I was obsessed with birds as a kid. But much like a black widow or a toddler with a carnival goldfish, I was never one to leave my pursuits alive for very long. That is, until I discovered whales.

Whales became one of the few obsessions that didn’t just stick throughout my childhood; the orca whale is still my favorite animal on the planet to this day. They’re the definition of, “I’m the nicest person you know, until you get on my bad side. Then I’m a huge bitch.” And who doesn’t love reality star energy in their aquatic creatures? Orcas are like the Countess Luann of the ocean, and that, they say, is indeed on period.

The ocean in the 90s was like catnip for kids, and for some reason, it made everyone want to be a marine biologist. The details of such a job didn’t matter; you’d get to hang out with sharks and dolphins and fish and whales all day! I blame Jacques Cousteau, but I genuinely have zero clue why deep-sea diving was so appealing to a bunch of fourth graders who are Lunchables for a great white shark.

Whales ticked two other big boxes for my young brain: They were full of mystery and majesty. And not to overanalyze what could just be me thinking something was cool, but there might have been some relation to them being in another world, quietly being some of the smartest and most fascinating creatures on the planet, and doing it flawlessly with a mouth full of krill.

If anything, I was envious of the lives whales got to lead. Just imagine swimming with your pod, clicking and popping with your echolocation, and then finishing off the day with some incredibly fresh sushi. What’s not to love?

But nothing turned me into a darker shade of green than thinking about the kid from Free Willy. To this day, all I can think about is how that shit wasn’t CGI, and if an orca whale breaches over my head as he did in the movie, I would never shower again.

Seeing as I was an expert at rotating through interests, anyone who wanted to get me gifts found it hard to keep up. Wait, so he’s not into rocks anymore? That was fast. So is he not gonna use that geode kit we got him then? Hang on, who gave him a flute? What do you mean he’s writing a novel? He’s fucking twelve.

I figured it was merciful to give the people in my life a safe baseline by always loving everything I could about whales and dolphins. I thought I had made myself clear, but apparently, some people only heard what they wanted to hear.

I’m sure this won’t surprise you if you’ve gotten this far, but in kindergarten, I was certain I was going to marry Dan Marino. This had nothing to do with me being gay (I was) or being a fan of him (I wasn’t). Nope, the only thing I cared about was that he was the quarterback for the best fucking football team name of all time: the Miami Dolphins.

I was not shy about this. You could even argue I was manifesting it. My immediate family didn’t care; they wrote it off as just another silly bit that I would eventually drop, like most things I said or did. But you have no clue just how serious I can get about things I don’t realize I don’t give a fuck about.

It was Christmas, I was seven, and we were finally opening presents at my grandma’s house. This was right after she, much to my mom’s chagrin, dragged us to a midnight mass, even though we weren’t remotely religious. I was exhausted by the time we got home, but the reminder that Santa had visited while we were gone gave me a second wind.

For all they did wrong, my family did Christmas right. My parents especially did not fuck around. Not only that, but they did something I respect: Many gifts were from Santa. But the big, important gifts? Those were always from Mom and Dad. I couldn’t care less if it was because they wanted credit—they deserve it—but as an adult, I think it’s so nice to remind your kids that you don’t just get presents because you’re “good.” You get them because you’re loved.

My grandma was usually no exception, giving me some of the best gifts of my young life, like my first Playstation 2. But there were some growing pains between Rita and me, and this was the Christmas I realized I had to set her straight by letting her know I was gay for Dan Marino.

“We” were Packers fans, in the sense that the green and gold cult vibes that I grew up with weren’t nefarious enough for me to fight against them, so I’d often get Packers socks or shirts or pajamas in an attempt to convince me to like a sport where people give each other brain damage. But I was young enough then to advocate for myself, despite that being the last thing anyone wanted me to do.

I opened a gift that was distinctly from my grandma and grandpa, revealing a Packers shirt. The adults all oohed and aahed around me, bulging their eyes out of their sockets as if to beg me to react better. I couldn’t. My heart belonged to one team and one team only, and that was the Miami Dolphins.

“Thank you, grandma. But…I don’t like the Packers. I like the Dolphins.”

