as far as A & I knew, we all had arrived this same morning. Turns out we just weren’t invited to join the group that came Thursday night, which would be fine by us, except we all paid equally for this rental, meaning effectively the 9 girls who weren’t there Thursday paid for the ones who were.

A and I side-eyed but didn’t vocalize as we somewhat awkwardly joined the chittering group and waited with them for the other weekend attendees. The day progressed somewhat slowly. A lot of sitting around awaiting instruction that never came.

Toward the evening, there were a few planned games. We had all submitted a memory to the MoH via text earlier in the month and were to read each other’s memories anonymously on cards for B to guess who wrote them. Cute concept, and one that you might think would be relatively obvious in a group of your best friends — and granted, I was not the guesser, so credit to B for being put on the spot — but B could not identify the first 6 memories read. And not just who they were with, but even a recollection of the memories occurring. Save for one, the memories were fairly specific: “the time when we came home drunk and didn’t have the gate key for my apartment, so I hopped the gate and landed flat on my face,” or “when we met up for the first time in 12 years outside of X bakery.”

Super. Freaking. Awkward.

Then it was time for another awkward classic: the Newlywed Game. The premise being that, for those unfamiliar, B’s fiancé had pre-recorded answers to the same questions that were now going to be asked to B, and their goal was to answer as similarly as possible.

Generally, this game consists of black and white answers like favorite coffee shop, the song you listen to when you’re sad, a shared love of _____, etc. But Miss MoH decided to take a rather deep spin on the game and ask questions more along the lines of, “what’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned from one another?” and “what do you think the other person will say the greatest thing you do for them is?”

There is no doubt that B and her fiancé know each other well. And as jaded as this sounds, I can’t help but feel like it’s scripted between them. Like they wrote the book on how they want their relationship to appear, and are both so deeply committed to it that there is no room for vulnerability or weakness. B herself admitted to me recently that she has never seen him mad. Ever. And not just like throw-a-fit, lingering grudge mad, just any degree of frustrated/annoyed/peeved/etc. I literally thought she was kidding, but she assured me she wasn't, going on to cite it as something she loved about him.

So, in this Newlywed Game, her fiancé revealed that the thing he had learned most from B was how to stand up for himself, and I’m just not buying it. This girl has revealed that she has cheated on him at least 7 times, and she’s never seen him mad. She broke up with him a few years back because she had a crush on someone she worked with one summer, slept with the guy, then immediately got back together with her fiancé because she got what she wanted from the breakup. And he says he knows how to stick up for himself….?

And now she’s regularly sleeping with and dating another woman 5 months before their wedding.

Maybe I’m the crazy one, but I certainly do not have this level of chill he possesses.

And all throughout this game, there are murmurs of “awe” and “goals” from the girls in the group. B proclaims her three best traits are that she’s “honest, transparent, and true” (all the same thing, btw), and A and I actually make eye contact to mentally scream at one another.

The final ask of her fiancé was that he leave her some parting words as she sits in a group of her very best friends. His advice is “look around at all of the people you’ve accumulated, now you can stop saying you have no friends and that no one loves you.” (Does anyone else find this extremely cringeworthy??? Just me???)

We get in bed that night like whoa, and genuinely, we wonder if it’s just us who know can see all of the weirdness surrounding this wedding. Whether because we know the most, have seen all of the B’s phases enough to call BS when we see it, or because we're just being judgmental bitches ourselves… either way, the vibes are all wrong.

Day 2, we woke up, not in time for the slated 5 AM sunrise yoga, but much to our relief, neither did anyone else. People are mostly scattered about their house in small groups, and B is nowhere to be found.

We spent most of the day sitting around with various factions of the group. One of B’s best friends had strategically opted out of this gathering in its entirety, opting instead to drive in for a few hours. This is a girl I hear about regularly for her closeness with B. They send each other pictures of the meals they’re eating throughout the day and generally talk about everything over 15-minute voice memos and daily calls. It had been pretty clear so far that B was grappling with said friend’s decision to not fully immerse herself in this experience — going so far as to choose to tell his group of strangers that she was newly pregnant months before she’d feel confident enough to tell her own family (or even confirm it with a second test). Womp womp.

Eventually, A and I went to our bedroom to lie down, in mild disbelief at how weird the vibes were of this whole thing. We came out a few times to see if we were missing anything, and never were. Finally caving to our need for fresh air, we went on a walk, and of course, came back to find all of the girls sitting around the living room playing Scattegories (with INSANE rules, they literally were accepting anything).

“Oh, I knocked on your bedroom door,” B told us as we walked into the living room, looking confused to find them all gathered for such a clearly intentional activity.

Didn’t text us, wasn’t on the itinerary. Cool. Now we’ve officially confirmed our loner status.

We knew we were equally unequipped to fit into this environment, but it’s also starting to feel somewhat intentional, too? Like a purposeful if not directly intentional othering. Maybe that’s my inner middle-school girl talking, though.

That night, we’re going out to dinner. B has not been drinking, at least to our knowledge, for about a year. But I’m pretty sure I saw her take a few shots on the way out the door with several of the other girls.

A drive us to the restaurant and I’m in the passenger’s seat somehow designated carride photographer, taking photos of B and her two friends in the back seat.

15 girls in one restaurant, so we ended up in our own little room with two tables to split ourselves between. A and I chose our table poorly. It was the bigger of the two, and at first, we were next to B, until she decided she liked how the second table shook out more and jumped ship.

Now we’re just at a table of the already drunkest cohort of our bunch who are already screaming at each other for no reason.

Our waiter comes in and clocks us immediately. Trashy bachelorette of drunk girls and a FAT tip potential coming his way. First line out of his mouth, “Wow, so many beautiful ladies, I’m going to have to card you all because there’s no way you’re all older than 21.” This is met with general whoops of delight from this late-20s, early-30s crowd… I saw one girl adjust her cleavage in response… cringe.

As he comes around, I’ve already seen enough of the menu to know that A and I won’t be eating much tonight (long-time vegetarians as we are) and certainly won’t be drinking, so I ask that he split our check off from the larger group. He gives me a disdainful look and says that’s a question for later in the meal, and continues on to wink at one of the more fun girls across the table as he takes her ID.

When drinks arrive, there’s a toast to our bride-to-be, and the girl across from me at the table decides to scream “JIZZ JIZZ JIZZ” as part of her toast. And I mean scream it.

Someone’s weed vape gets passed around, and one girl in particular hits it a little too hard and is suddenly on another planet as she launches into a story about a wild night in Miami, where she was so drunk that she peed her pants while dancing in the middle of a group of British men at a private party she crashed. She was pretty sure she got away with it, but after hearing the story in detail, I have my doubts.

B’s sister launches into a tale about her anti-semetic, racist, bigoted ex (ex because he broke up with her). — This ex is the reason she is not the MoH, and the reason she was uninvited from this event and the wedding until their breakup. — and with this rant, she starts another girl on a story about her ex-fiancé, whom most of the girls in the room know and are still friends with, and with the most hypocritical rant of all time, she proceeds to talk non-stop for the next 2 full hours.

Here are some fun quotes I texted my husband during this dinner…

“I miss my Botox”

“Women are so much hotter than men”

“You can not mother a man and ever want to fuck him again.”

“He’s an ex-con and drug addict, but he told me I never have to work again once we have kids, so I’m pretty locked in.”

