You haven’t answered for a few days, which might as well be years. My fingers type out it slowly, mustering the courage to hit send. 

Why have you been distancing yourself lately? Did I do something wrong?

Except I don’t ever send it. I delete it and let myself linger in the text box’s emptiness, wondering how long it’ll be before you cut contact with me altogether. A million questions crowd my head, fighting for their spot at the forefront. None of them will win, but they will all lead to the same dreaded question: are you going to leave me too? 

You knew how many people have left me, and how much each one of their departures destroyed me.  You knew they started just like this: with the distancing. They all promised me with sincere eyes and a held hand that they wouldn’t leave either—just like you did a few weeks ago. You’re following the same pattern. I know how the story ends and still, my brain engages in that same tortuous guessing game where I beat myself to a pulp trying to understand. But I never do. 

In between the period of time when we were friends, in which you showed me even an ounce of love, I would’ve done anything for you. I would’ve gone wherever you told me to go, jumped however high you told me to jump and walked to the very ends of the earth if it meant you wanted to stay one more day with me.

But how many scars have I justified because I loved the person holding the knife? 

How many times did I polish the weapon you used to stab me in the back, over and over again until my blood ran ice cold? How many times did I let you step on me, destroy my confidence, ridicule me, manipulate me, and make me feel guilty for situations I was not responsible for? Just because I was desperate for some cruel form of comforting company? 

I stay, even though I am constantly used as a bandaid for other people’s wounds; I’ll distract you, humor you, comfort you until your hurt heals and you throw the bandaid away. 

I loved you even when our relationship stopped being fifty-fifty and it turned into seventy-thirty, eighty-twenty, and even until you weren’t putting any effort in at all. But  I stayed. I stayed because I wanted you to stay. But I want you to want to stay. I don’t want you to stay because you pity me or you’re bored and have nothing better to do than linger in my horrible company. 

I won’t have the courage to leave; no matter how much some small part of me wants to because I foresee how this cycle ends, but the fear of never knowing when someone will want to get close to me again is always present. I can’t lose another person because if I do, I will die inside just like I have so many times before. The pain will never go away. I will never stop thinking I was not good enough. I crave the reassurance you provided me in the beginning; I need you to tell me you aren’t leaving and I need you to mean it. 

And maybe it is a lot to ask, for you to stay forever. But I’m not asking for forever—I’m just asking for now.

But I expect you to leave and when you do, I will only remember the good memories—the times you made me feel wanted and loved, when we laughed for hours until our stomachs ached. I won’t remember how you twisted, pulled, and broke me down in a million different ways so you could feel powerful and good about yourself. Did I not do that enough? 

When you’re gone, my head and my heart will be in a constant battle: my heart will try to rationalize every hurtful thing you ever said because you were just “looking out for me.” You wanted me to be better, I’m sure of it. You were just pushing me. My head will tell me that I’m an idiot, that this wasn’t real love. My head wants to kick my heart for not leaving all those times before like when you told me I would look so pretty if I just tried harder or when you told me I needed to stop talking so much because I was getting annoying. But I didn’t leave because the heart, who craves love no matter where it comes from, always wins. 

So the questions continue. 

Did I not try hard enough? Was I too overbearing? Did I not bring you joy? Was I exhausting to be around? Did I suck all the life out of you like a leech? Was I too annoying or not funny enough or just plain boring?

Please tell me what I did that was so horrible so I can stop running in aimless circles with no destination trying to figure out what I did wrong! 

Please tell me so I don’t lose the next person too.

Did I love you too much? Maybe my hugs were more suffocating than comforting. Maybe if someone had taught me how to love, how to trust, then I wouldn’t have to overcompensate for existing by giving you random gifts as if they’ll make you love me more or answering your every command like a dog attached to an electric leash. 

Just tell me you want space! I can give that to you! 

Just… don’t leave. 

I hate the fact that I am so willing to sacrifice everything just so you’ll stay. What you don’t realize is how hard I’ve worked so you’d be happy in this friendship, relationship, whatever this is. I overthink, overanalyze, and overcompensate for every single part of this relationship, and for what? I’ve hidden so much of myself just so you would like me and still, it wasn’t enough. I didn’t tell you every time I cried or had a panic attack or when the anxiety was rising or when I was at an all-time low or whenever I genuinely hated everything about myself because I wanted to be easy to love. 

Was I not easy enough to love? 

Were my struggles too much for you to handle? Does that make me unworthy of love?