You would have thought I’d slit her throat. The gall, the audacity, the absolute nerve of this sniveling brat to let people know that while he appreciated the gift, it just wasn’t something he wanted. This was the Midwest; you took that shit to your grave, and honestly? You took the fucking shirt with you.

I remember feeling the room shift into an icy chill, as if someone had just blown a hole through the window. Everyone kept up appearances like good little Lutherans, but I could tell I had done something wrong.

My mom eventually took me into the sunroom to discuss this horrible dismemberment of my grandmother in private.

“Sweetie, that wasn’t very nice what you did back there. That’s not how we accept gifts.”

Uh, duh? I thought. I wasn’t accepting it. Weren’t you there?

“But I don’t like the Packers, mommy.”

“I know. But it’s rude to tell someone you don’t like their gift.”

I’m gonna return us to our regularly scheduled programming here in a second, but I’d just like to deviate as adult me and say that this isn’t rude at all. It’s not always necessary; there’s merit in keeping your mouth shut sometimes. But how and why did I do it? Not rude.

But what an important lesson for a little Midwestern boy to learn: Pretend you’re okay with whatever you’re given, or people will be mad at you. Great, got it.

Honestly, it didn’t end up being like that with gifts. I have no poker face; if I like something, I’ll jump up and down, screaming about how this was the best day of my life. If I weren’t doing that, you missed the mark, no matter how much I tried to force a smile and say, “Thank you, I can’t wait to make my own rock-shaped bubblegum, Uncle Danny.”

Sometimes I question if my intense reactions were a way to subconsciously guide people to or away from behavior, like I was Jane Goodall and the adults in my life were all extremely successful gorillas. Well, it didn’t matter why I did it: It was working. Anything orca would always get me hyped, and seeing me get hyped is honestly pretty exciting. It’s one of my better qualities; I’m easily impassioned.

A few years later, my grandma, having learned her lesson from the field dressing I’d given her earlier, bought me a very special glass orca ornament. I loved it. It wasn’t anything I could play with. It didn’t do anything, but that didn’t matter; I was a preteen, and I didn’t do much either, but I was still perfectly worthy of love.

One day, my dad was standing in the doorway of the room I shared with my brother, yelling at me for something. This wasn’t remotely novel, but my reaction to it was. It was one of the first times I started to fight back, get snarky, and raise my voice in retaliation. I was getting so tired of feeling like a cornered animal, like a seal on an iceberg just waiting for the orcas to knock him into the sea to tear him to shreds.

But my dad was no stranger to brinkmanship. If you go low, he’d go lower. The “anything to win” mentality, likely curated by his love for the barbarians of the Green Bay Packers, meant that he had no problem getting down in the muck, losing his shit, and waiting for the dust to clear to see our tiny hands waving white flags.

His impulsiveness and anger were familiar to me, so I knew I was already playing a dangerous game by talking back. But sitting there and doing nothing wasn’t helping either, and this felt like my only other play. The argument reached a fever pitch before my dad picked up my orca ornament in a fury and slammed it to the ground like he was scoring a touchdown, shattering my gift into tiny pieces.

We both fell silent. He tried to remain powerful and indignant, but I saw the look in his eyes, and he saw the look in mine. It was the first time I remember thinking that my dad was a bad person. But for him, it was probably the millionth time.

I would eventually see that look in the mirror when I was in my twenties: a muted sadness, a helplessness against the emotional undertow pulling me into the depths of my mind. My adaptation of his behavior was both learned by example and inherited through ADHD and generational trauma.

Years later, my dad was in hospice, slowly dying from cirrhosis due to his heavy drinking, his last bastion against the specter we shared. I knew his pain now as an adult, but I refused and still refuse to respect his journey. He left the world in one of the saddest ways imaginable: broken, resigned, and completely unaware of how much love he was capable of giving and receiving.

My mom took care of my dad for nearly eight years before he passed. He died in October of 2022, and on August 4th of that year, my birthday, my mom sent me what I initially thought was kind of a silly gift: a stuffed orca whale. I was turning 34; what the fuck was I supposed to do with this? That thought went as quickly as it came. I went from rolling my eyes at an inane gesture to feeling seen and understood in a way I didn’t anticipate.

I ended up naming the orca Octavius, and I still sleep with him every night (though he’s currently out of office). He’s soaked up many of my tears, laughter, and frustrated screams. He was exactly what I needed to soften the blow of watching any chances of a healthy relationship with my father slam into the ground like a touchdown, shattering into tiny pieces. For the second time in my life.