“If I’m going to give birth to something, I better have the option to stay the fuck home” (honestly, snaps)

“Two skinny spicys and a pino gris” (complete with a legitimate finger snap to the waiter as this order was placed)

Reading a text from the ex-con: “I can’t wait for you to be a stay-at-home wife, you’ll fuck with that vibe and be so hot with the other moms.” Response from the group: “WOW, that is so respectful and self-aware of him. That’s a real man.”

The waiter to one girl: “If you need me to fuck someone up for you, just say the word, sweetheart. wink”

Girl to waiter: “This is sooooo chaotic of me, but do you have a pair of scissors?” Waiter to girl: “You’re not one of those sad people who want to hurt themselves, are you, because that might cause problems for me.” Girl to waiter, pulling her top down, “Nooooo, see these straps, they have got to go.”

Girl to me and A randomly for no reason at a level 10 volume, “I THINK I WAS FRENCH IN ANOTHER LIFE.”

At this point, it’s been almost three hours, and the table behind us has been playing cards for at least an hour. Ex-con future mom is talking to B’s sister about the tragedies of bad men who don’t do enough for them. B is talking to MoH, trashing the pregnant girl who opted out of the weekend, but doing it in whispered voices while face to face, inches away from one another, making complete goo-goo eyes.

A turned to me when she saw this and said, “Why don’t they just kiss already? They both are allowed to.”

At one point, I hear B say to MoH, “I have so much respect for you leaving your husband, I think I just need to stick it out with X a little longer. I owe that to him.” (X being her fiancé). Like girl, WHAT are we all doing here…

A to my left is so cold she’s turning blue, despite the pot of tea I ordered just so she could hold something warm.

Then, finally, B seems to come to from her intimate moment with MoH, and realizes it’s time to go. Thank god I split the check off from the group because we ate a slice of cornbread for dinner and clung to our $7 pot of tea with dear life, and it still cost A and me $25 each.

We drive the partiers to a bar, and we hold our smiles until the last door of A’s car slams shut, and then she cranks up the heat, and we just start screaming.

Back at the house, we realize it’s been thoroughly trashed, and we are not interested in lingering tomorrow morning longer than necessary while 14 hungover girls drag out the cleaning process. We stare at each other, and without saying a word, we both start in on the wreckage.

It takes us just over an hour to put the house back together, which doesn’t even look like much since we opted not to touch people’s things strewn about in every nook and cranny of this place.

Then we crawl into bed defeated.

To each their own.

A saying I repeat often. To myself and to others when fruitless judgment kicks up.

Commiserating has an important place. I love a good vent sesh. I judged this weekend harshly, in part because of my own insecurity and in part because, well, it was warranted.

I found myself questioning my relationship with B, where I stand with her, and how well I even know her. She’s one of my best friends, so I aim not to blame her for anything because I genuinely believe this was her weekend, and I’m so happy that for her, it seemed to be everything she wanted it to be. But I felt sad that after all of this time, I still feel like I only see a version of her that she curates just for me.

I don’t need to be friends with her friends, I don’t need to like them or even see them again outside of her wedding. So, though they certainly were not my type of people, I can let that go fairly easily once the peak of the interaction discomfort is behind me.

I wonder if my feelings toward the weekend say more about me than any of them (probably). I could see their own insecurities reflected in their behavior and words, and with that, I could empathize. But I still couldn’t do more than give a half-smile/half-grimace and try to mentally tough out the remaining hours.

Some of it was A’s presence. Her negativity and her need for me to be in it with her did color the weekend more strongly than I might otherwise have. But then again, had I been there solo, I either would have needed to be thoroughly intoxicated or to have left early.

And, most of all, A and I bonded for the first time this intensely since our college days. I think that ultimately made up for the rest of the weekend for me, at least. I felt closer to her than she usually lets herself get, and I’m grateful for this experience for giving us that.

In the wise words of the Stones…

We can’t always get what we want.

But if we try sometimes, we just might find, we get what we need.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Dear June,

“Hi June! I love my work but it's the co-workers I don't like. At least some of them, as I have 2 close friends in the team but we're introverts and we work remotely so we don't really bond. I'm an independent kind of worker where I will exhaust all my resources before I ask for help. I have always been on my own lane, minding my own business but when I entered the team, there were factions already. I don't like office drama or any kind of drama but since my friend was a previous co-worker from another firm, people have been thinking I'm on that friend's side. Guilty by association. I don't even know the whole story. I can see the volley of rude interactions and petty callouts. My friend even pushed me to retaliate but I didn't. I told her I will never give them the satisfaction of showing a reaction and I have a lot on my plate. I have just been silent. Now, they have been checking my work constantly. I know because their image icons would show on my sheets and I have screenshots as a proof which I sent to my Manager. She didn't do anything when I told her about it. It's harmless I know, but it's distracting. Ugh. I just want to vent.”

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Dear friend,

Ah, yes. I have been here. Work is a weird thing, not because it necessarily has to be so, but unfortunately, where you have two people in a room (virtual or otherwise), you have politics.

“Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.” — William James

Male denominators of this quote aside (*eye roll*), there is a lot of truth here. The workplace is not so different than a primative society of early homo sapiens trying to figure out not only how to survive but how to fit in.

You must assert your value, but not so much that you become a threat.

You must be amicable, but not so much that you are taken advantage of.

You must provide, but not so much that you damage the egos of your peers.

You must conform, but not so much that you get passed over or left behind.

You must find your role, and never deviate from it.

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Complicated ask back then, but now?

With generations upon generations of trauma built into our DNA. A work-life balance that is anything but balanced. Access to the vast and unending opinions and edicts of the internet that regularly contradict themselves. A cut-throat ladder with limited rungs ahead of you available for climbing. And an unreasonably outdated cost of living that makes your job feel like the ticket to continued living…

Add in the weird dynamic of not seeing most of your co-workers face-to-face, and you are working with a rather delicate and fraught ecosystem.

You show up on day 1, just praying you don’t step on any landmines that prove deadly.

With all of this to keep in mind from 9-5 each day, I am right there with you on the choice to abstain from additional drama. And, I’m glad to hear you at least have 2 semi-close coworkers with whom you feel a certain camaraderie. I’ve come to think this is vital in particularly messy work environments with strong personalities and even stronger personal insecurities in charge. You need people who can validate your experience, even if it’s just a 1x message landing in your Slack like “are you thinking what I’m thinking here?” and a few not-so-cryptic emojis that let you know they too see the drama for what it is.

It is all too easy to get sucked right into that drama, too. It’s distracting; it’s sometimes satisfying; it’s sometimes a triggering reminder of times in your life when you were treated similarly, and that inner child starts tugging on well-worn strings deep within.

React.

Explain yourself again.

Hide.

Run.

Whatever your past experiences have taught you, they’re valid, and you’re safe here. And with that, I caution you to do none of the things.

Stay in your lane.

Keep your head down.

Stick to the work at hand.

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Boring and unsatisfying, totally. And maybe I’m inserting too much of myself and my work experiences into your submission, but I think the wise words of my therapist ring true for us all:

“A job is a means to an end, a paycheck to support your living. Nothing more, nothing less.” - go, Dr. K, go.

Your friend wanted you to retaliate, and let me acknowledge her, too, by agreeing that you do have a voice and a right to be heard. You have standards and boundaries that must be met for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship to continue in this workplace and with these coworkers.

If you feel at any point like you are compromising too much of yourself or putting up with hateful, spiteful, disrespectful, and out-of-line behavior, here’s what I would do…

• Keep a record of the situation, what was said, who said it, and the date. This is just for you, but it’s a list of credible, documented proof that may eventually come in handy. Keep it simple, factual, and organized.

