What Makes a Good Romance?

I’ve been thinking lately about my gripes with the romance genre. I'm a romantic girlie who is simultaneously critical of “women’s media”, but I don't want to condemn something just because women enjoy it. I have a hard time achieving balance between these competing beliefs. Let us then begin with a disclaimer: while I am, in my heart, a hater, I am a girls’ girl who loves girly things. That said, I take issue with the many expected tropes in the romance genre, and that it doesn't try hard enough to produce good writing.

Overall, I believe romance relies too heavily on tropes, which are now weakening the genre's ability to encourage writers to challenge themselves, banking instead on normative design and predictable plots. The romance genre is evolving into a capitalistic, polished, lush-pink echo chamber, filled more-so with archetypes and the wide swath 'vibe' of a book than actual substantive passion projects. Authors who can punt out puff pieces one after the other get big contracts, forgettable book covers, and slapped into Godforsaken BookTok recommendation kiosks at Barns and Noble.

I’ve cared about books and reading for my entire life — and my favorite books have always been (in one way or another) about love. How it precludes us, beckons us, dismays us. How despite causing our most gut-wrenching, lonely, and devastating life experiences, it's also the catalyst of all of our most powerful, ecstatic moments of joy.

Romance is thus, unsurprisingly, an incredible popular book genre: being that it's solely dedicated to exploring people's romantic relationships. And given that it's such a popular genre, there's a lot of money to be made and authors trying their hat at romance. The genre right now is so overpopulated with a wide breath of sub-genres, tropes, and storylines, and there's also a large variety in the quality of writing that gets published. Some of romances' most popular genre writers, like Colleen Hoover, Ali Hazelwood, and Sally Thorne, for example, are talented enough in that their writing is readable, but their writing is not (in my opinion) all that good. I could write a lot more about why I think these authors aren't that great, but right now, in my first blog post about my Issues with the Romance Genre, I'm going to first focus on an author who I really, really adore. I want to talk about Emily Henry, who exemplifies the potential of romance, and keeps me optimistically crawling back to the genre, hoping other authors are half as good as her.

I’m currently revisiting an old favorite romance book: People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. Henry is definitely one of the most popular voices in the romance genre. She’s published three books in her short writing career spanning just five years thus far, and has another book coming out this month. Her books are funny, smart, and easily digestible. The outline of the main characters are always recognizable archetypes, but they still feel flushed out. It feels like she more so uses tropes as a starting point, then she explores how a trope might actually be a real, breathing human. And while all of her books are about two people falling in love, they're also about people in their 30's undergoing some kind of existential life crisis. It's a refreshing balance: both in the age of the characters and how well Henry expands the inner world of her main characters. (It honestly reminds me a lot of what people love about Nora Efron movies!)

People We Meet on Vacation (which came out in May of 2021) is about what to do after you accomplish your biggest goal and lose your sense of purpose. It's also about how the timing of our life choices can be consequential, but we can always change our mind. Mostly, though, it’s a book about how messy it is fall love with your decade-long best friend.

After an exhilarating best-selling debut with Beach Read in 2020, Emily Henry returned just a year later with an unexpected book about going on vacation. People We Meet on Vacation (hereafter PWMOV) introduces us to Poppy and Alex, two people who seemingly have nothing common besides their love of cheap travel and, of course, each other. I was so excited to read this book. When Henry described PWMOV on her instagram, she teased that it would span the entire 12 years of Poppy and Alex's friendship. I love books with flashbacks: I find that novels work as a good medium for large time jumps in storytelling -- more so than film or plays because novels allow for immersive yet clear time differentiations in the way other mediums can't. For example, Henry starts chapters of PWMOV with chonicalizing titles like "10 summers ago" "7 years ago" etc. It's quick, effective, and nondisruptive to the reading experience. And in my opinion, no matter how well it's cast, this couldn't be replicated on film. Aging characters never works that well. Anyone who's watched Daisy Jones & The Six can tell you that. (A notable exemption here is the movie Moonlight).

Another example of this time-bending storytelling working well is in Attachments by Rainbow Rowell, where each chapter opens with an email correspondence, each dated with their time/date. I particularly love this example of Attachments because the use of email time stamps also tells us when the emails are being sent, and thus which characters might be things like night owls. It's an adorable element of characterization. I'll probably talk about Attachments another time, because I truly think it's the best love story ever written.

Anyway -- I loved PWMOV and finished it in two days. I recommended it widely and without reservation to all my friends who asked for a good book to read that summer. It superseded my already high opinion of Emily Henry's previous book, Beach Read. "This book is even better than her first!" I remember saying to people, not realizing then that I was espousing a hot take.

I have many friends who also love Emily Henry’s books, but PWMOV tends to be their least favorite. So many people, based on my conversations and cursory glances at GoodReads reviews (which I do not recommend), seem to prefer Book Lovers (which came out after PWMOV) or her first book Beach Read. 

But PWMOV is by far my favorite of Henry’s, and is likely to remain so. Though I can understand why certain aspects of the book might not appeal to people, especially given the convoluted time-jumping Henry employs. Maybe it makes the book hard to follow for other people. but this book really works for me.

I love the non-chronological flashbacks in PWMOV and how much the narrative moves around. When you’ve known someone for so long, like our two main characters in PWMOV, your memories tend to get muddled and messy. Things get jumbled and you forget who said what or what happened when. I loved that Henry chose to write the book this way. The intersection of time and space made the relationship between Poppy and Alex feel very real, and I got the sense that these were two people who had both known each other a long time and truly care about each other. While they were, on the surface, extraordinarily different and seemingly incompatible, their shared history contextualized their undying loyalty and mutual connection.

This is different from a lot of romance novels, where the two leads share nothing in common besides a undeniable, unshakable attraction, despite having nothing in common, and sometimes even hating each other. Sure, this dynamic makes for great sex scenes and biting dialogue. But I'm always left thinking that this kind of relationship is going to crash and burn in two weeks, which makes the inevitable 'happily ever after' all the more unconvincing. Plus, romantic leads are always sexually insatiable with one another, and I sometimes get reminded of having to awkwardly evade that one couple in high school who couldn't go an hour without making out. I don't want to be that couple, and I don't really want to read that couple. They were the worst!

But People We Meet on Vacation is a romance about two people realizing that it's not enough to fall in love. Poppy and Alex are pretty immature in the flashbacks, especially in their college years. Poppy is impulsive in a way that feels nearly reckless on their first vacations, following random dudes back to tents and showing literally no self preservation skills. She comes across as a lot more tender, vulnerable, and sincere in later years and subsequent chapters. When she's younger, she gets frustrated with Alex's reserved approach to life, and has to get better at empathizing with his perspective. Throughout the book, Poppy learns to not only understand Alex's life philosophy, she values how his experiences shaped him into the person she loves. She sees all of him, and it makes her love him more.

