My clearest childhood memory is when I held my sister for the first time. She was so small and frail, bundled in soft white blankets. Her hair was dark and wispy, peeking underneath those knitted beanies they give out at the hospital. She was so tiny. 

I often wonder how much of my personality is shaped by my birth order. How much of me, if not all, is due to the fact that I was born first? 

Being the eldest daughter meant having to miss sleepovers and birthday parties because Mom was always working late and I needed to babysit. It was okay though because I had offered: I was free help and she needed as much of it as she could get. Her hair was thinning and falling out from all the stress and weight she was carrying around day to day, so as soon as I was able, I lifted the load.  

It was never too much to handle. It is never too much to handle. 

When I was a freshman in high school I was waking up at four in the morning to help my sisters get dressed and pack lunches from the meal plan I curated at the beginning of each week because I wanted to be helpful. That is always the goal: to be helpful–lessen the load until your back is practically breaking but you can’t let anyone know because this was a choice, your choice. And I chose to write notes in my sister’s lunchboxes with stupid jokes on them just like my mom used to do for me.

Being the eldest daughter means that I plan every birthday party. I buy the decorations a week in advance and I stay up until five in the morning to set them up. I bake a cake from scratch every year. I send out the invitations, I follow up with parents, and I make it happen.

I have never had a birthday party. 

I didn’t have my first sleepover until I was fourteen.

I have to order my own birthday cake. 

Being the eldest daughter means that I teach what no one ever taught me so that my sisters don’t face the same struggles I did so that they are spared of the embarrassment I experienced. No one ever taught me to do my hair but I’ve been doing my sister’s since I was ten. I just bought my twelve-year-old sister a basket of her own curly hair products as a Christmas gift with a tag that said “From Mom” on it.

Being the eldest means feeling like a parent and not like a sibling. I can’t tell my sisters about a school crush I have on a boy or why I’ve been crying for the past four days straight—I remind them to do homeworks and look over book reports and ask them why they didn’t finish their lunch. I had no one to look up to. I had no one to ask what to wear on a first date or how to put makeup on. No one to steal clothes from or ask for advice. I am meant to fill that role but how can I when I was never shown how?

I’ve come to realize that being the eldest means that I am never the one being surprised. I will always go above and beyond and kill myself bending over backward for people who would never lift a finger for me. I am always the listener and never the talker. I will always show up when you call. I will apologize when I never had to.

Being the eldest means that my mom hasn’t seen me cry in three years because I don’t want her to think I’m not doing well even if sometimes, I’m not. 

Being the eldest means that I felt like I abandoned them once I left for college—it seemed selfish to divorce my family and to even wonder what life was like without them constantly around; they had been my life’s purpose for so long. How could I possibly want freedom? Freedom feels like an exaggeration. Helping around was not a prison, but somewhere along the line of life, I traded my childhood at its expense.

I didn’t even realize how much of a childhood I wasn’t afforded until it was over. It’s almost as if when I held my sister for the first time, the door to childhood and childhood things began to close. I didn’t watch it close. How could I? I was too busy making sure my siblings’ childhood was magical, making sure it was everything mine wasn’t. I was so busy that I forgot I was only seven or eight or nine years old. I was so busy that I couldn't even try to stick my foot out to stop it. It had closed and locked and all I could do was stare at the wooden slate, reaching and longing for what I didn’t even realize I’d lost. 

And I don’t expect an apology because it was my choice. 

But I was seven. I was a seven-year-old little girl who just wanted to be helpful and thrived on feeling appreciated. 

And now in my embraced role as the eldest daughter, I am supposed to be perfect all the time but I won’t ever feel good enough. I am the role model who always needs to put on a brave face. I have to be the person that everyone leans on, but who am I supposed to lean on? Who am I supposed to trust? I’m the person who is never allowed to break… but I have been cracking for years. Surely, a seven-year-old isn’t meant to carry the same weight as her thirty-seven-year-old mother.

But I don’t want an apology. 

In my role as the eldest daughter, I put others first, I worry extensively,  I help with homework, I attend the concerts, I make the schedules, I plan the birthdays, I wrap the Christmas gifts, I make the reservations, I do the school supply shopping, I drive to and from, I know every in and out of every single person of the household, and I get absolutely nothing in return…

But I don’t need an apology.

I am a walking one-man show but I accept it with all that it comes because who even am I if not the eldest daughter?