• Keep your emotions offline. Tell your friends, your partner, your parents, your pets… anyone who is supportive of you. Feel your feelings. Journal them, write them in furious text messages to your non-work support system after particularly annoying meetings. But whatever you do, release them outside of work. You don’t deserve to carry negativity around that doesn’t belong to you or your life.

• Look past the situation. 90% of what people do and say is about themselves — their worries, their insecurities, their biases, their agenda. It’s easy to get caught up in specific things that were said or one sticky situation that got out of hand. Learn to see these moments as opportunities, as reference points for who these people actually are.

  If you learn them, you can rise far above their level simply by showing up more authentically as yourself. This will teach them that they cannot use or control you. They might try harder at first, double down on their behavior. Keep rising above. I promise, it takes time, but it works.

• Silence is your superpower. I actually wrote about this in context to some of my own professional anxieties and problematic co-workers. When in doubt, say nothing and temper your reaction. Stick only to what needs to be said to further the work. Without your reaction, what is the point of your behavior? Without something you said to fuel their fire, they end up feeling dumb. I have employed this to great effect recently at my own job.

  I had a boss tell me she felt like the office bully and implied that this was somehow my responsibility to correct. Well, she is a bully. She felt like one because, on some level, she was aware of her behavior. In response, I just stopped reacting when she spoke or messaged me. Just acknowledged her and said “I’ll consider” or something equally passive. No fuel. No fire.

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It sounds like you are doing a lot of these things, go you! I am interpreting a certain question in the lack of feedback or satisfaction from doing so, though. I assure you that questioning and the feelings behind it are real and well worth contemplating. You don’t deserve to be absorbed into a situation you never asked for and have no true stake in. You’re just trying to do your job, and as an added bonus, a job you like!

I wish I had more to offer to ease the day-to-day discomfort you must be experiencing, but I can tell you that I see the suffering you’re enduring at the hands of a truly unfair situation. Work constitutes a big portion of our days and lives; it’s important to consider your value and what you can put up with, and in return, what that affords you. This balance will inevitably ebb and flow, but don’t doubt that you are autonomous and intelligent enough to acknowledge your options and exercise them with discernment. You are already doing this and doing it well.

Your vent is always welcome here, friend. You are not alone in your frustration. You are the only judge who matters in assessing the harm here.

Know your worth is far beyond the petty words of an insecure majority.

Know you have power within & no one can take it from you.

Know you are always right if you are being true to yourself.

Your life exists beyond the confines of your computer screen and those who loom inside of it. You are loved and valued and seen and cared for. You never need to earn that. You never need to prove that. It’s innate to your being.

And when in doubt, kill ‘em with kindness. ;-)

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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How loss and grief roiled behind the eyes of the pragmatists.

How distrust and insecurity spilled from the mouths of the haters.

How a need to hurt people echoed in the hearts of hurt people.

And because I was young and impressionable and hungry to earn love from the endless circle of tortured souls amongst whom I depended on, I adapted.

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One angsty teenage day, in the car with my dad, context long forgotten, he told me that all actions are doomed to consequence, and the smartest thing I could do was to not succumb to decisions made on emotion.

Echoes of regret etched deep within emphasized every syllable.

Already, a longing to earn his approval had hardened my youth. A precious cocktail this, when combined with mother’s own grief and regret, for which I was the final hope, the last stand. Mix in a healthy measure of narcissistic emotional abuse from the step-parent I was regularly pawned off to, and you’ve got a recipe for emotionless perfectionism and fundamental fear of ever being wrong or making a mistake.

I learned that in order to save us all, I must live a life devoid of regret.

Choice after crippling choice, I dedicated my adulthood to being unregrettable. A calculated dance of performative risk (so as to maintain my illusory claim to free-spiritedness) and constant achievement (so as to live up to my long-acclaimed Gifted Child Syndrome). Each a pruned and honed mask for which to hide my true self behind. For she had never gotten us anywhere worth being or worth loving.

I resented the burden of her, so I stifled the sound of her beating heart. She had no place in a scarred, scared world.

I lived by a code of survival, of adaptation. I bear the scars of living like a badge of honor, of belonging.

See, I, too, am broken enough to belong here with you.

Broken enough for my dad to understand me.

Broken enough for my mom to care for me.

Broken enough for my friends to find me interesting.

Broken enough for the world to owe me instead of me tolerating the weight of acknowledging all that I, in fact, owed it.

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This is a place where so unbelievably many people stop. Like they’ve seen enough and found acceptance in their belief that there really is no point in going further.

This is a place they understand. A point of good enough. And the excuses of adulthood kill their resolve and bolster their right to develop no further.

This place is a quicksand. It will eat you alive. But like an ever-heating bath, degree after degree ticking by as you become all too accustomed and attached to the heat, you don’t realize when you start to die.

It’s slow, and life unfolds as it will around you. Babies are born, promotions are granted, losses are incurred, and suddenly the quicksand in which you’re rooted feels like a blessing. For it keeps you grounded in the face of this unpredictable life, swirling around you.

What an odd thing it is that, though we have experience and genetics to attribute to our getting stuck in the first place, we have only ourselves to blame for the staying.

On my very first day on Substack, the algorithm graced my feed with an article entitled "You Are What You Love" and in a true serendipitous moment of right place, right time. Sherry Ning changed my life.

“I walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that was happening across the street from my house, where I first heard of the motto: Your best thinking got you here. If our thoughts steer our destiny, why is there still so much suffering among people who know better?

The tension between these two sayings is the most important question you can ask about what it means to become someone better: the first puts you in the driver’s seat; the second suggests the car has been going somewhere you didn’t choose. The Nietzschean wrinkle in the promise of agency is that you are as responsible for your own destruction as you are for your glimmering success, so, what happens when we come to the end of ourselves? If thinking is the epicenter of our lives, why can’t we simply think ourselves out of addictions, pits of depression, or panic attacks? Why do people leave their families? Why can’t we shed our worries? Why do people commit suicide?

Why does education not reduce sadness? Why does memorizing the teachings of prophets not make a person feel comforted in times of crisis or closer to God at all? Addictions are called addictions precisely because they make you feel like you no longer have agency. Your best thinking got you here means: the tool you’re trying to use to escape your disease—your conscious, watchful, rational mind—has been running the whole time, and it hasn’t changed anything.”

— Sherry Ning, You Are What You Love

It was perhaps the first putting-to-words of what it was I had seen my whole life, for which I had concluded myself to be the problem for noticing.

The very understanding I had hid so completely, thinking it was the reason I was not worthy of unconditional love. That I could not fit in with my peers. That I did not want what everyone told me I should want. That I didn’t innately chase validation from men or care about the opinions of others. That I didn’t dream of a house teeming with children and a husband to polish like he was my crowning achievement.

Or why a career didn’t interest me as much as my perpetual yearning to understand. How I always found myself the holder of wisdom that fell on deaf or ignorant ears, or that I was shamed in my attempt to share.

I learned to subdo. To cloak the honest mirror of my thoughts behind a more colloquial and acceptable mask of the polite girl doing as she’s told.

Even yesterday, a friend texted me that our other mutual friend and I seemed to share a lingo she just couldn’t fake, and my solemn response was, “I’ve long learned how to blend in when I have to.”

There are people, like this friend and my husband and others, who have all told me on first impression they found me intriguing, and I’d like to think it’s because they saw through the mask and didn’t fear the mirror beneath. But I did. Because I was not groomed to love this mirror, but to turn away from it in quiet shame.

