My heart is racing and my mind is spinning. My eyes dart around to grasp the objects near me, and I eventually shake my head to connect the pieces and disorient my thoughts. I can’t stand too close to someone because I’m afraid my mind will convince me to hit them, or say something heinous. Not because I want to, in fact I’m terrified that I will. My therapist told me that having thoughts this strong, makes me the least likely person in the room to do what they’re saying. I see the logic, but in those moments it doesn’t always feel that way. 

Regardless, I’m relieved to leave the situation. I walk along Forbes to get home. The lights and traffic match the energy of my mind, but sometimes I wish my walk could be quiet the way it was last year before I moved. The walk was long but I kind of liked that. Crossing the boulevard is a common indicator that the walk to campus is too long, but seeing the buildings downtown was peaceful to me. They are so far away but their size and shape are familiar, especially when the sun is setting behind them. When there were no cars waiting at the stoplights, I would stand in the middle of the road and examine them. I could feel the breeze and the air smelled familiar. 

I do like Forbes, I love being so close to campus and other restaurants and stores. CVS is a two minute walk off of Coltart, where there is a mini mart two more minutes away from there. No one seems to know about it, I’ve only been inside once but it was very enticing. Though there is a giant wall of vapes behind the desk that the cashier will try to convince you to buy no matter your age. The whole place is basically a hole in the wall, maybe that makes it less inviting than it seems. 

Sometimes when it is really late at night, or should I say where the night meets the morning, I walk home and stand at the end of the street. I look down Forbes where there are no cars to be found. It’s quiet and still. My eyes glaze over and the soft smile fades from my face. My mind is exerting a soft buzz and I don’t feel as cold anymore the more my body relaxes. I don’t think this is a normal relaxing stare, yet I’m thankful for it. It feels like a break.

Dissociation is your brain trying to protect you. It shuts down when your nervous system is overwhelmed, and I honestly think it’s a pretty cool response. It can either happen against your will or you can welcome it in times of need, which for me, is fairly often. 

But unfortunately people do notice, I am either on or I’m off. I’m checked in or I’m simply not there at all. If you were to ask me what I was wearing yesterday, I would not be able to tell you. I have trouble focusing in class and retaining information. I feel guilty not being able to remember a single thing I learned in classes I took in previous semesters, and not because it was a long time ago, but because there was nothing to remember at all. You could hand me the syllabus and it wouldn’t ring any bells. 

This semester has been better but in an odd way. I am actually enjoying my classes and I’ve started being more intentional about participation. I’ve been applying to grad schools, I’m doing well on the Speech Team and I started painting again. I found old paintings that I shoved under my bed years ago because I thought they were bad. She painted so many faces because she was good at it. Practice was still art to the untrained eye - even a rusty one.

I can see my past more clearly now. The younger versions of myself feel closer, I’m succeeding and have direction in my life. Younger me would be so happy to see herself now. She would think I’m really cool, artsy and almost a little too far out there. But that’s what makes her cool. Her face is interesting and she looks like she knows who she is.

But despite feeling more connected to myself, I still have those moments where I shut off. Yet, I’ve been more happy about it than usual. I get home after a long day, turn my soft lighting on and lay in my bed. My blankets and pillows are warm and inviting. My room smells sweet and refreshing for no particular reason, and it makes me happy that it’s a natural result of my living space. I go upstairs and sit in the living room with my roommates. I see my plants that I love; I started putting baby spider plants in empty diced tomatoes and Dr. Pepper cans. The flowers are growing a bit slowly, I’m not sure how long they will take to sprout up higher and bloom.

I’m able to lay on the couch and stare into space. My phone gets overstimulating and at some point I just get tired of looking at it, something that hasn’t really happened before. The room is still and my roommates are calm. My heart doesn't start racing when someone walks in, and there has yet to be any conflict. I’m able to turn off and stare. 

I have a boyfriend who is actually calm and consistent, and after five months I’ve finally started to truly relax. Alarms that never needed to go off in my head have quieted down, and I’ve started accepting the support he wants to give me. My mind and body will shut off around him too, especially when we’re in my room. I’m able to lay there and let myself detach. He just holds me. 

“You’re so loving,” I tell him. A formation of soft confusion and persistence coexists on his face. “Because I love you,” he says. 

I must’ve forgotten how simple love is meant to be.

