Sometimes when I am asleep, and the wind is coming in through the window of my childhood bedroom, I can almost feel you here. For a sleepover, the way we used to do all the time. It was just our clothes then, I didn’t know what was mine or yours. It was our day then, we never left each other’s sides. It was our life then, a pact that if we made it to 40 and were still single, we’d run away together and live on the beach in Mexico. I always wake up in a sweat from those dreams now. Now I live in your phone as an unknown cell number, I live in your photos as a girl you used to know. I live in that stain I left on the carpet of your truck when my bubblegum ice cream melted. Now I’m the most hated girl. For twenty-five years in a row. If you’ve never been the last choice friend, undiagnosed depression at a very young age, artsy but filled with melancholy girl, then you’ve never been the most hated girl. But I’ve worn her skin all my life. At first it was the separate group chat with 9 memb...
I always mistook discomfort for bad news. Anything even sort of remotely maybe wrong sent up all the red flags, warning signs, alarm bells. I never bothered to figure out why. So, even though I was learning to be with myself, I wasn’t getting to really know who I was. I wasn’t putting two and two together. Not searching for cause of my effects. I was sitting there with a stomach ache thinking, “this sucks” instead of thinking, “did I eat something that caused this?” So I chose to start noticing. To hear my words from other peoples ears and ask myself if I was a person I would be friends with. To listen to my intuition and see people for who they really are. To change my perspective from “why me?” to “why did this happen?” and not to blame myself but just to understand the course of events that led me here. You know that feeling when you’re in the water and you lay on your back with your ears underneath but your face is out? In that moment where you just feel really sort of light and un...