Essays
Longform attempts at exploring, expressing, and existing.
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How the Body Holds
Lately, the hurt lives more in my body than my mind. I suffer through sleepless nights in a row, writhing with headaches that resist every remedy. More mornings than not I wake with a stiff neck and a clenched jaw.…
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An Inventory of Pain
A personal inventory of pain I’m carrying right now—physical, emotional, spiritual—and a few things that help. Maybe it’ll help you name yours too.
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A Distance Measured in Silence
They warned me, over and over again—marriage is hard.
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A Reckoning With Yourself
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music…
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And After Self-Hate?
A reflection on remorse and the self-hatred that follows wrongdoings. Envisioning a new understanding of myself as a person who can hurt others and searching for a self-love that encompasses the whole, flawed self.
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Nothing That Isn’t for Anything
If you had an extra hour every day, how would you spend it? I think the one thing almost all adults have in common is the feeling that there is never enough time to get everything done that you hoped…
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Isn’t It a Miracle?
Isn’t it a miracle that we’ve ended up as ourselves? My youngest sister is always trying so hard to become someone. I have tried, but I still haven’t found the right way to explain to her that no one ever…
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I Deserve to Dream
How do you dream big? When I was growing up, I never heard the adults around me speaking in future tense. Everyone around me seemed too busy coping with their past or simply surviving the present. My parents in particular,…
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Time Blind
Are you saving time or wasting it? No matter how early I wake up, I’m always late for work. I’ve tried getting ready the night before, but I still find myself confused about the next steps. I’ve tried waking up…
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Catching Up
“if someone called you right now to catch up, what’re the things you’d tell them about?” If I called you right now to catch up, it might surprise you to hear from me after such a long time away. I…
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What Thanksgiving Can Be
I’ve never been a fan of the Thanksgiving holiday, for many reasons, but mainly because as a practice of gratitude it was too little, too late, too commercialized, and too superficial. Thanksgiving, I used to think, was just a time…
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2022 // Pay Attention to the Present
“Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself—what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.” — Warsan Shire It’s that time of year. The first day of the next 365, when we all resolve…
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What I Wish the World Could See
It was Valentine’s Day, 2017, just over four years ago now, that I was formally, and finally, diagnosed with an inflammatory bowel disease and nothing in my life has been the same since. I spent the evening before preparing for…