I was 15 the first time I dyed my hair. It was the early 90s, back when it wasn’t commonplace to see a teenager with three-inch black tips on the end of otherwise naturally sun-kissed blonde hair. At the time, my motivation was pure rebellion, teenage angst turned outward so I could see a different person in the mirror. But 20 years later, when I decided to dye my blonde locks brown in the midst of a painful divorce, I realized the act of changing my hair was less about defiance and more about manifesting positive change.

A few years after my 15-year-old self got tired of the black tips and cut them off, I felt the urge once again to do something drastic to my hair. I was about to turn 18 and had just accepted an athletic scholarship for swimming at an out-of-state Division I college while nursing a shoulder injury from overtraining. Every single aspect of my life was about to change, and despite my brave face, I was terrified.

Could I handle living so far away from my family? Would my shoulders heal enough to perform as I was expected in the pool to keep my scholarship? Would I be able to make friends at a school where I don’t know a single person?

As I contemplated these self-doubts, I drove to the drugstore and bought myself a bottle of wash-out black hair dye. This time, instead of just coloring the tips of my blonde hair, I slathered the color over my entire head.

I’m pretty sure I thought I was being rebellious again, basking in the attention classmates and teachers gave me for suddenly showing up at school one day looking like a completely different person. But more than anything, , I remember the sense of confidence I felt. I’d dyed my hair black! If I could do that, I could thrive moving ten hours away from my family. I could be the MVP of my swim team, maybe even MVP of my conference. I could find my friend group in a sea of strangers.

Months later, long after the black had gradually washed down the shower drain, I accomplished every one of those things, my fear of those life changes long forgotten.

Of course, dyeing my hair didn’t cause me to mature as a young adult away from my parents, swim well, or make friends. But what it did do was give me a boost of adrenaline, a shift in perspective, a new image to see in the mirror reflecting a person whose confidence I could borrow until I could fully absorb it.

The hair dyeing continued from there. I went for black dye again right before my college conference swim meet. I opted for strawberry blonde when I was having relationship issues with a boyfriend. I used grape Kool-Aid mix to attempt a purple hue as college graduation drew near and I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. My hair dye method never let me down.

But soon enough, the hair dyeing stopped. I met the man who would become my husband. He joined the military, and I became the wife of an officer in the Navy. I gave birth to a son and then a daughter. I was a grown-up, a mother, a military spouse. There didn’t seem to be space in those roles for spontaneous drastic alterations to my appearance. I had a certain image to uphold. I had to fit in with the other mothers at playgroup, the other officers’ wives at potlucks and our husbands’ work events. I couldn’t show up on the arm of my husband in his military uniform with magenta hair. So my hair remained the same for years, the familiar palette of blonde highlights on the agenda at every salon visit.

Until my marriage ended.

I had just moved out of my marital home and into an apartment, and after a grueling seven-month in-house separation, I was living on my own for the first time in my life at 37. Even though we were finally living in different homes, my husband and I were still dwelling in the limbo of a yearlong legal separation, a state-mandated requirement in no-fault divorces when minor children are involved. Not divorced, but not a marriage. I felt stuck in so many ways.

Despite the fact that I wanted the divorce, that I wanted to end my thirteen-year marriage and start over, the struggles of being a single mother of two elementary school-aged children hit me hard. Alongside the breakup also came an unexpected search for identity as I realized I had spent most of my marriage trying to live up to the varied expectations of being the wife of a service member. My entire identity revolved around my husband’s career as a Navy officer, and I no longer knew who I was without my title of military spouse.

That’s when I found myself at a salon.

Maybe it was the adjustment to co-parenting after my move into the apartment. Maybe it was the series of panic attacks that seemed to hit me out of nowhere. Or maybe I was so desperate to get unstuck that I needed to do something extreme. Whatever the primary motivation was, the result was exactly what I needed it to be: positive change.

I had never met this stylist before, but she came highly recommended by a friend who knew I was struggling. When I told this stylist I wanted to chop six inches off my long blonde hair and dye what was left brown, she did exactly what I asked for. I walked into that salon a blonde and walked out a brunette.

I admit the change was shocking at first, my initial look in the mirror bringing me to tears as I clutched a half-foot long strip of my blonde hair in my hands and fought the urge to beg the stylist to immediately reverse what she had just done to me. But as the days passed and I grew less and less surprised when I looked at myself, I fell in love with my hair. I saw myself with fresh eyes. I saw the woman I was becoming. I saw that change, no matter how scary at first, could be beautiful.

There were countless things out of my control because of the divorce, but my hair was one thing I had complete control over. I couldn’t change my custody schedule. I couldn’t change how my husband was parenting our children in his home. I couldn’t change where the military was sending him. But I could change my hair. I could change who I saw in the mirror. I could change the identity I had lost in my marriage and find the sense of self I needed in order to move on with my life.

I eventually grew my hair back to its original length, and that same stylist eventually colored me back to blonde. But my hair dyeing days to induce change continue to this day. While I haven’t had to face the drastic life changes that I did during my divorce, I still periodically feel the itch to switch up my hair color.

What began as rebellious black tips progressed into something more meaningful than I could have imagined at age fifteen. I got a splash of delicate pink after my six-week recovery from a hysterectomy. I chose blue tips when things were getting serious with the man I was dating and there were thoughts of moving in together. I swirled pink and purple during the pandemic and all the uncertainty it created. I went a sassy red when tough emotions resurfaced while I was writing my memoir. And while sometimes I dye my hair because I tell myself I simply want a pop of color framing my face, I usually look back later and realize the salon visit coincided with something bigger, like a tough decision or work burnout.

Whether I wanted to cope with change or induce it, the color of my hair has acted as my driving force, my motivation, my strength, my confidence.

Regardless of the reason, my hair colors are usually temporary, a reminder that whatever emotions I’m connecting to the life changes inspiring the dye—nervous excitement, discomfort, fear, downright dread—will be temporary as well. They say that change is the only constant in life. For me, that means life changes come with a little added color.

Share

Leave a comment

Read our essay archives

Upcomign Open Secrets events

Heather Sweeney is the author of the memoir Camouflage: How I Emerged from the Shadows of a Military Marriage. She writes about divorce, life as a military spouse, parenting, and women’s health, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Business Insider, TODAY.com, Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Healthline, Reader’s Digest, Electric Literature, and Military.com, among many others. She lives in Virginia. Camouflage is her first book.

I get obsessed with word counts. I think most writers do. And yet, I have picked up a new hobby that involves words I never count: writing and sending cards and postcards.

This hobby is actually a return to old habits. As a member of Generation X, I saw my first computer in high school. After a summer away from home, I made friends who lived all over the country and we spent the next few years writing long letters to each other about our lives. My parents divorced when I was in high school, and when I left home, my childhood belongings were largely scattered or disappeared. I would love to find those letters again.

When social media started becoming popular in the early 2000s, I was a little hesitant. But it reconnected me with some people who were important and that drew me in. Ten years later social media was an important part of my work as a non-profit communications and fundraising manager, and it was also a tool I used to connect with friends all over the world. I was certain it was a net positive. It didn’t give me the negative feelings about myself that other people reported, I figured I was adapting to the pace of technology.

Like almost everyone else, my trip downhill on the social internet happened slowly; I almost didn’t notice. I stopped reading except for articles that were posted by friends, and eventually fed to me by the algorithm. Focusing on writing felt impossible. Time went by, and habits became a lifestyle. Then last summer I got a new phone, and didn’t log into Facebook, X, or Instagram. I kept only Substack.

I got so much time back. I’d spent hours of my life scrolling through things that weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t things I deliberately selected. Instead, they were presented to me as if I’d stumbled upon them, but they weren’t my proactive choices.

Enter postcards, which I have complete control over. Postcards give me an opportunity to look at an image, think about who that image reminds me of, and then send a short and directly relevant message to that person.

My girlfriend bought me a set of pens and stamps in January 2025, and I started buying postcards. Now I’m experimenting with making my own. I’m not claiming any kind of anti-tech analog purity; I write them in front of the TV while watching basketball, Stephen Colbert, or Gilmore Girls. Then I walk down to the mailbox and send them away.

This is a wildly imperfect system, and I love that. There is no “sent mail” folder, and I often completely forget what I‘ve written to someone and have to rack my brain when they respond. I also don’t keep track of who I’ve sent postcards to. If you adopt this habit, you might be more vigilant, especially if you worry about equity or have siblings who’ll be upset if you sent a card to one but not the other.

Another small word of caution: So many of us are feeling overstretched, stressed out, and at max capacity, and there are people who receive postcards or letters in the mail and take their arrival as a kind of guilt-inducing act. I know that I’ve felt this way in the past when folks have reached out to me and I haven’t had the energy to respond.

I chose to follow my instincts here and focus as much as possible on people who express interest in the practice. Lots of my friends send texts saying that my postcard made their day. They talk about what a joy it is to get real mail. Many of them have started buying and sending their own. My last post on Facebook, after not posting for quite some time, was to ask if anyone wanted to join my postcard list. It drew a very positive response.

One of the most recent cards I sent was to the daughter of one of my oldest friends after we met for dinner over the holidays. I wrote something like this:

Someday you’ll be at dinner with a friend that you know right now and they, or both of you, will bring one of your grown children. It will feel like a total blur, and a total blessing. xoxo -- Emma

Share

Leave a comment

Emma Margraf is a Northwest writer with words in The New York Times, Folks, and her Substack, Bites of Change. As a former Sassy magazine reader she is also very excited to have contributed to Another Jane Pratt Thing.

My brother Paul and I navigated childhood for twelve years under the same roof, but in adolescence, our family unraveled and spun apart. We have travelled wildly different paths since then. Our infrequent conversations could be contained in a single day in which we failed to find common ground. Then the omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus put a period on the possibility that we ever could. Paul’s death at sixty-four meant that we would never share an actual laugh, compare our children’s endearing eccentricities, commiserate about, well, anything from our father’s heavy drinking days to our lesbian mother’s contributions to women’s liberation.

I will never know his demons—forged out of some extreme notion of Christian good and evil—that led him to expel me, his lesbian sister, and our mother from his family pantheon. And he will never know mine—a murky stew of self-doubt and recriminations that I can never be good enough to deserve love, that people I love always leave.

Once, when we were both middle-aged parents, we briefly overlapped at our dying father’s house. We were cleaning up the apples that had fallen and were fermenting beneath a pair of heirloom Rhode Island Greenings who reliably birthed them year after year, their sharp, vinegary smell stinging our sinuses, sun glinting through the canopy and dappling the soupy blobs underneath like butter on an apple crisp. Every attempt to speak of something I thought safe—what kind of car did he want to buy? Did he do any fishing now that he lived on the Gulf Coast?—somehow always ended with Paul’s admonishments that we (I was never sure if he meant humanity in general, or Mom and me specifically) had been expelled from the Garden of Eden and that there was only one true path to redemption, which was to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior, a path I had not taken.

This was not a conversation; it was an impromptu hellfire and brimstone sermon delivered by my little brother more at me than to me; it was a repeat of the one he delivered at my mother’s deathbed a decade before. Where I saw nature’s bounty and the sacred cycle of life, he saw eternal damnation. There was no opening for conversation. I fell to shoveling up rotten apples in silence. As siblings, as members of a family, albeit a divorced and reconstituted set of families, we more closely resembled the family shrapnel than far-flung loved ones.

Words, in the end, failed us.

And yet. When we were teens and no longer living together, Paul took a shop class in school. At Christmas, one that required visits to two parental households in two states, Paul presented me with a beautiful chopping block: light and dark strips of maple and oak that he had expertly cut, sanded, and painstakingly pieced. The edges were rounded and the bottom was fitted with four rubber feet. I don’t remember what I gave him. It was our last Christmas together.

I have started every meal of my adult life on Paul’s cutting board: five decades, nine households, and an infinity of recipes. It is redolent with thousands of cloves of garlic. When I had in-laws, I had to remove bags of groceries and purses with nasty bottoms from it because it seemed to call incoming dinner guests to place such things upon it. It has that kind of magnetic charm.

Its once perfectly flat surface now features two deepening depressions where I have repeatedly pressed a blade into it in a relentless percussion of slicing, dicing, mincing, cubing, quartering, trimming, coring, and peeling. I can no longer roll out biscuits because the rolling pin cannot make contact with these deepening hollows.

When I learned Paul was on a ventilator and would not survive, I swept my hand over the gentle dips in the cutting board in a soothing motion. I thought about how, a half a century ago, he selected lengths of oak and maple 1x2 boards with intent. How he crafted them into this workhorse of a lifetime, one carefully measured cut after another.

I felt my brother speaking to me in the language of blade against woodgrain. A call and response. A cadence of cuts. A correspondence carved in wood, a Braille for siblings who could never see through to each other’s hearts.

Not long after Paul died, I took my knives to be sharpened and mentioned to the cutler that my cutting board was no longer a flat surface. As he wrote out my ticket, I chatted to fill the silence. “It’s hard to get a good cut.”

He offered to sand it smooth.

“No, no!” I replied instantly. “It’s a story.”

Share

Leave a comment

Kris Kleindienst is a writer, queer elder, and bookseller. She has come recently to literary nonfiction after twenty-five years as a columnist for her local LGBTQIA+ newspaper and fifty-two years as the owner of Left Bank Books, served concurrently. She believes that objects, particularly ones made of organic materials, hold significant spiritual energy when we slow down enough to pay attention. The kitchen is her holy place. She is working on a family memoir and is always saying she will post more regularly on her Substack.

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

Submit your Object-ives essay

Recommended reading on possessions:

“I Figured Out Why I Love Tiny Houses So Much” by , Old Mom Things

“10 unusual ways to use the empty notebooks you keep buying” by

“Vintage Inspired Amp: part 1” by , Vic’s Amps

“Lena Dunham on the Retail That Raised Her” by , Shop Rat (run by )

Writing travel notes by

“Why young Americans are buying $200 notebooks from a store in Paris” by Megan Sauer, CNBC Make It

“I’m a Professional Thrift Shopper—These Are the Items I Wish People Would Stop Donating” by Ashley Poskin, Martha Stewart

The first tattoo I got was cheap. Very, very cheap. Shortly after my high school graduation, and about six months after my 18th birthday, my dad walked into my room and threw a $50 bill on my bed. “Go get your tattoo,” he’d said. “No skulls, no knives.” I lit out of my room to call my best friend Lisa, whose mother had let her get a tattoo before we were of age. Lisa was now sporting a purple rose (her favorite color) with light turquoise bubbles tattooed on the lower left side of her belly. I thought it was beautiful and wanted to get inked, too, so I’d started drawing on myself. I drew flowers mostly—often a sharp petaled one on the inside of my left ankle. I guess my father was fed up with it and thought maybe the pain of a real tattoo would deter me. For a little while it did.

Lisa picked me up in the little stick shift Mazda her mother had customized for her our senior year. It was smoky grey with a thin purple pinstripe circling the body. We sped toward the edge of town to the man who’d done her tattoo with my $50 burning a hole in my pocket. The makeshift studio was dim like a basement and the man setting up the inks and tattoo gun looked as I expected—older with a big beard and a heavy metal band muscle tee. He told me color didn’t work on Black skin so I wouldn’t be able to get something vibrant like Lisa. But if I was insistent I had a choice that might work. Orange.