This novel spans 12 years, and it genuinely felt like you were watching two people get through an entire decade with the other at their side. When they fall in love, I buy it.

I think this book is something special. It affirmed for me my stance that 'friends to lovers' is the best of the romance genres, if there is to be any kind of ranking system, and if genres have to exist. But much to my dismay, it often feels like ‘friends to lovers’ is an underestimated storytelling device in the romance genre, despite being the most realistic depiction of how organic romantic connections can be formed in the real world.

'Friends to lovers' romance books often start with one or more of the main characters in another long term relationship. Or maybe they’re getting over a bad breakup. Maybe the two friends don’t realize their feelings until it feels too late. Maybe they're scared to admit their feelings, choosing to prioritize the friendship. Maybe they misread their mutual love for one another for years. Regardless of the particular story arc, the 'friends to lovers' sub-genre is always shaped around two people who (regardless of any romantic attraction) genuinely love and understand one another.

Personally, I’m much more enchanted by the idea of someone seeing me, really seeing me, and choosing to love me. I’m skeptical of passionate, fast paced love affairs (though I’ve had my fair share) that burn brightly and quickly. I do suppose some people want a love that makes them feel like they’re on fire, and I suppose in some ways I want to burn, too. But mostly, I want love to feel like something I can come home to — over, and over, and over again. I don't want to fall in love with my enemy. I want to fall in love with someone who loves me.

Perhaps what I most love about People We Meet on Vacation is that it doesn’t feel like falls under the umbrella of a typical ‘romance’ book. I do love romance as a narrative device, but as I've said, I get irritated by romance as a genre. Many of the tropes considered typical for romance strike me as cliched, over-played, and honestly sexist: the male-lead is always withdrawn, physically domineering, and jealous, while the leading lady is oh-so-tiny, self doubting, and extraordinarily clumsy. There’s always a grand miscommunication towards the end of the second act, over something that is so minute and excusable that it forces the main characters to act with the emotional maturity of 14 year olds. And as the end of the third act draws to a close and we approach our inevitable climax, one of the leads leaps into a romantic, larger than life gesture to pronounce their love, which leads immediately into the denouement, where everything is resolved and our happily ever after is guaranteed.

I personally dislike this approach to writing for how prescriptive and overly simple it is. Most romance books these days read like like a mad-libs. Switch out the main character’s jobs, the quirky-but-wise neighbor, the sassy best friend, the montages, and the chapter 22 sex scene, the mis-read text, and BOOM, a U.S.A. Today best seller. While pulp fiction has basically always existed, but with mediums like BookTok, the swelling monster known as the Romance Book Industrial Complex has been exploited and exacerbated. It means a lot of shitty books get published. It allows mediocre authors like Colleen Hoover to rise to stardom for their abilities to showcase incompatible and boring people doing terrible things to each other because Hoover is able to follow a formula that people will read.

In defense of the genre, there aren’t a lot of gatekeepers in the romance genre. Since the tropes are so pronounced, a new author can write a relatively sound story with very few original ideas. I imagine it's a good way to get started as a writer, or get out of a writers block. There’s a reason there’s such a huge overlap in authors of romance and fan fiction. People come to expect certain things from a genre — and authors learn to deliver exactly what the people want. It's a self replenishing ecosystem.

I can appreciate, too, that a lot of people who love romance and read it to escape: to revel in guaranteed happy endings. People read for all kinds of reasons — and a valid reason is to escape into a blissful cocoon of hot, slicked, angsty abs on a dude named Theodore (or some shit) galloping on horseback through a moonlit beach, straight into the path of an unsuspecting lady’s companion named Carolina who's real passion is knitting yarn rose-bouquets for kittens. (I actually just made this last bit up, but if this isn’t a book yet, it should be. It probably is. I’m not that original.)

My friends who like romance don’t tend to like PWMOV because it doesn’t follow the prescriptive tropes of romance. And I like all the more because it doesn’t. Poppy and Alex feel real, and this book should receive more recognition for its subversive approach to the romance genre. The two leads already know and love each other when the book starts, and they love each other for the entire book. That's never the problem. Miscommunications do happen, but they are the messy, real, human kind.

I especially love that the grand ‘miscommunication’ in PWMOV happens before the narration occurs, but that we don’t know what it is until the book is almost over. It builds great suspense: in the first chapter, we are told something terrible happened two summers ago that ripped Alex and Poppy apart, and they haven't spoken since. Thus, when chapter 32 arrives with the title "Two Summers Ago" and we finally get to read about Croatia, we know something big is coming, because it already did. And when the Croatia fuck-up happens, you’ve spent over half a book with these two characters who have spent 12 years chasing each other around the world on vacations. They know each other inside and out. You know they're going to get through Croatia. And, even still, what happens in Croatia is a miscommunication that makes sense: they both freaked out over something they weren't ready for and then built it up in their heads for two years. I do that! We all do that!

And while PWMOV doesn't grant us with the grand, explosive miscommunication trop so indicative of the romance genre, I would have bought it if it did happen. This is the kind of person you have a blow up argument with — not someone you met 6 weeks ago when they accidentally stepped on your foot at a Belle and Sebastian concert and subsequently joined your effort to stop cruise ships from selling a specific and exploitative brand of bird earrings that are coincidentally made by your long-lost twin sister. (I’m just giving these ideas out for free, people!)

On the first page of The Secret History, Tartt tells you that Bunny will die, and who killed him. In the first chapter of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, we learn Sam and Sadie will not be speaking to each other in their early thirties. And in People We Meet on Vacation, we know that the Croatia trip will be a disaster. I love stories that reveal details early on but make you wait to understand how they happened. We get the spoiler early on. We read anyway, and we can’t help but care. So many books in the romance genre are essentially ruined if you're told the spoilers because the emotional attachments to the book are only as good as the gotcha's. But life isn't made up of big, surprising 'aha!'s. We hurt each other in predictable ways. We say things we don't mean, we do things before we're ready.

When my friends hurt my feelings, I forgive them. Maybe I already even know things will blow up with certain people in my life. But I can't help but care. I can't help but keep them around. I care about the history I have with people, and even if it makes me more vulnerable, I can't help but forgive them. I am lucky to have my life filled with friends who I've known for years and years. For some of them, I don't remember how I met them or even really why we're friends. What did we originally bond about? Did we meet during class or through other people? Where is that inside joke from? But I don't need to recall all of our shared moments together to remember why I love them -- all I need to know is that they've shown up again, and again, and again.