Written by Camille Ware

Edited by Lauren Myers and Kate Castello

I notice it on the second week of Christmas break. 

My parents are both working late, so I volunteer to make dinner, putting together the same soup my mother used to make whenever I was sick as a child. My little brother has been convinced to set the table, and I blink when I see the plates he took out. “When did we get new plates?”

He stares at me and then looks down at the plates in his hands. They are white and have a pretty border of green swirls. The plates I remember were completely blue. 

“Oh. Dad dropped one last month so mom got a new set.”

“I didn’t notice before.” How had I not noticed? 

My little brother shrugs, “I mean, it’s just plates. You don’t live here anymore, so it’s not like you knew we switched them.”

And then he walks away to finish setting the table like he didn’t just shoot me in the chest.

I don’t know when it truly hit me that I didn’t live in my childhood home anymore. Maybe it was when I started saying I was “going to my parent’s house for the holidays” instead of just saying I was going home. Maybe it was when I bought my own blender instead of stealing my family’s old one. Maybe it happened the second I stepped into my freshman-year dorm. 

But I haven’t lived in that house for more than a few weeks for over a year now, which probably means that I need to start moving on.

I’ve been trying to define the word home, recently. When I was a kid, home just meant the physical location. I used to have these vivid nightmares where my childhood home would catch fire, and they scared me more than any monsters under my bed. I used to think it took having a physical, permanent place to stay that made a home. 

The past three years of my life have proven that wrong. I’ve bounced around and around, from two different dorms to a summer internship apartment in a different city, to finally my own apartment. But even that won’t last forever. Now, I’m looking at graduate schools all across the country, and not a single one is even in this state. 

But in every single place, I’ve still had a home. 

My mother still has the string of photos from my graduation on the living room floor; the posters that decorated my first-year dorm hang in my new apartment; my second-year dorm probably still has the stains on the sink from dying my roommate’s hair black; I have the flowers that decorated my bedroom this summer pressed between the pages of an old journal. I bring people into my new apartment, take photos of every event and party, frame my friend’s smiles with the lens, and immortalize my love for them. I’ll bring them into whatever place I end up next, and place the old photos on the fridge, leaving room for new ones too. 

I still don’t think I can properly define home; how do you define something that stretches through time, that exists in fifteen different places, that changes every step of the way, that walks the line between a physical place and a concept you can only hold on your heart? Sure, I don’t live with my parents anymore, but it’s still home. The old porch light will still glow in the distance when I come back; it will always be there when I need it to be. Every time I leave for some new place, I’ll reach into the lamp and pull out a little bit of its flame, and I'll use it to warm my new hearth. 

It’s not a true definition, but maybe it’s a start.

Written by Emma Moran

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Elisabeth Kay

iPad kids are the bane of modern existence, for parents and bystanders alike. They affect everyone with their temper tantrums and sheer inability to exist without constant instant gratification. This is a phenomenon that didn’t quite exist when we were kids: we were young enough not to remember a life without technology and yet it wasn’t so ingrained in our culture that we couldn’t step away from it. I believe that Gen Z was graced with the perfect era to grow up in, but that is no reason to gloat. Unfortunately, for all future generations, that won’t be their reality.

I do, however, find that people overly villainize this group of kids. Sure, they can be hard to please and massively greedy, but they didn’t put themselves in that position—it was capitalism and corporate greed that stuck a tablet or phone in the hands of any child who would accept it. I also think that they will grow up to loathe technology and actively work against it, just as Gen Z has. They just don’t have the means to yet. For the time being, I will avenge the iPad kid, with some firsthand knowledge I’ve so graciously been able to experience. 

My first piece of technology was a Kindle Fire tablet, that is if we discount the desktop computer and cable television; the Kindle was mine and mine only. It wasn’t connected to the internet and was merely used to play games; I don’t even think it had a camera. There was a kind of subtle bliss that came with the Kindle, where I was still disconnected but also didn’t feel left out. I had a few more iterations of the tablet before I received the ‘godforsaken’ iPad, which had less parental control and more online access. It also came with iMovie, and my creative life blossomed.

