I donned an orange safety vest and sparkling new hard hat fresh from its cellophane wrapper and trudged up the wide, steep incline under a blazing California sky. My gait was off-kilter, too much weight in the front of my steel-toed boots. The Sony camera slung across my body hit my back every step I took, like a stranger trying to get my attention. I shoved my small notebook and pen into my jeans back pocket and swung the camera around, securing it with my right hand. Up and up the bridge deck I climbed, all the way to the end, halfway across the San Francisco Bay.
Read MoreI tug at the sleeves of my sweater as I rock back and forth on the hospital floor. A girl around my age tucks a strand of her turquoise hair behind her ear and sits in the chair beside me, her knees up under her chin.
Read MoreIn the pre-dawn silence, before the sun wrests the veils of frost from our windows, I hear someone running down the hall—small, naked feet sprinting toward my bed. I’m only half awake, half expectant, but when I feel the mattress dip under the pressure of new weight and a warm body pressed against my back, I know it’s my son and I know he’s had another bad dream. Maybe it’s Captain Hook again or Shredder, the knife-toting villain from the Ninja Turtles.
Read MoreFrom October 2020 until February 2022, every Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. until 11:15 a.m., I dedicated my time to taking a shower. My weekly Wednesday ritual also included my virtual therapy session at 1:00 p.m., so I began my day changing out the week-old unwashed pajamas to shampoo and deep condition my hair, shaving my legs, and exfoliating my body. As I undress, starting with my crew socks, I focus on my parent’s medicine cabinet. Although not my bathroom, this is my childhood bathroom, as there is one shared shower. Next, my black sweatpants and long sleeve-stained John Mayer tour shirt from 2017 hit the blue tile.
Read MoreThe despair is back. It’s so familiar that its return is almost comforting like seeing an old friend until you remember that friend is misery. I am miserable.
It is mid-February. I have made it through the big three without incident: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. My sober family had a party on January 2 to celebrate getting through the holidays without a drink and hopefully a minimal amount of amends. I proudly celebrated one year of sobriety on January 8.
Read MoreI smell her in a cosmetics store on the other side of the world. It hits me in waves that test my balance and fuck with space-time. For a moment, I half expect to turn the corner and see her browsing the next aisle, filling the air with the sweet fragrance of her perfume laced with the lingering scent of her last cigarette.
Read MoreI love to be as close to people as possible. I guess it’s something about security.
Read MoreAn intensely painful stomach ache kept me awake that night. Every time I lay down, my head spun and nausea swelled in my throat. I ran from the tent to the portable toilet a handful of times. I desperately wanted to vomit. And I tried. But I couldn't. We were scheduled to have five hours of sleep that night, but I managed to get only an hour and a half. I'd felt so strong, almost invincible up to this point.
Read MoreI often wonder at the definition of first love. Many acquaint it to different people, for different reasons. Could I acquaint it to the first crush I ever had? Well then that would have to go to Orlando Bloom as Legolas in The Lord of the Rings. Do I count it as the first heart pounding, late night longing, tear-jerking crush I ever had? Well, that would have to go to a boy named Chase at the tender age of twelve, whom I was infatuated with for quite some time. Though he never liked me back, and while it was fun to crush on and spend nights talking about him with my girlfriends, I don’t think I could call it love. No. My first love belongs to my first boyfriend.
Read MoreVinegar-soaked fish and chips in a London pub, our families escaping the summer heat in 2006. You, me, your brother, my sister, all of us in a dark wood booth beside a window. English bric-a-brac, the smell of Guinness. In the spring, we’d both graduated from the University of Oklahoma and turned twenty-two within months of each other, which meant we’d known each other half our lives.
Read MoreHe had been in Montana for seven days before she got there. He was there with a group of guys—one he had grown up with, the others he had fished with before, on the same river. The house was up on a mesa and they had rented it for ten days. It was her first time in Montana, her first trip away from her children in over a year. She didn’t do any of the planning, but rather showed up feeling as if she was joining in on someone else’s vacation.
Read MoreMy heart pounded conspicuously in my chest as my husband and I approached the clinic. I was terrified. What if there were protesters outside? What if they talked to me? What if they asked me why I was there?
Read MoreThere’s an old Hebrew proverb that says before a child is born, the angel Gabriel whispers the secrets of the world in their ears. He tells them everything about God, life, love, the universe. Then he kisses them on the forehead, the child is born, and they begin to forget all the wisdom that was granted to them.
Read More“Let’s see what your fortune holds,” my sister Lynn said, brandishing a pack of tarot cards.
A recent college graduate, I was off to France to spend a year as an au pair. She laid out the cards carefully—we were just messing around; neither of us really believed it—and put on a good show. Lynn explained each card with gravitas, knowing nods and occasional sighs. I don’t remember what card came—the naked Star? The Wheel of Fortune?—when her eyebrows jumped up to her hairline and she announced “You will come home pregnant.”
Read MoreOn a bus across the city, university to main station, sometime in late June, I spent five endless minutes alternating between three thoughts.
One. Why do I feel like crying?
Two. I am going to throw up.
Read MoreOn Sunday, I'll discover the meaning of all of this. It'll turn out that it's all about hue. They say that pain, real pain, hardens around a body, ossifies, so that the sufferer can't move or even breathe. Of course, you try to prepare for the pain. It's instinctive; it's part of the process. In the end, it'll turn out that I'd prepared too well.
Read MoreFive.
A girl finds herself standing with her cousins, wondering what she will wear for dress-up at Nana and Pops’s house. The dazzling range of options is almost overwhelming. Who will she be today? Through the animal costumes and the police uniforms, something catches her eye. A stunning red dress—the kind women wear to fancy parties she’s seen on TV. That’s who she wants to be.
Read MoreI thought I was done with menopause. I hadn’t had my period in over 12 months, which, according to the National Institute of Aging (NIA) definition, meant I was post-menopausal. I’d made it through a year of mood swings and depression. I adapted to thinning hair and dry skin, sleep problems, chills, joint pain, a decreased sex drive, headaches, and fatigue. An entire shelf on my bookshelf at home was dedicated to menopause related books like The Hormone Cure and Estrogen Matters. I joined an online menopause support group. I had a prescription for estrogen pills and invested more than $1k on hormone patches, so why was there blood in the toilet?
Read MoreI get home a little after midnight. Mom is awake reading Joyce Meyer on the couch and Dad is upstairs sleeping. I head to the kitchen to grab some water. She takes off her reading glasses and watches me.
“You’re not supposed to be out this late with a cinderella license.”
Read More“Like, would that string really have stayed on her finger for fourteen years?” Lindsey asks, and I laugh in the carefree manner typically brought about by cheap vodka.
“Well, it’s magic string,” I respond, “because it’s infused with love.”
We continue to watch, a bowl of popcorn between us, buzzing on the fruit-flavored Smirnoff I am finally able to buy legally now that I’ve just turned twenty-one. It is summer; the semester has ended; we are each home from college.
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