These thoughts run through every single relationship and friendship I have ever had. It is so exhausting to get so excited to meet new people and have your brain immediately slap you with the reality of assuming everyone will leave you just because you exist.

I am so unbelievably tired of begging people to love me but I can’t help but think that if I don’t beg, if I don’t overcompensate, if I don’t pour all of myself into relationships that do nothing but hurt me, no one will want to stay. I have been begging my entire life and I am so tired. 

But yes, I am begging you to stay…

But if you choose to go, I’ll love you anyway until the pain lessens day by day and you become a little memory in the back of my mind. 

What a curse: to love as fully and wholly as I do…even though we won’t ever talk again albeit the occasional awkward run-in on the streets, I will still think about you on your birthdays, wonder if you’re doing okay, and wishing that I would learn to not hold on too tight to anyone’s heart but mine.

Written by Camille Ware

Edited by Emma Moran and Kate Castello

You are, as an individual, a unique sum of common parts. Your mother’s smile, your dad’s soft eyes, a joke your third grade best friend told you on the playground. You are a combination of all the things you have experienced, the people you have loved; you are a culmination of everything that has washed over you in your life. So then, who are you? How are you an individual amidst all of this?

It’s hard to distinguish yourself when you feel so similar to others–especially in college. There’s so many people with similar interests, majors, goals, and styles. It’s easy to become lost in the crowd. You can feel really fearful sometimes, scared that you’ll never find a way to stand out, or a way to make yourself appealing, or that you’ll ever seem exemplary or compensable, or worthy of hiring. That’s terrifying. 

You’re always told that so much of college is about finding yourself, and, while that in and of itself is a difficult idea, trying to “find yourself” amidst a group where you feel like you’re struggling to stand out is all the more complicated. Then there’s this seemingly unending amount of comparison; you think someone is doing something so much better than you–their paper is better, their outfit is cuter, they just seem to have more of themselves figured out. There’s this constant push and pull of wanting to be ‘good’, wanting to stand out, and just not knowing how to. 

When trying to figure out who you are, what makes you different. The answer is one thing: combination. You reflect so much of your world around you; your past, your loves, your everything–and so does everyone else around you. Each person is a unique sum of things. You may have a similar experience to someone, a similar aesthetic, but no one has the exact sum of experiences and inspirations as you. No one else has ever stood directly in your shoes, seen directly from your eyes–they may have come close, they may have stood directly next to you, but they still cannot be you. 

They cannot be you. 

There is no one who can offer exactly what you have. There will be people who offer similar things, but no one can offer exactly what you have. You have a unique gift and wonder to offer this world, and the pieces of you that you see in others are a part of that beauty. Similarity and imitation can be an act of love. Love and attention work together–to see someone with similar style, with love for a similar topic, is to be reminded of all the people who have loved that before you, all the people who have been echoed in love and in passion. To have a similarity is to be reminded of a legacy of love and celebration. And to have that similarity is to recognize that that similarity is piled on a layer of similarities that you contain within different categories to make a singular unique person. It’s all kind of paradoxical–you are you because of similarities, and that makes you different. 

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Teagan Chandler and Elisabeth Kay

*Trigger Warning: Mentions of domestic abuse*

While mindlessly doom-scrolling during the 2020 pandemic, I stumbled across a new genre of content: Booktok. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, these are videos that feature users sharing book recommendations on social media. While you may get the occasional sci-fi or horror novels, these books are often romance novels, commonly by authors like Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas. 

 Sick of watching Outer Banks and doing Chloe Ting workouts, I decided to get back into my old hobby of reading. After picking up a copy of It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover at Barnes and Noble, and reading the entire thing in almost a day, I immediately wanted to buy more books by the author. 

It Ends with Us stars a young and naive girl, Lily, who starts a relationship with a doctor, Ryle. Meanwhile, an old boyfriend, Atlas, comes back into Lily’s life. The main plot of the book is Ryle’s domestic abuse of Lily throughout their relationship. 

Before discussing the implications of a domestic abuse plotline in a romance novel, I think it is important to acknowledge what I think was Hoover’s good intention. Hoover herself grew up in a domestic violence situation and battled with it in her adult life. By having this story indirectly represent her personal experiences, there are many plot lines I think she did a great job with writing and representing. 

However, if Colleen Hoover wanted to write a romance book about someone getting out of a domestic abuse situation, then that should be the plotline. It should not be about the possibility of starting a relationship with a new person or attempting to repeatedly redeem a male abuser in the guise of a female empowerment story. 