Octavius the whale plushie also had a hand in healing my anger from the moment my dad broke my ornament. It left me with some renewed anger, mostly that my mom was often there, sweeping up after him and trying to make everything right, and that this felt like an extension of that. And just like every other time, I doubt he even knew it was happening. Cleaning up after his mess was often her job, and I strangely resented both of them for it.

Whales are majestic creatures whose intelligence rivals that of humans. But just like us, they’re still animals. Fortunately for them, they aren’t tied down by the wicked brambles of society, forced to deny their instincts and lie to their whale grandmas about how much they like a T-shirt.

I felt grateful that even now, in my thirties, people know that in moments like this—moments where language fails them—you can’t go wrong with getting me a whale.

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CJ Darnieder is a comedic essayist and creative writer from Milwaukee, WI. He is currently working on a collection of personal essays titled “Cigarettes for Lunch” and his debut fantasy novel.

I believe we can still be in conversation with and linked to our loved ones after they’ve left this earth. They communicate with us through signs, symbols, dream visitations, and the physical possessions they leave us. I keep James’s guitar pick in my wallet. Holding the triangular plastic memento in between my thumb and index finger makes me feel close to my best friend even though he’s gone.

Our friendship started on a social media site late one night in the early aughts. He’d posted a video of him playing a song in his bedroom that caught my attention. He fumbled with the opening chords, stopping and restarting a few times to get it right. James sang softly as if his parents were in the room next door sleeping, which they probably were. His voice and the chords made me stop whatever else I was mindlessly doing online. I commented asking for the name of the song. His response came swiftly. “My Guardian Angel by Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.”

Soon we discovered we lived just a mile apart in our leafy Nashville suburb. I walked over to his house where we’d listen to music for hours, him showing me bands I’d never heard of. He’d walk me back, making sure I got home safely.

When my parents decided to move our family overseas in 2009 as the housing bubble was bursting and my father’s work in residential development dried up, the one who was hit hardest was James. Looking back at the letters he wrote me, it’s clear he was struggling. I just didn’t see it at the time.

As a parting gift, he’d bought us general admission tickets to see Coldplay. They were on their Viva la Vida tour, and I knew just about every lyric on their new record. They were a band I’d grown up listening to as my dad often had their songs playing on our family’s stereo when we were doing Sunday chores or just lounging around the house.

Both the paper butterflies that fell from the arena’s ceiling and the tears that fell from my eyes during “Yellow” surprised me. Tears continued falling as the concert ended, not wanting our time together to stop. Home was a feeling I felt wrapped in while in his arms. I gathered up the colorful paper butterflies now on the floor and carefully put them in my pocket, keeping them for years to come. I didn’t want to leave James, my best friend, whose love I felt so deeply but didn’t have the words to express.

As best friends in early high school, I hardly said “I love you” out loud, or at least I don’t remember saying it. James wore his heart on his sleeve and more aptly expressed his emotions whenever he had the chance. He left me with carefully curated CDs and letters explaining why each song was included. He wrote, “You’re my best friend, and I will love you always and forever.” He also left me with his guitar pick. A red Peavy, 0.73 mm. James gave it to me when I visited him during a Thanksgiving break in college. My own family was still abroad and James’s family welcomed me into their home.

When I’m holding the guitar pick or listening to his playlists, I feel his presence along my back. His angel wings caress the sides of my face. Even if he no longer graces the earth with his physical presence, I feel deeply connected to him.

He once told me that he still thinks of me every day. I remember in the moment—and shortly after he passed six years after that fateful Thanksgiving—feeling guilty that thoughts of him didn’t take up equal mental bandwidth. But now that he’s gone, I see him everywhere. Whether it’s in the kindness of others, the warmth of a full bear hug, or the signs and symbols I get from him. His guitar pick lives in my wallet, and I now think of him every day when I get a peek at it. It doesn’t take much for me to feel his love and presence from the beyond.

Our friendship started with a song about a guardian angel. I wouldn’t understand the full meaning of this until he was no longer here.

