This Is Us

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” — Albus Dumbledore

As a writer, I’ve been well prepared for the voices that manifest in the course of birthing a story. Everyone from high school writing teachers to literary giants warned me to fight inner voices that stifle creativity. Most of them describe the same critical voices: there’s the cruel one that says, Your work is shit, the one who worries, What if your boss reads this? What if your MOM does? And of course, the one who…

In the time of coronavirus, I spend a lot of time sitting around with the friends in my quarantine circle trading stories about our lives before the pandemic. Recently, our conversation turned to the worst dates we’d ever been on, and as I relayed one of my dating failures, I shared a racially charged comment one suiter made on a first date.

Immediately, one of my White friends balked at my date’s behavior while my friends of color laughed and offered to share similar tales of their own. Ignorant, offensive, and racist comments are old hat to most people of…

Breakups are hard. It doesn’t matter if ending it was the right choice, if the split was a long time coming, or if you’ve lost a friend instead of a romantic partner— whatever the details, cutting your connection to another person feels bad.

This, in itself, is not news. Because breaking up is such a universal experience, the stories around it never get old. As a society, we’ve obsessed over vulnerable breakup songs and gotten lost in the on-screen sagas of broken-hearted protagonists. …

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been at war with goals. I grew up holding fast to the ones my parents provided for me (working a 9–5, getting married, having kids) to the point that I didn’t even realize there were other ways to do things. Each one of the goals I followed came with a subset of exhausting smaller goals and modest, yet painful, sacrifices. By my college graduation, I was exhausted. I was meeting the goals I’d adopted from my parents, but I wasn’t happy.

To make things harder, by senior year, I’d realized that I…

When I started therapy, there were a million things I thought would be difficult to acknowledge and discuss. I was prepared to wallow in grief, muster through tough confrontations, and experience awful flashbacks. Those things came, and while they weren’t fun, they weren’t as bad as I’d prepared for.

The parts that have actually been hard are the conversations I didn’t know to expect. You know that saying, “The more I know, I more I realize I don’t know?” Therapy is a lot like that. As my therapist and I work through the things I knew I needed help with…

Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with losing weight

The day before my 24th birthday, I broke up with my girlfriend. It was my first time being in love and that breakup ripped apart my whole being. I cried constantly, completely heartbroken and alone in a new city. I cried myself to sleep, I cried in the bathrooms at work, I cried on the phone to my friends back home. I soon became sick of my own crying but I didn’t know how to stop.

Then I saw a flyer for a pole dancing studio. It was the first thing to distract me from my heartbreak — event for…

I didn’t go on my first date until I was 24. I wanted to — I dreamt about cute dates and love letters, suffered through crushes, and lamented my loneliness — but there was this small voice in my head that would pop up daily and tell me, “No one will want to date you.” In the mirror, I’d look at my body and think, “No one wants that.” In class, I’d trip over a concept and thing, “You’re so stupid. No one wants to be with you.” Even while writing, that voice would break through, “You’re not that creative…

What do you think when you hear the term “self-care?” Do you imagine spa days? Vacations spent lounging in posh hotels? Do you think of ordering food and lying on the couch while you stream the latest offering on Netflix? Curling up with a good book and a mug of steaming tea?

The term is everywhere these days, but I learned about it from a self-help “guru” on Instagram. This woman talked about the importance of “treating yourself” and preached the benefits of a semi-regular glass of champagne as a form of self-care. …