At the end of the story, Lily has a daughter with Ryle. Instead of staying married to Ryle, Lily decides to break the cycle of generational family abuse—hence the title, It Ends with Us. Yet, before this happens, a “big” reveal is that Ryle accidentally killed his brother when he was a child, which made an excuse for his behavior. While Lily does divorce Ryle, she still names their daughter after his brother and decides not to pursue legal action but instead co-parent with Ryle. 

I completely acknowledge that every domestic abuse victim does not react in the same way and has the right to make their own decisions afterward. However, considering Hoover’s fanbase is mostly young readers, this book would be better off portraying a moral with relatable role models that girls can look up to. With a movie coming out, I can only hope it will fix the mistakes originally made with the novel. 

While It Ends with Us is the only Colleen Hoover book I’ve read in full, I have read many other Booktok romance novels: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Icebreaker, Better than the Movies, etc. These popular books follow more or less the same tropes and plotline of boy likes girl but is instead mean to her, girl starts liking boy, boy admits he likes girl, a few conflicts occur between the two, and then they live happily ever after. 

I did enjoy some of these books at first, but I started to get bored of the same characters represented with similar writing styles, book covers, titles, etc. Nevertheless, I kept on reading them at the expense of contributing to cheap and sell-out writing. After all, they portrayed situations where people met each other in real life. Plus, I would much rather read these books than do my economics homework. 

As much as I would like to argue we should all read history and world geography books, truth be told, the world can be a depressing place where it’s hard to scroll on Instagram or watch the news without seeing tragedy. So, although I know I shouldn't be reading these books, I still do, as they’re much better than having to think about the climate crisis…the attack on women’s rights…gun violence…immigration issues…America’s political divide…and, oh god, I think it’s time to buy Verity on my Kindle. 

As much as I try to escape these issues, they’re still happening whether I’m cocooned in bed, or seeing it first-hand. I, therefore, have to acknowledge that these books I am reading are fictional corporate sellouts most likely written by an AI (as a writer, I have a lot of opinions on writing), and if I truly want to feel better about the world, I need to be educated. 

I need to feel enlightened and read memoirs, guides, and history. While romance books offer an easy escape, you can learn so much more from reading historical fiction or books from authors that challenge perspective, such as Maya Angelou or George Orwell. Much like how it is so easy to get caught up in the little idealized world on your phone, the same can apply to books.

Written by Emma Hannan

Edited by Izzy John and Kate Castello

Feb 2, 2024 

The Oak Tree 

Dear Diary, 

This morning, I had to drag my body to the bus stop. The hill I trudge up to the bus stop was covered in snow and ice. This weather always makes me miserable and, of course, the bus was late. At one of the bus stops I looked out the window and noticed an old oak tree. Its branches were bursting through the heavy white walls of winter. I thought about what it would take for me to grab onto that oak tree, and climb its billowing branches. Am I too big now? I have grown at least 4 inches. My feet are less trustful and more careful of what is below them, and I found my first gray hair in the sink last week. Would it still hold me anyway? I think of how many times this tree has been frozen, grappled, and beaten by the snow. Yet it grows still. My grandma would call snow on trees “lace.” But I think that implies something too careful. I think, if I were the oak tree I would have been angry. I would have shown the winter just who is the one with the strength. Just who has put up with hundreds of J+H or B+C carvings. I would have thought, can this winter not see me? I would have shown it. But I am not an oak tree, and I am not strong enough to fight an entire season. So, like every person on this bus, I settle for myself. Then, I breathe a deep sigh, push the red “stop” button, and brace myself for the cold. 

Feb 9, 2024 

Pigeons 

Dear Diary, 

Today I thought about pigeons while walking on Fifth Ave, or I thought about how I haven’t seen pigeons in a while. A year ago, when I came to Pittsburgh, there were pigeons on every street corner. Pigeons weaving out and between cars. Pigeons pecking at trash on the sidewalk. They weren’t even scared of me—or anyone, really. It was one of the first things I noticed about campus after coming from a small town where animals usually live in secret places. Anyway, there used to be a patch of grass on the corner of Fifth and De Soto where it seemed that all the pigeons would congregate. And I mean piles and piles of them. Often someone would be sitting on the bench in the middle of the pigeon (Spot? Patch? How many pigeons constitute a pigeon park?) area. Often the person was swarmed by the gray birds who were intently picking at whatever food they were dropping on the ground. The sheer number of pigeons was surprising at first, but then, every time I saw them, I felt a bit clearer. Like the reminder of their presence was a break between mindlessly walking on sidewalks, in between busy streets, and from class to class. They tore the patch up sometime last year, I think. I remember being furious—with who I’m not sure—and then promptly forgot it between busy streets and mindless sidewalks. Until today. Until I walked past that street and for some reason I noticed it. Or I guess I noticed the absence of the pigeons. These days, when it’s cold and dark, I really miss them. I hope they come back in the spring. 