When we stop wanting, we are diseased (literally, dis-eased, not at ease). We know this physically: when we have the flu we don’t feel like eating, and we know we’re recovering when our appetite returns. The same is true at every other level. It’s what Ezekiel meant by, “I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” A hardened heart is not just stubbornness, it’s spiritual sickness.

— Sherry Ning, You Are What You Love

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Stuck, diseased, heart turning to stone, I forgot what I loved and what it was to be loved. Or maybe, I never knew.

I saw the path go fuzzy before me, and I felt the sweet caress of heavy sand collecting around my ankles. Meaning became elusive; maybe this is it. I wondered why, at all, I had a right to think there was any more for me out there than anyone else.

Internally, I rejected all that made me like, but behaviorally, I walked the same walk as everyone else. And it’s our actions, and our response to their consequences, that make us.

But I am not like. I never have been. And calling upon that natal third eye, I willed it to look boldly into the very mirror I hid behind and from. And there, though fuzzy and indistinct, was another choice.

A choice with consequences. One that would quite possibly lead to regret. One that I had no confidence in myself to navigate without mistakes. One that, should I choose it, would demand a total and utter relinquishing of the carefully constructed ego that had cloaked me since the day I learned I was unlovable.

With fear eclipsing all reason and under heavy protestation from my survivalist nervous system, I chose to step from the sand.

It fell away at my feet,

for it was never really there at all.

When we want to change, the metamorphosis we look for is not intellectual (you can’t just “know” what’s good for you and suddenly get better). The addict doesn’t need more information about why their habit is destroying them. What they need is a different want, by practice and intention—by submitting to different desires. You don’t recover from an addiction when you’re deprived of that thing, you recover when you don’t want it anymore, even when it’s placed right in front of you. A true change in being is a change in appetite. True conversion is a change in heart.

— Sherry Ning, You Are What You Love

Love is a leap of faith.

Love is a surrender.

Love is an awakening.

You know it when you feel it. Sometimes it comes on slowly. Sometimes it’s masked behind passion and lust. Sometimes it’s sticky like sap that clings to the skin. Sometimes it’s an electric current pulsing through your veins. Sometimes it’s a quiet knowing, an assuredness, a sense of safety.

But when it’s real. You know it, and you do not need to question it.

And for all the discussion here on choices, as I’ve slowly adapted to live in, of, and as love, I wonder if love is really a choice at all. Or maybe it’s just something we are.

Maybe you are what you love because you are love.

Actions not made from a place of genuine and unbridled love are what ruin us all. Because they are not of us, so how could we be of them?

The quicksand is an excuse, a justification offered by the subconscious to ease the discomfort of knowing that you are not living in harmony with your true nature. That you are not orienting to and operating from a place of love.

Living a heart-led life is saying, how you do one thing is how you do everything. The path upward is not more consciousness or more rigorous self-monitoring, but the embodied work of reordering your loves: finding something worth loving completely, and letting that love do what only love can: shape you, from the inside out, into someone new.

— Sherry Ning, You Are What You Love

It is a sacrifice of certainty. But certainty was only ever an illusion to begin with.

The stuck place is a gateway. By no means is it the final test, but it is a choice. One that you always possess, that asks you how you want to experience life beyond the now.

Your answer can be as radical as your wildest dreams or as tame as your comfort zone.

But before you choose, look first within at all that you love. For there you will see not pain or torment or fear or injustice, but the truth of who you are and what you’re capable of.

Therein you will find your power.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Content warning: Eating disorders, child-loss, and addiction.

Today, I was standing in my kitchen, innocently preparing breakfast, when my brain spontaneously decided to name my fictitious future child. The one I have all but sworn to never have.

Maybe it’s my age and hormones doing their thing to preserve the species, though I wish I could tell it that we’ve pretty much got that taken care of (and then some).

But nonetheless, the name came to me in a moment where I certainly wasn’t thinking about anything other than my dogs and the tea boiling in the kettle. I felt a pang of pain, remorse, and even, much to my horror, some longing.

It’s the perfect name. Using my husband’s middle name, which we love and has good family ties, and my sister P’s middle name, which is a flower. And there it was. And there she was, the beautiful little curly brunette-haired child with the single left dimple courtesy of R and the dark attention-grabbing eyebrows courtesy of me. She’s as fiery and untamable as her parents. Her lust for life, untenable.

If she’s anything like me, she skipped crawling and now runs through our home like she has somewhere to be and she’s already late for it. Stumbling her way to that elusive destination, clear only in her mind’s eye, furniture corners and walls be damned.

If she’s like her dad, too, then she’s empathetic and kind. She can tell when we’re sad and comes to snuggle a bit closer. We breathe in her sweet scent as we kiss the top of her honey brown ringlets. She may even be a little shy, sure of herself, but naturally unsure of others, needing some extra encouragement to put herself out there to the same degree with which she comes alive in the safe space of our home.

And knowing us, she is our entire world. We would fall on a million swords for her, we would have a hard time not beating up her bullies, and her word would be law. Her tiny spirit would color in the pages of our life with shades and hues we never knew existed. We’d be her reverent servants, for now and for always.

But also knowing us, I think she would hurt. The world is not made for her spirit; it doesn’t know how to sit with all that she is and can be. It tries to tame her, to keep her quiet because it senses her power, and to maintain a balance, it must challenge her right to use it.

She’s tough, our girl, and we hold the weight of her hurt together as a family. She is never too much in our eyes, but we know all too well how this hurt affected us, and it’s hard to overcome the instinct to protect and defend our little deity at all costs.

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And I think, above all, this is what scares me most. I think R & I, circumstantially won the life lottery in that we overcame our burdens and are all the better for them. But we each have family members and generations of examples enough to know that we were the exception to our relative family rules. And we didn’t make it out without battle scars of our own.

I don’t know how, in the depths of my disorder, flirting with death, my mom could watch me wasting away before her eyes. I know she didn’t handle it well, and I know her own scars linger from this time…

And then there is my brother, dying at 29 after a decade-long substance abuse battle. I have never heard my stepdad cry the way he did that day. It’s been three years, and he told me recently he is alive for me, my mom, and my other brother, but never again will he be alive for himself. The finality and gravity of this statement haunt me still.

Since I was 12, I recognized that the bloodline needed to end with me. At least on my dad’s side. I knew enough to know that I would be doing my lineage and the world a service by stopping things here. And for most years, my younger sister, P, seemed to find peace with this notion on her own. Until recently, at 22, deciding she might want to be a mother after all.

Now that she has a boyfriend, she thinks she’s going to marry and is getting her first taste of adulthood and a sense of herself when she’s not actively traumatized by her parents. So, all things can change. But she would be the best mother. She already is a mother. Ever the gracious caretaker and lover, my sister. She has been taking care of me, and I her, since the day she was born.

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It didn’t cross my path as a possibility for my life until about a year ago, 6 months before we got married, I was in a conversation with R about how exactly we would get married. There were lots of factors to consider, given that I wanted nothing more than to elope, and R was hoping a more traditional wedding would yield a heartfelt moment between him and his parents (it wouldn’t, they aren’t capable of it).

And somewhere within this debate, and 9 years into our relationship, R proclaims he can’t really see his life without kids….

For 8 years, I had been adamant that I was not the person to be with if he wanted kids. As heartbreaking as this would be, it’s important that he understand that and do what he has to do for himself. There is nothing in me selfish enough to wish him an unfulfilled life just so I could keep him forever.