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Natasha Krell is a scientist and writer living in the greater Boston area. She’s currently writing a memoir about the parallels of shared experiences across generations. You can stay up to date on her writing by signing up for emails on her website: natashakrell.com. When she isn’t writing or working, she enjoys volunteering for animal welfare causes and practicing Reiki.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

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Recommended reading on possessions:

“My Ex Threw my Couch off a Roof.” by , Ghost & Co.

“Alice Coltrane Changed Everything. 3,000 Records Later, He Had to Let Go.” Vinyl Vibes

“The Neuroscience of Decluttering” by Emily Falk, The New York Times

It’s hard to say when she started stalking me. I felt her looming before I saw her. Each time, I filled up with dread. I kept my anxieties secret, sure that no one would believe me. Unsure if I believed myself. For a while, she showed up in glimpses. Glimpses became stints. Stints became prison bars that wouldn’t unlock, not even for a second. Until one day, she died.

Died.

Awash with grief, I cried over her grave. How crazy is that? I mean crazy in the psychotic sense of the word. I must have been downright delusional. Or maybe I’d finally become sane.

I’ll start in the middle of the story, where I think this all got interesting.

I was eighteen years old and moving from my Minnesota hometown to midtown Manhattan. During high school, my theater director had seen modeling potential in me. Although she was legally blind, I desperately wanted to believe her. So I answered a newspaper ad and landed a photoshoot with photographers who turned out to be agents.

I could barely match my own clothes and looked more like Anne Hathaway’s character at the beginning of The Devil Wears Prada than a fashionista. But something about performing for cameras, like acting without the lines I struggled to memorize, enthralled me. Before the lens, I became someone far removed from my teenage insecurities. Finally, I’d found something I excelled at. I wanted more.

After months of forcing myself to wake up early to exercise and eat healthier, I signed a contract with the esteemed Wilhelmina Models. Before then, I’d only flown out of the Midwest once.

Numerous people warned me about the culture shock before I left. “You can’t possibly be prepared,” an acquaintance warned. “New York is nothing like the movies.”

Only it was exactly like the movies. During my ride to the apartment, I saw someone pee out of a taxi door. My first time entering a subway station, a plump rat scuttled before me. The city’s buzz matched my neurodivergent brainwaves in ways I’d one day understand. The city seldom slept well, just like me.

I was more nervous about meeting my roommates than I was about castings. Perhaps that should have been a sign. Outside the apartment door, I inhaled a strengthening breath. You can do this. After several knocks, the door creaked open.

Rather than the sophisticated women holding champagne flutes I’d imagined, my roommates were sprawled around in sweats, watching Jerry Springer.

“Hi! I’m August and I’m from Minnesota.” Why had my voice come out so nerdy-cheerleader-like? Back home, I’d felt like a rebel. Here, I felt like a Mormon librarian.

“Polina from Buryatia,” one of them said flatly.

Where even was Buryatia? Minnesota felt worlds away. For years, I’d longed to have grand adventures in new places. Now that I’d arrived in one, I couldn’t even move. I stood there like a cow staring over a country farm fence awaiting food or attention—the kind I’d seen during countless drives. I suddenly missed those cows.

A softer voice sounded. “I’m Niko. Need help with your stuff?”

My body softened. “I think I’m okay. Just…where should I put it?”

Niko must have pitied me, given her chicness. Even her sweatpants that draped from her pointy hips seemed expensive. Her flip flops clacked on the floor as she guided me to a bedroom housing two sets of bunk beds. Rumpled clothes and empty cigarette boxes dotted the floor. Overwhelmed, I cried myself to sleep.

Come morning, I realized I hadn’t eaten dinner, which said a lot. I never forgot a meal. My stomach rumbling a symphony, I tiptoed to the kitchen, careful not to wake anyone. Approaching the fridge, Beth, the roommate who’d given me the worst vibes, appeared. I gasped.

“Sorry, you scared me,” I said, unsure why I disliked her so much.

She leaned her back against the counter, clutching a mug to her chest. “You think you can make it here, huh?”

I didn’t know how to respond. Instead, I glanced around the kitchen, spotting a bag of bagels. “Is any of this food for everyone? I could pitch in.”

Beth lifted the bagels and moved them toward me. As my fingers touched the bag, she snatched it away. “Nope, and these are mine. But there’s a fruit stand out front. Better for the waistline anyway.” She eyed my midsection.