I'll end this with a slight (but not altogether surprising revelation given that this IS a romance book) spoiler: the first time that Alex and Poppy (FINALLY) sleep together in their awful Palm Springs hotel, Poppy is aghast. Apparently, the sex is mind-altering amazing. This is always true in romance books, but unlike so many romance books, I believe that this first time could be as amazing as Poppy thinks. She herself is in disbelief. The first time isn't supposed to be this good. Why was it this good? How is it this good?

And Alex responses to her incredulity, “because I know you, and I remember what you sound like when you like something.” And you know what! That is an incredibly hot thing to say, and I believe him.

That's what I love most about People We Meet on Vacation. When Emily Henry shows us that Poppy and Alex take care of each other when they're sick, know about each other's parental trauma, talk about their shared hometown, and imagine their lives with the other person always being there, I believe her when she says these people are best friends. I believe that these two people, who know each other inside and out, could fall in love, and stay in love. It's one of the only 'Happily Ever Afters' I've ever bought, and it's probably because it was 12 years in the making.

Summer Camp in the CA Narrative Imagination

Working in the summer camp industry, many of the spaces I work in are named either after Native American tribes who ‘previously’ inhabited the colonized land or the primary colonizers who laid claim to the land to the behest of the United States government. The summer camp I have spent many years working at, primarily in a leadership position and most recently as the Director, is called ‘Camp Menzies’. It is not a clever reference to a popular and cheeky nickname for menstruation — it’s in honor of Charles Menzies, a cattle rancher and businessman whose primary residence was in Stockton, CA. The campground itself is situated about 2 hours from Sacramento, CA, just outside the small city of Arnold. It’s 5500 feet in elevation, in the heart of the Sierra Nevadas, and the land is riddled with Ponderosa Pines and the biggest pinecones you’ve ever seen. It’s gorgeous, and it’s understandable why Charles Menzies might have originally wanted to purchase the land. This 150 acre lot land that is now my Girl Scout camp (and has been since 1946) was land that Menzies and his wife bought for camping, entertaining friends, and outdoor recreation. His cabin, however dilapidated and rat-ridden, is still situated on the property today. It’s surrounded by tons junk: metal bed frames, charbroiled pipes, and a truly inexplicable number of bathtubs. At Camp Menzies, there are also original Me-Wuk built shake cabins, and a particularly creepy creaky old ‘ice house’.

Charles Menzies bought the land from a Me-wuk tribe around 1903. I’ve seen the land deed that his lawyer wrote up — I and a fellow camp staff member came across it this summer while we were searching through old camp documents. We were grateful to learn some of the names of actual Me-Wuk tribe members who were a part of the sale, including Nettie Hunter who our camp’s canoe lake is named after. The deed does not, however, list for how much the land was negotiated for. I’ve been zeroing in on this missing detail for months: scurrying myself in a tailspin as I try to parse through fragile, old documents in local libraries for how much this land exactly sold for. I had to know, and I knew it had to be written down somewhere.

I didn’t talk about this obsession with a lot of people because I felt it would become a better story, more neatly wrapped up, when I could finally report all the facts. But few months ago, I was recounting this hyper-fixation to a friend, he paused me and asked, “why?”

Why, exactly, was I invested in learning the exact amount that this sale amounted for? What would that answer? I responded that I didn’t know. And I didn’t know. Perhaps I wanted to know that Charles Menzies was a fair buisnessman. Perhaps if the land was truly bought for an amount of money that seemed ‘fair’, then I could feel absolved of some of my guilt for operating a summer camp on land that doesn’t have a clean history. Perhaps I wanted to absolve any feelings I had for running a camp named in honor of a man I know very little about. Perhaps I just felt fixated on a piece of information that felt out of my grasp.

But is there a fair price that this land could have sold for? Can you put a price on land people have lived on for thousands of years? What would that price be? The truth is, regardless of price, the event of a sale illustrates the colonial state at work. The claiming of ownership over a parcel of land is a construct we, the settlers, introduced in California 150 years ago. As la paperson writes in A Third University is Possible, “Property law is a settler colonial technology. The weapons that enforce it, the knowledge institutions that legitimize it, the financial institutions that operationalize it, are also technologies. Like all technologies, they evolve and spread.” The price of the land doesn’t really matter — the sale taking place in the first place is what counts. And it doesn’t matter is the Me-Wuk tribe members like Nettie Hunter sold the land because they genuinely wanted to or because they felt they were driven to no other choice. They were still making a decision based on their rapidly changing world, a world that was changing because of settler arrival.I will admit that I desperately still want to know all the details of this sale from the Me-wuk tribe to Charles Menzies, including the price. But I would like to know not because there is an amount that would constitute fairness, but because I feel deeply connected to this small parcel of history, which is embedded in this land, and I want to dig my fingers deep into its Earth and hear all of the stories it might tell me.

There is other evidence on the Menzies property besides the buildings of this land’s past iterations. Despite the campgrounds having been an operational Girl Scout summer camp for over 75 years, campers find old (and new) evidence every summer: horseshoes, wrenches, cowbells, rusted metal contraptions/parts we can’t make sense of. Every time a camper proudly delivers a new finding into my posession, I silently confirm in my head that, yes, we do indeed require updated tetanus shots from campers. These artifacts, to me, appear as persistent reminders that while we busy ourselves constantly with the self delusion that the past is behind us, the artifice of time remains just that: contrived and meaningless. There are ghosts at this camp. They demand to be known. And of course the children find them before I do.

Although, it can’t be all too surprising that the past beckons forth our attention when summer camp, as an institution, seems to uphold the past as a heralded beacon. To summer camp professionals, our pioneer-origins are accepted as an innate, powerful, and a nearly religious origin story. We relate deeply to the cowboys of America, the hikers of the Adirondacks, the brave and sure-footed Pioneers trekking across the plains. Summer camp professionals are often white people who embrace community and cooperative visions of the future, but cling needlessly to narratives of an idealized, non-existent past: one in which white ancestors, our forebears, lived ‘off the land’ in a way that was virtuous and noble. It allows us to see ourselves as perpetual underdogs, united by our altruistic and highly profitable love of the outdoors.