And R, too, would be an incredible father. He would be all that he never got from his parentage and so much more. He would build the treehouse and play the sports. He would read the books and write her new ones. He’d paint murals on her walls and dress up like a princess for weekly tea, and I’d find him sleeping in her bed in the middle of the night if she had a nightmare.

I am getting emotional at the sheer consideration of this.

I think I’d envy their bond in the best way. He’s all I could ever hope to offer my child, and to deprive him of that love feels like the cruelest thing I could ever do.

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Yes, a lot of my concern about having kids is rooted in fear and all that I have witnessed of my family and of the world in my 28 years. I used to tell my sister and R alike that no child asks to be born. Our existence by default was non-consensual. And that’s how I knew, with certainty, that our parents owed us all and we owed them nothing in return.

Not in a cruel way, I love my family. But when we’re being held to impossible standards to earn their love, I’m calling bullshit. Love from a parent to a child should be unconditional. These imperfect humans decided to create an imperfect human for their own selfish reasons, and therefore, it’s their responsibility to love it and provide for it to the best of their ability. Forever. Not while we are cute little babies. Not for 18 years.

Forever.

I don’t fear my ability to do this.

I don’t fear R’s ability to do this.

I do fear our desire to do it.

Having faced death repeatedly within the first 20 years of my life, and again, it feels like when we lost my brother, I understand the importance of living for oneself.

Even within my 10-year relationship, and the varying states of co-dependency we have navigated. I have always been a fierce protector of my independence. I have always been able to advocate for myself better than most adults can understand. It’s innate to me. It’s what makes me, me.

And I understand motherhood to be the ultimate sacrifice. I don’t think I would want it to be anything less. The minute those two (is it two?) pink stripes appear, or the adoption papers are approved, I’m theirs.

But do I want to be anyone else’s?

Haven’t I worked so so hard to be my own?

But in the work of becoming my own, I do find myself contemplating the reality of children more and more, too. Both in having them and in accepting that I never will.

I sit on that fence. I watch my husband long for it but not be ready for it himself. I wonder if anyone ever is, and if I should keep using that as an excuse to avoid the deciding conversation.

Part of me sometimes wishes it would just happen and make the decision for me, but then I think pregnancy would ruin me, and I use the kind of birth control that is fairly non-negotiable without decisive action.

I am learning to love life. I believe that stress and discord are the ultimate disease makers. I also believe that having a child and loving them so much would be both an unimaginable joy and a resignation to worrying about them for the rest of my life.

And for R, these would only be magnified because he lives in the extremes of his emotions. No grey, just unfettered feeling, passionate and intense for-better-or-for-worse. That scares me, too.

I wouldn’t survive losing them. I know that.

I’m not sure I’ll ever understand how people afford to have kids.

Worst yet, what if they grow up to be republican? The horror.

[I jest to lighten the mood here ;).]

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So I sit on this fence. Warring with biology, emotion, and logic. With instincts pulling me in two opposing directions.

A decision with no compromise.

No refunds or exchanges.

I’ll be okay either way, but I know that I’ll always wonder to some degree what if.

Life is full of what-ifs in light of the choices we commit to. But I never want that what-if to be discernible by anyone, let alone my fictitious little her.

I grew up both extremely wanted and extremely unwanted. I never needed to be told either; I just knew, and it played a hand in shaping me. Kids always know.

Is my life enough without her?

Am I enough for her?

Her name dances on the edges of my brain, a little melody of what could but may never be.

P.S. this was a hard one. Something I struggle with more than I thought I ever would. I invite (and need) perspectives from all sides of this spectrum in the comments!

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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The birds sing louder, the grass grows taller, the light lingers longer as the earth rejoices in your arrival, at last.

I bow to your presence, your perfume potent as I devour lungfuls of your sweet air.

I forgot what it was to breathe deeply.

I ask for nothing of you, June. But I offer myself. Ripe and raw, I stand before you with surrender in my heart and peace in my bones.

I am a rose awaiting bloom at your gentle hand.

Nurture my spirit and awaken my senses. I am yours to mold.

Shape me with your soft breeze and bake me in your sun.

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The winter was a revolution.

I shattered self. I prayed at unconventional altars. I stared beyond appearance, turning mirrors into windows, and gazed lovingly upon my own soul. I took the hand of my inner child, who waited patiently for me to arrive on hand and on knee and on apologies long overdue.

Spring was a transformation.

I weeded long, untended gardens so that they might one day flourish anew. I discovered new colors in my pursuit of wisdom & clarity. I unburied deep wounds and taught them how to breathe again. I became the caretaker of my own heart, and found it a thankless job, relentlessly humbling, but a dream just the same.

Summer will be a surrender.

No expectation laden my thoughts for what this summer will be. I know you have much to teach me in our brief time together, sweet June. I am your ready disciple. I trust that you will bestow upon me all that I am ready to receive, and show me all that I still have yet to work for.

And for you all, as you step into the light of a new season, may you find surrender. Let go of expectation, let go of the past, let go of the future, for this moment here is the only one you ever get.

Indulge in its sweetness until rich flavor saturates every taste bud.

Lie still on the earth until its abundant life grows within your every cell.

Smile when you look upon yourself in mirrors or in the eyes of others.

Choose peace over violence.

Choose silence over speech.

And let the music of this beautiful month sing right into your eager heart.

It has so much to tell you.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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“I’m so scared for the future. I have no idea if I’m as strong or intelligent as I think I am. When i was a child the word ‘gifted’ was how people described me, but I can’t see that, not anymore at least. Even if I was gifted once, it is no longer a part of my life or identity. I’m lost, on the verge of adulthood and it feels like a countdown to some form of hell I’m unknowingly about to enter. I used to think I could write, that I could create something beautiful out of the pain I was, am, in; the same way you do. But the older I grow the less hope I have that I was right. I’m disappointingly average. I want to prove to that 11 year old girl who had so many dreams that they’ll come true one day, yet i don’t know if they can. I don’t know if I’m just like every other person who believes they’re intellectually superior only to be embarrassingly disproven in their future. I don’t think I’m superior, but I thought I knew things. And being on the cusp of 18 has taught me I don’t. I know that it’s a part of life, but the thought of being a failure terrifies me, but the fear of being average is what keeps me wide awake at night and distracted throughout the day. I know that I will be. Even if I’m encouraged to pursue my dreams I know how my story will end. And I’m terrified. I want to do things. I want to change things. I wish I could.”

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Dear friend,

In 9th grade, I had a math teacher who used to interrupt lessons on algebra and the fundamentals of PEMDAS to tell us about “the wall.”

“One day, you will all hit your wall. The earlier you hit it, the better. So many people hit it too late, but when you get there, you’ll know, and I encourage you all to lean in. It’s worth it to come out on the other side.”

Most of my peers had no idea what she was on about or what this had to do with next week’s test. Do we have to calculate the wall's surface area? Find its height when only given the height of a nearby tree?

But I, who hit my wall at the ripe age of 13, thought I knew what she meant.

We were a school of gifted and privileged students. Our biggest concern, even in middle school, was getting into a good college and onto the path towards presidency or inventing the next iPhone. One kid in my school invested in Tesla in 7th grade and made his first million dollars before we graduated high school. Ya.

Teachers and parents alike chose to care more about our academic CVs than our morals. We were encouraged to be brilliant, but by one narrow definition that would contribute most to the school's statistics and give parents something to feel good about when investing $40k a year into their child’s education year after year.