I became an instant filmmaker. My friends and I found so much joy in making movie trailers and silly videos. Eventually, I had my parents set up a YouTube account for me to share my creations with the world. I know that nowadays, it is hard to limit YouTube access and what is safe for children on the platform, but I relished it in my two followers (my parents). I’m also so glad I was able to make this archive of videos, full of childhood wonder, that are still up today. Every now and then I revisit CupcakeFrenzy17 and smile, reminiscing on the kind of secluded glory that children sadly don’t feel today. Whenever I come across a viral clip of a child posting a video, whether it is a fake vlog or a GRWM video, I think back to myself and thank god there were no weirdos and haters in my comment section. Why can’t we just let kids be kids?

This is why I will always defend this new generation. They have been set up for failure, and it is all our doing. I gawk when people say that all childhood creativity has been lost on this new generation because I know they haven’t actually been perceiving kids. Over the summer, I worked at an overnight camp where kids came for at least a week. They slept in cabins with screen doors and played outside, unplugged from the virtual world. This is not a new phenomenon either, because when I was younger, I went to this camp, phoneless and all. You’d be surprised at the number of kids who came to this camp of their own volition, who wanted to escape the pressure and consistency of the internet and constant communication. Just because it may be hard for them to disconnect—one of my campers asked to hold my phone just to “remember what it felt like” on their last night—doesn’t mean they don’t want it. 

I worked with middle schoolers and soon-to-be freshmen in high school, and I could see how they flourished being away from technology. At this point, it is on parents and all adults to bear the burden of what we have done to kids. This is not a problem we can get mad at them for; that would be irresponsible. So next time you think this generation is “so lazy and uncreative,” think first about who and what made them that way. Gen Alpha, you will be okay.

Written by Leighton Curless

Edited by Gabi Amorim & Elisabeth Kay

I’ve always clung to labels. I collect them like prized medallions and pin them across my chest. A redhead. A twenty-something girl. A Libra. A lover of Fleetwood Mac, specifically Stevie. A perfectionist and a procrastinator, somehow simultaneously. 

I just love the notion that people perceive me in some sense. As something or other. I know that spelling out the concept on paper makes it sound redundant, but the core of my high school beliefs boiled down to one absolute truth: to be seen, is to be loved. 

When I was a senior in high school, I received the superlative “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” I was eighteen, freshly committed to Pitt, and planning on pursuing a career path that made most adults ask if I had a backup option. I was begging for someone to give me another prompt to follow, and those six, tacky words provided the perfect mold to cement my senior-year persona. Six words fashioned into a barbed-wire fence that I could herd my mess of complexities into. I practiced a permanent, toothy smile that never ceased to feel forced. 

Sure, the superlative was somewhat true. I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, and I will most likely always have something to add to a conversation… But what about the other side of the coin? What about the part of me that dreamt of clawing my way out of my small-minded, suburban bubble? What about the part of me that was aggressively opinionated, unsatisfied, and most contrastingly, unhappy? It was left to rot under the guise of a sickly sweet pushover, a school mascot for everything I used to go against. 

A couple of months that felt like years whirled together and spat me out in a graduation gown. I offered teary goodbyes to girls that I had spoken to twice and teachers that I was never very fond of. As far as emotional depth goes, I was barely skimming the surface, but at least I had made it into the pool. 

Within that agonizing purgatory sandwiched between graduation and college, “How do you feel now that you’ve graduated?” was a commonly used icebreaker. 

To which, without fail, I would always respond, “Bittersweet,” through gritted teeth… even though the bitter-to-sweet ratio was a solid 20:80. How ironic that I forced myself to be the brightest in the room until the socially appropriate response was to be sad. Those six words plagued me with an inner monologue that functioned like a PR team, keeping my record of polite conversation clean and consistent. 

That is, up until college.

When I got to college, many things changed, and most things didn’t. In the span of four months, I had lost any semblance of familiarity, and in return, gained ten years’ worth of friends. When adults asked if I had a backup plan, I started saying no. 

But I was still putty fresh out of the casing: shapeless and impressionable. Who am I if I’m not perceived as something tangible? Surely that decision doesn’t belong to me. 

For the first time in years, I had no veil to conceal my mess. What began as something purely internal, soon trickled out and solidified as something physical. Laundry routinely blanketed my dorm floor. With each passing Wednesday, I was one half-off bottle of wine closer to emptying my savings account. My thumb had adapted to five-second intervals between each methodical flick, muscle memory on par with my doom scrolling. 

How to be successful by twenty-five! You should be successful by twenty-five. Flick. Get your Summer body by March! Flick. Get ready with me! Gym. Study. Green juice. Gym. Coffee. Class. Gym. Flick. 