At Camp Menzies, we often play a game called ‘Gold Rush’ where we hide gold-spray painted rocks all over the camp property, and each camper’s goal is to retrieve as many gold pieces as they can and bring the rocks back to the bank (which is a cardboard box in the Dining Hall we have fitted with a Sharpie scrawling of the word “BANK!”). We assign older campers with the role of ‘robbers’ who job it is to steal gold from younger campers and re-hide them before campers can bring the rocks to the bank. After rules are described and teams are chosen, what ensues is delightful, wonderful chaos. Running is allowed, points are not kept, scores are meaningless, and the game concludes when the younger kids are tired of running and the older kids have run out of hiding places. I love Gold Rush. It exemplifies so much of what I love about summer camp. When we yell, “GO!” I watch dozens of kids squeal with delight and run with glee into the woods. I watch them take their friend’s hand and move freely, uninhibited, with a watchful adult trailing closely behind. There aren’t many times I witness young kids, girls especially, live with this complete lack of inhibition. The competitive air rushing through camp when we’re playing Gold Rush is something thick and alive. I watch teenagers, who are often otherwise constantly adjusting their hair and standing so self-assuredly in an “I’m way too old and cool to be here fashion” run full-speed at a tree stump because they caught a glint of something shiny. I’ll see a middle schooler plunge into the dirt towards a fern plant, chucking sticks and dirt at her friends, commanding that they “go on without her” because she’ll stay behind and obstruct the path of the robbers. I’ll see a younger gaggle of 10 year olds abandon the game to braid together wildflowers in the meadow, oblivious to the chaos around them. I love nothing more than watching this scene unfold before me as I stand and laugh until I can’t breathe. But I can’t shake the feeling whenever we play Gold Rush we’re playing into something weird, and complicated. I can’t help but think about that before the Gold Rush began in 1849, at least 20,000 Me-wuk people lived in the Sierra Nevadas, but by the 1910 census, only about 300 Me-wuk people (then called ‘digger Indians’) were recorded on the Tuolumne County census. The Gold Rush killed thousands of people, and here I am teaching kids it’s all in good fun.

Everyone who grows up in California is closely acquainted with the Gold Rush, and for those of us in close proximity to the Sierra Nevadas (such as myself), it’s legacy is inescapable. Practically every Main Street, town square, school is named after some aristocrat who got rich off the Gold Rush. While 4th graders in Southern California construct tiny dioramas of the Spanish missions, NorCal kids pull wagons and pan for gold in Coloma, where James Marshall discovered gold in 1848. I remember being taught that the Gold Rush was inseparable to the identity of Californians. It influenced our plucky, creative, and independent spirit. Californians, especially those in the Northern half of the state, are go-getters, problem solvers, the last true cowboys of the West. Out here, you could make something out of nothing. You could live surrounded by the most beautiful trees - Giant redwoods, palm trees, or majestic oaks. Any tree, whichever y your favorite, take your pick. You could live in the Golden State and become the truest, most shiny version of yourself. This legacy is especially enduring as any other pervasive colonial narrative, thanks to the outpouring of wine, film, music, and agriculture from the state. Everyone knows who we are, the Californians. When I traveled abroad to other countries, I learned that other U.S. Americans usually introduced themselves as just being from the States. If you’re from California, you can just say, “I’m from California” — and be certain they will know what you mean. But most of California’s modern recognition power doesn’t come from Northern California, even if that is where our golden legacy began. It comes from the Golden Gate Bridge, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Disneyland, and of course, our infamous sprawling, seaweed stinky beaches. This leaves Northern California and its many cities, strewn about the valleys and foothills and Sierra Nevada mountain range, condemned to the footnotes — despite their cities’ high populations, agricultural outputs, and literally housing the Capitol of the state. It isn’t cool to be from NorCal. It’s too hot, the valley is too flat, it’s on fire all the time, and it’s not L.A. or the Bay. The gold country remnant towns are sparsely populated and often tote tired, peeling building facades and deeply Republican vibes. Even still, this is where Camp Menzies is situated, I love it so dearly, and folks living here honestly have a point about hating the government and establishment Democrats (you and me both, buddy).

I’ll try to digress. There’s very little I can say about my personal feelings on growing up near Sacramento that Greta Gerwig didn’t say in Lady Bird. But I’d like to make a case for where to go from here, and what to do at this point. I love summer camp. I worry about summer camp. I worry when we play Gold Rush at Camp Menzies, we play into the persistent myth taught in California public school classrooms that the 1849 Gold Rush was exciting, great fun. Part of me thinks our version of the game is so anachronistic and removed from context that we are perhaps absolved. But another part knows that while the Gold Rush represents the beginning of California’s human history for many people, for the Me-wuk, Patwin, Neislan and countless other peoples and tribes, it represents an end: the end of a way of life in communion with the Earth. Many white descendants living in Northern California believe that Native Americans in the area died because of exposure to diseases like smallpox that their immune systems weren’t used to. This did occur, but this narrative instils a certain passivity on the part of white settlers and negates their real, human agency and actions. There are many letters between settlers from this time period where gold panners describe intentionally sending someone infected with small-pox as the ‘go-between’ person to tribes, knowing that infection would likely spread. Many rivers in the Sierra Nevadas were plugged or rerouted during the Gold Rush, the reason being attributed to building necessary dams or panning for gold, but a great number of the rivers were directly in path of Me-wuk tribal homesteads, and white settlers also wrote in letters that removing water was a means of ‘dealing with the Indian problem’.

Never mind many of these rivers are still not ecologically restored to their pre-colonization splendor, such as the Little Mokelumne River that runs through the Camp Menzies property. There’s rock striations and tree evidence that this river used to be much bigger. Now, it rushes in quiet earnest with snow run-off in the early summer, usually drying up by late July. When a fire blazes through this area (which it will, at some point — this is California, after all), the Little Mokelumne River likely could have provided land protection pre-Industrialization. Now, though, the river will only be a small blip in the monstrous and unstoppable path of a wildfire. There’s no way that white settlers in 1849 rerouting rivers in Tuolumne County could have known they would one day bear some responsibility for the current state of wildfires in Northern California — they also must have known, on some level, that what they were doing would cause a disruption. But I suppose that was the object. Californians love to cause a disruption, be it artistic, economic, or political. That much was certain with the sudden arrival of hundreds of hopeful white settlers in the mid 1800’s to Northern California. It is in our nature to be hopeful — to know the slight odds, and preserve anyway. A bet on the hope that you could discover something new. It is always during Gold Rush that campers discover the horseshoes, the weird tools I can’t name, the cans rusted beyond recognition. The past’s legacy of this land doesn’t just linger in the back of my head while we play Gold Rush: this history is rooted here, in this land, and in children’s hands splayed before me.

mitski lyrics ranked in order of the severity of the existential crisis they each facilitated

“nobody butters me up like you, and nobody fucks me like me"

“and I am in the idiot with the painted face, in the corner, taking up space”

“and I know i’ve kissed you before but I didn’t do it right  can I try again? and again and again and again?”