This teacher, however, saw through it. The wall she described was an inevitable point she saw us all reaching. Where success, measured by arbitrary achievement, starts to lose its meaning. When we would enter the world and be met with the cold realization that we were not all destined to be the next Bill Gates.

It was the shattering of an illusion, the point at which we would discover we were bred for something we might not actually want. But who had time to want while maintaining straight As and fighting for a lacrosse scholarship that might finally make us worthy of our parents' affection?

I figured it out early because I was pushed into new perspectives well before any of my peers would dip their toes into the frigid waters of real life. Nearly dying from my eating disorder was certainly eye-opening as I spent many a hospital stay with a few fellow pre-teens, but more so, a smattering of adults from various walks of life.

I realized that the pressure cooker I existed in was a lie. A force-fed debauchery that was inevitably setting 99.8% of us up for what we would learn to perceive as sure failure.

Despite my awakening, I still had to follow the path. To graduate with all of the necessary accolades, to finish college and get that oh-so-prized degree (that I have never done anything with, btw), and onto a series of jobs that have never fit right but sound good enough on paper.

No presidency. No billion-dollar inventions. And even more poignantly, no personality and a mid-life crisis at 25 when disillusionment finally caved in on my rose-colored reality. The trail ended, and the “gifts” I was once prized for possessing stood as nothing more than participation trophies in a game I never signed up for.

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I see you, my friend. I’ve stood somewhere close to where you now stand. You’re looking up at your wall, and it’s terrifying as fuck.

Please hear me when I say: this is not your embarrassment.

You did not ask for the first 18 years of your existence to be amounted to nothing more than your community’s misguided hope that they could produce a prodigy.

That is and always will be their embarrassment, because they’ve been through it too. They have the wisdom and years to know better, to do better by their children than what was done for them. And yet, here you are. A byproduct of their chosen ignorance.

Of course, the wall looks daunting when you have no way of knowing what is on the other side, when your only choice is to put faith in something you’ve never seen, heard, or tasted for yourself. No proof, just a blind climb predicated on your own curiosity and will to see the life that awaits you on the other side.

Many people stay on this side of the wall. Go through the motions of a successful life and delude themselves into believing this to be an exercise of their own free will. They learn to ignore the wall until it quietly fades into the background of their contained reality.

There is nothing wrong with this choice; it’s the majority decision for a reason. But as someone who has scaled her wall, I can assure you, they are missing out.

Because what’s on the other side of that wall is a beautiful thing. Unprotected, sure, there will always be some measure of discomfort in knowing that you’ve left what you were trained for behind. But in that unexplored haven, you make your own way, chart your own course, find fellow wanderers to navigate with, and ultimately, you find yourself. Your unfiltered, imperfect, wild-hearted, and free self.

There is nothing average about taking the path less traveled.

There is nothing disappointing about how long it takes you to scale the wall.

There is no failure in charting a course with no destination other than knowing where you stand now is not where you’re meant to stay.

The average is nothing more than a median point between two extremes. If one end is desolate idiocy and the other is intellectual superiority, I think you will find that most of the world's 8 billion people fall at or near average.

But what a limiting scale this is to boil one’s being into.

You are not a sum of your intellectual capacity and achievements.

You are love. You are joy. You are a writer. You are an artist. You are a free thinker. You are human. You contain the capacity for so much more than you know now.

These are your gifts. They ebb and flow like the tide, and are always uniquely yours.

They are not measurable on any scale.

You don’t lack the ability to be great; you just lack the perspective to see just how great you’re going to be. Time and experience will grant this to you; lean in.

Adulthood is not easy, but every hardship is a worthy sacrifice for what you learn about yourself in return.

It’s terrifying to look out at that abyss. To leave structure and safety behind is not for the faint of heart or the mediocre. It’s for the warriors, the dreamers, the believers, and those who know in their souls that their true selves are out there waiting to be crafted by trial and error and love and heartbreak and mistakes and wins and every little moment in between.

You are at the beginning. What a beautiful place to be. Cherish it.

Feel the fear; it deserves to be felt. Start here.

Mourn what you know that you are leaving behind; it deserves to be memorialized.

Summon your strength and choose to trust that you have all you need to take that first step forward.

Live boldly in your authenticity, and allow yourself to change, grow, and learn, as experience will teach you much if you are patient enough to listen to its wisdom.

Stay true to yourself, and you will end up exactly where you are meant to be. And I promise, there will be nothing average about it because you, my friend, are one-of-a-kind.

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anyway, here it is…

-June

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“Not every shift in atmosphere is mine to solve. Not every silence is mine to interpret. Not every feeling in the room belongs to me just because I can feel it.”

-My dear friend, Ella Thompson.

The world is mine and yet, I am of the world.

Do you ever feel selfish?

I do.

There are many things I am not afraid to talk about. Traumas I’ve faced, demons I’ve slain, mountains I’ve climbed, bridges I’ve burned. And then there are the quiet things. I promise you’d never guess they’re there if you met me or even if you knew me well.

The quiet shames, that linger so softly; the gentle caress of a lazy breeze in the back of my mind. Even I don’t look when they pass, tempting and sweet. They tingle along my spine both sensual and sinister, and, cowardly, I close my eyes until the sensation abates.

If I dared, I could acknowledge the whisper. Like Eve’s Apple (and no, I’m not religious, just a fan of a good metaphor), I could look my ego in the eye and let it undo me and all that is good about me. I could surrender as it tears me down and births me anew, malevolent and ripe.

She’s a demon of a different variety, Ego. My inner bitch is put to shame by her undeniable callous. My benign heart turns to stone at the mention of her name.

Ego.

I’ve kept her buried deep. May she never see the sun and all its radiant glory. Though, perhaps she’d melt like the wicked witch at its golden touch.

She roils in protest at her entrapment because she knows, and I know, she’s capable of taking over the world. All of the hurt, the defeat, and bitter sacrifice would fall away in her wake. And I would become untouchable.

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It’s a seductive power that. To be unfeeling and unflinching. If you read certain ideologies behind growth and the path to one’s highest self, there is an argument that those we praise for selflessness acted selfishly on behalf of Ego.

The Buddha relinquished all to master his self. One of the most spiritual acts in human history, quietly, the most self-centered. For he did not save anyone first or at all. He chose himself over all who needed him. He starved. He sat. And eventually, he rose.

There is a choice to be made in the path to one’s highest self. To radically choose self over other.

This is where Ego sees opportunity.

Ego thrives in the misinterpretation this wisdom.

Ego thrives in the extremes. She’s rife with contradiction. Her honeyed promises cloak her quiet malice.

“Never forget,” she reminds me. “If we fly, we fly alone.”

And we’d soar together towards glory and totality. All I must do first is renounce and detach.

Asceticism to achieve abundance?

Curious logic.

Ego doesn’t argue with wisdom, she plagiarizes it.

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I am who I am because of those who came before me. Am I then indebted?

What is a family?

A strand of organic material buried deep within a cell?

A shared home?

A denomination?

A denominator?

The ties that bind us are tight. Too tight. Tug and pull though I might, I cannot loosen their reins on my being. They are reminders, restrictions, boundaries, safety…

I am who I am because of those who came before me. Who are they?

What is a family?

A status symbol?

A paper trail?

A promise?

A regret?

The hands that hold me are worn. Too worn. Soften my grip though I might, I cannot restore their youth. They are mementos and sacrifices, the passing of time.

I am who I am because of those who came before me. How do I grieve them?

What is a family?

A tree for which I am but a small branch?

A means to an end?

A disguise?