The comment enraged me. But maybe she was right. I’d worked too hard to get there to not do everything I could to succeed.

Over the following days, Beth stunned me in different ways. Her snarky remarks turned complimentary. Beneath her aloof shell, I sensed we had a lot in common. Part of my initial dislike may have stemmed from her gorgeousness and confidence, attributes I needed professional makeup and camera magic to possess. She had the secret recipe for perfection. For some reason, she wanted to share it with me.

“I have a guest pass for the gym if you wanna go,” she said on my second New York morning.

I followed her out the door like an eager puppy—eager for friends, for acceptance, for anything that felt like a life.

Soon, Beth and I were inseparable. We exercised together, shared mangos from the fruit stand, and critiqued each other’s catwalks in the apartment building hallways. While our roommates partied late into the night, we read novels, watched TV, and turned in early.

One evening, our relationship took an intimate turn. I couldn’t sleep and again found her in the kitchen. She stood there spooning Ben & Jerry’s into her mouth. Mesmerizing.

“Want some?” She taunted me with a spoonful.

I stepped toward her. God, it had been so long. My hunger became pulsating lust. Stepping closer, I felt her breath. Our mouths joined, hers filling mine with sweet decadence.

We consumed the entire pint and then each other, finishing on my bed. The next day we doubled our workout and shared a salad. We were in this together. I needed Beth. I supposed she needed me, too.

Isn’t that how all abusive relationships begin? With strong feelings? Intoxicating, chocolatey, love-bomby feelings wrapped in the paper of codependency.

It took me a long time to realize that Beth was controlling me. By then, she dictated how I spent my time and monopolized most of it. Once I saw the toxicity, I was too far in. How can you leave someone when escaping would feel like extricating yourself?

A terrifying moment came when I was thumbing through photos from home. I lifted one of me from high school. Pre-modeling me looked so different from the woman I was becoming. Examining the image closer, my insides churned. Beth was in the photo. Younger, but unmistakably there. She’d been in Minnesota, too. She’d followed me, I was sure of it. I might never get away.

I did get away eventually. After several false starts, I reached a bottom that became a springboard for survival. That morning, I’d skipped our morning workout to indulge in brunch with my agent. Afterward, Beth punched me in the stomach, ridiculed me, and poured a poisonous substance down my throat to make me throw up. If I didn’t puke, she said, the poison would gnaw at my insides until my heart stopped.

I sobbed, projectile vomited so hard I tore the flesh in my throat, and passed out in the courtyard where she left me to suffer. Someone found me—I don’t recall who—and I ended up in the hospital. Soon after, I started therapy.

“So, tell me why you’re here,” Anne, my therapist, said at our first session.

“I thought you knew.”

“I read your form, so I have an idea. I’d like to hear it from you.”

I fumbled with my hoodie zipper. “I guess…because I don’t want to be miserable anymore.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“It is?” My answer hadn’t felt like a fabulous proclamation. Or realistic.

“Of course. You’d be surprised how many people stay with the misery because they refuse to let go of the cause.”

Who said anything about letting go?

For months, I deceived Anne. I lied about my aspirations and my fantasies. I even lied about how “well” I was doing. Feeling much better, oh yes I am!

Finally, Anne called me out. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really happening?”

“What do you mean?” But of course, I knew.

She leaned forward in her chair. “You can tell me anything. No judgment.”

I fought a well of emotions until tears lined my cheeks. I dabbed them away, my dark eyeliner smudging onto the tissue. Anne half-laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Honestly, I was offended.

“Not funny exactly. It’s just that I thought your makeup was tattooed on. It always looks perfect. I suppose it’s refreshing that you’re not.”

“Oh.” Oh…

“Can I tell you what I think?” Anne paused. “I think you’ve put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a person.”

Her words felt like permission. “Well, I’m not perfect. But you could be right.”

“Why don’t we try this? Tell me what you’ve been going through, without blaming yourself. None of the, ‘I know I shouldn’t have done blank.’ In fact, let’s make your eating disorder a person. She’s not you, after all.”

She’s not? “Okay.”

“Good. So what would you like to call her? Or him, or whatever gender you’d like.”

I considered this other entity, the disorder that haunted me. “Female feels right. Like the femaleness of what the world tells me to be? I’ll call her Beth.”