With each methodical flick of the thumb, I was hooked on the perception of being methodical myself. I was hooked on hair matted into sleek ponytails. A glossy makeup routine disguised as natural beauty and minimalism. I was plagued by this Clean Girl Aesthetic, this virtual perception of girlhood rooted in consumerism that I couldn’t afford to consume. Finally, I could pour my mess into another mold. 

That is, up until I couldn’t. 

I tried relentlessly to slick back my hair in that polished fashion that appears so seamless online, only to find that it reminded me of middle school, dunking my curly hair under the shower nozzle so that I could try to comb the ringlets out of it. I had spent years chasing a cure to my dissatisfaction, only to realize that I was trapped in an endless loop of unattainability. 

Now, if there’s one label I’ll cling to, it’s that I’m a writer. And ever since, I’ve been able to romanticize my mess. A half-off bottle of wine is now a small price to pay for three hours’ worth of stories, and a senior superlative is now nothing but six, tacky words.

Written by Delaney Pipon

Edited by Renee Arlotti and Kate Castello

I never really understood why it was hard to find love in a city, especially one like Pittsburgh which has many universities. I finally decided to enter the dating scene here a few months ago and boy, is it a marathon. I’ve realized that finding love in this city is not my problem; it’s finding someone who wants a relationship. Rivaling with passing organic chemistry with an A or surviving sorority recruitment with your identity intact, finding someone who might just want to maybe, possibly start a relationship with you is impossible.

I had this conversation with my girlfriends repeatedly, and we all attempted to answer the same question: is love dead in Pittsburgh? It left me thinking for days and I finally came up with an answer: sort of. Now, that sounds like a cop-out, but hear me out! I find that the love I am searching for is too hard to ask of a college man. We are only so young and in my experience, a college man doesn’t want to find the head-over-heels love of his life. Rather, he wants to find someone that could have interest in him and then once you display that interest, he freezes up and calls it quits, leaving you and your dignity thrown into the trash like a SPAM email. 

Even worse are the dating apps, you see a guy you think is cute and he has in his dating intentions “Short-term relationship, open to long” or even worse than that, “Long-term relationship, open to short,” which both sound promising. But, most of the time, they’re not. Instead, they are just words on a screen without the intention of actually meaning much. Entering the dating world is being thrown into the biggest game of catfish, but with words, not pictures. Anyone can say anything they want on their profiles and if you are new to the dating scene like I was, you’re going to believe it all. I believed everything and anything a man told me about their life or their intentions. God, I even believed a man when he told me that he still liked me after he said he wasn’t exclusive with only me. Was I wrong to believe that? Absolutely.

My experience with love (or lack thereof) in Pittsburgh has been a convoluted one. Every time my trust is betrayed, I am brought back to the same starting point: is love dead in Pittsburgh? Now, I can only speak on my experiences– as a man looking to date other gay men–but it is eerily similar to that of my girlfriends seeking out straight men. In fact, a girlfriend of mine was detailing to me her past situationship and how it went from the obsession–the texting every day, the asking how your day was, the getting to know her roommates, and the meeting of his friends and hers–to complete radio silence. How is it that a beautiful, intelligent woman like her can get stood up by a man who in fact, started it all? 

Even worse, another girlfriend of mine was recently victim of a love bomber: one who showers you with constant love, affection, and adoration to ultimately gain control of you and the relationship. Once she ended things with him, he was quickly back on the dating apps to find his next person to assail. This is exactly how both cases, the obsessor and the love bomber, can get you and your emotional stability wrapped around their fingers. Right when you display interest, it’s game over and you are thrown back into the sea of eligible bachelors, drowning as each wave is thrown your way.

So where do we go from here as young adults joining or still stuck in the dating pool? Is love really dead in Pittsburgh? When entering (or drowning in) the dating pool, you should remember these three things: protect your peace, have fun with it, and always make sure to listen to your girlfriends (or your boyfriends if they are at all competent to the issue, which is rare I might add). We are only this young once, so make the most of it. Now go and call your girlfriends, they can probably relate to this one too.

Written by Will Beddick

Edited by Ruby Kolik & Elisabeth Kay

The first time I rode through that infamous tunnel into Pittsburgh I made my mom blast “Heroes” by David Bowie. With the windows rolled down and a smile on my face, I felt like I was finally having my perfect Perks of Being a Wallflower moment, finally having that quintessential, picturesque, coming-of-age epiphany. 