I picked a piece of flash art from the wall. It was a series of three nondescript flowers on a vine that I wanted it on my right ankle. I took my seat in the chair with my leg extended out toward his chest and closed my eyes. The first dip of the needle into my skin was like fire. I balled my fists together to still my body, afraid to jerk or move or end up with scattered lines. I made it through one flower before I tapped out in tears and sweat. I don’t know what I expected it to feel like, but it certainly wasn’t someone carving into my skin. He cleaned up the wonky orange flower, wrapped my ankle in Saran Wrap, and sent me on my way with no care instructions or ointment.

Then Lisa and I headed to McDonald’s to debrief and chatter over the newest addition to my body. That tattoo and two supersized value meals fit into my $50 budget cleanly. It was a cheap tattoo, remember? But I was proud. It was the first time I felt fully in control of my body. I was always well cared for growing up. I had a standing hair appointment, an abundance of clothes, shoes, and jewelry, and I was almost always neat and well put together. That was at the hand of my mother and the direction of my father. But this? This was my own thing even if it was financed by my dad. A couple of months later, when I arrived on the campus of Kent State University, I cut off my hair. By the end of my freshman year, I had two more tattoos and a tragus piercing.

Across social media young people have begun to post about customizing their avatars. The videos show new hairstyles, tattoos, piercings, and more. I’m proud of them for putting a name to this personalization so early on in their lives. I grew up being told tattoos would stop me from getting a good job, tongue piercings were for nasty girls, and natural hair wasn’t professional. I lived worrying about these ideas for far too long. The tattoos kept coming, though. I tattooed my wrists to stop myself from sinking into corporate oblivion but have now spent nearly two decades working for the largest corporation in the world, the United States government.

Almost 30 years after my first tattoo I’ve added 15 more. Most are small, but all of them mark a chapter I needed or wanted to memorialize for a lifetime. Some of the tattoos are dumb and there is no deep meaning behind them (the fairy sitting on a crescent moon on my left thigh and my own name in cursive under that orange flower). I got them because my college friends and I descended on a tattoo shop in Kent, Ohio and all of us (but maybe not Chris) got tatted or pierced. It was bonding and a bunch of kids exercising their freedom.

College changed me. I went from a homesick girl to a crew of friends I still have 30 years later. The tattoos are dumb, but they matter. They matter because those first three trips under the needle marked my adulthood. I starved and worked and studied and lived under my own hand. There was a lot of failure, and a few years misshapen like the first tattoo, but I picked it all on my own and lived with the decisions and maybe a little bit of regret.

Other tattoos are heartbreak and healing. My wedding date in a stylized fashion is inked into my front right shoulder. If anyone asks what X30X means I have to reopen the wound. I have to tell them that on 10/30/2010 I thought I was starting my forever. Or maybe I don’t have to tell them anything. I’ve thought about covering it. I don’t think I will. It’s heartbreak but it’s part of my story just like the horrible orange flower.

On the inside of my left wrist is part of the healing. It’s a single word tucked beneath the ankh I got tattooed sometime in my twenties. It says libertad. It’s the final word of the OutKast song “Liberation.” Freedom. That heartbreak had crushed me, broken me in ways I wasn’t sure I had the tools to fix. I listened to the song on repeat for hours and hours one day that bled into night. I cried and cried until I was empty. Then I got up, drove to a tattoo shop on Main Street in my hometown, and got the word and the feeling etched into my skin. It’s crooked when my arm isn’t extended, but my healing has been crooked, too.

I’ve spent the last 30 years collecting milestones in my skin. In typewriter font on my nape is inked “poet,” a gift to myself when I earned my MFA. My life’s motto, il buon tempo verra (the good time shall come), circles my right wrist. A pen, a paper airplane, the goddess Athena, an owl, 11:11, and three Adinkra symbols at the base of my neck round out the 16 pieces of memories I carry with me daily. One of those Andinkra symbols is a sankofa bird. “Go back and get it” is a rough translation of its meaning. You can always reach back for something in your past to help you in the present is the idea. The tattoo is solid black, a little larger than a quarter, and it hurt. The vibration of the tattoo gun sent shivers down my spine as the artist worked, but the pain was worth it. I can’t reach back for some greater meaning from when I got the tattoo, but I can reach back now and see what I needed was sitting just below the surface alongside the ink. I can look back at the tattoo, and the other 15, and see the path of my life. The joy and heartbreak, but most importantly the freedom to decide my final form.

There are more tattoos in my future (the next two have already been decided) and they have meaning from the onset. This doesn’t make them more important than the others, though. They’re just another part of my evolution, another way to express the version of myself I think is most closely aligned to the woman I want to be. The tattoos in the last few years of my life, deep into my forties, have been both aspirational and reminders. They remind me that I have survived rock bottom. Remind me of the omnipotent love that exists in my life. Remind me that I’m living so many of my dreams. They remind me of whimsy and the course corrections it took to get to this exact moment. They remind me that life is a series of choices that can lead to scars and beauty marks of many kinds and it’s up to you to decide how to best carry them with you.

Share

Leave a comment

Read past Radical Pleasure columns

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.

Like Lindy West, I have a polyamory memoir out. Unlike Lindy West, I am a total nobody.

Like West, I am a millennial woman who wrote a book about her experiences transitioning from a monogamous marriage to an open one. Like West, my story was published by a Big Five publisher. Like West, I consider myself a feminist, and where I’m from, people would definitely consider me fat. But that’s where our similarities seem to end.

Unlike West, I changed all the names in my book except my own, in order to keep the people I care about—my husband, daughter, (then) boyfriend, plus a few close friends and former lovers—out of the public eye.

Unlike West, I’m not the center of controversy. In fact, you’ve probably never heard of me or my memoir. That’s because my book was never published in the United States. And while I’m guessing you, dear reader, are American, I am not.

Outside the American bubble: a different polyamory origin story

I’m from a world out there where the Sexual Revolution never happened and probably never will. Where feminist blogs didn’t set the Internet on fire or toss match after match into a generational gas tank of feminine rage. Where polyamory is unspeakably taboo and could never be described as common.

I was born and raised in the Philippines, a staunchly Catholic nation of 121 million people, the last country in the world apart from Vatican City where divorce remains illegal. The angry Gen X/millennial feminist voice of my generation was Jessica Zafra; instead of Jezebel, I read her column Twisted. If you haven’t heard of them, that’s okay. I had no idea who Lindy West was, either—until a few weeks ago.

As West’s name began to trickle into my consciousness via Threads, a friend sent me an Instagram reel by Dan Savage. In it, Savage dives into the buzz around West’s new memoir, Adult Braces, by questioning opinion writer Emma Camp, who wrote: “Almost always, when a straight couple opens up their relationship, it’s because the male partner is using the polyamorous label to launder his desire to cheat.” Sure, Savage says, it seems so in “the memoirs that get published,” naming three titles written by white American women. (“Why are these authors ‘almost always’ from Brooklyn?” wonders a commenter). He declares, “The next poly memoir should be written by a man” to “balance the scales.”

Interesting, I thought. Savage takes “memoirs that get published” to mean “memoirs published in the U.S.” This assumes that mainstream publishing has exhaustively covered women’s perspectives on polyamory, and that the only perspectives that remain excluded are those of men.

Um, hi.

I’m a brown, queer, Filipina-Indian author of an open marriage memoir. My book, Ask Me: A Memoir of Daring to Love Differently was published in 2025 by Viking Books/Penguin Random House UK in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, and has been translated into Dutch, German, and soon into Albanian. This year, my book was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction in the UK, alongside the likes of Arundhati Roy and Lea Ypi.

In my story, the wife (that’s me) incites the shift from monogamy to an open marriage. Nobody becomes polyamorous (or bisexual) overnight. It’s four years before a boyfriend appears on the scene. No one is in a throuple. No partners are involved in publicity. The husband doesn’t crash out publicly over coverage of his wife’s book. In fact, the husband is pretty great. Readers love him. As do I.

Due to a frustrating quirk of territorial rights, not getting picked up by a U.S. publisher means my book isn’t available for distribution in the Philippines, which is considered under U.S. territory (ahh, colonialism, the gift that keeps on giving!).

Despite this, the press I’ve received in my home country has drawn ire from people who accuse me of having traded my Filipino values for Western ones. But the idea that polyamory is only practiced by white Western folks comes from the prevalence of published polyamory memoirs by white Western folks, especially by white women from the U.S. This in turn cements the white American experience as the experience of polyamory that exists and widely held to be true.

What about women, authors, people like me? Shouldn’t our voices, experiences and stories count, too?

From a six-way auction to 31 rejections

In September 2023, my agent Jo in London and her co-agent Deborah in New York went out on submission simultaneously with my memoir. Within 24 hours, my book had multiple offers from UK publishers, and was in a six-way auction by the end of the week. The same book was rejected by 31 editors in the U.S.

I remember the frustration in Deborah’s voice as we spoke on the phone. She told me she was “stunned” and “disappointed” by what she was hearing from editors: that no one seemed willing to take a risk on a non-American story by a non-American author. Also, she was told, Open marriages are old news. Everyone is doing them. Several editors already had a polyamory book on the list; one was enough. No one really wants to read about open marriages anymore, they said.

So I was surprised to hear about the new memoir that was stirring up controversy about polyamory in the U.S. I thought nobody wanted to read about open marriages anymore? I thought this was old news?

Clearly, people still want to read about open marriages—and gossip about them, except when it’s literary we call it discourse. But the majority of readers want to hear from voices they know. Publishers bank on this. If they do bet on an open marriage memoir, they want it to be from a certain type of author: one with a name and a platform, who will sell books. A sure bet. Like Lindy West.

West worked hard for her platform, and her hard graft deserves respect. Publishing simply did what publishing does: made a business decision in favor of lower perceived risk and greater perceived return. Polyamory memoir by a millennial feminist icon with a massive platform, or polyamory memoir by a nobody? It’s a no-brainer, even for me.

An unknown author like me needs only one person to see their potential. But that champion has to be capable of transmitting what they see—that spark of something special—on to others. In my 18-odd months in the waiting room from acquisition to publication, I saw how many times that spark of excitement caught on for my book. A whole chain of sparks catching becomes people feeling things, which moves them to make things happen. Seeing it changed something in me; I feel lucky and grateful that it happened to me. How could I begrudge any author the same?

As authors whose memoirs touch upon the same topic, Lindy West and I are at the same party—we’re just talking to people in different corners of the room. It’s a huge party, full of life and chatter and movement, with plenty of nooks to explore, and I know I can only reach so far with what I’ve got. I still can’t believe I’m here, still having the time of my life, even though I need to step out for a breath of fresh air every now and then. Just enough to slow my heartbeat and cool my sweat, until I hear a new tune calling me in to dance.

I intend to stay until I wear my dancing shoes out. And I hope you’ll wander over to my corner of the party sometime. You might just like it here.

Publicity, crashouts, and what my open marriage taught me about boundaries

From where I sit, the controversy over West’s memoir is like hearing a fight break out in one corner of the party. You’re not entirely sure what it’s about, but it’s loud and noisy and almost drowns out the music. You’re glad you’re not at the center of it and hope that whoever it is will make it out okay.

Online, West’s life choices have been ripped apart, her loved ones criticized, and old social media posts dug up and dissected. A seasoned catastrophizer, I could easily picture myself drowning in the same online vitriol West faced as a woman speaking openly of sexuality and questioning norms around love, commitment, and femininity.

I understood I would be judged for my choices by people who didn’t agree with them. I knew I could always shut off the laptop or put away my phone. But mostly, I worried about the people I loved. They didn’t write this book; I did.

I worried that trolls would find my husband and (then) boyfriend on social media and harass them online; that my daughter, about to enter high school, would be bullied by her peers; that my ex’s conservative Irish relatives would ice him out or make life difficult for him (not that they needed my book to do that, but that’s another story).

Neither my publisher nor I could stop media outlets from sensationalizing my story for clickbait, because sex sells. But opening my marriage had taught me something important: that I could understand my fears, discuss them with all involved (in this case, my partners and publisher), and set boundaries around them. I know from experience that boundaries help make the leap into uncharted territory a little less scary, and give me agency in a situation where so many factors lie beyond my control.

My publisher organized private media training to help me navigate interviews, live radio, and TV appearances. A friend helped me archive over a thousand Instagram posts featuring the clearly recognizable faces of my child, husband, and ex. I wiped their real names from Instagram captions and Substack posts. Most importantly, I categorically declined all press requests to include my partners in photo shoots and interviews.

“Your book stands on its own. Your writing speaks for itself,” my husband said. “Why do they need a man’s voice to legitimize a woman’s story?” I love him for that.

When West’s husband, musician Ahamefule Olou, sent a scathing email to Slate journalist Scaachi Koul for her profile of West, the public crashout made me glad to have decided on these boundaries in advance. I may have missed out on publicity, but I know I can stand firm about what’s important to me, and that the people who are truly behind me have always got my back.

Perhaps national media doesn’t have quite the grip on mass attention as it used to. Perhaps my corner of the party over here is a little quieter, a little less angry, a little less invested in parasocial relationships with online personalities. The online noise was nothing I couldn’t switch off or unplug from at the end of the day to return to my offline life, a life and people I loved. I could laugh off comments like “filthy beasts” (The Daily Mail) and “hot horrible garbage’ (Goodreads) by joking about turning them into merch. Side note: If I ever get published in the U.S., “Banned in Florida” will look really cool on a baseball cap.

Following the release of her memoir and the press that followed, West postponed tour dates indefinitely, with online speculation that publicity blowback played a role. Meanwhile, despite the proximity of my memoir to my life and that of my family, our lives have gone on undisturbed, uncontroversial, maybe even wholesome. My teen and her friends’ online lives revolve around K-pop and skincare, not Mom’s interviews in the Times of London and The Daily Mail (that’s for old people). Two of her primary school teachers follow me on Instagram. A class mom sent me a wonderfully warm message after devouring my book in two days, and several of my neighbors have read it. The only way I could really blow up my Dutch neighborhood Whatsapp chat group is to leave the trash out on the wrong day.

I can’t wish for controversy or believe that it’s directly related to my success, when I have peace, which directly underpins my sanity. Peace in which I can live a life worth writing about. Peace that creates the conditions I need as a memoirist: to process the events of my life and write—the next book, the next essay, the ideas I explore on my Substack.

This is writing I live for—writing that happens in the quiet, away from scrutiny and hot takes and crashouts. What nurtures and protects my writing, nourishes and protects me, too.

More than a headline, the quiet parts matter

From the coverage I’ve read, Adult Braces is about more than just polyamory—it’s about identity, the aftermath of public success, and the disillusionment and disorientation that happens when “living the dream” becomes all too real. In her Slate profile by Koul, West says she “worked harder on this than anything I’ve ever written,” and seems aware that polyamory might overshadow the other themes she set out to explore. Things that aren’t as prurient or salacious, that won’t draw as many clicks or drive as much traffic as polyamory or throuples.

And honestly, I get it. Because while I’m comfortable calling the book I wrote an open marriage memoir or a polyamory memoir, it covers much more than that. It’s also about marriage, migration, and motherhood, and how life changes can cause seismic shifts in our identities and relationships. It’s about realizing that the woman I was becoming was different from the girl I’d learned to be, and that I could trust the man I loved to love her, too. And it’s about realizing, with some relief and plenty of joy, that daring to live and love differently really can work out in the end.

My polyamory might be a clickbait headline, but to me it’s one identity woven into the fabric of a life of many colors, threaded through with mistakes and messes, pleasure and desire, but also with tenderness and joy.