“Any significance?”

I smirked. “I had a roommate named Beth. We didn’t talk much, but she was so judgy.”

“Alright then, judgy Beth it is. Now tell me about the first time you encountered her—not your roommate, but the entity. When did she start creeping in?”

Through that session and several more, I detailed the times Beth made me feel awkward about my appearance. How when I was five years old, she wouldn’t let me kneel in certain pants because they made my thighs look fat. How in middle school she taught me that “fat” was a horrible (although actually fat-phobic) insult, and that attracting boys—super important—meant I had to skip lunch. When I’d later eat a whole tube of crackers, she’d scold me.

Beth grew quieter in my teens when I gleaned positive attention for my looks. Maybe she was all in my head. When a photographer suggested I “lose a few pounds” if I wanted to succeed as a model, Beth returned with a vengeance. She cheered me on, filling me with euphoria at first. Intoxicating soulmate love. Every time I approached a finish line Beth set, she inched the ribbon further so I could never cross it.

When I started binging between bouts of starvation, Beth stuffed the food in my mouth then bullied me for days, her punishments intensifying. By then, I saw Beth’s true colors. I wanted her gone. But how?

“I still can’t let go,” I confessed several sessions of this role play exercise in.

Anne’s eyes glistened with tears, maybe because I’d just told her about the poison I sometimes consumed. “What would happen if you did?”

“I can’t imagine. But this has to be worse.” I couldn’t bear life as I knew it, nor did I want to die.

So I made a commitment to myself. For one year, the longest I could fathom, I would not brutalize myself for eating any food in any amount. Even when I binged to the point that I fell into a trance, coming to in a pile of food remnants, my belly aching as though it might explode, I’d carry on. I would eat the next meal, and the next. I’d cut the size tags from my clothes and buy larger, stretchier ones. I’d avoid mirrors. I’d put my energy into other things—hobbies I’d long abandoned, like songwriting.

The morning after my last binge, I woke up swollen and puffy, my eyelids crusty from tears. Rather than plot self-revenge, I sat down at the kitchen table and ate breakfast. Each spoonful of cereal into my mouth took a wall of courage. Then with a trembling hand, I grabbed my guitar.

Beth’s death wasn’t a sudden collapse, but the gradual kind. Her voice decrescendoed as I reclaimed my own. She started to feel more like a memory than a complicated, controlling lover.

One day I tossed nuts from my grammy’s countertop into my mouth, no thoughts of the meal I’d eaten shortly before. No dietetic calculations or unwarranted guilt.

“I think she’s gone,” I told Anne at my next session. The same day, I shared that my periods had returned. Apparently my body trusted me. Maybe because I’d begun to trust myself.

I’m in my late forties now and consider myself fully recovered, a privilege not all eating disorder survivors experience. Recently, though, I feared Beth was clawing her way back like a horror film zombie. In a mirror, I saw her in my forehead lines, the thinning of my hair, the creases around my eyes. My heart thundered. What if my body dysmorphia had returned? I squeezed my eyes shut and reopened them, staring and thinking.

I almost laughed at the ridiculousness when it struck me. I wasn’t seeing imagined “flaws.” I was seeing an aging woman. A person with a face. The kind our culture fails to celebrate or even allow. I wasn’t mentally ill again. I was simply alive in America.

I straightened my posture, forcing gratitude and determination. I have the chance to age, to respect age-related changes, to invest my energy elsewhere. I can resist society’s rules.

In doing so, maybe there won’t be quite so many Beths in the world. Maybe a young person will see me aging with acceptance, neutrality, or even pride and give herself permission to deprioritize her appearance rather than fuse it with her self-worth. Rather than fall in love with a stalker, maybe she’ll fall in love with how it feels to be herself.

A year into my eating disorder recovery, I buried a time capsule containing photographs, journal pages, and poems. Resting my hand on the lumpy mound of soil, I bid Beth goodbye, giving her a proper burial.

Jolted by profound grief, I wept. Beth was brutal, abusive, and toxic. She almost killed me more than once. But she was also mine. Who was I without the illness of her? Without her chaos?

If I could relay a message to the woman I was then, I would tell her that the most wonderful things in her life would stem from figuring that out.