“I thought / I’d traveled / A long way / But I had / Circled the same old sin”

“On sunny days I go out walking / I end up on a tree-lined street / I look up at the gaps on sunlight / I miss you more than anything”

“They’ll never know how I’d started at the dark in that room / With no thoughts like a blood-sniffing shark”

“and hear the harmony only when it’s harming me / it’s not real, not real, not real enough”

“And then one warm summer night / I’ll hear fireworks outside / And I’ll listen to the memories as they / cry, cry, cry”

I tried to pick one lyric from Townie but actually the whole song has been an insurmountable issue in my life.

“and the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape” (the William Carlos Williams of it all, the "we sit and talk quietly" of it........ fucked up, it's so fucked up)

“I’m staying’ up late just in case / You come up and ask to leave with me” (actually fuck you Barthes for this one!!!!!! I am the one who waits?????? what the fuck was that!!!!!!!!!)

“Everything you feel is good / If only you would let you”

blood for a thimble

back in 2019/2020, I was a part of my city's 'vagina monologues.' I was in a special production where we could write our own material. and I decided to write about my general disdain for prescribed womanhood, my hatred of terfs for coopting something as beautiful as feminism, and how it felt to watch kids be scared of getting their first periods.

_________________________

Minimize your pores, shave your legs, smooth your calves, trim your thighs, flatten your tummy, cut your cuticles, iron your hair, gape your thighs, perfect your skin.

make your hair smoother, sleeker, straighter, like silk - like porcelain: like the quiet, dead, shiny, smiling, dead, perfect angel that you are, that you could be:

so light and smooth and pearly you would hardly even notice it’s there -- hardly notice I’m there. 

Take note of my uniform.

tattered, cropped shirts, jeans ripped perfectly on purpose, cascading, limp hair with bleached split ends on purpose, a ‘One Size Fits All’ label declared on a shirt best fit on a body I haven’t had since I was ten:

This is the oyster girls are offered.

we rise as Venus dripping in pink glitter and confident struts, and with the swelling of our womb, we are rewarded and shoved back into the sea.

impressioned with thinking the world was made for our smiles, only to learn they are not wanted from the pleasure of our digitorum and autonomy.

how dare we feel and not want to be felt.

I know that men noticed a fire raging on my tongue and in my limbs before I did: curling the ends of my mouth, carting me for consumption before I had the chance to rid myself of blood stained underwear.

my womanhood suddenly a nuisance, an annoyance, a marker of growing up, I guess. 

Not a right for consumption of my swelling body.

It is not expanding for you, it’s expanding for a child. 

Mind you, I was still a child. 

You’d think the world wants young girls to disappear.

And we do. Quietly. At night, before school, after sleepovers.

Becoming a woman slices us into a binary so slender, it suffocates us all.

Even the ones born with the ‘right’ chromosomes, who can even be a woman anymore?

But still, please, witness my attempts to finally be flat and small and quiet enough to blend in with my surrounding buildings. 

I promise you. I’ll do it all.

Only cry into vanity mirrors, or the floor of my closet, or the dressing rooms of shopping malls.

I promise you: my suffering will be silent and private and you will never watch the painstaking process of me attempting to shrink into my skin.

No, you, you only see a smile sweet and small and pretty and beautiful.

I still know this smile -- this small, sweet smile -- all too well, no longer in myself, but in the girls I work with. 

Working at summer camps, I bear witness to many girls having their first period.

There is always fear in her eyes when she rustles mine or another’s sleeping bag awake in the middle of the night because she is afraid of her own body.

The fear always bothers me the most.

I wonder if she is aware of how men will treat her differently, as if the blood a foreshadowing -- drafting her into ranks which biology and cisnormativity guaranteed her. 

A period means that you can have a baby. It doesn’t even mean that you are a woman.

And when I got mine, the only thing people seem to care about is that it made me boobs two cup sizes bigger -- which felt like the only place I was allowed to grow. 

I was built, apparently, to fertilize the world, but instead I want to watch it burn. 

In the ashes, I want to plant seeds of thought into the minds of young girls who are told they are the most beautiful when they take up the least space.

I bleed not for you, but for those girls. 

you are not your anatomy. it means as much or as little as you want it to.

And I for one will not eliminate young girls, trans girls, trans boys - all children, beautiful children -- from what I contrive of my own body.

We are so much more than our ability to breed future oppressors, and I don’t want to equate my woman-ness with my ability to bleed. 

I am not scared of being a woman.

I am angry at a world that made me feel small for being one.

I was born to take up space, not just to bear your fucking children.

girl offline

this past new years eve, while many of our peers avowed to avoid alcohol for the next month, my friend delaney and I exchanged our instagram passwords and asked each other to change them and keep them a secret. while the both of us agreed that critically examining one's relationship to alcohol is great, particularly with how casual alcoholism is enabled throughout our culture (looking at you, wine mom tea towels at homes goods). 'dry january' didn't feel like the right fit for either of us. neither of us are huge drinkers.

I didn't drink for most of the pandemic. now, my nights out dancing with friends, hangs at breweries, occasional trail beers (one of life's greatest pleasures), and bottles of wine shared at board game nights fall within the realm of (what i'd categorize) as healthy.

anyway, my 'month off social media' passed with little consequence or fanfare. I didn't yearn to check instagram once. after delaney and I exchanged passwords, I decided that staying off instagram should also mean staying off all other social media. I already don't use snapchat, tiktok (usually), or twitter. I did continue using pinterest, tumblr, and reddit. I decided that the way I used them was non-addictive and thus probably fine. but I did remove the apps from my phone. I did also stayed on BeReal.

throughout january, all the instances in which my new less-online proclivities were points of discomfort were purely external. my internal world went on uninterrupted, but around my peers, I did notice that my ability to participate in our shared culture subsided. a few occasions transpired, for example, where a friend wanted to send me the instagram account of a tattoo artist they liked, or they referenced a TikTok audio in conversation that I didn't get. (I was reminded that the least funny thing someone can do is try to explain a TikTok audio to you. I wish people didn't do this.)