Maybe it’s like the way that one Substack post you pour your heart and soul into gets the least number of likes and restacks—the quiet parts may not skyrocket us into controversy, but they’re the parts we fold our treasures into: our joy, our love, our wounds, our humanity. All we can do is wrap them in words chosen with care, before we share them with others in the fragile hope that what we have to offer will be received with kindness.

And Lindy, girl. You don’t know me, but this nobody sees you. If you’re reading this, call me.

Share

Leave a comment

Deepa Paul is the author of Ask Me: A Memoir of Daring to Love Differently (Viking Books UK), longlisted for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-fiction.

Gillian Anderson describes Ask Me as “stunningly vulnerable and poetic… if this doesn’t change your perspective on relationships, nothing will.”

Deepa has written for Seventeen Magazine Philippines, The Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer and Singapore Women’s Weekly, with essays in Vogue Australia, RED, Cheex, Gal-Dem, Rappler and more.

Born in Manila, she lives in Amsterdam with her husband, daughter, and black cat, and writes Letters by Deepa on Substack. Find her on Instagram as @storiesbydeepa.

Most of my friends aren’t aware I took a job as a stripper right out of high school, or that the women I’d worked in the adult entertainment industry nurtured me back to life.

My relationships with women have forged me into the person I am.

Broken women have scarred me indelibly. From being left on the doorstep of the welfare office by my mother when I was 4 to being kicked out of the house by my step-grandma at 16, the blows of rejection hammered at my self-worth. Their inability to recover continued the cycle of generational maternal abandonment.

Strong women have loved me, from teaching me I had value beyond my body and service to standing by me during my most challenging moments. Their unyielding acceptance provided the surrogate family I’d always needed.

My life experiences kept me walking a tightrope for much of my adolescence. Though I hid the turmoil at home, most of the adults I knew had considered me one of the “good kids” throughout my childhood and teen years. I worked 30 hours a week during high school to buy my own clothes and pay for my entertainment. An honor student throughout my education, I also served on school committees, as a teacher aide, and as class treasurer. I didn’t do drugs and had only lightly experimented with alcohol. Before high school classes, once a week I attended early morning Bible study with other teens.

Everything changed when I was 16. The night I had to leave my home with a black trash bag filled with a few belongings, I lost my connection with my school friends—and myself. Even a “good kid” can’t control everything. That moment marked the end of my childhood and the beginning of years I’ve rarely spoken about—years that would shape me in ways I never expected.

The three-year period I spent taking my clothes off for money behind a peepshow window after high school is an experience I’ve hidden in shame for decades. I locked those memories in a box, fearful of how others would judge me. I hid the truth from my childhood friends, my family, and even myself, choosing to put my energy into being the best wife, mother, co-worker, and friend I could be—leaving no room to dwell on my past. It took years before I could face those memories without my stomach turning, but today, I understand how pivotal they were in shaping the person I’ve become.

My first step inside the doorway of the adult bookstore I worked in remains vivid in my memory. I’d found an ad in the local newspaper: “Exotic Dancers Needed. Make up to $500 a week.” Bells chimed when I stepped in, announcing my entrance. My heart pounding, I moved forward with my printed résumé in hand. As my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, my ears took notice of the pulsating music emanating from the hallway to my right. Distant moaning echoed from behind a wood-paneled wall toward the rear of the building. My cheeks flushed as I pretended not to hear. The “powder fresh scent” of my Love’s Baby Soft perfume clashed with the incense and cigarette smoke assaulting my senses. A soft fluorescent glow cast a neon haze over the room.

“Can I help ya’ find something?” A tall woman stepped up from behind a glass countertop. Her name tag read, “Harmony.”

I fumbled for my words, acting cool despite my nerves. “Hello, my name is Michele. I’m here about the exotic dancer position. Are you still hiring?” I even extended my hand, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism, though my insides were mush.

My gaze darted around, taking in the unfamiliar objects on display. Glossy magazine covers reflected men and women in provocative poses. Glass display cases showcased latex objects of various sizes, shapes, and colors. Colorful bottles of lotions and potions stacked neatly on the shelves featured edible body butters and flavored warming gels in every shade of the rainbow.

In contrast, imposing black leather, spiky chains, and rubber balls filled the case below. Rows of XXX-rated movies lined the wall, their titles like Debbie Does Dallas, Talk Dirty to Me, and Tracy Takes Tokyo competing for attention. Clothing racks held scanty fabrics in red and black lace, while a vintage cigarette machine stood beside a dollar bill changer in the corner. On the cusp of adulthood, I didn’t know all the intimate parts of my body and certainly had never seen male parts as shown in the latex models in the cases before me.

Looking back, I’m surprised by how composed I tried to be in such an unfamiliar place. Despite the pounding in my chest, I resisted the urge to gawk or let my mouth hang open. Stay cool, Michele. Don’t act like a little kid. “Fake it until you make it,” was a mantra that helped me survive all the tumultuous situations I’d experienced in my life so far. Turning my attention to the clerk, I stood tall, took a deep breath, and steadied my voice. “I brought my résumé.”

Harmony didn’t laugh, though I was clearly out of my depth. She led me to the back room to show me the peepshow stage. The mirrors, the dark booths, the $5 deposits for a dance—the setting was nothing like I had imagined. I’d pictured a glamorous Madonna straddling a chair with her fishnet stockings and heels behind a window in her 1986 “Open Your Heart” video and convinced myself I could be as cool as her. That was the first night of many I spent backstage with the other women trying to make ends meet.

Inside that world, I found unexpected connection and support among the women I worked with. Our shared intimacy on the job created a unique environment of belonging and trust, which allowed us to bond over our lives and struggles and dispelled any preconceived notions I had about working with strippers. They shared their costumes, their makeup tips, and even advice on relationships and finances. When I cut my leg on a broken stage mirror, one of them took a risk to use her health insurance for me. When I became a single mom out of wedlock at 19, they threw me a baby shower, providing everything I needed to welcome my child into the world.

Through them, I began to recognize my value. They showed me that nurturing relationships, both giving and receiving care, were essential to happiness and well-being. Acceptance was a ghost I’d spent my life chasing, and with them I found a sense of belonging.

Then there was Alex.

What began as fear for the owner of the adult bookstore eventually transformed into admiration. When I’d first heard of the boss, I felt intimidated. Harmony handed me the shift schedule and warned me about Alex. “Don’t miss your shift or Alex will fine you.” Others had told me she was tough, her rules strict, and she wouldn’t hesitate to fire anyone who broke them. “Alex doesn’t like strippers,” one had stated. “No, Alex doesn’t like bullshit,” another quickly corrected. I worked hard not to bring any bullshit.

As a woman, Alex was a rarity in an industry primarily dominated by men. She owned and managed five different adult bookstores across several states, navigating the politics and purity culture of the 80s and 90s with a steely resolve. Dealing with picketers, death threats, and even a bomb at one of her shops, she persisted and adapted to each situation. The safe working environment she provided for the women in her employment exceeded all expectations.

What I didn’t expect from her was the quiet wisdom and steady guidance she would provide directly to me in the three years I spent in her world. Over time, she recognized something in me I had long lost—my belief in my value and potential. As I gained her trust, she gave me more responsibilities, entrusting me with her cash register and business operations when I accepted a salaried position as a desk clerk. The steady paycheck proved more valuable than the fluctuation of tips on the stage.

When Alex noticed my doodling on the end-of-day cash envelopes, she purchased supplies from a local art store and encouraged me to continue. She sent my art to magazines that featured it on their covers and entered my work into competitions. My framed art hung on the walls of her home. Through her, I learned to believe in my own artistic ability.

An owner and breeder of purebred Alaskan Malamutes, she introduced me to the world of the American Kennel Club. We traveled together to dog shows and dog-sledding events, sharing hours of conversation and building our friendship. She reignited my love for the outdoors when we backpacked together with our dogs. Side-by-side with Nitro, the beloved dog she gifted me, I learned perseverance.

When she purchased a home and rented it to me under the guise of “needing an investment,” she provided my son and me with a safe place to live. If I came up short on rent, she was flexible. When my car stopped running, she offered me one of her extras. Honestly, if I needed anything, she was there. As her friend, I never lacked diapers, food, or shelter.

Her guidance went well beyond giving me things. Her inspiration as a single mother, fiercely protective of her son, showed me how to be a better mother. I didn’t have that example in my family and needed someone to model it for me.

When I could no longer reconcile being a mother with working in the adult entertainment industry, she showed me a way out. Watching her go back to college in her forties inspired me to enroll in parenting and art courses, eventually graduating with honors with three natural resources degrees from a local community college.

Shortly after graduation, I accepted a job with the U.S. Forest Service and moved to Montana with my son to start a new life. The first summer, I worked harder than I ever had, hiking 200 miles on trails, carrying heavy loads that included chainsaws, hand tools, and a backpack filled with supplies. With each drop of sweat I shed, I found my strength, washed away my past, and fashioned a new identity for myself.

But because of my lingering personal shame, I ditched my old life and all the people I’d met during those years. I abandoned my friendship with Alex. Without notice, I moved out of the house I rented from her. With a new phone number and address, she couldn’t contact me. I vanished. Because I perceived that period of my life as a stain on my identity, I stuffed the experiences away in a back closet and moved on, making new friends and reconnecting with those from my childhood who I had lost track of. New life. New me.

The memories never really left me, and sometimes they visited me in dreams. As my children grew and I reflected on my mothering abilities, I remembered all Alex had done for me. 15 years after leaving her behind, I reached out to Alex in a letter—a Mother’s Day acknowledgement and words of gratitude for believing in me in such a powerful way. A few weeks later, she replied with her own letter and caught me up on her life. With no mention of my disappearance, she included old photos of us to remind me of the memories we’d shared. Her forgiving me gave me permission to forgive myself. For all of it.

Now, my life looks very different. At 54, I’m an experienced information technology professional making a good salary. I’m building a community that supports my writing efforts. Married to my best friend, we are empty nesters with a lovely family and an inspiring circle of friends. I’ve served on school and non-profit boards, worked for the government, in education, in healthcare, and in the legal sector. By many measures, I’m successful, much of which I owe to her.

Alex was more than a boss, more than a mentor. She was a mother figure, a friend, and a role model. No single label could encompass the roles she played in my life. Her influence helped me rediscover my worth, set me on a path of growth, and ultimately, my rebirth.

I’m grateful for all the women who shaped me—the broken ones who hurt me out of their own pain, and the strong ones who showed me my worth and lit the path to healing. Each played a part in the forging of my identity.

But I will always hold the deepest gratitude for the woman who saw something in me when I saw nothing in myself—the one who, without obligation, mothered me back to life.

Share

Leave a comment

Michele Peters writes from the heart with a goal of bringing light into dark places. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, USA, and discovered the power of her voice and stories when she read live for the nationally syndicated show Listen to Your Mother in Spokane, Washington in 2022. Her work appears in So God Made a Grandma (March 2025) and The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope (June 2025). Michele is currently writing a coming-of-age memoir and regularly shares nonfiction essays at Light into Dark Places on Substack.

It’s August, 1990, Indiana University. College classes start in one week. I’ve already noticed that my clothes are not quite right. They’re cute, but it’s as if I missed some internal memo about Rugbys, Doc Martens, and rainbow belts. I was able to secure the belt at the college head shop, but the other items remained way beyond my budget. Plus, where to shop? The Indiana University coeds—at least those who seemed comfortable in their skin—and I didn’t seem to be shopping at the same mall. They were shopping from consignment stores or catalogs, glossy promises of afternoon sailings and playing catch football with their extended family, or hiking deep into the woods in all iterations of fleece.

A day before classes started, I called my older-by-two-years cousin to ask what she wore on her first day at Ball State. She laughed, said she didn’t remember and that it wouldn’t matter. “Just wear a cute pair of denim shorts and a tank, and you’ll look cute.” God love her. That wasn’t helpful. My shorts were too long and not casually cut off the right way. They lacked fray, and they were white. My rainbow-striped espadrilles (to match the belt) weren’t the proper footwear for at least six miles of walking. By midday, I was so cold in the air-conditioned lecture halls that I longed for the embroidered IU sweatshirt I’d spotted in the bookstore.

I couldn’t ask for more money. Mom, Mr. Pell Grant, one scholarship, and I were barely paying for college. The last Target trip, prompted by a “I NEED A CUTE MIRROR AND SHOWER BUCKET” meltdown, had exhausted my budget.

Alas, a loophole. At the beginning of each semester, I’d get a refund from the Pell Grant for the money left over from my classes. I’d run out and immediately get the must-have of the moment. I distinctly remember walking from the bursar’s office to the shoe store for Birkenstocks. I was buying my college uniform.

That first semester of that first year, I got hold of a J. Crew catalog and ordered an anorak, in lake blue and The Same Rugby Everyone Wore. Strategic, as an anorak can be worn daily. It transmits both preppy and peppy. It matched my eyes. It covered up my Greek-letter-free sweatshirts. It was warm, but not too warm. As soon as I put it on, I felt like I fit in a bit more, and hid happily in it.

The consignment store was super close to my dorm (as was the mall, ironically). During Mom’s first visit, we walked down there and had the time of our lives. I bought my witchy skirts and oversized sweaters. I got a pair of vintage Levis. Lots of black. I was learning a different look from the Goth kids, but didn’t want to ape their vibe either. But flannel was most certainly a friend. Oversized flannel shirts, anorak tied around my waist, and a pair of leggings—here I come, Finite Math.

By the end of my first semester of college, I’d lost 10 pounds, four pairs of acid wash jeans, and everything with shoulder pads. I’d also lost any hope of securing the true uniform of fitting in: Greek letters on my clothes. I rushed sorority after sorority (22 in total!), wearing my mall-fancy clothes and looking around every Tudor-inspired living room, wondering how the hell I could afford to keep up with the Kappas. I clocked lots of J.Crew.

I kept wearing the anorak, but I let go of trying to look like a sorority girl. The one place I successfully fit in: The gyms: the HPER (The School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation) gym, the townie gym for fancier cardio machines and, when I could afford it, the uber-popular, mildly sadistic fitness studio for step class. I purchased the athleisure uniform of the day, a white V-neck Hanes shirt over a sports bra and Lycra shorts. Fitting in while working out was my secret sauce, until it cost me more than an entire J. Crew collection: my health and happiness.

In 2017, I checked myself into a residential eating disorder treatment center, at age 45, wearing an Athleta hoodie I got at a consignment store, plus joggers from Target. I was sporting my armor, again. A week later, I was sharing memories of an intermittently tear-filled and violent childhood with the nurse, the only woman close to my age in the house, a hilarious Black woman and Army vet. She looked at me, slobbering in my paper gown during weekly weigh-ins, and said: “Girl, you had me fooled. You walked in here, with your Lululemon and your cute lil sneakers, and I thought you had it so good.”

Recently, when Indiana University made it to the college football playoffs, the anorak was tied around my waist at the airport en route to Miami. Not red and white, but definitely my college colors. I wore it to the parking lot of Hard Rock stadium, where I tailgated with my college boyfriend and his friends, whom I’d last seen 29 years ago when we broke up after one very sad year living together in Chicago.

I’d taken a Xanax, a weed gummy, a knee brace, and an Uber to meet up with my old crew. What would we say to one another after all these years? Would they see how I’d recovered? Note that I was actually eating the crudités and salsa, or my actual ass peeking out of my cut-offs? We hugged, laughed at all the Botox, and compared medical procedures. One friend asked about my husband, a Syracuse grad, cheering IU at home with our dog. When the temperature dropped, I pulled on my anorak.