A purpose?

The eyes that see me are blind. Too blind. Though I describe the world in careful detail, I cannot grant them sight. They are relics of the past, doomed to see only that which they can accept.

I am who I am because of those who came before me. And, in spite of them?

What is a family?

Cloaked conformity?

An unalterable fate?

A responsibility?

A burden?

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The hearts that find me are pure. Perfectly pure. I show up as I am, and they do too. I can give them my love. Their touch is cooling. Their ties are flexible. Their hands are capable. Their eyes are clear.

I am who I am because of the love I inspire. The love I am.

What, then, is a family?

Recognition & respect?

Mutual sacrifice?

Commonality?

A family is unconditional love.

To all who have an unconditional love in their life, cherish it always.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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Then, I was lectured in the dean’s office, where he cited the school rules to me: Hair color may not deviate from the naturally occurring spectrum.

Fine. Red is certainly a naturally occurring hair color. So the next day I showed up to school with, albeit dark, but unmistakably red hair.

I used to consider this rebellion a condition of the angst and mental health woes that plagued my teenage years. I once made a deal with my dad that if I hit Xlbs in my weight goal (just eating disorder recovery things) that he had to take me to get an industrial piercing because I was 16 and still needed a guardian’s approval.

Well I don’t back down from a bet, hit the weight goal, and there we were: chronic alcoholic father and underweight 5’ 3” prep-school daughter rolling up to the downtown tattoo parlor unintimidated by the burly sleeved biker behind the counter or the three drug addicts we passed on the street from where we parked my dads Lexus with thoughts and prayers that it would be there when we got back. (I won’t share what city I grew up in, but let’s just say one of the rougher in the US).

We walk in, they eye me up and down when I boldly ask for them to jam a 3-in needle into two spots of my ear cartilage. They tell me on a pain scale it’s one of the worst, am I sure?

Eh. I have a high tolerance for pain.

They look at my dad, who just shrugs, and we’re brought to the piercing table where I lie down for them to prep me.

My dad turns green.

He squeezes my hand more painfully than the needle going through my ear, and I make a mental note to never let him live this down because he is the one who has to sit down after it’s all said and done.

My mom hates it. She hates a lot of things quietly, though. She hates that I don’t own a shirt that covers my belly button. She hates that my hair colors have permanently stained the shower. She hates that I painted my room lime green and eventually talks me into painting over it… grey.

My mom has had the same clothes, the same hair, the same unchanging, unaging aura for my whole life. Our homes were carefully devoid of personality. She wouldn’t let me have friends over for fear of them judging that we were not living in the usual McMansions occupied by my school peers. She’d never wear a pattern or plant anything too colorful in the front yard.

She would quietly turn up her nose if I wore anything she deemed too out there.

The day I pierced my nose, she kicked me out to my dad's house, and we didn’t talk for a few weeks. But ironically, she sends me a text in the middle of this estrangement of the tattoo she got on her leg to commemorate her soul dog passing away.

Undoubtedly, the source of my own crippling social anxiety in this era of my life, my mom enables me to stay home from school day after day because the idea of being perceived by others makes me feel physically ill. She gets it. She created it.

When I was in college, it was one of our favorite pastimes to shop together when I was on break. We would plan our trip to the mall, and she’d have a list of what she was looking for, and I’d have a few gaps in mind for my own wardrobe, hoping she would help me fill.

We’d go to all of our favorite stores, but without really ever noticing it at the time, my mom would buy the same shirt 10 times over. Muted colors, no patterns, I could pick her “style”, safe, a little drab out anywhere we went. And this is how I learned to shop, too.

I’d pick out things, and that subtle disapproving sneer on her face if she hated what I upheld to her meant a quick reshelving of the item and a quick turn of my eye towards anything more suitable that would be sure to win her approval.

Not to mention, I went to school in a cold, grey place that wore on my spirit and enforced a strict dress code of unflattering and oversized layers.

In my freshman year of college, though, my roommate told me I was good at curating hygge. Perhaps one of my all-time favorite compliments from someone whom I could write whole chapters on for her complicated and slightly insane ways.

Ever the rebeller, I hung contraband string lights around our room, a 2016 boho tapestry on the ceiling, taped fun patterns into the backside of our door, burned my stash of candles every night, and we quickly became the room that other’s coveted for an invite to.

My roommate supplied the humans, and I supplied the vibes, but they had to be just right if I was to warrant my own spot in this crowd. I had to host with just the right playlist, mix just the right drinks, wear just the right thing, and only then could I let myself relax into the cozy corner of my bed and watch the party unfold before me. Only when I was sufficiently intoxicated myself could I participate without consequence.

This got worse as my relationship with R went through the tribulations of insecurity mixed with long distance. R grew up in an even more extreme environment where conformity was a means of survival and rebellion was not even an option to be flirted with. Ever the repressed and made-to-be straight edge, R was not a fan of how I spent my evenings and skipped class. He didn’t like what I wore to parties and was jealous of my male friends. I even visited my best friend M during freshman year so we could get our long-awaited tattoos together, a lock and key like the one we had left on the infamous and now underwater bridge in Paris together on our 16th birthdays.

R hated this. He made me feel small and unworthy because of it. He was (and still is) the love of my life; his words cut deep. His disapproval rang out in my head, an echo of my childhood reminding me not to get too comfortable in my newfound freedom.

My college friends started to make other friends. They were putting themselves out into the social scene while I shrank deeper into my bed and filled my time facetiming R sometimes until 4-5 in the morning.

I left college in a state opposite to what they say college is intended for. If anything, I lost more of myself than I thought I had left. Barely scraping together the friendships I managed to hold onto and the roller-coaster of a relationship I didn’t have the backbone to course correct.

I set my eyes on California. A place that lives and breathes individuality. No more frumpy winter jackets and the East Coast mentality that riddled my life: conform or die trying.

I wasn’t interested in a career, much to the confusion of my parents and peers; I was interested in finally living after so much surviving.

Too bad for me, I had no idea what this meant or looked like in practice.

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A few years into my California life with my perfect dog, a much matured R, a Pinterest apartment, a capsule wardrobe of neutrals, a TikTok-approved skincare routine, a friend group, and a job that only sounded cool on paper (shoutout to my fellow marketers), I thought to myself: Ah, at last, perfection attained.

But it felt hollow in comparison to my expectations. The girls in my friend group asked me for advice on my wardrobe and skincare, seeing something in my perfection, they sought to attain their own.

And it made me feel sad.

Never in my life had I wanted to be one of many. I spent years actively avoiding conformity, desperate for the world to see and accept me for all that I was different, and only then, when finding failure in that approach, did I shrink myself to their level.

So I bought a red shirt.

A truly unusual color for me, even to this day.

There was nothing special about it, just a red T-shirt that stood out in bright contrast to the sea of white, grey, and navy that made up my closet.

I started to wear it when we would hang out in the group because I liked the way it made me feel other, and quite possibly somewhat better than these girls that I wanted to find me cool, not for how I could blend into them, but how I could stand out from them.

Then I bought a pair of electric blue overalls from a shop in town. I was in love with them. Every time I walked into the shop, I would stare at them in longing for the person I could be if I wore them.

On maybe the 5th visit to the shop, I saw they only had one pair left, and in my size, too. Taking the sign, I swiped it off the rack and dashed to the checkout. Addrenehline, acting for me as I tapped my card at the register, wrapped this new piece of my identity in teal tissue paper.

They sat in my closet for almost a year before a dinner on the town for New Year’s Eve build just enough courage in me to wear them out with my friends.