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August McLaughlin is a journalist, author of thrillers and nonfiction, and host/producer of the podcast, Girl Boner Radio. Her writing and expertise have been featured in a range of publications, including Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Shape. Her next book, the psychological thriller, Climax, will be released in late 2027 (Rogue River, Roan & Weatherford).

You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Read Elizabeth’s essay “The Maternal Survival Instinct That Helps Me Handle Food Insecurity.”

Read Tajah’s essay “The High Cost of Being Poor.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Read Dana’s essay, “What Do I Owe a Father Who Betrayed My Trust?”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Find out more about Lu at luchekowsky.com and follow her at @luchekowsky on Instagram.

Read Lu’s essay, “Pinch More Than an Inch.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Read Chris’s essay “Am I Food Insecure Because I Have Bulimia, Or Do I Have Bulimia Because I’m Food Insecure?”

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Find out more about Courtney at courtneykocak.com and follow her @courtneykocak on Instagram, and listen to her podcast about writing, The Bleeders.

Read Courtney’s essay, “Me & Amy Pascal’s Pubes.”

Read Courtney’s Object-ives essay, “The Sneakers That Traipse on Without My Grandma.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Find out more about Amena at amenabrown.com and follow her at @amenabee on Instagram.

Read Amena’s essay “The Music I Threw Away.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Find out more about Michelle at michellegurule.com and follow her at @michelle__gurule on Instagram.

Read Michelle’s essay, “Hiding My Life as a Sex Worker Nearly Destroyed My Health.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

See Amie’s essay, “A Love Letter to Myself After Eating Disorder Treatment.”

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Follow Jazmine on her Substack newsletter, Living Room, and at @jazmine.becerra.green on Instagram.

Read Jazmine’s essay on domestic abuse, “How to Shatter a Marriage,” here:

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Find out more about Jenny Bartoy at jennybartoy.com and follow her @jenny.bartoy on Instagram.

Below you can read Jenny’s original essay, “So It Goes,” about becoming estranged from her father and siblings:

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You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

Read ena’s essay, “How I Survived the Cult of Mom” here:

Read Shanetta’s essay, “I Cut Off My Mother. Now I’m Becoming Her” here:

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Find out more about Jesse at jessejamesrose.com and follow her jamesissmiling on Instagram and TikTok. Read an excerpt from sorry i keep crying during sex here:

And read Jesse’s original essay, “Why I Share My Sex Life on the Internet,” about sex education and shame reduction, here:

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Find out more about Edgar at edgargomez.net and follow Edgar at @otroedgargomez on Instagram.

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Rebolini shares how being part of the Livejournal generation helped shape her writing, choosing her book’s very clear subtitle, studying the journals of Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, how social media has played a role in her life, why she included her family members’ mental health journeys in her memoir, critiquing media guidelines about how to cover suicide, the role of anti-capitalism in her work, and more.

Find out more about Arianna and her indie zine Reading Habits on her website and follow her at @arianna_rebolini on Instagram.

You can read a transcript of our interview by clicking the icon that looks like a page with writing on it, to the left of the closed captions.

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Please also check out Marianna’s essay, “Why My Friend’s Reaction to My Bracelet Charm Filled Me with Shame,” which is excerpted from Portrait of a Mestiza.

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My necklace is a kind of Theseus Ship—a thought experiment that asks, How much of something can you replace before it transforms? If charms and chain are continually lost and replaced, is it the same necklace at all?

First, it was a crucifix, purchased in the Vatican gift shop. Then Jesus fell from the crucifix, making it a cross; eventually the cross fell off too. The chain snapped, to be replaced with a cord from my prom dress. A plastic engagement ring was added from a fake proposal, then a peridot charm from my grandmother, then a wooden heart from a friend’s trip abroad. The ring was lost. The cord ripped. I found a new chain, and another. I added a new engagement ring when my real engagement broke.

I still call it my cross, which I suppose reveals where I stand on the Theseus Ship debate, but the people who have entered my life since the loss of the original pendant get confused when I make the cross I bear jokes and tell me it isn’t, which I suppose reveals where they stand, too.

