Close Your Feet and Walk Away
Close Your Feet and Walk Away

My boyfriend and I say, “I love you,” to each other every single day, more than once. I don’t know why he loves me, but he does. Sometimes I question this love. Sometimes I wonder if we will get married someday and have a family and live in a big house with a big yard or if we will break up after a big fight and move out of the togetherhome we have right now because until death do us part is not realistic for a raped girl like me. Maybe after our big fight, he’ll ask his boss to relocate him to another state because he wants to move out of California because California is where we became us and where we destroyed us.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumsexual violence, sexual assault, ChildhoodComment
Yellowstone
Yellowstone

In June of 1993, I was twenty-three and pregnant—again. Despite having been on the pill for years and using a diaphragm correctly, this was the third time my body tried to make me a mother before I was ready. Nothing had changed since the last time it happened: I was still living in the Ocean Beach enclave of San Diego, still in a rocky relationship with Richard, still a part-time student inching my way toward a bachelor’s degree, still a waitress, still broke. Things were worse, in fact. My roommate informed me that she was moving to Guatemala, and as I couldn’t afford the whole apartment, I had to move out. Richard had just graduated college and planned to ride his motorcycle up the west coast to Seattle, so we decided to break up (again). When a co-worker heard me complaining about a lack of summer plans, he suggested a hospitality company that hired seasonal workers in Yellowstone National Park. Employment included room and board, so I applied, they accepted, and I packed my bags.

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True StoriesKristina Buschrelationships, travel, reflection, traveling, friendshipComment
And Then The Moon
And Then The Moon

We found the perfect place to camp. At eleven-thousand feet in the mountains of Eastern Nepal—the sky filled with puffy white clouds and a panoramic view of Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world. My friend Elizabeth and I traveled with five porters, two cooks and a guide. The porters set up four tents—a toilet tent with a hole dug into the ground inside, a larger dining tent where the guys, after dinner, rolled out their sleeping bags and one tent each for Elizabeth and me. I threw my duffel bag into my tent and turned to look at Kanchenjunga. I knew these clouds, swirling, changing, growing darker, moving as if the hilltop itself was spinning.

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True StoriesKristina Buschtraveling, travel, relationships, friendship Comments
A Need for Hibernation
A Need for Hibernation

I hear scratching coming from behind me on the couch. I live on the third floor of an apartment complex, with nothing above me. Woods surround my tiny balcony and cover my living room and bedroom. The noise, it sounds like scurrying, and I think maybe it’s just a squirrel or a raccoon crawling on top of the roof. Whatever it is sounds like it’s running off the roof, leaving me wondering why it would be doing such a thing this late at night. I don’t know much about nature. I don’t know much about what happens in the dark.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumtrue stories, anxiety, fear, Grad school, coffee, panic attackComment
Soul Mate: A Definition
Soul Mate: A Definition

The day after my twin sister's wedding I curled up in the corner of my parent's kitchen and fell asleep. At the time I said I was sitting there because the rest of the house was already overtaken by relatives. I said I was sick because my adrenaline had finally run out. As maid of honor, adrenaline was all I had been running on for a long time. But I've had a long time to think about it now.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumsuicide, Marriage, Sisters, Familiy Comments
From Nashville to Maine With Love
From Nashville to Maine With Love

Everything in Maine was blissfully damp, from the sheets to the mornings to the paperbacks. Blueberries, by the time they made it into our pancakes, were still wet. Ponytails remained lake-stained all the livelong day. It was only when we laid our heads on the moist flannel pillowcases that we felt something akin to dry. Even then, one good squeeze and we could have wrung juice from the blankets.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumfamily history, family, Familiy Comment
Fingernails
Fingernails

In the high dependency room, the room before graduating to the special care baby unit, I would cut your fingernails for the first time.

My mom took a bus to Hackney Central in East London, to buy the tiny, baby-doll sized fingernail clippers.

Grandma had traveled from Michigan, where I grew up, and was not used to big city living. For her, a bus ride to a very busy place, by herself, was a brave step for her. She then walked from the bus to the Woolworths on the corner.