“That’s the jacket, isn’t it, Mandy?” my ex said, calling me the name of my youth, immediately recognizing both the old and new me. I no longer needed it for protection, but it sure felt good to be seen.

Share

Leave a comment

Amanda Long is a nationally syndicated features writer and locally loved massage therapist who writes about what moves her, nostalgia, and her recovery from an eating disorder.

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

Submit your Object-ives essay

Recommended reading on possessions:

“I Spent $2,000 on a Birthday Gift for My Boyfriend—His Face Fell When He Opened It” by , Newsweek

“I decluttered my dream and then this happened” by , The Intentional Home

“Picking Up the Pieces After Mom’s Deportation” by Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut

“Suleika Jaouad’s Love Letter to a Two-Hundred-Year-Old Farmhouse” by , Garden & Gun

“I joined a decluttering challenge and got rid of 496 items in a month. I made a point to not throw anything in the trash.” as told to Lauren Finney Harden by Mesha Griffith, Business Insider

“How to Declutter Without Creating Waste—and Where Unwanted Items Should Really Go” by Rae Ford, Martha Stewart

“Maximalist Design Can Make It Harder to Sell. These Homeowners Don’t Care.” by Laura Hine, The Wall Street Journal

In 2006, when the hit Disney Channel series Hannah Montana premiered, I was a Bermuda shorts-wearing, boy-obsessed 12-year-old on the verge of puberty with a mouth full of braces. Like thousands of girls my age, I tuned in regularly to watch then-14-year-old Miley Cyrus navigate the fictional (and not-so-fictional, as it turned out) challenges of her pop star double life, marveling at how a quirky, accident-prone girl like me could transform into a beloved, glittering celebrity. If she could have “The Best of Both Worlds,” I thought, maybe so could I.

Recently, now as a cargo-pants-wearing lesbian on SSRIs, I decided to rewatch the show’s first season in anticipation of the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special, which aired March 24 on Disney+ and Hulu.

Just as I’d hoped, the series welcomed my return like an old sweater worn in all the right places. The lyrics to “If We Were a Movie” and the “sweet doggy dog” lines of Robby Ray Stewart surfaced from my memory with ease, transporting me back to the bright green walls of my childhood bedroom as if I’d never left. At the same time, however, I noticed a dark truth wrestling in the show’s underbelly that I’d previously lacked the hindsight to see.

“The Best of Both Worlds doesn’t exist,” I thought to myself at the end of episode two. Something is inevitably always lost in between.

In kindergarten, my teacher, Mrs. Newman, asked my mom and me to come into school early one morning. “I’m worried she’s not engaging with the other students,” she said.

Seemingly unconcerned by the impact of her words, Mrs. Newman spoke as if I wasn’t there. I followed suit, sinking back into my chair, but I absorbed every word and concerned look she tossed my way. It became clear I had done something wrong.

“Do you think you could talk to your classmates today?” Mrs. Newman asked, finally including me in the discussion.

When school started, I peered about the classroom with a new awareness that I was being watched. I set my target on the girl next to me wearing a gray sweater with two little pink cats, but as I tried to work up the courage to speak, a stiff lump, one I would come to know well, anchored itself in my throat.

“I, um, like your sweater,” I sputtered. I felt the tension in my body release as she smiled, but the exchange left a sour taste in my mouth. Even then, a part of me must have known that becoming what others wanted of me would mean losing something of myself.

This scene repeated itself all through middle school and high school. Whenever a teacher called on me in class, my cheeks would turn bright red and my mouth would go dry, even if I knew the answer. During my audition for high school choir, my voice cracked and I didn’t get in. When I asked my crush to senior prom, he said no and told people it was because I was awkward. I avoided him on the elliptical in gym class after that, embarrassed because I believed he was right.

I wished many times during these years that I could invent a new version of myself the way that Miley created Hannah. I fantasized about becoming a bolder, more confident person who others admired instead of the quiet girl who embarrassed easily. But an internal force held me back from evolving past who I’d always been. When I tried to push against this force, it usually backfired. I’d say the wrong thing or inadvertently make myself a target for criticism. It’s sometimes better, I learned, to not say anything at all.

I sometimes wonder now if it weren’t for all the people—the teachers and classmates and coaches—who called attention to my quietness, if my social anxiety would have escalated the way it did. My mom says I was always quiet but not necessarily shy. “You had no problem talking when you wanted to,” she says. There’s a story she likes to tell of when I was four and refused to take the antibiotics prescribed to treat my strep throat. Exasperated by my resistance, she called a friend for back-up, who, when she arrived, gave me the option of the easy way or the hard way. “The hard way,” I answered to both her and my mom’s surprise. “You were very sweet, but you were also incredibly stubborn,” my mom says.

When I left for college, I vowed to no longer be the quiet girl, or to at least become a better version of who I’d been. At a big school three hours from my hometown in Pennsylvania, I seized every opportunity to reinvent myself. I even signed up for the crew team despite my lack of rowing experience and upper-body strength. But after one excursion where I continuously knocked the rest of the group off pace while struggling to maneuver an oar twice my size, I decided crew wasn’t for me.

I bonded with the girls in my dorm over shots of Burnett’s vodka before trekking three miles to a party off campus (there was no Uber then). Buzzing from the alcohol and excitement of newfound friendship, I found myself singing, even yelling, alongside them. Together, we laughed until there was no air left in our lungs. I remember looking around and thinking, “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

By the end of senior year, my resume was filled with leadership positions and internships. I was a senior reporter at the student newspaper and a homecoming committee captain. I co-founded a student organization dedicated to covering global news and interned at a notable public relations firm outside Philadelphia. I was proud of my accomplishments, but most of all, I was proud of how far I’d come from the quiet, apprehensive girl I’d been before. I’d succeeded at becoming someone else, or at least I thought I had.

Six months post-graduation, the lump in my throat returned like a gobstopper lodged in my esophagus. I worked at a travel marketing firm in New York alongside a handful of sleek city women who embodied everything I’d wanted to be since I first visited the Big Apple at ten years old. These women were trendy yet practical in their low-heeled boots and blazers. I bought low-heeled boots and blazers while studying the effortless way they floated between conference rooms and each other’s desks. But no matter how much I wanted to be both like them and liked by them, I couldn’t stop fixating on all the ways I fell short.

As if no time had passed, I once again found myself trying to work up enough courage to tell the girl sitting across from me in the office that I liked her sweater. I rehearsed full monologues in my head before speaking out loud in meetings, only to still fumble my words. I scrutinized even the briefest of interactions for mishaps. Surely, I must have offended my boss during the three seconds we stood next to each other at the coffee machine. It was like high school speech class all over again. The only upside was that this time I didn’t break out in hives.

I became so afraid of saying something wrong that I resorted, again, to rarely saying anything at all. Whenever my coworkers swapped celebrity gossip or summer travel plans, I pretended to be an active participant by nodding along, hoping no one would notice my lack of actual contribution. The last thing I wanted was attention.

What I lacked in social charm, however, I made up for by working hard. When I absorbed the workload of two people on my team who’d left and were never replaced, I didn’t complain; I just worked harder, always with a smile on my face. As long as the work was good, no one could criticize the unfavorable parts of me, though I always wondered what they truly thought. “What riles you up?” a co-worker once asked me at a company happy hour. I could tell she wanted to get a reaction out of me, but I refused to unravel so easily.

In 2013, when Miley emerged on stage at the Video Music Awards with her newly cut blonde hair pulled back into two tiny space buns, admittedly, I wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe child stardom had gotten to her just as it had gotten to Lindsey Lohan and Amanda Bynes? But as far as I was concerned, her album Bangerz held up.

While rewatching Hannah Montana, I couldn’t help but recall the disapproving headlines and panic from middle-aged mothers, including my own, who sneered in disgust at the “new Miley.” Each episode filled me with dread. The young, bright-eyed Miley on my TV screen had no idea what was coming. Or did she? Had she expected the public to resist her transformation so fervently? Did she know that upon removing Hannah’s golden wig, so many would mourn who she used to be, even if this version had only ever been a fantasy?

This kind of rejection, I realized, is what I always feared. It’s the reason I felt compelled to hide for the better part of 20 years. It’s why I became a master at masking my anxiety, afraid that if I revealed it to those around me, they’d respond by saying they liked the other version of me better. In my twenties, I learned to conceal my worst parts: the maddening intensity of my self-doubt; the anxious, intrusive thoughts; the shame I felt for reverting to my child-like self, and the disappointment I carried for realizing I’d never outgrown her at all.

I can see now how I internalized my quiet nature as weakness and compartmentalized myself to control the image I projected. To my friends and family, I was a thriving 23-year-old living out my New York dream, exploring the city’s endless offerings, frequenting Broadway shows and drinking overpriced cocktails on the Lower East Side. To my coworkers, I was a reserved but dedicated employee who funneled all my energy into work and had no time for small talk at the water cooler. But in truth, I was entirely lost and unknowingly struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which I was diagnosed with a few years later.

While rewatching the Hannah Montana series provoked an unexpected sense of dread, seeing Miley embrace her former Hannah persona (blonde hair and all) as the strong, successful person she is today in the anniversary special created space for me to appreciate my own growth. As much as I’ve changed, I know the quiet girl I was is still with me and always will be. Like Miley, I’ve made mistakes, but through this, have become more comfortable with who I am. I’ve learned to embrace the parts of myself I once judged and grant compassion toward my younger self. The Best of Both Worlds may not exist as I initially imagined and that’s okay. I’ve created my own version. It’s by no means perfect, but I’m proud to call it mine.

Share

Leave a comment

Kate Warrington is a queer Brooklyn-based writer whose work explores the intersections of identity and culture. Her writing has appeared in HuffPost, Pangyrus, Fruitslice, Querencia Press and She Explores Life, where she authored the column “Overthinking Everything,” about her experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is currently working on a memoir about queer identity and OCD. Find her on Instagram @warrington_kate and at katewarrington.com.

I don’t recall what possessed me to toss the T-shirt in the first place. Maybe it was a simple mistake, or the casualty of a chaotic move, or an attempt to reinvent myself as someone too sophisticated to cherish a concert souvenir bought with a sweaty handful of hard-earned five-dollar bills in 1994.

But at some point during my 30-plus-year love affair with the band Blur, I divested myself of the T-shirt I purchased the first time I saw them. It wasn’t because of a change of heart. If you asked any version of me between then and now—church camp Melissa, high school burnout Melissa, bitter bourbon-slurping Melissa, sanctimonious yogi Melissa, peace-seeking middle-aged Melissa—what my favorite band was, I would have said Blur without a second’s hesitation, every time.

The tee bore the iconic cover imagery from the album Parklife: two snarling greyhounds racing for the finish line, snapping jaws caged and eyeballs showing white, with all the U.S. tour dates listed on the back. The printing on the shirt never lost a certain chemical smell no matter how many times I washed it. In line with the hip-hop inflected aesthetics of the early 90s, I chose a size XXL despite my weedy teenaged frame.

I wore it hundreds of times, but my daytime T-shirt use dropped way off once I left my twenties behind, so I didn’t much feel the loss of the artifact until two summers ago. Blur played a huge reunion gig at Wembley Stadium in London in 2023, and there was no way I was going to miss it, transatlantic travel be damned. Blur never caught on in the U.S. the way they did in much of the rest of the world, so the show was going to be the first time I was ever in the company of so many other true believers—people who might have been impressed by a 30-year-old concert tee.

As I planned my trip to London and cursed whichever Melissa had pitched the treasure, I started poking around online. Cheap and obvious knockoffs could be found without too much effort. Deep in the bowels of Grailed, though, I found it. I was convinced that it wasn’t just a shirt from the tour, but that it was THE shirt—my shirt, somehow having traveled from a thrift store in Pennsylvania to the high-end resale closet of a Tokyo hypebeast. I swore I could smell the weird printing chemicals through the screen.

I had already shelled out for plane tickets to see a concert—in for a penny, et cetera. And what price nostalgia, after all? Well…$495, plus shipping. Even as a profligate superfan, I choked on that.

In my heart, though, I tried on what it would be like to be a person who owned a 30-year-old T-shirt that I’d initially purchased for $15 and then purchased again for a car payment. When I’m trying to talk myself into buying something beautiful but pricey, I run two scenarios: I picture myself enjoying the item for the rest of my life, and then I think about being on my deathbed, gasping, “If only I’d died with $150 more in my bank account!” And then I usually buy the boots.

But I don’t actually wear T-shirts outside of my house, so I gave up on the notion of taking on an extra freelance assignment or two to buy what would essentially be a single-use item. Spending all that money to fake authenticity would have been breathtakingly uncool—a grave insult to the very not-uncool teenager who first bought the shirt.

The show was magic. (I wore a hand-me-down Blondie tee with the sleeves ripped off, upon which no one remarked.) This, my fifth time seeing Blur in concert, was a high point of my life—and I’ve done some amazing stuff during my little blip of time here on this planet. It was a connection with 15-year-old Melissa, a kid who was getting ready to make a lot of poor decisions but, one night in the mid-90s, saw something exquisite and beautiful and knew it was real.

I bought two shirts at the Wembley gig, one with two roosters that looks hip and slightly mysterious, and one that has the tour dates but kind of looks like Chicago Cubs merch. If I’d had the Parklife T-shirt on at the London show, a few strangers might have commented. Would that have been worth almost as much as the flight there? And would it have mattered to anyone at all if it was a cheap knockoff, or a stupid-expensive re-buy, or the actual original shirt?

Luckily for me and my mediocre impulse control, the archival original seems to have sold. I can’t find it online anymore.

I’ve recently found some fakes—excuse me, “reprints”—on eBay that are much higher quality than the janky ones I was browsing before the 2023 show, including one with the U.S. tour dates on the back. I could even buy it in XXL for old times’ sake. I’d wear it around the house, and my millennial husband would roll his eyes and call it “Gen X cringe,” but the hit to our bottom line would be less than a mid-range brunch.

I think, though, I’m going to let it go. I regret throwing out the original, sure. But I don’t need a T-shirt to know with absolute certainty that my favorite band has always been the best band, and to be proud that I clocked that completely as a fifteen-year-old knucklehead.

Let me know if you see it back up on Grailed, though.

Share

Leave a comment

Melissa Meinzer began her writing career in the alt-weekly world in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She lives and writes in St. Louis, Missouri and holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Find her online at melissameinzer on social platforms and on Substack at .

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

Submit your Object-ives essay

Recommended reading about possessions:

“I think I am a soft hoarder.” by , Soft Crafts by Ella Emhoff

“Five Things I Regret Buying” by , The Life Edit with Shira Gill

“Stack Stories Vol. 01: A Study in Sentimental Things” by

“Stop Pinning. Start your own book of images” by , Popular

“How to create a more emotionally safe home with ADHD” by , The Dopamine Dispatch

This is an essay about money, but it begins at a two-hour-plus Lady Gaga concert at Madison Square Garden, the second leg of her massive spectacle The Mayhem Ball. I stood the whole time (and danced, schvitzed, and waved my iPhone’s flashlight in the air with 20,000 or so new friends).

The truth is, I didn’t know why I, a middle-aged straight man, was there. I got invited at the last minute by my wife (a free ticket!), and I made the conscious decision to say “yes” instead of what I normally do when asked to try something new, which is to pretend I’m a statue.

