Now, today, I no longer have to convince anyone how bad I feel.

will,” I said. I had exhausted all other options. The way antidepressants changed my life so fast was comical. Within two weeks I had a sense of calm I had never experienced. My body stopped vibrating. It was not as if my anxiety completely dissipated, but the cyclical thinking, the inclination to bore into a thought or decision until it subsumed

normalizing and withstanding this type of behavior from men is exactly what it means to be a woman. I didn’t break things off because my value had always been tied to what men thought of me; because I didn’t want to seem reactive, or difficult, or mean;

The familiar feeling of boredom eventually saturated my lampshade making, as it had with everything that came before, but at least doing this I never had to leave Petunia.

Doing this made me feel powerful. Pop culture had taught me that being the Lolita meant being in control. It meant

It’s shocking how much faster I recover from an ending when I don’t have to also disentangle my sense of self from the other person. I

I still needed Theo’s help. He generously offered to split the cost of the class with me, which was close to four thousand dollars. Two thousand dollars was nothing to him, but it was a lot to me. I felt extremely grateful for his help but also guilty, given he had paid for nearly everything over the course of our relationship.

At sixteen, I saw myself as Annie Leibovitz or Linda McCartney. I did not see myself as a teenager, but maybe this was because so few people treated me like I was one.

In this moment it’s impossible for me to admit to Reece and to myself that I also am not happy and haven’t been happy. My feelings of mutuality are obscured by those of rejection.