She did it for me, because I couldn’t leave you.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfamily, motherhood, reflectionComment
Pressing Play
Pressing Play

It’s my first Christmas Day with my family in two years and Scott’s first Christmas with us ever. After packing up our lives in Austin and moving to Brooklyn to fulfill a mid-twenties obligation to ourselves, we spend our vacation time not on vacation and instead doing the work of family visits. Now that I’ve dragged him for the four hour flight and the five hour car ride to the southernmost tip in Texas, he can enjoy December in shorts and a tee in what locals call the Valley.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfamily, divorce, relationshipsComment
I Earned My Stripes
I Earned My Stripes

I grew up listening to my mom criticize her stomach. Having children had done this, she would say as she ran her hand over her loose stomach. Being pregnant and giving birth had changed her body forever, leaving behind stretch marks and large breasts and a stomach that jiggled and bulged. She didn’t like how her stomach looked, but she didn’t starve herself or excessively exercise. In every fitting room we shared, she commented. If only I could get rid of this, she’d say as she patted her stomach. Look at this, she said, as she shook her head and looked at her side profile in the dressing room mirror. If I didn’t have all this, these would fit better, she would say, while pulling down the pair of pants that didn’t fit. She saw, and continues to see, her stomach as a negative, a defect.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumself love, family, body imageComment
Waterstones
Waterstones

A couple of months ago you were going to several Overeaters Anonymous meetings a week, sometimes every day. But when Elaine told you she couldn’t sponsor you anymore after your suicide attempt, and when she and a friend whom she also sponsored asked you not to attend a couple of their regular meetings, and after your therapist came to the facility you were hospitalized in to tell you she couldn’t work with you anymore, you stopped going to meetings altogether.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummental health, self love, books, friendshipComment
Polar Solstice
Polar Solstice

The evening before you came into this world we endured the longest blackest night.

Winter. The hibernal solstice. Our slice of Earth turning her back to the sun, head bowed, submitting to the dark.

That night imprinted its suffocating length onto my birthing body. Within the week, wrapped in tendrils of dread

postnatally deeply depressed.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaummotherhood, family, reflectionComment
Tears for Vivian
Tears for Vivian

You stand with your husband on the balcony of a hotel room in Ao Nang, Thailand. Together, you watch the sky turn from pre-dawn pink to blue. It rained during the night and the air smells like damp teakwood and salt. Your hotel sits at the edge of town on top of a steep hill. As the sun rises, you contemplate the serenity of the Indian Ocean—a sea without waves.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumgrief, traveling, trauma Comments
Wedding Song
Wedding Song

It was time for our one rehearsal, the day of my daughter’s wedding. A group of family and friends who had been practicing alone now gathered, anticipating the thrill of voices blending and harmonizing, woven together by the glistening thread that is my daughter’s life force. In the run-up to this event, all said, “Yes, we will sing…We are honored to sing…We are thrilled to be part of this special surprise,” a touching tribute to a father long dead. All coming together from different places, different times, different experiences, to fuse in song.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumgrief, love, family Comments
(W)hole
(W)hole

I used to place Ken’s hand right on the mound of Barbie’s breast. It fit, almost precisely, as if the rounded palm was created for this small act of intimacy. Of course, further south it was merely a place where two legs connected, a smooth sweep of plastic that neither confirmed nor betrayed pleasure. But that didn’t stop me from imagining. I used to sit on the floor between the two twin beds in the upstairs bedroom at my grandmother’s house.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumsex, sexuality, bodies, body image Comment
The Cost of Leaving
The Cost of Leaving

I stare out at the sky. The man next to me is snoring, mouth wide open. His head drops forward, jolting back upright. It’s February. If the year had gone as planned, I would not have been on this airplane. I would have been finishing breakfast with my roommates and walking to class. Tonight, they will make dinner without me. We won’t dress up together this weekend, sifting through each other’s closets, to attend a party where we drink too much and laugh too hard. I am leaving home.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumReligion, father daughter, Change, Change of life, family, teacherComment
The Memorial
The Memorial

In the early morning hours after John Lennon was shot and killed, people began gathering in front of the Upper West Side apartment building that he shared with his wife and their young son. For more than a week, from everywhere and of all ages, they came to keep a vigil. Watching the local news channel, I hear them referred to as Beatle fans. But what I see are mourners. Crowded together, hemmed in by police barricades, they weep and hold candles and signs, cleaving to the spot where Lennon left this earth.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumChild Loss, miscarriage, still born, stillborn, New York, Beetles, John Lennon, Grief, Loss Comments