Feb 18, 2024 

The Window 

Dear Diary, 

Today I was walking around my neighborhood in Shadyside since it was finally (semi) nice out. I have a normal walking path that is basically just a large circle around the block, but I decided to go a different way today. I noticed this house that I’ve never seen before. It had this very strange and very large circular window. At first, it struck me as some kind of over-eager architecture design that’s trying too hard to be unique or different—which kind of pissed me off. Then I saw what looked to be a kitchen with a few people who looked to be around my age inside. One tall guy was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his abdomen. Another girl stood next to him exaggerating her hand movements. I think she was talking to this other man in the room who was hunched over the oven. I imagine them talking about some kind of chicken seasoning or an annoying professor in class. I imagine them cutting the chicken. And I wonder if they ever get nervous cooking chicken like I do. If their version of “cooking” chicken is actually just burning it to a crisp like I did last night. The orange light inside is somewhat off-putting when paired with the circular exterior of the window. Like something that fancy shouldn’t be nice or welcoming. Maybe I’m just cold but I think it’d be very warm inside. I realize I’ve been standing there for too long and I probably look like a creep, so I leave. I’d like to be friends with them I think, but I doubt we’ll ever meet. If we did, I’d tell them I think their window is ridiculous. 

Feb 21, 2024 

Camel Statue 

Dear Diary,  

In my room I can see the blue and purple echoes of a sunset that is sitting behind the brick, and it reminds me of summer—I miss summer. On the ledge beneath it there’s a camel statue that my aunt gave me. Its white body is encrusted with twinkly jewels and gold hoofs. The hump opens up. You could put rings in it or something else that’s small and fancy, I’m sure. I’ve never bothered to put anything in it since my aunt gave it to me so many summers ago. I wonder what kind of things she kept there. Something uppity and something careful probably. I like the wondering. I like to remember her in these ways. In ways that are distant and echoing and living with me here in my first apartment in the city. The sun is almost gone as it is most times in February. Surprisingly, I appreciate it today. I like when the day ends. It tells me that I am here too. Makes me wonder about the next time I’ll see it again. Makes me think about spring and summer and all things light and breezy. Or maybe it just reminds me that the sun is a good thing. That these moments are good. That some things stand alone: the pigeons on the corner, the oak tree, the people in the window, my camel statue. These are things that I can only love and nothing else. I’ve been praying for February to end since it started and soon it will. Soon it will be spring, and I think then, I’ll be longing for February again.

Written by Lauren Blatchley

Edited by Lauren Myers and Elisabeth Kay

For as long as I can remember, I have been the definition of a “girly girl.” My first friend was my younger brother, who sometimes felt like my twin (due to age, not similarity). Growing up together seemed to only highlight our differences—our parents would give us almost identical presents on our birthdays, which were only two weeks apart, but his would be “boy” themed, and mine would be “girl” themed. As the older sibling, I never looked up to him or aspired to be anything but myself.

I was never interested in typical “boy” things. I watched my brother discover sports, superheroes, toy cars, and action figures, but I was completely enthralled by the joys of girlhood. My three-story dollhouse had a bigger presence in our playroom than all my brother’s toys combined, and I still had room in my tiny heart for princesses, playing dress-up, and all things stereotypically girly.

My only complaint about girlhood was that the color pink seemed to claim me. Maybe I began to hate the color because I resented the fact that I never had a choice in the matter. I was helpless to the first pink gift given to my mother at my baby shower, a reflection of marketed sexism and the pink tax costing women more than just financially. Maybe I was tired of never having control of my own life, so I repealed the first decision that was ever made for me in an act of rebellion against a society that assigned me pink at birth.

Or maybe I was breaking the last connection to a happy childhood that was left in the dumpster with my toys when we got evicted from my childhood home. I felt detached from the blissfully naive girl I once was and associated the color pink with the weakness of someone in denial. I always loved playing house as a child, so didn’t I deserve to be shoved into the role of parenting my little sister? I got too comfortable feeling equal to my brother, so didn’t I deserve to be reminded that my childhood was for learning how to be a homemaker, while his was for simply being a child?