besides secondhand embarassment, these instances didn't really bother me. life moved on. January rolled into February, and it did not occur to me to re-download social media. when I realized this, I texted Delaney, and we shared a short conversation about it:

honestly, thank god for Delaney. it felt so good that I had a confidant in this experiment, but it did get harder as the month went on. during the latter half of February, I had a few compulsions to check instagram, though, notably, they weren't born out of pure, idle boredom. they were for specific reasons: I wanted to look up a podcast host's page after they mentioned something on their show; I met someone cool at a concert and they wanted to exchange handles; I was curious if a local venue I liked had shows coming up, and they update ig more than their website. I resisted these temptations, deciding it would be worthwhile to hold out for the rest of February. though of these instances I took note that, given all the new reasons I craved checking instagram reflected actual intentional thinking and reasoning, it might be worthwhile to consider a use of instagram as a information hub rather that a social channel. this shift would mirror more closely to how I use reddit -- I go on for specific information relating to my interests, like for paramore set lists (lol) or how to hem a pair of pants (i'm short).

as i'm writing this, it's now March 1st, and I caved this morning. I asked Delaney for my ig password back. I felt weirdly anxious logging back in, critical and suspicious of any dopamine-rush adjacent feelings. I logged in, and the algorithm eagerly delivered all the posts I wanted to see on a shiny silver platter: a friend had an anniversary, another posted beautiful photos from a recent trip, another recently got a puppy, an author I like announced a new book, my 10 year high school reunion is this year (lol), and my mom had sent me a cool travel account. cool. things I was genuinely excited to see.

with that settled, the novelty wore off rapidly. good god, there were so many ads! there were literally ads every 3-4 instagram stories: pod shaped toothbrushes (why is everything a god damn pod these days), CBD gummies, running shoes, artisanal coffee, birth control. it seemed like you could get a subscription for everything you could ever need. scrolling through stories felt like I was listening to an endless mid-episode ad reel of a podcast.

i then went to the explore page and encountered a truly horrendous amount of ads: actual humans blending seamlessly into an mirage of makeup tutorials, clay pots, cute cats, and hiking trails. everything there that wasn't an ad was still trying to sell me something: a new recipe to try, a dress I don't need, a planter that looks expensive, a face oil that probably does nothing, a buy-guide on how to recreate a hayley williams makeup look. the entirely of the explore page was coded exactly to my interests and proclivities, and it weirded me out how well these algorithms seemed designed to sell me shit I truly didn't need.

this was about the point where my crisis began. did I want to be here? was staying up to date with hundreds of acquaintances, friends, past lovers, old classmates, brief coworkers, and literally all of my family members from the worth the millions of generated e-billboards designed for other young millennial, white, feminist, childless, tastefully ironic (BUT NOT TOO ONLINE), fiona apple listening, anime watching, west coast-coded, leftist, sophia coppola loving, queer, outdoorsy, well-read college educated girlies just like me? (who are all also extremely individually unique, obviously).

did I need to buy supplements, or did I just like the container they came in? did I actually like the headband, or did a pretty girl get paid to post a picture of herself in it? did I need a new jumpsuit or did the big bud press model look cool in it? do I need a new claw clip or do I just like the font that the advertisers chose?

what could I possible gain by being on instagram? what did it add to my life besides benign inadequacy, inferiority, and an excessively long shopping list?

the truth is boring and painfully obvious, and yet we all continue scrolling. but why? fomo? addiction? anxiety? a mere lack of reflection? shortened attention spans? the fraught hope for an occasional dopamine rush when in reality most of us feel worse after spending time on instagram?

to be frank, I'm of sick of feeling this way. and so: this post officially marks the beginning of my attempt to spend the rest of 2023 off of social media. glory be all. what follows below are the (loose) parameters I am setting for myself for this experiment. i'm using parameters because i'm not setting any official rules. if I mess up, it literally doesn't matter and no one will care. I also don't wait failure to dissuade me from keeping up the effort; say, for instance, in 6 months, I re-download instagram. in my opinion, that would still be a success, because I still stayed off instagram for 6 months. I don't want to put arbitrary rules on myself. this is a lifestyle change. adjustments can be made. and again (this cannot be overstated), literally no one but me cares. thus, starting today, these are the only 'social' things I will still use, as I don't have an unhealthy reliance on them:

spotify, cause I like sharing playlists with friends, and I use it for podcasts.

bandcamp, cause I like following artists.

goodreads. I like sharing what I'm reading and seeing what my friends are reading.

tumblr/reddit/pinterest, as I don't use these websites as social media. (though pinterest is on thin fucking ice cause the bitches on there REALLY want us to all have eating disorders). I am probably going to keep tumblr on my phone, as a treat.

lex, which is like a craigslist for gay people. it's fun and harmless, and I barely check it anyway.

an anonymous instagram account that has no followers, and that I will use to keep up with bands/venues that I like. but this account will only be logged into on my computer and checked for SPECIFIC reasons.

linkedin and facebook, because I will be looking for a full-time job later this year. tragic.

email, unfortunately. see number 8.

when i've told people i'm attempting this experiment, i've been asked the following question a few times: what are you going to do with your free time?

this strikes me as an odd question, and I guess I think it's strange because for most of human history, the internet has not existed. though I suppose that cannot be a reasonable justification for offing the internet because there are plenty of things that we humans used to do that I do not think we should reinstate. (see also: the jungle by upton sinclair). maybe some things have improved as a result of the internet, but i'm not entirely convinced it's a net positive. (it definitely isn't for me.) still, there is a lot of solo free time to be had in adulthood, and it's a valid question, and one I will endeavor to answer:

reading, duh. love audiobooks and my city has great libraries.

I listen to a lot of music, and really enjoy going to shows. they provide a great deal of scope for the imagination. one of my favorite times in the whole world is the time in-between sets at shows. I love to stand in the crowd and watch everyone: couples, friends, other strangers just meeting. if you're a fan of people watching, this (and airport bars) are the true mother loads of people watching. it's a bit too loud in these concert crowds to make out exactly what people are saying, but that's the best part. you have to rely on your storytelling abilities to make sense of the world around you. (sorry to all the people in the seattle area i've stared at unabashedly at shows. it will continue to happen.)

podcasts are what they are. but I like some! my favorites tend to veer towards the theme of history, lolz, and feminism. my favorites right now (that I would recommend to others) are: Who? Weekly, Rehash, Maintenance Phase, You're Wrong About, Not Past It, and It's Been a Minute.

walking, walking, walking.

reading (the sequel): I really enjoy long form journalism. right now, I like The New Inquiry, Long Reads, The New Yorker, Blood Knife, The Baffler, and The Atlantic. I have also been starting to explore the world of Substack, but generally find its formatting extremely dystopian. I can't quite put my finger on it. someone smarter than me please write a thinkpiece about this.

it is honestly weird to be a 27 year old who is trying to live a life off of social media, especially after being someone who's spent so much time online. this is a short life of some things that inspire me to stay offline:

bragging rights. if nothing else, I can feel comforted by a trite sense of superiority.

the luddite community in NYC. literally my idols.

this binchtopia podcast episode.

how good I feel seeing my weekly screen time average go down.

how much I enjoy spending time with my friends, and not looking at my phone once.

reading books and watching movies about people spending time outside and note using technology.

remembering that there are ways to live more slowly, and not always in big, demonstrative, political ways.