I was aware of their surprise as I strolled up to E’s front door, and she was there in her usual light wash jeans, white sneakers, and non-descript blouse (no hate - I own more variations of this look than I can count). Her eyes go wide, and then she quickly recovers because I know her well enough to know she won’t give me the satisfaction of her real feelings on the matter.

We press on. I get the same little eye pop from the rest of the girls as they file in, and I’m both feeling extremely self-conscious but also emboldened. As my serial on how not to make friends as an adult delves further, this was not a friendship built on praising individuality. No, this was a friend group rooted in insecurity and competition, and I had quietly but markedly upped the ante.

Until they started to shun me for it.

Personality is a threat to those who struggle with their own. I know it, I’ve lived it. I feel it still to this day.

There is a nagging voice in my head when I make a choice, running through the list of people I know and how that choice might land with them. What they will say when they find out, and if I can live with the weight of that judgment.

But then, I’m choosing for them. And when do I ever get to choose for myself?

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My brother died in October of 2022. I can’t say it wasn’t a possibility we had all considered after 10 years of battling with addiction, but it still was a complete and life-altering shock.

300+ people came to his memorial.

They talked about his love to flowers, of art, of culture and opera. They talked about his wild fashion (indeed) and how he spray-painted the side of his 2007 Honda Accord with a giant orange creature just to stand out, even on the road.

He would host dinners and decorate the spaces with whimsy, flowers, and treasures he picked up from the world.

He would write long, handwritten letters to us all.

He lived in Brooklyn, Madrid, on a farmstead in Portugal, Shanghai, London, and California.

He was untamable in his sense of self. And he paid the ultimate price for it.

He died just a few months before his 30th birthday.

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We weren’t close. We didn’t get the chance to be, but sitting there, at his wake, hearing of all that he had done and all the lives he had touched, I think something primal in me shattered.

If I died at 29, what would they say?

Why do I touch people?

Do I even?

I want to.

I moved us out of San Diego a few months later. Deeming it no longer the place to find myself. In order to touch myself first, so that I might one day touch others, I must go back to my roots and ask for help.

I came wholly unraveled after this move. I didn’t realize how much I had grown my identity around fake friends in a fake place. How they bolstered my ego and kept me small for so many years, but felt like progress and perfection just the same.

It shocked me. I spiraled.

I got fired from a fake job I hated and realized how nice it was to walk dogs and wake up early to work the front desk of a nearby fitness studio. I spent my days ice skating, playing with dogs, and working on mock-ups for my portfolio.

No pressure, no being for anyone else’s benefit, just existing in the here and now.

Since then, I have been putting in real work. I went back to therapy, and I conquered a very major and prevalent fear of anxiety medication. I’ve been auditing my life, reconnecting with my body, and weeding my garden, so to speak. Marie Kondo certainly had one thing right: if it does not spark joy, it’s not for you.

But in place of her minimalist agenda, I’ve found the most joy in color. In undiluted muchness. And, it’s not without a mountain of self-doubt, insecurity, and anxiety kicked up in the wake of making choices that bring me, and possibly me alone, happiness.

I have ridden the wave of Depression. Starved at the cruel hand of Anxiety. Bowed still at the behest of those who once controlled me.

I have worn the blue overalls proudly some days. I have put them on only to take them right off in favor of something more familiar just as often.

I bought a house and filled it with what I had. Where versions of me would previously have rushed to unceremoniously make the house perfect by someone else’s vision, this house felt different.

For one, it was far too big, and I was far too house-poor to do much but live in its walls as they came.

But in even a year, color sings through my life for the very first time.

Various shades of green, a bright blue door to the garage, a sunshine yellow office, pink and orange throw pillows, and a baby blue duvet. All the once beige corners of my existence are coming alive one small choice at a time.

I am an artist. I am a writer. A truth I knew in my bones before I ever touched pen to paper or finger to keyboard. But I was scared because to be an artist is to be imperfect and yet never satisfied with imperfection. Well, I felt that my entire life, so now to invite it in and to make myself the only critic who matters, that’s final boss mode.

To become, I must first conquer. To conquer, I must first relinquish. To relinquish, I must first accept. To accept, I must first acknowledge.

It takes time.

It is painful.

This past weekend, I had a beautiful moment of clarity. One that, like all things, will pass but not without me first harvesting all that it has to reveal to me.

It doesn’t have to be so serious.

Joy is an unserious thing.

Life is serious, but the living of it does not have to be.

So I did a little online shopping.

And as I was shopping, I let joy be my guide (RIP my wallet).

If something spoke to me and only me, I added it to my cart.

Along with two cute toe rings and an anklet, I saw these adornments while shopping for sandals for some upcoming travels, and I HAD to try them for myself.

Then my husband came home after 7 days apart, a long time for us, and he brought me my favorite candy, and I made him breakfast as we sat together and caught up on our shared adventures of the past week.

We decided to go antiquing because he wanted to take me to a place he had gone to last time I was away. I bought this adorable little frog for the front of our house… because, joy!

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Then we remembered a sign we had seen in our tiny town about a plant sale, with proceeds going to town beautification. SAY LESS.

I promptly planted these (a first for me) outside the front of my house, which was in desperate need of some personalization. My husband joined me even though he thought he wouldn’t want to, and we were giggling and falling down the front slope of the house.

We hung some colorful lights he got me for Valentine’s Day, finally, in our backyard.

And I finished the stool I’ve been working on making by hand with my step-dad for 3 months!

Nothing inherently productive. Nothing that furthers my status or role in the ecosystem of our complex society.

My dog threw up for half a day during this; my husband injured his back, some of the flowers are wilting slightly, because nothing can ever or will ever be perfect. It’s in the acceptance of the imperfect that we learn to exist and extract beauty from the struggles and joys of being alive.

I have the cutest front-of-house on my block. I don’t have the most well-manicured or polished. I don’t want to.

I just want you to pull up to my house and think, with a smile, "Oh, this must be June’s.”

I want to run out and throw my arms around you, inviting you in with love. I want this to be a place where you, too, know from the moment you enter that you are welcome to be nothing more and nothing less than your purest and truest of selves.

anyway, here it is…

-June

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→ 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 sleep 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 little demon we’d invited into our home and the wake of destruction she left behind each day, 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 gave in to E’s pleading with us 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, the pee-absorbent blankets, and the pile of entertainment chew toys we’d amassed, and piled into the car, puppy in tow, sweet Theo thrilled as we were to be leaving the house on an adventure.

We set up Juniper’s dog jail, and Theo ran off with little 8lb terrier-mix, Cinnamon, and we graciously accepted glasses of wine before taking our spots on E’s 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 a 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 klepto-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 facilitate 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 is terrible to say of someone, I know, 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 radiating off S. To be fair, in these initial moments, 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 myself).

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We play a few of the games, and then come back to good ole Stir the Pot. I’ll let you in on the general 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. Then you point at someone in the group, mind you, no one knows why you’ve chosen this person, as only you have seen the card in question up until this point.

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, partial strangers, the game can only function on appearance-based 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 eliciting 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.

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 of this group situationship now. R was a mess, for lack of a better way to explain things; his actions were now fully rooted in his 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 Waves 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 made a running leap onto 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 one row, boys behind— but not before immediately disappearing for more beer first. Most of my female companions 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 behind my back 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 them incredulously, and probably because I too was not fully sober, and in a move I truly regret (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 30mph 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 stomachache 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

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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.

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unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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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.

continued here

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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