I hated society for putting all this meaning into a color, but also myself for not being above it. In my teen years, I wanted to distance myself from things that were “too girly” as a whole. As I was learning to accept a sexuality in which I loved girls, at the same time I was distancing myself from them. In a way, I thought that hating girls would bring me closer to loving them. I saw the acceptance of masculine and androgynous women within my community and decided that being feminine could never be enough. Even within a space that men were never invited to, here I was accommodating the male presence through heteronormativity and internalized homophobia.

I thought I was denouncing gender roles by rejecting the color associated with femininity, all while judging other girls based on their relationship with the color pink. I thought I was standing against misogyny by hating pink, when really I was feeding right into it, using a color as a reason to destroy female solidarity. I blamed the ugliness within myself on the ugliness of a color and held the acts of society against the ones that weren’t to blame, girls who were victims as much as I was.

One of the biggest challenges from my college experience is also the one I owe most of my growth to. I was forced to leave the familiarity of my small town and the same 60 peers from kindergarten through graduation, forced to make new connections, or to sit with the uncomfortable thoughts I avoided for so long. I was finally free from the people I always felt I owed explanations to, the people that made me feel bad for changing who I was, or becoming the person I always had been deep down.

For as long as I can remember, I have been the definition of a “girly girl,” and I still am. Nothing makes me feel more confident than feeling pretty and nothing makes me feel prettier than feeling feminine. Nothing feels more rewarding than reclaiming a color that was used as a weapon and accepting the parts of my identity that I tried to deny. Now I realize that my hatred was never for the color pink, or even for femininity itself, it was the hatred for who I was inherently, something I had no control over.

But identity can’t be defined by society, least of all by a color.

Written by Renee Arlotti

Edited by Sofia Brickner and Elisabeth Kay

At ten years old, all I know are narrow hallways that smell vaguely of melted butter and popcorn. I walk, or sometimes skip, between walls of finger-painted guardian angels, colors smeared and smudged to concoct a golden-brown halo atop a head of cascading hair. Paper chain-link Advent calendars hang from the ceiling and rock in rhythm with the air ventilation.

I’m criss-cross applesauce on a baby blue carpet embellished with clouds, and Ms. T is talking about death. Her voice, a delicate croon, hushes the classroom.

“I see my sister with the angels,” Ms. T remarks with a soft, knowing smile, “Every Thursday mass, when I gaze up at the ceiling,” She pauses, dangling the prospect in front of our wide eyes, “They sing with us.”

There’s a heaviness to her words. Her eyes are tired, as if she knows that we, too, will have to wait sixty years to see the chorus in the sky.

At ten years old, I begin to wonder when God will trust me enough to show me his angels.

At fourteen years old, religion becomes habitual. Memorizing the Nicene Creed is treated with the same validity as learning geometric formulas. Each Thursday morning mass, as I prop myself upwards against the church kneeler, I devise a calculated plan to disassociate during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. As the priest rattles off his prayers, my brain reduces his words to mush, and the mush scatters and pulsates until it’s nothing but white noise. I practice absolute stillness until the cushion eats away at my kneecaps, raw and sticky with sweat.

I’m sitting in a rickety, baby blue chair. The backrest is sloped so aggressively that it is impossible for me to carve my spine into it. The room is damp, chalk-white, and full of girls my age.  No one dares say a word.

Mrs. O has the waistband of a tan, pleated skirt cautiously gripped in between her pointer finger and her thumb, as if the promiscuity of its length might catch and spread like the flu.

“This skirt,” She proclaims curtly, “is inappropriate, and unacceptable.” She pauses, dangling the creased fabric in front of our wide eyes. “Can anyone tell me why?”

The correct response hangs in the air above us, a chorus of angels crying chants of purity, chastity, and “one inch above the knee.”

Yet, we sit in unified silence.

There’s a certain unanimity between twelve girls wearing the same collared navy blue polo shirts; twelve girls mentally measuring the distance between the end of their skirt and the beginning of their kneecap; twelve girls searching for Ms. T’s angels.

“You girls...,” Mrs. O trails off with an exasperated sigh, “In God’s eyes, it is much more important to be pure, than to be attractive.” Her eyes scan our bare legs, “Kneel on the floor. If the ends of your skirts don’t touch the carpet, it’s an infraction.”