Studio Ghibli movies, especially ones like From Up on Poppy Hill and My Neighbor Totoro. they connect me to the idleness of my childhood, especially in the summer, and that I can live without the internet because I already did it for the first 10 years of my life.

'How to Do Nothing' by Jenny Odell

'Trick Mirror' by Jia Tolentino

remembering that after deleting my twitter account in 2021 I have not missed it once.

remembering that I am worth more than just the things I produce.

in conclusion, mostly I am just attempting this to see what it feels like, and to see how I can connect to the world in different ways. I do yearn connection to the larger world around me, but I feel a deep repulsion at the social internet as it exists now. the internet was originally designed to help us build connections to each other and to exercise our free speech rights, and while it does do that, it also means fringe conspiracy groups can gain traction at unparalleled speeds. knowing this, being online stresses me out, on top of all of the zillions of advertisements it forces me to look at (and already discussed above). i've always been a pretty online person. I like staying up to date with the world around me and keeping up with contemporary discourse. but the speed at which news is moving feels unsustainable and frankly dangerous. honestly, the safest thing it feels like I can do, for myself, is step back from it. I want to learn how to form opinions and write them down in a journal, and not espouse them to the world. and, like the singer from my favorite band, "I feel useless behind this computer".

lastly, on a personal note, i've noticed that it's really easy for me to fall into patterns where I am constantly body-checking myself compared to others on social media. I tried to combat this at first by following a bunch of 'body positive' accounts on instagram, and while it was nice to see actual human bodies, it really only compounded the sheer amount of bodies I had to compare my own to.

regardless of how I feel about it, i'm stuck in the body I got. I want to form a healthy opinion and relationship to it without the ever alluring capabilities of the 'gram. no one else gets to live in my flesh prison, ergo, no one else gets a say as to what it looks like. the fact of the whole matter is that the only person who suffers if I don't like the way I look is me, and, advertisers have everything to gain the more unhappy i fare. thus, out of spite, i will fare well.

what does it mean to be an expert? does it matter?

As a camp director, I spent many hours thinking about and speaking with others about how to best share nature with children. I often relied on the ‘backwards design’ approach to outdoor instruction and facilitation, wherein you begin with the end-goal in mind and design backwards from there. While I’ve gained a multitude of different perspectives over the years, my philosophical goal within this area of learning has remained pretty constant: when kids get outside in programs I’ve helped organize, I hope they enjoy the experience, and leave it feeling a desire to spend more time outdoors and with nature. While I still feel morally and philosophically aligned to this mission statement, I am interested and open to seeing how it evolves. My work environment as a Camp Director was a fast-paced and exhausting one and did not allow for a great deal of time for contemplation. I suppose my job was to exhaust myself in the fraught hope that others would commune with nature.

There are many ways in which expertise is vital in the outdoors -- particularly in the realm of safety and caution. This expertise is land and regional based. For example, educators benefit from recognizing poisonous plants, animal skat/tracks, kinds of trees, and safe water drinking points. I also found a certain understanding of child psychological developmental ‘check-points’ to be helpful to reference. When I was, for example, flabbergasted as to why a thirteen year old would scale the side of a mountain while we were hiking, an objectively unsafe and absurd decision, it helped me to remember that the part of her brain which comprehended ‘cause and effect’ was still forming. Her capabilities to take calculated risks was still in its’ beginning stages, leaving her unguarded and open to elemental danger. It was thus imperative I not show frustration and exacerbation towards this child, as she made a choice employed with the wisdom she was capable of, and this was thus a learning opportunity for the both of us. I learned how to calmly move a child away from a severe risk, and they learned the importance of staying on paved trails while hiking. This specific realm of expertise, of age characteristics and child development, aided me a great deal in my years of working with different age groups. More than anything, this knowledge allowed me to better empathize with people of different life experiences, and it also urged me to be more aware of the potential power differences that could arise from me working with different age groups. 

This realm of expertise, however, is one that is institutionally mirrored and encouraged within the summer camp industry. The American Camp Association offers dozens of essays and studies on child psychological development. There’s even a small market of therapists and child psychologists who charge camps to deliver ‘expert training’ at camp staff trainings. While I agree this is a helpful bank of knowledge to build, and it has absolutely helped me in my own childcare experiences, I wonder how much of my personal bias is built off of industry leaders deciding this was important, and thus deciding what aspects of child development are important to learn about within a summer camp context, and which aspects are thus deemed unimportant.

I only learned very recently by reading the book Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America of the militaristic origins of the American summer camp. The commonly accepted narratological history of summer camp is often understood to be reactive to the 19th century Industrial Revolution and Reconstruction Era -- as parents and families moved to more urban areas, they desired their children to have a meaningful relationship with nature, and summer camp was a natural solution. This romantic, historical narrative is somewhat true. The earliest evidence of organized camping excursions of same-age white children is recorded to have occured in the 1850’s in the New England area. However, the earliest camps were disparate, scattered, and many early camp directors seemed to have trouble with funding and recruitment. The true boom of summer camp occurred just after World War I on the heels of a national push to ensure young Americans felt a strong sense of “America first” patriotism and the birth of modern conservation efforts to ‘Americanize’ outdoor recreation.

Many youth experts in the early 20th century wrote in articles and letters that the best way to ensure young Americans were patriotic, and ready to defend America at any cost, was to romanticize American soil and encourage a national land-based pride. This militaristic approach influenced the development, design, and structure of many American summer camps. Many of these military-like influences still exist at summer camps today: cabins are often evocative of barracks, Girl Scout uniforms don earned badges and an American flag, camps have a daily flag ceremony, campers learn repetitive cheers and marches, and most camps teach a camp ‘origin story’ -- instilling a sense of pride and history into its campers. Especially after running a Girl Scout camp, there are tons of camp traditions that I didn’t understand at the time, but with this gained historical context, they now make a ton of sense. I bring up this newfound knowledge for a few reasons. One reason being I literally can’t stop thinking about it. The other being I can’t believe I didn’t learn this at any point in my ten years of working in the summer camp industry -- and how easily I accepted the presented earlier narrative based solely in Reconstruction Era parents virtuously hoping their children love the outdoors. This experience has made me think a lot about the nature of expertise in the industry of summer camp: why doesn’t our historical and cultural evolution as an industry play a larger role in modern dialogue about the direction of summer camp today? Why isn’t our true history treated as an area of important expertise?