For a long time, to know me was to know that I loved coming-of-age movies—they seemed to fill an insatiable need in my soul, and I thought that I would never get enough of them. But lately, I’ve noticed that they’ve started to fall flat, a gulf growing between these films and me, as my age and my experiences move further and further away from those of high school coming-of-age movies. There’s a kind of sadness there, a deep loss that I never really considered about growing up, a letting go of films that had been my home for so long, that had been tied so closely to my identity. My twentieth birthday is just around the corner, and I’ve never really been a person who felt weird about their birthday. But this year I do. This year it feels like a final marker. A distinct moment that I’m no longer a teenager, that I’m no longer coming-of-age. It feels like a reminder that it's time—time to let go of teenagehood, to let go of coming-of-age. 

And there’s a kind of brokenness that comes with that, an acknowledgment of the beauty I found in so many of these films, a beauty I still see so clearly but isn’t so perfect for me anymore. These films are now someone else’s, they are past memories for me, instead of current experiences. Those vivid moments, of Charlie in the tunnel (Perks of Being a Wallflower), of the Dead Poets running through the leaves (Dead Poets Society), of Earl and Greg and Rachel sitting on the curb eating ice cream (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), aren’t for me anymore in the way they once were. They are no longer what’s directly in front of me, but rather, what’s behind me, a reminder of the love, loss, and laughter that was teenagehood. A reminder of something I’m endlessly grateful for, but no longer so completely a part of. 

And I feel it. That growing up, that confusion and pain, in my viewing habits. In the films I now gravitate towards. I find myself now being more enraptured by films like Cha Cha Real Smooth, Francis Ha, and Shiva Baby. That feeling of wandering, of finding out who you are—that feeling that is so ever-present in coming-of-age movies but that grows and changes and presents itself in different ways the older you grow. A lot of the same emotions are there, but they’ve morphed into different forms, forms not grounded so much in high school, but in the wider world, in college, in relationships, in jobs, and so much more. My world is bigger now, so are my worries, and so are my dreams. That kind of precipice I felt myself standing on when I was so enraptured with coming-of-age movies, I now find myself in the midst of—I’m not waiting for that first step—I’ve taken it, and I’m trying to figure it out along the way.

Growing up is really hard. There’s loss and there’s pain and there’s responsibility, and there are so many other hard things that you never even expect. But there are also so many beautiful things. As you grow, you accumulate pain, but you also accumulate beauty—there is a wider capacity for hurt, but also a wider capacity for love and joy. And all of that is something that I’m very actively learning, as I begin to see differently so many different films that have meant so much to me, as I distance myself from the intense closeness with which I once held them. And as I go in search of something new.

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Priyanka Iyer & Kate Castello

It’s hard to forget the first time I got catcalled. I was only 14. 

That summer I was working in Queens, New York to get volunteer hours, and the hot sun beating down on the city pavement was making me sweat more than anyone else in my group. While walking to the nearest YMCA to shower, a man at least three times my age looked me up and down and made a suggestive comment about my body.

I was stunned. 

I had heard about catcalling in TV and movies, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that anyone could say something so degrading to a person in real life. Even now, sitting in a classroom in Pittsburgh, over 300 miles from Queens, and that man, his comment makes me feel uncomfortable. 

It makes me feel unsafe. 

Later, as I stood in the shower at the YMCA, I turned his remark over and over in my head, my anger growing. Who is he to think he has the right to comment on my body? How fucking dare he?

I knew my anger was useless—it hadn’t stopped men in the past, and it certainly wouldn’t stop them now. If anything, I’d just put myself further in harm's way. 

But that didn’t stop me from getting angry when the catcalling got more frequent when I moved to the city for college. It didn’t stop me from getting angry when guys touched my friends at parties where they were barely sober enough to stand—expecting my friends to like it, expecting them to be grateful. And it certainly didn’t stop me from getting angry when two men denied me the surgery that would fix my agonizing back and shoulder pain—not to mention my self-esteem. 

My chest has always been an insecurity of mine. I know so many girls wish for big boobs, but I’d wish mine away in a heartbeat if it were possible. It always feels like a silly complaint—“Oh, you mean the body part people constantly talk about being attracted to? The one that would make so many people feel more feminine and serve as affirmation to them? That one? You must have it so tough.”