And as the carpet chafes my kneecaps until they are red and tender, once again, my brain mashes Mrs. O’s lecture into a smooth puree, nothing but a gentle frequency.

At fourteen years old, I begin to wonder if I would even enjoy the angels’ company.

At twenty years old, I sit in Heinz Memorial Chapel, simply because I love the architecture. I sit, and sometimes I think, but mostly I just observe. I observe the swooping carves in the rusted pillars. I observe the soft pink hue that seeps through the stained glass windows and pours onto the pews in front of it. I observe women with crinkly, trembling hands clasped in their laps, heads outstretched toward the ceiling, gazing. 

And although I resented the angels’ chorus for many years, I must admit, I still always listen for it.

Written by Delaney Pipon

Edited by Bella Emmanouilides & Elisabeth Kay

Whether she realizes it or not, my mom’s the main character. Imagine someone with the looks of Mrs. Incredible, the aspirations of Lady Bird, and the stubborn personality of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock. Yep, that’s my mom– and I’ve been lucky enough to have front-row seats to watch her life evolve over the past twenty years.

Ever since I was little I was told I had a cool mom. I’d argue with my friends that she was actually strict and would become grumpy if my brother or I pushed her buttons. Looking back on it now, I realize the misunderstanding. My mom wasn’t cool because she let me stay up past my bedtime and have sleepovers on school nights. My mom was cool because she was just like the rest of us. She made mistakes and didn’t let adulthood stop her from doing what she loved.

When I was younger, my grandparents would drive to the city every year so my mom could go to music festivals with my dad; Coachella, Virgin Fest, you name it. I still love stalking my dad’s old Instagram posts to find pictures of her asleep on the couch of their rental home, with the caption, “We’ve got a rocker down.” When I was in third grade she drove me three hours to Charlottesville to see Vampire Weekend in concert. I had school the next morning… and my first standardized test. On the drive home that night, my mom made sure to remind me that I should try my best, but standardized tests don’t mean shit and experiences are the things that matter.

My mom taught me how to make the best midnight snacks. She advised me to always pick comfort over style when it came to fashion. Plus, she gave me the best friendship advice. She seemed to know how to fix any relationship problem. I think that’s why I was so mad at her when she got divorced from my dad.

I didn’t like that she started inviting her friends over for Taco Tuesdays instead of having family dinners. I didn’t like her new boyfriends, and I made sure to write in my journal: Never name your kid that! And I didn’t like that she and my dad continued getting along. It was all so confusing. It felt like the movie paused. How could I feel so much anger towards Mrs. Incredible, towards Lady Bird, towards Liz Lemon? How could I be angry at my mom?

I’m not going to lie, even with all the pain and anger building up inside me, I didn’t want anyone to think of her as anything less. I ached thinking that my friends would know she was getting a divorce because I didn’t want them to label her as something she wasn’t. She was still my mom. She was still a cool mom because everything she was going through was a part of her coming-of-age story. She faced the uncomfortable, so her daughter could grow up watching a woman happier than ever before, live her life.

Being the daughter of a main character is incredible. I’ve seen her rekindle relationships with her high school friends as she flies out to the Midwest to watch them compete in cycling races. Oh, and back in November, I got this text from her: “Hey. I’m going to Iceland solo for Thanksgiving!” She had never traveled out of the continent before, and I got to hear about all her adventures and gush about them to my friends. And now, every time there’s a school break, I giggle on my drive back to DC imagining living through the stories she’s going to tell me… imagining having my main character moment. My coming of age story doesn’t need to end now that I’m twenty. If anything, my movie just started. And I owe it all to my mom, the main character.

Written by Nina Southern

Edited by Renee Arlotti and Elisabeth Kay

The moment my doctor looked at me, and told me, finally, conclusively, my diagnosis, it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders. You wouldn’t think that the words “eosinophilic gastroenteritis” would be words of relief to anyone, especially a 16 year old girl. But, after years of searching, and months of a vicious cycle of school, practice, doctors appointments, scopes, blood tests and more, to finally hear someone definitively say anything to me validated me. I was still naive enough to think that now that I finally had the diagnosis, I could be cured!

But that’s not quite how chronic illness works. 