I once lost the necklace when an ex—before he was an ex—took me on a day trip, a two-hour drive to an hour hike to a waterfall in the woods. We swam, and we laughed, and my shoulders blushed from the sunlight. The day still lives on in my memory like it is perfectly preserved and jarred. I took the necklace off to swim. I didn’t notice I’d left it behind until the ride home, when my hand met my chest to search for a familiar weight and came up empty.

As any rational person would do, I screamed.

Kyle—the not-yet-ex—nearly crashed the car.

I cried; I wailed; I begged him to turn the car around. A bystander would have thought I’d left a child behind. Kyle explained that it was getting late, the park would be closed—besides, we’d never find our way in the dark. Kyle was logical, and rational, and calm. I was a storm.

When I realized I couldn’t convince him to turn back, I became mute. Anything Kyle said was met with an icy stare, an irate silence.

The cross still had a cross, though it hadn’t been a crucifix for years. The prom dress cord had only just begun to fray. I’d worn it almost constantly since the day I’d bought the bones of the original, and I felt lost without it.

I knew it wasn’t fair to blame Kyle, but I did—for taking us out there in the first place, for not seeing it on the rock when he packed up his bag. Resentment flooded me.

I found a sad song on the radio. I turned the volume up. I brooded.

I thought of the cross, of each story I’d strung on its shifting chain. I thought of the trip to Italy. I thought of the boy next to me on the flight, his clammy hand holding mine, his brilliant smile—and the rumors he’d later spread in school about us sleeping together in San Gimignano. I thought about prom. I’d been dumped right after buying the tickets, and I spent the whole dance trying not to cry. I thought about the year my grandmother gave me the peridot necklace, back when she could still talk. Right before the surgery to remove her cancer, when her esophagus curled into the empty cavity where her lung had been and she spent three years silent, thin, and ethereal, like she was practicing to be the ghost she’d become.

I started to wonder what I was holding on to. I thought about Kyle, about our brilliant afternoon in that sun-speckled grove. Kyle, who told me he wanted a future with me—a future that could mean so much more than my past, if only I could let it. I thought about what it might mean to let go. My breathing slowed; my sobs became a quiet sniffle.

When Kyle and I got home, I didn’t apologize for my behavior in the car, though I know I should have. It would be a few years before he wrenched that one out of me. Instead, I took his hand in mine, led him upstairs to the bedroom, and spent my night thanking him for everything he was to me.

In the morning, I reached into the space beside me, looking for him. Instead, I hit bare blankets, heard a light metallic clink.

There, the cross, and a note.

Woke up early. Love you.

The relationship lasted a few more months; too many other things were wrong. The pastoral hike, the loss of the necklace, the swell of love in its wake—it was a small oasis in a desert. We never could have stayed there. Still, I find myself connecting our breakup back to that moment: hanging that familiar weight back around my neck, like being force-fed my past. My disappointment in Kyle for being so oblivious to the person I wanted to be, the one who could leave it behind.

It was an incredible, sweet gesture. I knew that then, too. It wasn’t all resentment that I felt, reading that note. Much like our relationship, the highs and the lows overlapped—but they couldn’t cancel. For all the ways we loved each other, there was always the sinking, sad knowledge that it wasn’t right. When he eventually ended things, it felt like hope. This way, we can finally be friends, I told him. Maybe that’s how it was supposed to be.

These days, I keep the cross as a reminder that I, too, am a Theseus Ship. I still treasure all the wayward, broken pieces of my past, the lessons I have learned and the people I have lost. I string them on new chains alongside new friends, hold them close to my chest, cherish their weight as I move with joyful anticipation toward new beginnings.

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Liz Abeling is the CNF editor for After Happy Hour Review and co-founder of the writing collective, Scribble House. She lives in Pittsburgh, where she works for the local cemetery and spends her spare moments trying to write under the watchful gaze of two tyrannical cats. You can find her work in Hippocampus, Barrelhouse, The Journal, and others.

Object-ives features flash nonfiction essays of 500-999 words on the possessions we can’t stop thinking about.

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Recommended reading on possessions:

“I Purged 46 Books in One Day and Feel Guilty About It” by

“The Minimalism to Analog Pipeline” by , Journaling Home

“why I started collecting physical media” by t., negative spaces

“What the Hell Does “Vintage” Even Mean Anymore?” by

“12 Things people actually want to inherit and it’s not the expensive stuff” by Tamara White, Yahoo!