They’ve never made me feel feminine, they’ve only ever made me feel exposed. I can be fully dressed and still feel completely naked. 

And don’t get me wrong, sometimes they make me feel pretty or desirable—I’m 21 and vain after all—but most days I fantasize about being free. 

One day I got tired of fantasizing, I wanted it to be my reality. So I made some appointments and tried not to get my hopes up. 

I answered the same questions over and over: 

Where did you say you were experiencing pain? My back. My shoulder. My neck. I get headaches, my bra straps cut into my skin. 

Have you tried getting fitted for a proper bra? Yes. Of course. 

Family history of it? No.

Do you take any pain medication? Definitely more than I should be.  

I got tired of hearing myself talk about what felt like phantom pain. 

Some days, the pain is barely noticeable, but other days I can’t turn onto my side in bed because my back feels as if someone is sticking thousands of needles in it. Some days I feel like I could live like this for the rest of my life (though I’d be Advil’s number one customer) and other days I cry and know surgery is my only option for finding peace in my body. 

It’s been years since I’ve looked at my body and not seen angry red lines across my chest where straps and underwires chafe against my skin. I’ve tried every bra out there, underwire, no underwire, bralette, sports, etc. Nothing makes the pain—or my self-esteem—better. 

So, I met a surgeon. And I stood there in a cold office while a nurse took photos of my bare chest on her iPad (yes, an iPad, as if the topless photos weren’t uncomfortable enough, you had to take them on an iPad?) all in the hopes of getting help. I felt like a stranger watching myself from above, cringing at the awkward silence and the way I tried to crack my back nonchalantly—anything for a little relief. 

That day I realized just how badly I needed surgery. The nurse knew I needed it. The surgeon knew I needed it. And yet, 

My insurance company needed less than two days to decide I didn’t qualify.

 I sat, dumbfounded as I read their decision, tears already rolling down my cheeks before I’d even opened the letter. I looked at the name of the doctor—the man—who had made the decision. A man who had never met me, who had only seen photos of my condition and didn’t know what it was like to have to get used to pain caused by two fucking sandbags on your chest being pulled down by gravity every day. 

My anger came back, familiar but fresh, as if it had been locked away and never seen the sun in the first place.  

But my anger wasn’t only aimed at this insurance doctor, he was only half of this messed-up equation. My surgeon, a man who’d swapped chemistry stories with me and told me he could see how uncomfortable I was, that he’d like to help me—chose an amount to take off that he knew wouldn’t pass insurance requirements. But he wouldn’t go higher, “I don’t want you coming back in here and asking for a boob job because you think you’re too flat now. How do you think that makes me look?” Even after I assured him I’d 1000% rather be flat-chested than be in this much pain and hate my body so much. But he thought he knew my body better than me. 

These men assumed I would get over it. They assumed that I would want these boobs later on regardless of my pain, because what else is a girl good for, right? They assumed I would be grateful to them for saving me from a life-altering surgery I’d dreamed about since I was 14. 

My anger cooled into obsidian resentment. I resented people who’d never have to go through this, who didn’t know this pain. I resented the two male doctors for making decisions on my behalf because they thought they knew better. But god—I resented myself so much more. 

I didn’t look in a full-length mirror for two days after I got rejected. I showered with my eyes closed. I wore baggy T-shirts and two sports bras. I couldn’t think about what could have been, but my body was a permanent reminder. 

It’s now been several months since I was rejected, and I’d be lying if I said I was over it. Every few days, I remember this is the way my body will have to remain and I spiral into a fresh hell. The other day I sat for too long and couldn’t fall asleep that night because my lower back was on fire. Somedays, I can’t get out of bed. Call me dramatic all you want—I know it's just boobs—but really, it's my comfort and self-esteem. It’s my goddamn peace of mind. 

 I don’t know what it’s like to wear a sundress without feeling like I’m showing too much skin. I don’t date or let people see my body. I don't trust my own judgment, constantly asking if my top is too low-cut. 

I don't know who I am or if I will ever know, until I have this surgery.

But for now, I know I have to live with the decision two men made for me. 