Life has turned good again, and it’s odd to look at where I was last year. I felt trapped in the situation I was in, and I would’ve never thought I would be where I am today– let alone be able to choose my own future. There is joy in feeling secure again, but the farther away I am from that time, the more clearly I can see what actually happened. How many “what actually happened” moments I’ve already had…the event I convinced myself didn’t even happen at all, suddenly can’t be denied anymore. I want it to be number two but the number is three - I’m still processing one and two I am not ready for three, three simply does not exist. Three is not real and you don’t get to tell me that it is. And that’s when the dam will break. All the things my mind has tried to protect me from gushes out into a giant flood. The world feels like it’s grabbing me by my clothes and forces me to look at things dissociation helps me look away from. I panic thinking I’ve done something wrong and that I’m destroying other people's lives for feeling this much. Nightmares flare up again and I wear extra compressing clothes and layers to feel safe and calm. The first wave of anxiety hits, until the wave of raw hurt comes next. 

No more anxiety, no more dissociation– pure hopelessness. Crushed by the weight of continuous traumatic experiences, my bright future suddenly fading from view. I walk into my room to smell and feel good things again, but it’s empty and silent - number three really did happen. The walls are white. The carpet is brown. The blanket is red. My thoughts aren’t racing anymore. All the pieces are right in front of me, and there’s nothing to do about it except look at them.

I finally cry. 

I feel my body pushing me towards moving forward; moving on. It doesn’t force, it gently opens the door and waits for me to take the opportunity.

And fortunately, I am able to do so. I will feel relatively disabled for a few days when this happens but it doesn’t last forever. I become terrified that I am hurting others with my spiral, pulling away because I feel irritable and sad. When I go to apologize, I’m shocked when they tell me they didn’t even notice– I’m walking on eggshells for no reality driven reason. One barely noticeable shift in my mood isn’t going to ruin someone’s whole life, and I don’t realize that until someone points it out. Instead, they point out positive traits about me instead of using every minor change in my mood as proof of moral failure.

The people in my life now then say the most shocking yet grounding thing that I’ve finally accepted that they mean. 

“I know who you really are, Mia.”

Written by Mia Stack

Edited by Ella Romano and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Sydney Williams

The first time I ever heard winter arc, it tickled my brain like something funny. Two such polar words, pushed together, springing apart like repellent magnets. To me, winter consisted of staying desperately cocooned from the cold and wringing every last drop from the holiday spirit before the bitter trudge toward April. 

But this concept was incessant. It dredged up the caveats of a calorie deficit and an intense gym grind. It fixed the cold, dark winter months as the perfect cover under which to build a summer body, made of skin taught over muscle and lean limbs to reveal in the spotlighting sun.

Each year now, I see the winter arc resurface from the ever-churning, insidious mechanism of diet culture, and it doesn’t seem so foreign. The Earth’s rotation induces trends that endorse a never-ending cycle of self-improvement. But I ask myself: why do we value self-improvement over self-compassion, especially in the desolate depression of winter?

The standards that drive the winter arc train us to ignore the inherent cozy, restful intimacy of winter, its ripe opportunity for indulgence and connection, its holidays that centralize food - rich and homemade to family tradition - for the sake of fullness, not for functionality. Doesn’t it feel ridiculous to demonize a steaming mug of hot chocolate for its lack of protein? Criminal to reduce a roast dinner to a subtraction from our fitness goals? Perhaps we should consider that these vehicles of love and pleasure are healthier than the “discipline” it takes to deprive oneself of them.

After all, our bodies were made to change with the seasons. To keep us warm, asleep when days are more dark than light, the world freezes over, and it’s almost painful to trudge down the sludge-slicked streets to our worldly obligations. It’s enough to simply survive - to be here with a bowl of something warm and the self-love of repose - though the winter arc tells us it’s not. Simply, the grind is not intuitive; it’s purposeful scarcity when our minds and bodies crave abundance and stillness. We all knew this by some natural, united understanding, before internet beauty standards forced us to forget it. 

We treat the winter arc like a temporary lock-in, a means to an end. But, really, it never does end. It hardwires us toward progress and discipline, running on the message that we are inadequate, dismissing the joy of embracing comfort when we need it the most. Then, covertly, the trial of achieving the body becomes the anxiety of maintaining it. The beauty of nature’s inherent change - and being present within this rhythm - is lost when we’re ceaselessly striving to meet standards taught to us by someone else. 
There is so much of winter to cherish, but we miss it when our eyes are fixed down at our bodies instead of up at the wonder surrounding us. A window-framed portrait of snow, a blanket thrown over goosebumped legs, steam rising from a Pyrex, peace; eclipsed by a voice urging us to be better, and the exhaustion of constantly becoming. But maybe - just maybe - the only arc we need is the curve of the boreal sky, and the self-acceptance to thank it that we are here, now, enough.

Written by Ellie Stein

Edited by Julia Brummell and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Clare Vogel

I am So. Bored. 