Ramsing, Ron. “Organized Camping: A Historical Perspective.” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, no. 4, Elsevier BV, Oct. 2007, pp. 751–54.

Miller, Susan A. “The Landscape of Camp.” Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America, Rutgers University Press, 2007, pp. 83–121.

Eells, Eleanor. “The Pioneers.” History of Organized Camping: The First 100 Years, American Camp Association, 1986, pp. 5–28.

clutching desperately to the acarine green (some time travel)

this is an old, edited, semi-fictionalized account my teen years. the quoted journal entries are all real, as are the dates. but the other details are just for lolz. I wrote this a long time ago and wish I could give 17 year old me a big hug.

______

In the age of the Anthropocene, there is nothing more interesting than the teenage girl’s bedroom. When I clean my room, I become an anthropologist in girlhood. Dusting and searching through layer after layer, I unearth former versions of myself hidden beneath the rubble of socks, eyeshadow pallets, and CD’s I burned for friends and never gave to them. What do these former versions of me mean? What can I learn about current-me through these earlier manifestations? Does anyone else do this? (Everyone else must do this).

Cleaning one’s bedroom shouldn’t realistically take longer than twenty minutes, but that guesstimate severely underestimates my talents for diversion.

My distraction this particular go-around is my old journal. I like to think of myself as a girl who journals, but I can never keep at it. I resolved a few years ago that I would instead only write in the journal once or twice a year. I pick the journal and admire the cover. It’s really quite beautiful. I think I like holding the journal more than writing in it: adorned with roses and creamy white pages, and it has its own ribbon bookmark. I open it and read through some of my own entries:

November 26, 2010 “I never know how to begin these because I don’t know how to address myself. I’m not talking to myself. Am I talking to myself? I don’t know. This all sounds stupid. I don’t need to apprehend every possible thing that might happen, or every perfect potential thought before I think them. Well. Now I don’t really feel like writing, to be honest. My walls are light green right now and I REALLY LIKE IT. Okay, that should be sufficient to fit the whole page. Bye!”

That was right after I painted my bedroom. Before the beautiful light green which it remains to this day, the room was a vibrant, wonderful yellow. Everyone thought it was too bright, and my mom claimed it hurt her eyes, but I thought it was perfect. It felt like my room was made of sunlight. Now, the room is green, and I hope it remains this way forever. Next entry.

April 12, 2011 “I am so tired of being a sophomore. It is really just a blah year. Nothing happens. Next year is going to be so much harder but like it’ll be fine. Also we broke up and I am so HAPPEEEEEEEEEE about it.”

Should I tell my 15-year-old self that [redacted] and I have made out twice since then? We’ve been drunk both times, I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. What my 15 year old self doesn’t realize yet, though, is that all the other boys are awful kissers. And [redacted] is comparatively a much, much better kisser than all of them.

I flip through a few more entries. I used the journal pretty regularly throughout my sophomore year, actually. Through almost all of December. I wrote how I was veering more towards indie rock than pop punk. I think I discovered Belle and Sebastian that winter. My junior year entries are also pretty long.

It’s so weird, I only wrote these a year ago, but I can’t remember writing any of these full pages. Realizing this, I feel a dull panic run down my spine. Why can’t I remember writing this? Doesn't weed affect memory loss? It must. My memory usually works better than this. I shouldn’t be forgetting things that happened just a year ago. I shouldn’t be partying so much. All the campfire smoke and cheap vodka going straight to my head. It’s going to make me fucking stupid. I flip to a new page and grab a pencil off my desk, and sit on the floor. I have no idea what I want to write. I look so ugly when I sit like this — hunched over my journal. I shouldn’t journal, I look awful. But I like journaling, I should like journaling.

What should I write? What do I think about? What do I spend my time doing?

I take stock of myself. I’m in old pajama shorts and a t-shirt from camp last summer. My hair is oily and I need to wash it — the bleached split ends obvious to me as I sit hunched over. Bare feet. Light blue painted toes. Surrounded by my possessions. All my earthly things. What do I feel? What do I really feel? I feel gross, for one. I hate how I look. I hate that I can’t tell anyone that I hate myself sometimes. I hate feeling like this — like a fake person. I hate being 17 and like this is supposed to be the most important time of my life. I don’t like myself, but it’s bad to not like myself. I want to like myself. I feel exhausted. When I rub my eyes with the back of my hands, my eyelids are slick with oil and I forget I’m still wearing mascara and it flakes into my eyes. It feels awful and gunky. I blink at the ceiling until the feeling goes away. I have to do this at least once a day. I hate that I’m like this. I pull my hands back and and, with loose focus, stare at the dark grey smudges from my eyeliner on my fingertips, disgusted. I hold them up to the lamp and focalize on a single, glittering streak of black eyeliner on my hand.

I can feel the familiar, tight, tingling sensation in my hands and my jaw feels taught — the sure sign I'm about to throw up. I don't want to. I'm not even that anxious. Part of me wants to. Most of me doesn’t. It will make me feel better, but then it won’t, and I’ll just be left crying on the cold bathroom tile floor and turn on the shower to cover the noise. I need to shower anyways, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Stop it, I think. I pick up the journal.

My fingers are sticking to the page I have open in the journal. My hands are cold, clammy, and sweaty. God damn it, I don’t want to have a panic attack. All this over a fucking journal. Over getting mascara in my eyes. Get it together. I wring out my hands a few times, take a few deep breaths, date the entry.

December 6, 2012 “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to finally feel comfortable in my own skin. I hate my body, and I hate my abject, ongoing disgust at my own form. I wish I could inhabit this body and feel nothing. But I feel everything.”

I read the journal entry over once, and then twice. What I wrote is just fine, but I don’t feel like crying anymore. I stand, stretch, and finish cleaning my room. I don’t feel like an archeologist anymore, or whatever. I just want it to be done.

angst!

i’m like every goddamn think piece where the author shrugs and says, “well geez, I dunno!” but, like, geez… i sure dunno!