Written by Kate Castello

Edited by Belle O’Hara and Elisabeth Kay

More often than not, you’ll probably find me with a bright smile on my face, laughing at a joke my friend made, giddily sharing a new song I found, or literally jumping up and down when I see a dog on the street. As a kid, my parents always told me I was their sunshine, I served to light up their world; and all my life I’ve carried that with me, trying to be the light and love in everyone’s life. Through that period, it looked very much like being a people pleaser: always playing the role of the happy and uplifting person in a situation, even when I felt the opposite. It felt as if, my best-served purpose, was to always be the positive one, but in doing that I was harming myself, and ultimately harming my relationships. 

For a long time, the shards of my heart felt like they were held together with scotch tape, gradually peeling and falling away, barely holding anything together. Anxiety and depression are looming figures in my life, ones that are present even after I started going to therapy and taking medication. I allowed few others to see how it impacted me, afraid I would be unlovable, discarded, and no longer wanted if I couldn’t constantly be positive. I tried to hide the broken pieces of myself, afraid I would be too much, that I simply would stop fitting into people’s lives. I tried again and again to be this source of light when I myself felt surrounded by darkness. And eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t hold the weight. My parents, my wonderful, lovely, supportive parents were the first to see this, to catch me as I started to fall and help pick me back up, again and again, each time I tripped. And they never failed to remind me that even as I struggled, I was still their sunshine.

And eventually, that struggle and that pain I had tried to conceal spilled out into my relationships outside of home, into my friendships. And let me tell you, it is hard to be vulnerable, to let others see that you’re struggling, especially when you want to hide it, especially when you’re trying to hold back this dam of pain to create room for the happiness of others. But I also know, and am reminded every day, that my best relationships were formed and/or became deeper, because I allowed myself to be vulnerable, because I found the best friends in the entire world who encouraged me to be vulnerable, who sat with me in the pain, who saw the tears I tried to hide, who had my back when I didn’t know if I could still stand. And who have made my life so much better because of it, have loved me better, and have in turn taught me to love deeper. Morgan, Celia, Ellie, Davin, Madeleine, Kylie, Hannah, and Lauren, oh how I love you so, I don’t know how I got especially lucky to be loved so well by all of you. The people who deserve you will stay, and they will make your life shine brighter because of it. 

The truth is, when I finally let myself be who I truly was, I was able to love others more authentically. Allowing myself to share more of my pain and struggle let me have brighter joy, a fuller heart, and more genuine relationships. Learning that I didn’t need to always be the most positive person in the room lifted so much weight from my back, and allowed me to fall into the love of all the incredible people around me. When I got to college, I had that desire to hide away, but I was reminded of how much better friendships are when built on the foundation of presenting your true self. When Alison and Kaitlyn walked into my life, and quickly became two of my favorite people in the world, I gradually let my guard down and allowed myself to just be me, and our relationship is much stronger and lifegiving because of it. Existing at the fullest of who I am makes me feel more positive than trying to hide behind a mask of joy ever did.

But that vulnerability, that lowering of the mask, is still incredibly hard for me. My first instinct is still to opt for the positive response, to mask the pain I might be feeling–my anxiety and depression haven’t left me, they’ve just become better treated, better medicated, but not gone. It’s still often very hard for me to share big negative feelings, it takes more mental encouragement and effort on my part, but speaking it, even when it’s hard, always makes me feel better than the weight of keeping it in ever did. So, I keep making the decision, to be truly myself, to let that love in, so that I too can continue to offer love. I remind myself every day that I am loved, valued, and deserve to take up space. So here I am taking up that space, and letting the light in.

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Julia Maynard and Elisabeth Kay

My brother, Nicholas, started to tolerate me 2 years ago. Before that, I was the snitch younger sister who would run to my parents over the smallest of arguments. If you have an older brother, you understand the complex situation at hand. They humble you, insult you, and say possibly the most horrific one-liners that will haunt you at all the wrong moments. A sibling relationship will hurt you; he is probably one of the only people who has seen the cruelest side of me through our epic screaming matches where we both end up with tears and somehow a larger ego than we had before the match. We have seen each other at low points: he slacked off in high school and lied to my parents, and I have had my fair share of tantrums and selfish moments.

 I could tell a stranger on the street my entire life story from birth and would expect it to be reciprocated, whereas my brother has just started telling me stories from when he was in eighth grade. He’s private and reserved, shy and cautious. I’m loud and obnoxious, simply a younger sibling with a need to be the center of attention. 