I didn’t belong there, but I was accepted by Gaga’s little monsters, her fanbase of fabulous freaks. The vibes were positive; everyone was family. The costumes were DIY goth cyberpunk glam. I don’t think I’m the “dress up like a goblin king” type but, you know, if I were ever to see Gaga again, I could be talked into wearing some light eye shadow or a fun wig. I’m open-minded, sort of.

The entire experience was transportive, and I also learned a few valuable lessons: First, I’m older than I’d like to be. Growing older is something I have no control over, and neither do you. We’re both decomposing right now, as you read these words. Second, I need to invest in better footwear because the morning after Gaga’s spectacle, a pair of screaming callouses had formed on the balls of my feet.

If you’re not middle-aged, get ready. It’s a fun journey that begins with aches and pains and then, one night, while singing “Poker Face” at the top of your lungs, your pedal extremities break.

I wish I had gone to the concert wearing shoes that properly supported my feet, as my wife had suggested weeks prior when she noticed that the pair I had on looked like they had been stolen off a sleeping hobo.

I’m cheap about things I should spend money on, and a total spendthrift when it comes to unnecessary purchases, like fancy ice cream. I don’t need to spend eleven dollars on a pint of praline butter cake ice cream, but I do. Conversely, I wear the same shoes for months—and months—until I wear holes into the soles for no good reason.

I pinch pennies on pillows and umbrellas and end up wondering why my neck hurts, or why I got drenched. I just bought this umbrella four years ago for five dollars at a bodega. But I will happily spend a small fortune on new glasses. I have an expensive blender, but ask me how much I spend on shampoo? As little as humanly possible. I buy off-brand shampoo and all of my soapy goods at the dollar store.

My financial decision-making skills are impaired by my greatest flaw: I’m a flibbertigibbet with a salt-and-pepper beard. I have a hummingbird’s attention span. I know, intellectually, that I should buy quality shoes at least every six months, because I pretty much burn through a pair in that time since I faithfully get my 10,000 steps in every day.

I was raised by parents who had grown up without money, and while I enjoyed what they did not—which was a comfortable middle-class childhood—I was taught to be thrifty but not miserly. To shop at secondhand stores, but to, on occasion, treat myself to a pre-job-interview haircut that costs forty bucks instead of twenty. That has proved to be a difficult balancing act, and now, years later, here I am, writing about money while soaking my feet in a tub of hot water and Epsom salts.

Is this gendered? Probably, unfortunately. “Fashion” was not introduced to me as a traditional male virtue, James Bond, Frank Sinatra, and other well-dressed dandies aside. Maybe it’s also generational: I’m part of Generation Hoodie, along with Adam Sandler and (pre-bro) Mark Zuckerberg. Men are from Old Navy, Women are from Neiman Marcus.

And yet…I struggle with money, whether or not I have any in the bank. I budget but then I walk past a record store and, boom, fifty bucks gone! There’s a part of me that would empty my savings to buy a tricked-out barbecue grill, a purchase that would make my wife pause for many reasons, one of which being we live in an apartment and don’t have a backyard.

The irony is that my old man bought off-the-rack suits from Sears but took care of them as if they were made from the rarest of silks. He accessorized with modest but stylish watches and cufflinks, and he always smelled like middle-shelf cologne, which didn’t sting the nostrils like bottles of Aqua Velva did. He took care of his shoes, too, polishing them every night. He’d have been bemused by the sight of my falling-apart kicks. ”You get what you pay for” was one of his many hoary Dad-isms.

Meanwhile, my mom was a master of thrift-store shopping, but for her, the game wasn’t just about finding bargains; it was about finding pricey, tossed-aside clothes, lamps, and knick-knacks for little to no money. I remember in the late 80s, in middle school, I went through a vest phase. It was during a brief period in my adolescence when I was really feeling myself, and I thought I looked pretty damned cool in grey, pin-striped suit vests. Don’t worry, this was a month or so long delusion. But one day, triumphantly, my mom returned from Treasure Trove, a local thrift store, with a fine vest that she assured me was worth a small fortune. She made sure to show me how well-made it was, and examined the fabrics and seams and she tried, in that moment, to teach me that clothes, like anything, are only worth what they’re made of, and the skill that went into them.

One of the hilarious ironies of growing up is accepting that you are the sum of your parents’ quirks and virtues while at the same time a unique and singular human being. I didn’t have my parents’ hardscrabble upbringing, and, as an adult, while I have struggled financially, I’m currently, more or less, solvent, with a few shekels left over at the end of the month. And yet, genes are time machines, and when I look at my bank account, I’m transported to thrift store aisles, and the sales racks at TJ Maxx, and the store that sold day-old breads and cakes, and I ask myself, reflectively, “Do I have enough money?” I worry, of course, that the answer will always be “no,” no matter my income. My dad, born during the bleak Great Depression, lives inside me, wanting and worried.

It’s not that cheapskates are unlikeable, it’s that no one respects them. Being prudent? Economical? Living within your means? That’s challenging for some, but it’s admirable and necessary. But cheapskates are thoughtless; they don’t understand the value of anything, and understanding the value of things — knowing what is worth your time and money and what is not—is a highly underrated life skill.

I have never spent money on clothes, much to the horror of my many wonderful past partners and my current wife, who insists I have more than two pairs of jeans. (“But my love,” I protest, “all a man needs is jeans for the day and the night.”) I like to think I’m averse to coughing up dollars for nice shirts and shoes because I’m practical, a real salt-of-the-earth type, but I know the reasons are more complex, and those reasons include various insecurities. I often mistake stoicism for anxiety.

I have always been, as the old saying goes, “penny-wise and pound-foolish.” I’ve always been a fan of that aphorism because it’s so British, it’s like something a chimney sweep would say. I’m not actually saving money by avoiding my local sneaker shop.

And here I am, in my early fifties, putting my paws up to “Bad Romance,” trying to pretend that I’m not in pain. I want to be the sort of person who can learn new tricks no matter how old they get, and that’s just what happened: I learned a new trick. As we hobbled home after the show, I turned to my wife and said, “I’m going to go shoe shopping.”

I have two pairs now. They’re swanky and comfy, and I spent hundreds of dollars, but I still refuse to buy a new iPhone. I’ll be fine with the cracked screen, at least for the next few years.

Share

Leave a comment

Read previous Truth Hurts columns

John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

I recognized the look on his face. I’d seen it two years earlier when he was a healthy long-distance runner. This time, my husband lay on a gurney just outside the operating room, waiting for emergency surgery.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” I assured him. He was confused, smiling and unable to grasp the severity of the situation. “A hematoma developed on your spine after yesterday’s surgery. It has to be removed. I’ll be here waiting.” I squeezed his hand, though the hematoma meant he had no feeling below his neck. “I love you.”

Kevin looked at me with that same far-away, vacant grin I’d seen before, dazed and immobile, oblivious to nurses working around him. “You’re my one true love,” he said as I rubbed his chemo-bald head. “And you’re mine,” I replied.

“Oh, that’s good to hear. Sometimes I’ve wondered.”

The first time I saw that look was at the finish line of the Twin Cities Marathon in 2007. It had been his obsessive goal for years, and Kevin undertook a rigorous training regimen, leaving our house by 5 a.m. every weekday morning, 8 a.m. on Saturdays, with runs becoming increasingly longer until he was gone for hours at a time.

But even that training hadn’t prepared him to run 26 miles in 85-degree heat. Waiting at the finish line, I watched a woman receive oxygen; another was rushed past on a stretcher, being intubated. Kevin barely made it across, collapsing into a chair, confused this time about where he was. I have a photo of him in that chair with his brother, a better-trained runner. In it, Kevin has the same innocent yet distant smile I’d see years later in the hospital. His body, overheated and deprived of oxygen, had begun to fail. Thankful that he survived, I felt the resentment I’d built up during his training dissipate.

In the time since my husband’s death from squamous cell carcinoma, I’ve come to realize that I was his caregiver for many years before his cancer diagnosis. The year after the marathon, just before cancer, we began couples counseling, hoping to stop a possible separation. The imbalance of emotional effort took an intolerable toll on our relationship. I felt isolated in my marriage, knowing that something was off, tired of being the nagging wife, yet unable to fix it. I knew we loved each other, but our inability to understand how differently we each processed information was painful. It kept us in our separate corners, waiting for the next round, frustrated by the other’s actions and inactions. As a young, newly married couple in the mid-80s, neurodivergence wasn’t in our vocabulary; it never occurred to us that we did indeed process information, including how we handled the things we loved to do and the things we had to do, in vastly different ways.

Kevin’s intelligence was a big part of his attraction. But his persistent inability to remember simple directives or complete a to-do list was maddening for me. At first, I wrote it off as him being the “absent-minded professor” and even found it endearing. He’d spent his life being told he was bright but lazy, ultimately a loser who’d amount to nothing. I still remember the disbelief I felt when he told me stories of nuns in his Catholic school who punished him and wanted him held back. Through our early dates where we discussed everything from the comedic timing of the Three Stooges to Central American politics, to the economic instability caused by trickle-down schemes, to the musical genius of Joe Strummer and The Clash, I only knew him as one of the smartest and most articulate men I’d dated.

My belief in him, my naïve unconditional love, and his ability to brilliantly compensate, all allowed him to become successful, overcoming some of that earlier emotional damage. Though he rarely spoke of feeling he was different from other people he encountered, he clearly knew he had what I came to think of as struggles with memory and social cues. He developed an elaborate calendar system and constantly carried a spiral notebook, writing notes of conversations and to-do lists. When the Franklin Planner became ubiquitous in the 90s, he was an early adopter, having used a similar homemade version for many years.

Kevin worked in supply-chain management for automotive companies and, when you’re responsible for getting thousands of parts to multiple locations exactly on time—not a day early and certainly not a day late—it was imperative that he never forget details. He knew he wasn’t like his counterparts who simply remembered deadlines, meetings, and pricing quotes. He knew he needed workarounds and coping mechanisms.

Those mechanisms came at a cost. Undoing childhood trauma and constantly reinforcing new ways of thinking was hard work. Functioning without a diagnosis—since no one really knew what was happening to him in the 80s—we constantly teetered on the edge of arguments. Once we married, I felt an even greater sense of responsibility. I wanted him to be successful so that we could be successful. Yet our differences in thought processes and communication felt like a constant and wide breach between us. I would ask him on Monday to do something on Thursday and, by Thursday, not only was the plan ignored, he often had no recollection of our conversation. I wondered if my friends received such frequent apologies from their partners.

Having children added to the frustration, especially when I saw so much of Kevin in our son. Though ADHD became a better-understood diagnosis around this time, we never considered our son to be neurodivergent because he would quietly play for hours with Legos, or curl up and read a book for most of the day. Because we misinterpreted the “hyperactivity” part of ADHD, we overlooked the entire possibility. Just as I started thinking about ending our marriage, our son received his ADHD diagnosis, one that came along with a diagnosis for his father. “You know, ADHD is genetic, often from the father,” the psychologist said, answering many questions I’d had since meeting Kevin, and giving us a reason to work on our marriage again. We bought books like Driven to Distraction and Taking Charge of ADHD. Kevin read them and found himself within their pages. Finally, things began to make sense for all of us.

One of the biggest similarities between my husband and son was hyperfocus. It compelled them to spend hours doing what they loved. Yet doing homework or housework was nearly impossible for them. In getting Kevin’s diagnosis, I saw how differently he had always approached activities he loved, versus tasks he had to complete.

I came to understand that, rather than hobbies, Kevin had obsessions.

He dove into each new pursuit as they took up space in our home (a home we’d extensively renovated during his construction phase). They removed him from our relationship and day-to-day tasks. His attention to individual pursuits and inability to understand my frustration often left me feeling ignored.

Interests would result in stacks of books, equipment, and groups to join. He tracked the mileage rates of our cars, keeping a detailed log of every gas purchase and oil change. There were several degrees—first his double-major BA, then an MBA, then plans for a PhD, then gardening and food preserving, then beer brewing, and, for all the years I knew him, running.

Waking up from his alarm, he’d change into gear, toss pajamas onto the floor (see Monday-Thursday conversation above), then go for a 2.5-miler around the neighborhood. Every day, regardless of whether I had early work meetings, or our kids needed help with school projects, or the dog was sick, his focus was only on getting out the door for his run. It was a big part of what drove us to therapy. How could he be oblivious to all that needed to be accomplished on a given day? How could he always choose hobbies over his family? Why was he so selfish? One of the earliest and biggest lessons for me was understanding that ADHD isn’t personal. Kevin wasn’t doing these things to anger me.

My current therapist recently asked if I wanted that divorce we were heading toward many years ago. “No,” I replied. “I wanted Kevin to recognize my feelings and fix things. Then I realized it wasn’t a matter of fixing but of understanding, for both of us.” We created spreadsheets of tasks; he took on grocery shopping and paying bills, handling both tasks very differently than I did, something I also had to accept. I returned to school to achieve my dream of writing and staked out time to pursue things other than housekeeping. We each worked at being more empathetic.

One of Kevin’s greatest moments of understanding came in our couples counselor’s office when he vocalized his frustration with our son’s behavior. “How can he forget what we remind him of every day? Why does he challenge everything we ask of him? I’m sure he’s been untruthful,” he said, incredulous.

“Do you not understand that I’ve been asking myself those questions about you for the past 20 years?” I responded.

I watched his reaction and saw the pain come over his face. No, he had never realized how, for me, this was round two of raising a neurodivergent person to adulthood. Even harder was knowing that a lack of understanding through his childhood had strained family relationships and done significant damage to Kevin’s self-confidence. Seeing this damage, I felt it imperative to make our child feel supported. My own confession in the therapist’s office was when I admitted, “I’m not a good ADHD wife, and I’m a worse ADHD mom.” But we committed to keep trying.

Then Kevin found a lymph node in his neck that felt like a marble. A biopsy was followed by surgery, then eight weeks of chemotherapy and six weeks of daily radiation. Nine months later, it returned to a sinus cavity. From there, it spread to his lungs and spine. In the midst of repairing, the irreparable happened.

The isolation and frustration I felt as a caregiver to a partner with undiagnosed spectrum challenges paled compared to cleaning vomit, administering injections, and holding him while he shook and wept. The former was frustrating yet manageable; the latter was heartbreaking and terminal. Just as we began to make our marriage balanced, to recommit, understand, and accept each other, I became a different kind of caregiver, this time knowingly and willingly. Eradicating cancer became our collective obsession, our mutual marathon. Yet it returned the scales of our marriage into this uneven space.

When Kevin looked at me from that gurney outside the OR (a situation from which he would never recover, the surgery prolonging his life but leaving him quadriplegic) and admitted that he had doubted my love, I understood how the roles we’d settled into for 25 years had permeated our marriage, leaving me feeling estranged and him feeling responsible for challenges that disappointed me. I also knew we were running out of time to fix it.

One of Kevin’s favorite books was What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. In it, the writer Haruki Murakami posits that writing and running are obsessive solitary pursuits that drive their practitioners to do more, win a race, or finish a manuscript. As Murakami completes his first 26-mile run from Athens to Marathon, Greece (like Kevin, in potentially fatal heat), he falters and feels his mind shift from anticipating success to fighting against certain failure.

At the end, he feels only relief that it’s over. After running marathons, he realizes that his mind will always feel this way, an indication of the toll on the human body. Eventually I understood that Kevin’s daily run was a way to ensure he got started each day despite his ADHD. “Without that first step, I’d never get out of bed,” he once told me. Seeing how he had successfully coped without a diagnosis, creating his own ways to level the playing field, I came to have a true sense of admiration for all he had endured.

