I thought, for the split-second between my brain recognizing that I was being called out to speak and my mouth automatically responding, that I should give a fake name.

I always had an inexplicable liking for “Veronica.” 

The week I got back home to New York after spending my junior year of college in England, two unexpected things happened. I got a phone call offering me an internship in Manhattan that I’d been rejected for months earlier and my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

I saw my weight today. A healthcare provider who didn’t take my history of an eating disorder into account put my
weight on my visit summary, completely unaware that her subconscious act would terrorize me
for the rest of my day. In a more hopeful vein of my recovery, I finally found a therapist who specialized in eating disorders, ending a months-long search for the recovery holy grail: an ED-trained therapist who also accepts insurance.

I always thought self-confidence had more to do with your outside beauty, your physical appearance, than your inner beauty, your personality. In that respect, I knew my grades were stronger than my looks. Which now I recognize as a form of self-confidence, but at the time, I didn’t see it that way. It all came down to what I saw in the mirror.

The first time I cut my skin intentionally was on my sixteenth birthday. That morning, I’d failed my driving test. I shouldn’t have taken the test that day, both because failing made for a shitty birthday and because I didn’t really know how to drive. I didn’t understand, for example, that you should slow down while turning. I was disappointed and embarrassed, so I dragged my shaving razor across my forearm once or twice.

Our bodies twitch and lurch and tingle and pinch and tire and inspire and confuse. For example, on a crisp fall day in 2023, I was sitting in a classroom, an observer, when I felt an itch. Without conscious thought my hand moved to my breast, an instinctual move, a response, an urge, only to touch my hand to my body just in time to remember it was a phantom itch, a glitch of my brain and nerves and memory, the breast, almost three years gone but still ever present. This happens in other contexts, too, where I will reach for my breasts only to find them gone, like when taking a bubble bath and my mind sees them, like ghosts, sagging with gravity towards the lavender scented bath water.

For as long as I can remember, I have been at war with a word. The f-word. No, not that f-word, though I could easily tell a tale about the wins and losses I’ve had with that notorious expletive. The f-word that I’ve been battling, well, it’s been bigger, meaner. I’m not alone in this lifetime fight either. Most of modern society views fat as far more offensive than that cuss-word f-word could ever be.

I am seven. Wooden blocks from a wooden box are my favorite toys and I spend hours constructing miniature houses on the brown linoleum floor of our family room. I want to build houses like the ones my grandpa and uncles build, like the houses they live in. But I never see them build. Only my cousin Joe is invited to join them at their work sites, to watch, to practice, to learn. Joe is a boy.

First, move out of New Jersey. It is the only state where it is illegal to pump your own gas. As such, it is diametrically opposed to the development of this valuable life skill. It would be wise to move somewhere relatively far from New Jersey—say, Minnesota—so that you are not tempted to go back.

I have probably lived over half my life. At fifty-one, I have no desire to get to 102 as my grandma Rosel did. She was a stout and strong woman with opinions, a big heart, and a twinkle in her eye. At age 102, she was incontinent and forgot to take her pills and which son she was talking to on the phone. She had outlived two husbands, 99% of her friends, all siblings, and one grandchild. She was also stubborn. When she decided to die, she willed herself to death in sleep.

Step 1. Ignore the people who say it takes half the time you dated to move on. They probably learned this from Charlotte York. Newsflash, Charlotte and Sex and the City aren’t real. Your grief is. Accept that it will ebb and flow for five-and-a-half years, almost the same length of time you dated. I promise, that’s OKAY. Save yourself the anger, anguish, and self-doubt in year three by ignoring this advice from the start.

On the darkest dark night of winter, one small light marks the start of the festival.

This darkest night is the longest night, too. In winter, in Maine, daylight can last maybe eight hours—if you’re lucky. And as the moon of the month of Kislev wanes from quarter, to sliver, to new, the Chanukah festival begins.

What was said: The cancer has returned, Bob. Your pelvis lit up like a Christmas tree on the PET scan. There’s nothing more to do, but go home for hospice.

What it felt like: We’ve scheduled your plane crash, Bob. Prepare to depart at Gate 7D.

It was the four of us— me, Hannah, Aaron and Kyle— sitting around in Hannah’s living room after a board game night that probably ended with me making Aaron so mad he packed everything away. I had lots of tricks for that. Like moving my little piece off the board when we played Monopoly as a protest of capitalism, or reclaiming America for my Indigenous ancestors in Risk, and then refusing to conquer any other continent. Hannah and Aaron had only been dating a year and some change at that point, so pissing him off was still a bit of a sport for me. Kyle and I had already broken up.

The first time I knew my parents loved each other was when my father Hoovered ants off my mother’s precious Christmas cake. Granted, it’s no ordinary cake. It’s a fruitcake my British mother makes two months before the holidays, injecting it weekly with dark rum to keep it moist.

It is hours past my bedtime when my mother shakes me out of a deep sleep. I might be as young as eight or as old as ten, but in my memory, I am nine: the exact age when Mom is the center of my tiny universe. I don’t ask questions; I simply crawl out from underneath my Little Mermaid comforter and follow her up the stairs.

There he was after seven years, walking out the door of the store just as I was walking in. After a second of eye contact, but no words, we kept going. Speaking wouldn’t have been appropriate. Following behind him was the woman he unbeknownst to me was still in relationship with when we dated. 

“So dear, how did we get into this mess? Tripped over a rug? Bathtub fall?”  Spoken with that cheery disengagement nurses reserve for those whose grey hair betrays their moldering minds.

The two-seater Toyota truck rushed through the darkness of early morning in Fayetteville, N.C. We were on our way to the hospital on Fort Bragg’s Army base. My pain made sitting up monumental, whimpering inevitable. I was aware of every centimeter of my body and yet, somehow, also entirely outside of myself. God, it hurt.

“Did she really say that?” I was shocked, yet I wasn’t. There was a strange quality to my awareness those days, like the water coming to shore and retreating again. I was listening to myself through insubstantial headphones, muted and tilted slightly.

My mama nodded. She kept tinkering about the kitchen, pressing the button on the coffee machine and side-stepping back to the sink. I watched her in silence for long moments, dangling my feet from the bar stool with the nervous energy that took hold of me while I was mulling over my grandmother’s statement.