For a long time, I longed for an older sister. Most of my friends have sisters and their bond with them seems unlike any other. As I spent more time with my brother over the pandemic and in the moments he was back from college, I have grown out of that want, maybe even becoming jealous of my brother as I watched him from afar. 

I’ve grown up with him, I’ve seen his weird phases of using an absurd amount of gel in his hair and being a bit obsessed with Eminem. But unfortunately for me, through those phases, I always looked up to him. I always believed he was the coolest and had the most eclectic group of friends and interests. When he eventually went to college, it felt as if someone who guided me through parts of high school was gone and I had to create new experiences for myself that would allow me to be half as cool. 

During the separation, we would be the closest we’ve ever been, I would call him crying over a situation while he gave me a brutal tough love speech, which was NOT necessarily what I needed at the moment. When he would call, it would only be to force me to listen to a new album or watch a TV show that would apparently alter my perspective on life. As much as I hate him for it now, most of my entertainment is heavily influenced by him. I have fond memories of us being in my room listening to the BROCKHAMPTON trilogy while he described the details of each of the songs. He has always wanted to share all of his very well-thought-out ideas with me on any topic and I think that’s beautiful. 

After one of our biggest fights ever, which of course I can’t remember what about, we discussed how we would get along for the rest of the summer since we were both home. It clicked to me, and somewhat him, that a sibling relationship is turbulent. It will continue to have its highs and lows because we know that we are always going to be present in each other's lives even when one of us is going through a moody phase; and in all fairness, it would most likely be me.

Written by Julia Maynard

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Elisabeth Kay

I measure intense emotion by way of heartache. In the same way someone might cry from happy tears, sad tears, or angry tears, I ache internally for all these reasons and more. I sit in my room and ache for my 16 year old self. It is a lonely, deeply dreadful feeling. I try watching a show, rereading and annotating an old book, listening to my favorite songs, but to no avail. I start to think I will have this chest pain for the rest of my life, that I am just going to be a girl with a pit in her heart. If I take a second to think about how many times I’ve felt this way in the past, I would remember that it does go away– it always comes back, but it does always go away. 

I feel a bittersweet ache for my family. They will always reside in the largest chunk of my heart. I try to imagine what my parents were really like when I was a child; consider what my memories of running through the botanic gardens on Yom Kippur were like for them. I worry about them constantly. I only wish to know about the good parts of their life. I wonder who they might have been at 19. I think about my brother and how I used to idolize him. I think about how he would dribble his soccer ball down the busiest street in Chicago, walking from summer camp to my mom’s office and how mad it would make me. I ache to think he is the same person he was and that I am the same person I was. 

I am so grateful that it nearly breaks me. Gratitude journals simply aren’t practical for girls like me because it would waste too much paper. Instead I am forced to think about how lucky I am to be alive which makes my body go into overdrive. This heartfelt ache extends to humankind as a whole. Seeing a family playing in the park or a stranger giving up their seat on the train is simply too sweet to stand.

I think about how I want to be loved and it hurts. I ruminate on the people from my past and I might as well be swallowing a wooden bench the way my insides twist and contort. There is a space in me designated for romantic love. I try to fill it with love for my family and friends – which I have an abundance of – but there is always a gap at the top. I wish I could fill it with knowledge, inside jokes with myself or photos on my phone, but it is only suited for one thing. My logical brain knows I’m not worried about its vacancy, but my body feels differently. Instead of being full of feeling like I was with my gratitude or thought towards my family, I am just empty. 

Sometimes I use my rage towards the men who have harmed me as motivation as I run on the treadmill. Anger makes me restless and when I’m restless, I need to understand it in my corporeal form. It is not enough to clench my fists, feel my face get red, and hold back tears. I have to let the rage bubble inside of me. It simply must burn a hole within me. 

My adolescence has been filled by these physical feelings. Maybe I’ll ache for my future self and she will look back and laugh at how foolish I am to know nothing else. Maybe she will feel joy in a different way. Maybe she will experience true love and it won’t be draining. Maybe she will think of our childhood and it won’t feel like a ceramic bowl has been shattered inside our body. No matter what happens in the future, I will never regret feeling my emotions for all the intensity they have to offer. Being emotional or sensitive is often portrayed as a weakness, but it's not. It is empowering to be in tune with your state and feel the fullness of being human.

Written by Clare Vogel

Edited by Diya Aneja and Elisabeth Kay