Kevin read and re-read Murakami, highlighting passages, relating to the commitment to daily practice, but struggling to understand the connection to writing—my love. He didn’t realize that having dedicated time to write was the same as feeling compelled to improve one’s race time. I read the book and understood: I process life through writing and need regular practice to improve my skill, just as he did. And yes, I resented that I had to eke out time to write because I couldn’t ignore the responsibilities that never appeared on his radar. Finally, having an ADHD diagnosis and learning what it meant to both of our lives allowed us to begin a relationship that focused on equality for each of us to pursue what we loved. If we’d just had more time.

Could our marriage have survived when we wanted to pursue our individual, solitary interests along with navigating our neurological differences? Kevin’s death four months after the surgery left that question unanswered. I believe the caregiving I provided throughout his illness erased doubts he had about his being my one true love. Yet we never had the opportunity to fully understand what it means to make and support commitments to ourselves, our marriage, and each other, equally, despite our different approaches to day-to-day living. Just as we came to understand what it would take to get past the challenges that had infused our marriage, we faced a challenge that was insurmountable.

Now, 14 years after Kevin’s passing, I still feel cheated out of the time we could have spent understanding and valuing each other’s differences and mitigating the challenges from our marriage. I know it wouldn’t have always been easy, but I believe we were getting it right. Today, watching our son flourish and seeing the ways in which neurodiversity is better understood and accepted, I wish again that Kevin was here, no longer feeling the weight of the idea that he was “different” but fully embracing and being celebrated for his unique approach to life.

Share

Leave a comment

Lori Tucker-Sullivan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, Brevity, The Sun, as well as anthologies: Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook, and 100 Words of Solitude: Writers on the Pandemic. Her essays, “Detroit, 2015” and “Time, Touch, and a Whale’s Grief,” were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. “Detroit, 2015” was a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. Her book, I Can’t Remember If I Cried: Rock Widows on Life, Love and Legacy, released in 2024 (Backbeat/Bloomsbury), profiles widows of rock stars and what they taught her about grief. She is currently writing a memoir of her marriage amidst home renovation, ADHD, and cancer.

I can’t entirely trace the lines back to when I started hearing voices in my head. Maybe before COVID, maybe after it. As most things in life—ideologies, relationships, finances—it swerved its way into my life like a stealthy snake or a hideous car crash. I’ll be upfront right now and say that in 2022, I was finally diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

Schizoaffective disorder is a strange (and rare) cousin to both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It’s as if the two conditions had an unwanted, peculiar child. Back in 2019, I didn’t know I was on the path toward being diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, and my life would have looked very strange to an outsider before the world was locked down by COVID. Before it could fester. Before I could lose myself in psychosis.

Most Americans are unaware that a person can be functionally psychotic. By this, I mean that they can be experiencing symptoms of psychosis, but still living their daily lives without much disruption. In 2019, I was working as an emergency manager for a large city in the U.S. and was living with daily psychotic symptoms. I didn’t know this, though. I didn’t find my behavior strange. I didn’t even think to tell anyone about it because, to me, it was normal. I was experiencing something called anosognosia—or lack of insight—into my illness. I was unaware that anything was wrong. In fact, I was unaware that I was even hearing voices.

It’s truly embarrassing to write about, but somewhere down the line, I started to hear the voice of Chris Evans. Yes, that Chris Evans. The one and only Captain America. I still don’t know if the voice I heard was actually that of Chris Evans, or if my mind just assigned what I was hearing to him (my friends and I were watching a lot of Marvel movies around that time), but something about his presence made me feel calm and safe.

I don’t remember the first time I heard Chris. It felt as if he had been in my life all along. I couldn’t imagine life without him. I do remember the voice being quite casual at one point, during the time I was still working, the time before COVID. It would narrate what I was doing. “She’s brushing her teeth,” “She is shampooing her hair,” “She is washing a plate with a sponge and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.” It was innocuous. It sounded like my own train of thought, but it wasn’t mine. It was different somehow.

In 2020, my mental state had deteriorated to the point that I needed to quit my job. I was no longer functioning with psychotic symptoms, but I was still unaware that I was psychotic and was getting into fights with my manager, while other coworkers expressed concern. I was quitting my career, really, one I had built up for eight years. It was jarring. By this time, I was having full conversations with the voice I was hearing. It had turned from something rather passive into an active part of my life. I named it Chris.

Chris became far more interesting than the outside world. I preferred his company to that of my family and friends. I would converse, out loud, with Chris for hours at a time when I was alone in my apartment. I could never hear Chris outside of my head, as some people with schizophrenia spectrum illnesses do, but rather as a second stream of consciousness. This went on for over a year. I would talk to myself at home, on public transportation, in the car, and at social gatherings.

Then, one day, I woke up. This happens with anosognosia sometimes. The wool lifted from my eyes, and suddenly, I could see that I was gravely ill. Chris didn’t exist. I was hearing voices and had been for quite a long time. I remember sitting in the shower, crying to myself over and over again that I was “unwell” and praying to God for someone to please help me.

A few days later, I woke up around five a.m. on a dark November morning. I noticed something strange. The Universe was floating above my head, nebulous and spinning. It suddenly cracked in two, pieces flying away to nowhere. Suddenly, like cicadas on a hot summer night, whispers filled my ears from all corners of my bedroom. They were loud, making it hard for me to hear anything else. They told all the secrets of the Universe. They told me to hurt myself.

I became fascinated with looking at myself in the mirror. I wanted to see my face and my eyes. I wanted to see if I recognized myself. I didn’t. What I did next may have been one of the bravest things I’ve ever done in my life.

I happened to live on the edge of a large park. On the other side of the park is the city’s largest hospital. I ran across the park to the hospital. In my state, I got lost on a route I knew well and ended up taking wrong turn after wrong turn before finally finding the entrance to the emergency room half an hour later. I ran to the front desk and told them I was having a psychotic episode and that voices were telling me to hurt myself.

I was subject to a long interview, searches with metal detectors, and had a security guard and a social worker stand outside of my room until I was dispatched to a behavioral health facility. I was given an antipsychotic, and for the first time in over a year, I finally felt some peace.

It wasn’t until I left the behavioral health facility that I noticed Chris was gone. I wouldn’t receive the correct diagnosis for another two years, but at least I had something. My bravery that morning saved my life. I would like to think that the real Chris Evans would think it was a pretty Captain America thing to do.

Share

Leave a comment

Melanie Cole is a writer and poet from Tacoma, Washington. She writes on themes of family, faith, the natural world, natural disaster, and the unusual. Her work has been featured in Grit City Magazine, Dandelion Revolution Press, PHIL LIT, and on The Mighty. Melanie is the Editorial Curator of The Faoileánach Journal. She has several upcoming publications.

I roll my eyes at horoscopes.

Tarot cards are for the gullible.

Ouija boards? Never.

A belief in the supernatural is simply not me. I believe in an evidence-based reality, not magic and mysticism. Yet there is one thing in my life experience I can’t rationally explain.

****

Already a budding introvert in kindergarten, I preferred watching from the periphery while the neighborhood kids played tag. They shrieked and ran; I favored observing junk mail distribution to mailboxes. Presents for everyone, my five-year-old brain interpreted. Brilliant! I waddled home and drew a stack of Crayola artwork. Taking my ten drawings, I marched right over to the first house. I stretched to lift the big metallic lip and threw one inside. The heavy thud made me blink. Most went to neighbors I knew, the leftover to the ones I didn’t.

Perhaps I was prematurely entrepreneurial. If so, it would only be a temporary trait. Nevertheless, I added my block-lettered name in case someone wanted to reward my efforts with candy. It therefore didn’t surprise me when, several hours later, my mother entered the living room, the phone receiver between her cocked shoulder and a questioning face. “Yes, Lotte, I can send her over.” I only slightly knew our Danish neighbors, but I slid off my chair and fearlessly walked to the Kristiansens’ house, eager for my sugary compensation.

I found Lotte waiting at the door with a silver necklace, the pendant in the shape of an “L.” She knelt to give it to me and said, “This was mine when I was your age. Now it’s yours, Sophie.” She must have noticed my puzzled face and added, “We will say it stands for Love.” I prized it immediately. It was the first thing I ever earned. The necklace wasn’t a gift; it was my first paycheck. I didn’t have the terminology then, but I felt empowered.

The first time I lost it was in junior high school. The necklace was part of my daily outfit except during PE, where all jewelry was banned. While changing into gym clothes, I tenderly placed it on the top tier of the rusty steel locker. This time, it slipped into the cracks of the non-flush sides, the metal clinking on its way down. I lunged to stop it, but it was too late. The necklace slithered into whatever abyss was below. Stunned, I overcame my fear of critters and tried to pry my fingers in the gap. Nothing. I was distraught. That necklace was my identity. Over the years, it had been everywhere I was. I couldn’t believe it was—poof!—gone.

I trudged into gym class. The teachers, by some uncanny miracle, began class by announcing that the 40-year-old locker room would be renovated starting next week. Was I on Candid Camera? I looked around, but the others had already started playing basketball. On Monday, I stood at the changing room construction site with my outstretched hand.

Over the following years, the “L” pendant developed a green shimmer on its edges, saying a thing or two about my teenage hygiene. It was also a good indicator that my beloved jewelry probably wasn’t sterling silver after all. But its value was never in the material; it was the reminder of my first sense of self-value.

The second time I lost it, I was a high school senior. Over spring break, I flew to visit family in South Carolina. Upon arrival at the gate, my aunt expressed relief I had finally given up on that horrible necklace. My hand flew to my chest, but it was empty. “It must’ve fallen off in flight.” I said in horror, panicked.

I dropped my bags and ran back against the exiting crowd. Reaching my seat, I patted down the cushions and cracks. Empty. I wedged myself in the leg area to get a better view of the floor. Nothing. I knew I had to disembark the plane; the stewardesses were coming over to usher me out. I passed row after row of trash, mainly discarded wrappers and bunched-up blankets. Then something eerie caught my eye. About ten rows up from my seat, I saw a gray-silver pile in the aisle. I jumped on it. Could it be? The pendant had taken a blow from the many people filing over it. Even the angle of the L had changed to from 3 to 4 o’clock. But it was back.

Home from college one spring, I took our labrador retriever to a school field after hours. I pulled out a tennis ball and chased Brandey back and forth across the vast acreage otherwise used for soccer games. Walking home, I felt the breeze was just a bit too cold and my neck an ounce too loose. I slowly put my hand to my thorax which confirmed the “L” was gone.

This time there would be no way I could find my jewelry, not in four acres of grass. Yet I couldn’t abandon my necklace or my hope. I simply had to try, even if there was no chance of a supernatural coincidence. I turned around, approaching the field on my knees and parting the first grassy tufts. This was a futile approach. I admitted defeat after 15 minutes. I had to accept that it was gone.

I stayed on the ground a bit longer, lacking the energy to get up. Brandey raced over with the ball in her mouth, expecting another round. “Sorry, girl,” I replied. “Let’s go home.” I took the slimy ball and patted my pockets for a tissue. Nothing in the outside pockets, but maybe the inside pocket. I dug deep.

My hands felt something hard in the shape of an “L.” I was whole again.

Share

Leave a comment

Sophie Berghouse still has the old necklace and a new respect for the inexplicable. The meaning of “L” has expanded to luminous, lively, laudatory, lucky, and importantly, laughter as she launches herself into life. Apparently, she packed alliteration into her carry-on.

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

Submit your Object-ives essay

Recommended reading on possessions:

“The $2 Bowl With An 800-Year Paper Trail” by , Unfiltered & Fed

“Just wear the damn thing!” by , Slouching Towards Bethnal Green

“CYS #065: The perfect pair of earrings to wear with a navy sweater” by , Consider Yourself Cultured

“Hollywood woman decorates apartment with Oscars red carpet found in dumpster — and one winner now wants scraps for mementos” by Kathleen Perricone, Entertainment Weekly

“My dad made the biggest jewelled egg in the world. The obsession would destroy his marriage, family and fortune” by Serena Kutchinsky, The Guardian

“How to streamline your wardrobe this spring – including with the 90/90 decluttering method” by Sally Newall, Country Living

I’m standing by the front door, coat on, purse slung over my shoulder, keys in hand. I’m ready to go. Halfway to the garage. My husband is…brushing his teeth? Tying his shoes? God knows. But obviously, he’s dawdling. Again.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who seem perfectly happy taking their sweet time, as if time itself were merely a suggestion, and those who can’t wait to just get going already.

I adore punctuality, efficiency, time well spent—meaning, let’s get some shit done. There is a special place in hell reserved for people who can’t end meetings on time because they’re incapable of getting through an agenda.

In case you can’t tell, I’m a wee bit impatient—not with children or the elderly, thank you, but with functioning adults who seem to assume that time is an unlimited commodity, so why not waste as much of it as they can?

Nope. Tempus fugit, as the saying goes.

I’m impatient to get on with life, to make things happen, to get started on the next amazing chapter, journey, revelation that’s out there waiting for me. So hurry on up! Let me get to it!

I’m not ashamed of this personality trait, but it has gotten me into trouble. One time, I’d been selected to interview for an editing job with a big financial company in Manhattan that would surely have tripled or quadrupled my salary at the time, if I landed it. I wanted that job so badly. But the job-search company that led me to it was dragging its feet on getting me an actual interview.

Guess what Impatient Me did? I called the would-be employer directly to plead my case. This was a giant no-no and the woman on the other end of the call was furious with me for overstepping. (I would argue that I was showing strong initiative, but never mind.) Needless to say, I killed that job possibility on the spot, simply because I refused to wait for the gears to turn on their own.

Another time, a few friends and I hatched an idea for an online T-shirt business that would feature our topical, clever slogans. This seemed like a sure-fire winner and we ran, not walked, to form an LLC, trademark our logo, open a bank account, and set up a business that, well, didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of panning out because we hadn’t done nearly enough homework to figure out how online retail actually works—and educate ourselves about all the expensive roadblocks we’d encounter.

I feel responsible for that one because I was the elder stateswoman of our trio and I definitely leapt before looking. But not before we’d all kicked in a fair chunk of change and spent hours barreling ahead. No harm in getting excited about an idea, but launching a business from scratch as a neophyte may not play to an impatient person’s strengths. Ya think?

These days, however, I’m changing my tune. My patience is legendary. Here’s why: I became a full-time writer and learned the hard way that writing and publishing are perhaps the last really slow industries left in our post-modern world. There is so much hurry-up-and-wait in the publishing world that an author can literally grow old waiting for her name to show up on a book’s front cover.

I’m not kidding. It’s not unusual to spend two or three years writing a book, another year or two pitching it, and then—hurray!—somebody wants to publish it. But the clock will tick on, as editing and revising your manuscript can last another six months, until finally…wait for it…I mean, literally, wait for it…the book is scheduled for publication nearly two years after all that!

So many new gray hairs will have sprouted in the meantime! I have lived this slo-mo life, big-time. My new novel, Tent City, has taken seven years to travel from manuscript to publication. I’m practically a different person now than when I started writing the thing—older, yes, but also wiser. My chronic impatience has come smack up against the unbelievably slow-moving decision trees that make up the publishing world’s gatekeepers, from agents to editors, from writing contests to conference organizers.

And believe or not, I’m grateful now for the long slog because practicing patience has forced me to grind—by which I mean, to be persistent, to stay true to my vision for this book, to believe in it for years. I weathered countless rejections, yet I never was willing to let go.