Eosinophilic gastroenteritis (EGE) is an incredibly rare condition in which extra eosinophils–a type of white blood cell–accumulate in the digestive tract causing inflammation, stimulating allergic reactions, and causing other symptoms like iron deficiency, migraine, and fatigue. The condition can be treated with medicine, but these are often steroids that cannot be taken for long; it is also treated through diet and monitoring. Often, the amount of eosinophils ebbs and flows, resulting in periods of downtime and periods of flares. 

For a while, I tried medication, and it helped immensely but I couldn’t take it forever. I tried limiting my diet, eating fresher foods–which helped, but not enough. This past Summer, I did an elimination diet–cutting out every major allergen (plus some extras) before gradually adding them back in. By the end of it, I had discovered that if I wanted to feel any modicum of okay, I couldn’t eat gluten, soy, dairy, shellfish, strawberries, or oranges. I don’t say this in a boo-hoo way, I say it because, for someone who has loved food all of her life, cutting this many foods out is incredibly painful, while also being necessary to my health; and that’s a difficult situation to explain to others without them dumping pity on you.

And I don’t want anyone’s pity. This is my reality. My life. I am fighting every single day to make peace with it–I don’t need someone to tell me how sad it is that I can’t eat all these things or to remind me of how much I used to love a certain food I can no longer eat anymore. I don’t want to be told how brave I am, how noble it is of me to go through this diet change. I didn’t choose this, it threw itself upon me, and sticking to these updates is one of the only ways in which I have enough energy and strength to get through the day, I don’t want to be turned into some kind of martyr for it. I don’t need you to comment on my food, my body, and its processes like I’m some sad little puppy. I am a real, human person, with deep and complicated emotions and I don’t want to be singled down to my illness. 

I know that people can be doing their best and it comes off in harmful ways, I understand that and I try to have grace for that–but I also have seen what it means for people to truly recognize, to be kind and willing to accommodate my needs in a way that is loving, affirming, and cognizant of the fact that I am making this choice so I can have a better life–and that I am empowered in that choosing. It’s okay to ask me questions, to need me to do specific things for a meal or bring an extra snack. That's fine, as long as it’s recognized that I am a person, I am doing my best, and I would rather be supported than looked at sadly. 

I have enough days and thoughts filled with that frustration on my own. 

For me, any trip to an unfamiliar grocery store almost always ends in tears as I walk back and forth across the store searching high and low for foods I can eat. Before I go out to eat I have to meticulously comb through the menu trying to find options that will suit my needs. If I don’t get enough sleep, or if my stomach has had a particularly rough time, it’s often a struggle to have energy for a full day of classes. I can rarely buy things from bake sales, and often have to turn down offers of food from well-meaning people, all with the fear that I’m hurting their feelings. I have to jam snacks and my lunch into my backpack and lunchbox because it’s hard to find snacks quickly that I can eat. I have to meticulously plan so many aspects of my day and my life around food so that I have what I need to eat. I can develop a sensitivity to a new food at any given moment, leading to new painful symptoms. 

I understand how hard this is because I live it every single day, and it’s difficult and frustrating and sometimes I stare at my roommate’s ice cream in the freezer and wish I could eat it. What I want, more than anything though, is the understanding that I didn’t choose this illness, that I don’t want it, but I have it and can’t do anything to make it go away. I have made choices to the best of my ability, and to the best of my attempts to have control over my body, to have a better quality of life.

Yes, I am sick. Yes, I go to the doctor more than others my age. Yes, I have a weirdly specific diet. But I’m also still a 20 year old girl. I want to experience the fullness of the world and of my life as best I can–and I may sometimes need more support than others, but I don’t need their pity. I am so much more than my diagnosis. I cannot make this go away, but I can learn to live with it, to cope with it, and to be loved as a person with an illness, not an illness as a person. 

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by JP Pello and Elisabeth Kay

“A love letter to female friendships.”

This is the title of my favorite Spotify playlist. Within it:

This Is What Makes Us Girls. Lana Del Rey.

True Blue. boygenius. 

Secrets from a Girl (Who’s Seen it All). Lorde.

Feels Like. Gracie Abrams. 

Clay Pigeons. Michael Cera. 

Gold Dust Woman. Fleetwood Mac. 

My secret recipe for curating a playlist for someone you love:

• Extract 3, or 7, or maybe 95 of the most gut-wrenchingly special songs. Sacred songs.
  • The song that would pulsate through your car on the first spring day that you rode with the windows down. Max volume. Bass boosted. 

• The song that would ripple and echo off the walls of the Urban Outfitters fitting room. Low-rise, medium-wash jeans. Shrieks and cheers and whistles of praise. “God, I love my friends.”

• The song with lyrics that rip and tear at clippings of your past and pierce them to a mental corkboard. You recommend it to everyone because it’s easier than talking about what actually happened last year. 

• Uproot these songs from their archives and lay them out in front of you. 

• Intertwine and overlay these songs. Let the lyrics bleed into each other. There is no correct, systematic order, just intuition. Maybe whatever feels aesthetically pleasing to you. Maybe there’s something spiritual about a Lana Del Rey to-house music pipeline. A seance of silk bows, champagne glitter, and clasped hands. 

• Name it. Dedicate it to someone, something, or some vague, nuanced feeling.
  • Something fleeting, but memorable: Carrie Bradshaw in season four of Sex and The City, the summer of 2018, a latte with oat milk and two pumps of vanilla. 

• Or maybe something so big and vibrant and ever-changing that it seeps through the constraints of time: A love letter to my female friends. When curating a playlist of such sacred nature, treat it with delicacy. It deserves i’s dotted with hearts, a label woven with care and consideration. Pretty packaging. 

• Play it habitually. Let each song unravel onto the next until it pools out in front of you.
  • Treat it like it’s a prayer before a meal. A blessing before the bar. A 4 p.m. post-class ritual. A reminder. A handwritten sticky note. A hand that holds back your hair. “Two caesar salads and a basket of fries, please!” Casual affection. A love letter to female friendships. 

Written by Delaney Pipon

Edited by Julia Maynard and Kate Castello

“Wow, you’re so brave” 

I hear it all the time when I tell someone I don’t drink. I’ve never been drunk, not even tipsy. At 13, I took my first sip of beer, which I immediately spat out. I remember hating the way it made my mouth feel, and how horrible it smelled and tasted. 

Growing up, I was always around alcohol. It was never bad or toxic, but my parents were big party people—and with parties, came drinking. My parents spent hours playing loud music and dancing, yelling out the lyrics to songs as if they were twenty-something-year-olds in a frat basement. 

I followed in their footsteps and became a party fiend. I loved the rush of dancing with my friends to classics like Cobra Starship’s “You Make Me Feel…” playing over the speakers. Yet, I never felt the need to have a beer in my hand.

Surrounded by alcohol my whole life caused the desire for a drink to fade away. The urge to get drunk and forget about the world never intrigued me. I can have fun without it.

We’re related to Bacardi, the rum company. Because my dad has worked there since before I was born, we always have rum/Bacardi-owned products scattered around the house. Our chairs are branded with the bat logo, along with our cups, shoes, and umbrellas. I always thought having this family connection was cool and a fun fact to share during icebreakers; but as I got older, it felt more like a burden because of my choice not to drink. 

When I got to college that feeling changed quickly. It was no longer just grown adults drinking, but people my age. The desire to get drunk took over everyone, but it never got to me. I felt like the fakest college student. 

I turned 21 this past year, and the feeling of staying sober felt worse and worse. All my friends get crazy at parties and we go out almost every weekend now. Although I have fun, there’s always a part of me that feels bad for not allowing myself to be a “real” 21-year-old. 

It doesn’t help that people make comments about the choices I make. Everyone always says that they could never do what I do. I know they don’t mean it rudely, but it always comes off that way. I don’t want to tell these strangers my entire life story to explain why I don’t drink, and it’s annoying that I have to. I get called brave, but I know they mean crazy. 

I asked my sister if she’d ever thought about this before. She says she feels the same way. I also brought it up to my cousin who just entered high school and started partying. She says she doesn’t like alcohol at all because of her growing up around it. 

People in high school and college drink because they aren’t supposed to. They love the rush of doing it secretly. At the end of the day, everyone loves to break the rules in some sort of way. 

Alcohol was never a mystery to me. I understand it more than most people probably do. I know how to take care of someone, and I know what not to mix. This is what I was taught growing up. 

In some ways, I thought I was letting my family down. I’ve tried to get into the “party drinking mode” before, but the thought of being drunk around other drunk people made the urge instantly go away. I know I would feel anxious, which defeats the whole purpose of drinking. Still, I wonder, “If my parents were not this way, would I drink?” “If my dad was not related to Bacardi, would I drink?” Those questions will never be answered, but as long as I stay true to myself, I‘ll be okay. 

All I need is good music, good vibes, and a nice cold Sprite in my hand to have a good time.

Written by Isa Gattamorta

Edited by Sydney Mahmood and Kate Castello