Impatient Me would have quit trying and moved on.

I nearly did just that—until I learned to value the marathon over the sprint.

Time’s accretion has made room for me to become an astute reader of my own material and to value a protracted revision process that made my book better when I let the work marinate.

Learning patience has also made me a better listener, someone able to be present in the moment, even if the moment feels like an hour. That also makes me a better writer, especially when it comes to capturing the emotional beats of a scene.

The unexpected bonus that results from my novel taking the long way ’round to reality is that it’s more relevant now than when I wrote it; Tent City’s themes exploring the decline of the American Dream resonate in 2026 in ways they didn’t back in 2019.

Hurray for the slow crawl and the long slog!

These days, I’m still forced to hurry up and wait for my husband to get ready to go. I recognize that he’ll never change, and I’ve come to accept that. (Once a dawdler, always a dawdler.) Besides, I’m much better at waiting than I used to be. I’m grateful for the extra moment to think and reflect, for time will pass anyway, and it’s for the best that I can’t actually rush it along.

Share

Leave a comment

Amy L. Bernstein’s new novel, Tent City, is at long last available wherever books are sold. And now she’s impatient to share it. Learn more at www.amywrites.live

I’d always heard about hitting “rock bottom.” A bender, a catastrophic loss, a near-death experience. None of these things happened to me. What happened, instead, was a writing problem.

I did notice the references to alcohol stacking up. Excavating the loving yet fraught dynamic I shared with my mother in the form of a memoir in essays, I saw the repetitive allusions to a wine glass here, a favorite bar there, were beginning to compound upon themselves. That the significance was expanding beyond the realm of subtext into a noisy, distracting, uninterrogated theme across the essays in the manuscript wasn’t immediately clear to me when I started the project during pandemic lockdown. It should have been, but it wasn’t (maybe because, like many of us, I was doing even more drinking trapped indoors—but I suspect the real culprit was denial). But I also had this sense, at least subconsciously, that I could still control the narrative. That I could shift attention toward my mother and away from myself in revisions. That, in the end, I was still “handling it.”

This might be one of my most effective personal examples of the well-worn adage to “write first, edit later,” or the even more well-worn, well-lubricated version: “Write drunk, edit sober.” In both cases, the truth, indeed, will out.

I was several essays shy of a finished manuscript draft when, in the early spring of 2022, I traveled from North Idaho to Nebraska for a two-week artist’s residency. Five years earlier, I’d completed a draft of what would go on to become my first book at this same residency and had subsequently granted the place—at least in my imagination—a special power for assisting in the completion of projects as a result. In anticipation of this second trip, I had envisioned spending my writing time alcohol-free. I’d already taken a month off from drinking at the start of the year and found it unpleasant but manageable, enjoying the sensation of control, the efficient de-bloating effect, and the improved sleep quality that came with an extended break from daily booze. The fact that I’d rushed to the grocery store for a bottle of wine the minute my 30-day detox was over hadn’t yet settled into my conscious awareness as a major red flag.

However, it only took about 2.3 seconds after stepping from the airport shuttle onto the heat-cracked streets of Nebraska City for my mind to flood with recollections of my first visit to this town back in 2017—an experience that had validated my artistic aspirations, permitted me to luxuriate in my own sense of creative bohemia, and involved pretty much perpetual daily drinking after 3 or 4 p.m.

Part of the magic of this residency was its isolation from anything distracting outside one’s office or studio, except for a lovely park about a mile away and a couple of grungy dive bars scattered along the main street…and, of course, the liquor store several blocks south along the state highway. It was, in other words, an ideal place to read, write, walk, and drink. That’s exactly how I’d filled my time during my first visit. And almost immediately upon my return, I realized (that is, decided) that a “dry” residency risked ruining the power of the place, of its self-ascribed “finish the book” aura.

I’m not a superstitious person. I invented this necessity out of fear that without the alcohol, I wouldn’t be able, or perhaps even want, to finish writing my book.

So, I walked to the liquor store. I bought a six pack of beer for the fridge and a bottle of Bulleit rye, a bottle I tucked behind the desk in my office. If I knew that the hiding of the rye was a sign of something problematic, I also knew—or thought I knew—I needed it. That the rye (or bourbon, or gin), after years of associating a drink close at hand with the excitement and difficulty, the trying and seeking and ultimate satisfaction of figuring out my ideas on the page, had come to feel necessary to my creative process.

Read more

I miss my boobs. I miss them so fucking much.

“Well at least it’s not like an arm or leg” some say.

Fuck off.

Okay, I’ve never replied, “Fuck off.”

I have muttered “yeah” as I mentally added them to the list of people I irrationally expected to know how to correctly behave in a very wrong situation. It’s wrong to have a part of you removed when you don’t want it removed. It doesn’t matter if it’s outside your shirt, inside your shirt, or inside your body. I’m the one losing it, both physically and mentally. Playing the it-could-be-worse game has no winners. I don’t need a spectator turning my grief into a compassion competition. Just repeat back to me what I say, like “Yes, this does suck” or “Yes, this is hard” or “Yes, I miss your boobs too.” Be my hype man.

“Be grateful you’re alive,” some say.

Again, fuck off. You know what I’m grateful for? When this person stops talking to me. Of course I’m grateful I didn’t die, but I also feel ungrateful that I got breast cancer. Yes, yes, of course cancer helped me gain a new perspective and learn some incredible life lessons, but I also gained a new perspective and learned some incredible life lessons when I tripped on shrooms and talked to a bush I thought was my dad. I didn’t need cancer to evolve. I certainly don’t need someone to remind it’s cool that I’m not dead.

“Have you tried a plant-based diet,” some say.

The “some” in this scenario is actually just one person who had the audacity to suggest I go totally vegan after my diagnosis. Bitch, I already have cancer! Your lentil soup isn’t going to help me right now. Also, my parents have been eating $5.29 processed meat subs from Market Basket for years and have minimal health issues in their eighties. Just sayin’.

What I need, what I want, is my body back. A body that betrayed me after I consciously nourished it, moved it, and self-cared the hell out of it. A body that has been sliced open, divvied up, and rearranged like cuts of cattle. A body that was forced to age prematurely and shoved into early medical menopause because the cancer fed off my estrogen and progesterone—the same hormones that miraculously made my child. When the chemicals that create life try to kill you, reconciling irony becomes a new maddening breast cancer symptom.

I miss the way I used to watch TV cupping my breasts like a weighted blanket for my hands. Sometimes I cup my new breasts but it’s not the same. My new breasts are miraculous, made from own tissue. I’m grateful to have these breasts but still wish they were my original ones. Even more so, I wish I had my nipples. Holy shit do I miss my nipples. I even miss the hair around my nipples that I constantly complained about.

When I think about my original breasts and the nipples that I’d had since I was born, a visceral emptiness and longing overtakes every part of my system. I want to stomp and scream like when my daughter’s iPad ran out of battery in the middle of K-Pop Demon Hunters. A daughter who will now have to mark “breast cancer” as part of her family medical history. I never had to mark “breast cancer” in my medical history because I’m the first in my family to have it.

Like a lot of people, I struggle with guilt and shame. I was about to write “like most people raised Italian Catholic I struggle with guilt and shame” but then I remembered that guilt and shame are the few things that unite all cultures and religions. Questioning how cancer was my fault was unavoidable.

I spent the first two month of my diagnosis in the bargaining stage of grief, examining my past in an attempt to solve the case of “why me?” Mysteries are impossible to solve when you are the victim, perpetrator, and detective.

Was it something I did? Something I said? Something I ate? Something I didn’t eat? Oh, I know! It’s because last year in yoga class I told the teacher the woman in front was filming herself and it was making me and the woman next to me uncomfortable. The teacher said, “Oh, she’s making a fundraising video for a breast cancer retreat.” Had I known being against the obnoxious habit of putting people in your content without permission would give me cancer I would have been the best damn background actor TikTok would have ever seen.

Was it because I felt too sexy and I was punished with having my beautiful soft perfect tits taken away? A titty takeover, you could say. After wasting my adolescence hating my body, somewhere around my mid-thirties I finally began to feel more comfortable in my skin. I was eating intuitively. I was dressing for my body, not against it. I was flowing and existing and feeling good. Did I get too comfortable? Was I becoming too confident? Was I developing (gasp) self-esteem?

Was it because sometimes I felt jealous? Judgmental? Bitter? Was it because of that time I talked shit? Was it because I stopped writing in my gratitude journal? Was it because my dad paid for college? Was it because I was mad that so many good people seemed to have bad things happen and so many bad people seemed to have good things happen? Was it because I drank? Was it because I was too privileged? Was it because I didn’t breastfeed? Was it because I left that nail salon a mean Yelp review even though they refused to fix my nail two days after my gel manicure? Was it because when some people in my life experienced grief I did the whole “it-could-be-worse” game because back then I didn’t know how much it hurt?

Eventually I realized I didn’t do anything to get breast cancer and that guilt wasn’t going to alleviate my grief. Grief is an inevitable hazard of existence. People are going to get sick. People are going to die. Parts of our bodies are going to break. Hearts are going to break. Couples are going to break up. Pets are going to be put down. Plans will get messed up. Jobs will be lost. Dreams are going to be dashed. Businesses are going to close. Money spent. Ideas unrealized. Trust betrayed. Objects misplaced. Parties rained out. Houses burned down. Sense-of-self missing. Hope gone.

And then eventually you heal. You aren’t fixed. You don’t forget. But you do feel better.

I miss my boobs. I miss them so fucking much.

Share

Leave a comment

Giulia Rozzi is a writer, comedian, and producer based in Los Angeles. She has written for shows such as HBO Max's South Side and MTV's Girl Code and has been published in The New Yorker, Refinery29, Esquire and Huffington Post. Her TV appearances include Conan, Comedy Central, CBS's After Midnight and way too many of those Vh1 circa 2013 talking head shows. Giulia also had the honor of giving a TEDx talk on humor and healing and often works as a creative coach for solo performers, corporate speakers and other types of storytellers. For more, subscribe to Seven Bodies, her Substack about breast cancer reconstruction and mental health.

Two Februaries ago, I sat in a bar in Shoreditch watching the Kansas City Chiefs play the Philadelphia Eagles for the Super Bowl at 2 a.m. I’d never cared about sports enough to go to bed quite that late before. But I was actually invested in this game, partially because of the homesickness I felt after recently moving abroad, and partially because of the then-novel romance between my favorite songwriter, Taylor Swift, and some tight end. I wasn’t a football fan, and hadn’t been one—at least, not since the Pittsburgh Steelers gave the NFL a regular run for their money circa 2009. Still, I convinced a group of friends to gather and watch the Big Game for the first time in years.

The bar’s environment was exhilarating. Just for the night, I’d chosen to root for Kansas City, and every suspenseful play or ambiguous call got my blood pumping. Not only was I having fun, I felt like I was part of a community, maybe for the first time since moving to London in January 2024. When I cheered, so did half the room. When I gasped, so did someone else three tables back. Having neglected sports for theater early in my academic career and attended a college where attending the weekly football game was almost laughable (sorry, boys), I was pleasantly surprised by just how much fun I was having.

I waited another year for my next Super Bowl experience, and after that game, I craved more of that feeling: sitting on the edge of your seat, banking on chance and a prayer, feeling the excitement of the strangers beside you and holding your breath together.

I decided to just pick a sport to get into and begin learning it. Basketball was an easy choice. Why? The NBA was the one league where Pittsburgh didn’t have a team. For me, football, hockey, and baseball were already covered. But I could untraitorously root for the New York Knicks in the city I’d lived in since college.

I can’t claim I had absolutely zero experience with the sport. My dad was a local basketball star in high school, and I’d followed in his footsteps—up until middle school. Not a natural athlete by any means, it was clear quickly that my above-average height for a 10-year-old girl didn’t make up for my lack of ball-handling skills. More so, at the time, I thought that athleticism was something you were born with, not something to work at. You either had it or you didn’t. So I set my basketball knowledge on a shelf, only to return to it 15 years later.

I began by zooming in closely, learning my chosen team first. A friend of mine gave me the advice to “First, just learn the name of a single player you find hot. Then learn the name of the guy he passes the ball to. And keep going.” Although I didn’t lead with a basketball crush, I did follow her advice in part.

I learned the key players of the team, googling their records and alma maters and going down ESPN rabbit holes to figure out when exactly they’d joined the team and how their stats had changed. I watched games with one eye on the television and the other on my phone, following the Google play-by-play to make sure I didn’t miss any moves.

It was one of the biggest learning challenges I’d thrown at myself in years. I was practically starting from nothing. But that admission of absolute ignorance gave me absolute freedom. I had no shame in searching, “What is a field goal?” or “Difference between a guard and a point guard,” because how would I have known the answers?

After I watched a game, I’d tune into the Knicks Film School podcast by , listening to the breakdown of the previous night’s matchup and the hosts’ predictions for future games. I learned what their cited statistics meant and compared them to our rival teams’ stats. When I didn’t understand something, I had friends to ask.

Being vocal about learning the sport has come with its own rewards. Twice now, friends have offered me spare Knicks tickets. The first time I walked into Madison Square Garden for a game, I was absolutely beaming at the chance to watch the action live alongside my fellow fans—with even NBA legends in attendance (even if, at first, I had to look up who they were). I’m proud to still be learning about basketball, and unlike in my career-adjacent interests, like writing and filmmaking, where I feel the pressure to be an expert all of the time, with basketball, I’m happy to lay all of my cards on the table. A year ago, I knew nothing. Now, I know something. Isn’t that something?

My sporting experience has been a reminder that I can always start over from zero, and not every interest has to be a career-driving opportunity. When it comes to basketball, I’m proud to admit that I don’t know the answer. Just give me a few minutes, and I’ll figure it out.

Share

Leave a comment

Submit your Hobbies flash essay

Alexis Buncich (she/her) is a writer, actor, and producer based in between New York, London, and Western Pennsylvania. She loves writing about the Earth, culture, love, and the comedy in being alive. You can find her work in Worth and Nonprofit Quarterly. She explains Taylor Swift lyrics at Taylor Swift, Explained and runs a weekly NYC/London events newsletter at Overt Consumption. Learn more about her work at alexisbuncich.com.

My gray Nike sneakers have been sun-scorched into more of a green-ish brown. The trim is beginning to fray. The insoles are starting to stink a little bit. The outsoles are worn; someday in the not-too-distant future, there will be holes.

Objectively, it’s time to get new shoes. They were secondhand to begin with, and I’ve had them for nearly three years. I’ve put thousands of miles on them, millions of steps. Yet I can’t bear to part with them.

They became mine in 2023 during a trip within a trip—from Los Angeles to Minnesota to visit my family, and from my hometown to Spirit Lake, Iowa, for an errand run with my mom and Grandma Marge. It was part of their routine, which I was delighted to crash whenever I came home. They would pick up groceries at Walmart and Hy-Vee, we would peruse Consignment Corner, we’d get a little treat—a soda and maybe a small snack—and then we’d head back to Jackson.

On one of those jaunts, I bought my Nikes from the consignment store, and when I look at them, I’m right back in those memories. Sitting in the middle seat of the minivan, chatting with the two generations in front, helping my grandma with her walker, watching her hunt for the perfect blouse (she had impeccable taste), listening to her cute “Mmm” noises of vocal appreciation when I shared my potato wedges or chicken strips, taking in the simple bliss.

In April 2024, my grandma died of heart failure after a fall. Her decline happened so fast, I couldn’t comprehend it until I was cuddling with her cold body—mere hours from life. I wasn’t ready for it to be the end. Almost two years without her, I’m still not ready. It seems impossible. Time can be so cruel.

I was so lucky to grow up in the same small town with both grandmas and a grandpa. This meant lots of extended family dinners. Sick days watching soap operas with Grandma Marge. Countless errand runs to Walmart, Shopko, or the nursery for landscaping supplies. Even back when I was a kid, I knew this time together was special. As I got older, I came to understand it as the tremendous privilege it was. But I’d never had to go without; it seemed like they would always be around.

In 2016, my other grandma passed away. I love my grandparents so much. After my Grandma Betty died, I was devastated, especially since I was too poor to travel home very often in my early adulthood. But after her death, I started making it a higher priority. I didn’t like to go more than six months at a time, at the absolute most, without visiting my Grandma Marge. I would send her word finds (her favorite) and flowers in my absence.

I got eight additional years with Grandma Marge, but I was greedy for more. I thought I still had at least a handful more in my future. I had projects I wanted to do with her. Conversations I wanted to have. Time I wanted to spend in her vicinity. But those wishes would remain unfulfilled.

I have stuff to remember her by—her wedding ring, some of her chic sweaters, a couple of old journals, one of her paintings, her finger imprint on a necklace—all of which I cherish. But these smelly shoes have become their own kind of precious heirloom.

Intellectually, I know having such a deep attachment to objects is ridiculous. I watched the funeral home take my grandma’s body away with just the pajamas she died in, and she couldn’t even bring those with her; I’m sure they were burned along with her when she was cremated. None of us will make it out of this life with the shirt on our backs, much less the body that wore it.

But I’m still here, and I miss sharing life with my grandma. So I will keep walking in my Grandma Marge-anointed Nikes until they fall apart, and maybe beyond, thinking of her every time I lace them up.

Share

Leave a comment

Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who splits her time between Austin and Los Angeles. She hosts the podcast Private Parts Unknown and writes and hosts The Bleeders on Substack. Her debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild, is out April 1, 2026!

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

Submit your Object-ives essay

Recommended reading on possessions:

“in the closets of my mother-the-model” by , Poor Man’s Feast

“On non-minimal living” by

“an analog adventure (without buying more things)” by , midnight crumbs

“The Analog Life Project” by , Little Truths

“The strange persistence of paper” by

“building a physical archive of the ordinary and the irreplaceable” by , a quiet dispatch

I’ve had an entire bottle of peach soju when I finally muster the courage to grab a microphone and belt out Oasis’ “Wonderwall” while rocking side to side. The mic is clutched in my right hand and I’ve stuffed the left into the pocket of my jeans to stop some of my nervous shaking. I tell myself to stare straight ahead and look at the flat screen television mounted to a wall across the room because if I do I don’t have to see the others at the tables around me and think they’re judging me. No one is. In fact, the others in the room sing along on the chorus in short and soft bursts and it gives me confidence. They join in between sips of their own drinks and bites of food stacked in small dishes on a table near the door.

Outside that door there is a restaurant and outside of that is Baltimore and the AWP conference all of us are in the city to attend. Some of the writers in the room I know and others I’ve been introduced to for the first time. The energy in the room is easy. People have already performed solo and in duos and trios. Those not on the mic aren’t afraid to add their voices to the lyrics and there’s plenty of laughter to go around. By the end of the night, we will have belted out Usher and Boyz II Men as a collective. But right now it’s me and an instrumental Oasis track trying to keep time.

I don’t really need the words of the song fading in and out on the screen. I know them by heart. I’ve sung them over and over at the top of my lungs at home alone. In my car while driving the back roads. In the dead of night with headphones stuffed into my ears and tears in my eyes. I don’t know how long I’ve known the song. I just know it. It’s in my body like a switch—one note and something in me changes or shuts down. It’s one of those songs that make me contemplative and hopeful. It’s always made me feel like I could move forward toward something better than my current place in the world or has given me permission to dwell a little in memory.

In October 1995, when “Wonderwall” was released, I was still in high school. I was just as you would imagine a Gen X teenager would be at the time. Angsty and quiet. Very serious and terrified, too. Back then I was still living into who I thought I should be. I was on the fast track to college, candy striping at the local hospital, a member of Junior Achievement, a cellist, and a very good girl. Maybe I’d heard the song floating out somewhere on the radio or at the skating rink. I could have seen the video in passing on MTV. I don’t know. All that I do know is that 30 years later I’m a little tipsy in a karaoke room in Baltimore living out some part of my teenage dream. I’m a writer. I may not be writing for Vibe Magazine like I’d planned, but I’m a writer nonetheless. 30 years later and I’m not the cool girl I’d hoped to be by moving to New York and covering the music industry. I’m not driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee I coveted or living in an exposed brick loft. I am cool, though. Cool enough that I am in this exact space with people I think are talented and creative and by extension that means I am, too.

When the first chorus comes around, I’m more comfortable. I let my hand slide out of my pocket and my arm swing next to my hip. I’m still rocking back and forth, but my grip on the mic is looser. It’s not the soju in my body. It’s the understanding that I’m safe here. That it’s okay to open up a little more because even if this moment was never one I daydreamed about, I’m right where I’m supposed to be. This isn’t that path I’d chosen when I was idealistic and still believed everything I ever wanted could come true. This is the adult version of my life earned through looping life lessons and veering off the beaten path.

Back in 1995, all the state testing and extracurricular activities set me on the college prep path. This path was supposed to lead to the American Dream. And it did in a roundabout way. I just got lost along the journey. I changed majors from what I loved (magazine journalism) to what I thought made sense (sociology) after hard criticism from a professor. I went back for another degree to right that wrong. Ended up in graduate school in my late twenties. Married. Divorced. Broke and rebuilt. Started a career in the polar opposite industry of where I really wanted to be. But all of it led me to the center of a dim room, gripping a mic, and singing about being saved.

I saved myself. When the second verse begins, the room and the people in it have faded a bit. I’m still staring straight ahead at the monitor, but I’m using it more like a metronome to make sure I’m not singing too quickly and getting off beat. The words flow out of me. I don’t sing any louder, but there is more conviction now. The person doing the saving is me. I’m not the person lead singer Liam Gallagher is crooning to. There is no mystery lover or friend who’s going to be the one to show up and right the world for me. It took me a long time to figure this out.

I can’t count how many times I wished and hoped and prayed for someone to step in and step up for me so that I’d be free from making big decisions, and small ones, too. I spent years telling myself that I just needed to hold on a little while longer and eventually the good work I was doing for myself would put the right person in my path. And it has, but not in the selfish way I was thinking of. The people, like those in this karaoke room and beyond, appeared to show me what advocating for myself looks like just as much as they showed me what respite is and not rescue.

That is what I was seeking. Respite. Some breathing room along the path of my life to give me time to figure out if the next step was straight ahead or if it was time for a whole new route. I’d spent my life waiting to be told what to do or waiting on the proper guideposts to appear to make sure I was on the straight and narrow. Had I stayed putting one foot in front of the other I would have missed so much. I certainly wouldn’t be in this room at this moment. I would have had a good life, I think. Far different than what I have now, though. I saved myself from a life much more dimmed. I took a scenic route that turned out to be richer than anything I’d ever imagined.

The song starts to fade out with a repetition of the same questioning salvation. The soju has warmed my belly and my limbs and I’m singing to bring it on home. A friend circles me with her phone videoing and photographing me for memory’s sake. It makes me laugh and I pitch forward to let it out and take my seat back against the wall, take another sip, and join in with the next chorus of voices.

Share

Leave a comment

Read all Radical Pleasure columns

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.

My mother died a year ago and such is the slow pace of probate, it’s only now that her estate is being released and my siblings and I are being called to collect what she left us. There we are, wandering through the house of our childhood, six floors of white stucco London packed with memories: the Babar and Celeste keyrings that sat on the playroom shelves, the nursery school paintings framed in the kitchen, the plastic photo cubes on top of the dining room cabinet with sides enough for all five of us.

I loved the blue glass architectural modal of revolving doors that was kept out of reach on the high glass shelves. I loved the kitchen table, a repurposed butcher’s block the bore the scars of knives falling. And what about the Corbusier chairs or Hitchens landscapes? The multitude of 18th century writing desks or ivory inlaid games table? The china dogs from our grandmother’s house that growled from the glass cabinet in the drawing room?

Chattels—the items chosen specifically by the dying for those who’ll carry on living—are singular in their message. I think you’ll love this necklace, says the surprise gift of the gold watch chain that used to belong to my mother’s father. Or This sculpture always reminded me of you says the machete of a mare and foal that once caught the sun on the windowsill of our weekend cottage. Or even, I know you always wanted this chair says the child’s velvet seat that took up a small corner of the landing.

What all chattels say, irrespective of value and meaning, is, When I was drawing up my last will and testament and sharing out my possessions, this is what I thought of when I thought of you. So, mum, wherever you are, a year gone and your homes emptied, what were you thinking when your eyes alighted on the two scariest paintings in your collection, and you decided they were for me? And why did you think I’d want them?

My mum’s departure was a fight to the death, socks in her fists to prevent her nails biting into the skin of her palms; she did not go gently. I sat by her bed in that last week, blessed and holy in its passing; she and I had reached a peaceful accord, whatever could not be discussed (and that was everything) dealt with between me and my therapist. She was leaving behind two houses packed to the gunnels with beautiful furniture, a great deal of it inherited down the long ancestral line of my dad who’d died 18 years earlier, and a gallery’s worth of art.

Both my parents were patrons of the arts, supporting students at two of the most prominent London art schools, City and Guilds and the Royal Academy, for decades, and our homes were filled with degree show work, some worth a great deal, others, not much at all, as well the pieces they’d invested in over the years and given them by friends. Of the many, many choices she could have made (Mum, I could have thrown a dart blindfold and hit something I loved,) she chose for me the two paintings I hated the most, and which had literally haunted my childhood. It’s almost funny.

Let me take you into them. Exhibit A: The Two Sisters (see above). It hung on the turn of the stairs in our London home, the stone treads providing the challenge of a leap and the banister something to swing off as I took the steps two at a time to get past their staring eyes. The sister in front (I made them sisters) holds her hand to her mouth while her gaze is fixed on the viewer. Her side-eye glance speaks of being caught mid-sentence saying something she mustn’t, which is both apt and ironic given the fine mist of Do Not Speak which drenched our home.

Does she know that another woman stands behind her beyond the window? Is that expressionless and faded other a version of the sister in the foreground, her shadow self, her actual flesh and blood, or just some identikit stalker who haunts her? Are they in cahoots? Does foreground woman even know that background woman is there? And why is she wearing my mother’s dress?

All this and more I would block out of my thinking on the multitude of times I took the stairs, going up worse than going down as at least when descending this final flight, the swing of my arm on the banister turned my back on the ghost figures. Did my mum know I hated this painting? Had I mentioned it, and in her latterly muddled thinking, she’d confused horror with love?

All things are possible, including a deep dark subconscious desire to remain vaguely unaware of who I was. The walls of my mother’s denial were thick. She lived in rooms allocated to prevent truth seeping in and ruining careful constructions. I, who have spent my professional literary life dismantling those walls, was the one person who did speak. Maybe this was a message. But had she known me at all, she would have known it would only drive me to speak more.

Exhibit B: Owl Steals Baby. Where do I begin? A huge, bird-like creature swoops upon a frightened woman, intent on whisking her child away. The creature is without emotion. The woman attempts to shield the child from the claws approaching, her expression hunted, sorrowful, exhausted and yet knowing. She doesn’t look surprised. She looks as if this cat and mouse (owl and baby) threat has been going on for a while; as if the creature has swooped at her across hill and plain, tormenting her again and again as she runs.

And what’s the deal with the church? Is the artist making a statement about God? Was my mother? Was this her way of telling me she loved me or another amusing attempt to scare the shit out of me? I don’t remember where the painting hung, but I can tell you, mum, that it is in my top ten list of Least Wanted Paintings Ever.

Shall we put the messages together? Do Not Speak + I Tried to Protect You, and now we’re getting somewhere. Granted, I’m making this up; I have no idea what she was thinking when her red pen hovered over the photocopied list of chattels and with shaky hand, she wrote Ellie next to these two disasters. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe she’d entirely lost her mind. It’s possible she was bored or tired and just wanted to get it over with. But pulling the thread of intent is more interesting, so let’s do that.

I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse; the perpetrator, a lodger, the fact something my mother and I never discussed. Or even acknowledged. My mother was a great one for hints and looks and cryptic asides, usually with the aid of some literary reference. You know what Pepys would have said in response to refusing a plate of spinach. No, mum, I don’t know what Samuel Pepys would have said, and I still don’t like spinach. Or Montaigne delivered with raised eyebrows and a knowing glance at no one in particular because no one knew what she was talking about.

So given that light, The Two Sisters and Owl Steals Baby are right in keeping. Here you are, darling; in my death I deliver another two cryptic crossword clues for you to figure out and decide that I loved you, which I know she did, and that I tried to protect you, which I know she didn’t. As if the entire thing was a Sunday morning puzzle, and not a life-ruining box of complex PTSD that I have had to unpack and made sense of. It’s hard not to feel that she didn’t care. It’s easy to surmise that her complex desire to stay in the dark trumped everything. I know that throughout almost all of my 54 years with her, she neither saw nor heard me, and these two paintings sum that up. But luckily for both of us, her legacy of message wasn’t the end.

The day before she died, I was sitting by her bed as usual. She’d entered the no-speaks era of leaving: eyes closed, breathing feint and erratic, nails becoming blue, life dancing away and only a pulse in her neck to show for it. With a suddenness that made me jump, she opened her eyes and looked directly at me, sat up, took my face in her hands, and kissed me on the forehead, drew back, looked me in the eyes again, kissed me again and just as suddenly was gone, returned to the no-man’s-land of corridors and tunnels and maybe a light at the end of it.

Mouth open, jaw slack, breathing erratic and feint once more; had it happened? But every pulse of my nervous system said that it had; my mother had seen me. She’d already chosen her chattels, already with shaky hand signed my name beside scary paintings 1 and 2, too late to change what I didn’t know was coming.

But does it matter now? Not really. Not in the coming months when her will was read and our email inboxes became choked with documents of material message. In her closing hours my mother discovered one more thing she owned: the ability to see, to recognize, to acknowledge the person before her, and this split-second awareness she gave to me. It’s all a child ever wants from a parent; it is the most valuable of gifts. It throws all else into shadow.

In the year that’s passed, I’ve walked about our childhood homes, free to put a sticky label on things I want irrespective of her choosing, but I’ve found I want very little. The Babar and Celeste key rings. My nursery painting. The kitchen table’s too big for my kitchen. My niece will give a home to the Corbusier chairs. And the paintings? As I said, no thanks, mum. Joke or message, you can keep them.

Share

Leave a comment

Eleanor Anstruther was educated at Westminster School, but dropped out of university, to travel the world where she was lost and found for twelve years. When she inherited a farm in southern England, she set up a commune and began to write. Her debut, A Perfect Explanation (Salt Books), was a finalist for the Desmond Eliot Prize & Not The Booker. Fallout (Empress Editions), a punk-hearted coming of age set at the iconic women's protest camp of Greenham Common in 1980s England, will explode into the world April 21st. Pre-order now. She now lives not quietly at all between London, Surrey, and the south of France. Find her on Substack at The Literary Obsessive.