I’ve been ruminating for months, lost in my own mind, thinking about what to write about. I love to write, and for a while my mind has been an empty, mechanic vessel for thinking about nothing more than an assignment for a gen-ed I couldn’t care less about, or what ill-fitting black top and jeans that don’t fit my body right to wear on a Saturday when I didn’t even want to go out in the first place. I’ve been floating through space, angry with myself for not feeling like myself; it seems like a bit of paradox. I don’t even feel like my weekly sessions with my therapist are productive, I’ve felt unable to access the parts of my brain that can even delve deeper into why I feel anxious about conflict in close personal relationships (something about my parent’s divorce, blah blah). All that to say, I haven’t written, not for a while. 

While I’ve been sitting in this hole for a while, so empty headed, all I can think about is my To-Do list, and I’m over this repetitive cycle of ennui. It wasn’t until five minutes ago, when I clicked out of the new Knives Out movie on my computer, a film that requires some form of attention to detail, to send a text message at the same time, I was done. It’s like my brain is so understimulated I can’t focus on one thing for more than five minutes at a time, like a child with a new toy, patiently waiting for the next. I’m sick of feeling like a sellout of the version of myself that is passionate, intelligent, deep. 

I love to read. Not romance novels (not to put shame on smut, as I do indulge sometimes) but books that make me think about my greater purpose as a human. Books that make me feel like a tiny, small part of a universe floating around, insignificant in my own problems in perspective of others. I love to bake. My mom and I would always make blueberry pancakes every Sunday growing up. I developed a habit after that of making apple pies, brownies, cookies, basically anything you can put over a cup of sugar into. I haven’t baked in almost five years. I hate small talk. I despise it actually. I love conversations with people that make me understand that someone else is living an entire life I don’t know about. I want to talk about things I’m passionate about, what others are passionate about. Not how anxious or stressed I am, my daily schedule or my vague, dull plans over break. 

But mostly, I love to write. I long to. Whether it’s the lyrical mental dance of phrases in my head I think of when my mind’s adrift, or my journal, writing for only myself, or whatever the 443 words (yes, I counted), above are. Nothing makes me feel more passionate than typing so fast that I’ve created enough spelling errors for the words to be illegible. It sounds silly when I put it on paper, but it’s the truth. The lack of writing hasn’t frustrated me, but my inability to. I lost the childlike whimsy comparable to twirling in circles in front of your parents as a kid and getting praise even though your dancing was horrible. I’ve been so focused on the potential of what I produce being awful that I’ve quit altogether. In doing so, I dug myself into a creative block that led me to feel dreadful anyway. 

Anyways, I’m sick and tired of my antics. I want to read again, I want to bake and talk until I can’t anymore and write until my fingers hurt and be able to watch a movie without getting distracted. I desire to nourish my brain with the things I love the most. The love of writing is a metaphor for the whole thing, by the way.

Written by Ella Romano

Edited by Elisabeth Kay and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Giulia Mauro

The first thing people often say when they hear I’m from Ohio is, “Oh, I’ve never been.” To which I reply, “It’s not really a place you visit.” In many ways it isn’t. Most people don’t vacation in Ohio with its endless alternation of corn fields and strip malls, but somehow it’s become a place I long for, that I want to visit, that I love to call home. 

When I applied to college, I was desperate to leave Ohio, I wanted a fresh start, a different place, a new adventure. Although I didn’t officially decide until March of my senior year, from the first time I visited Pittsburgh a piece of me fell in love with it. Pittsburgh was a ticket out, a pathway to that something new that I desired. Pittsburgh felt exciting to me, its winding rivers and endless bridges offering me a pathway to adulthood. 

However, about 3 months into being a college freshman, I came to realize that Pittsburgh wasn’t so different from home, from Cincinnati. Both cities built on industry and steel, medium sized, with a passionate love for their sports teams. Suddenly, it became clearer to me that perhaps I had chosen Pittsburgh not because it was an escape from home, but rather because it was like home. Pittsburgh is not a clone of Cincinnati, it of course has its own unique slang, more neighborhoods, and a wider variety of places for me to explore that I had not known my whole life. It’s more like a cousin of Cincinnati than a sister, but still it beckons me in with a familiar warmth. 

The more I fell in love with Pittsburgh, the more I also began to long for home, for the local coffee shop I always went to with my friends, the ice cream place I worked at throughout high school, the movie theatre where I watched double and triple features, and the sound of my dog running to me at the top of my stairs. And yet, these longings were also replaced by new places in my new home, a new coffee shop, a new ice cream place, a new theatre, a new home in my college apartment. 

Without me realizing it, I discovered two homes, one in Pittsburgh, one in Cincinnati, each of which I always longed for while in the other. College in Pittsburgh has taught me the beauty of place and people together, that it really is the people who make the place, the love and memories what makes it special, what makes it home. And now, I count myself lucky to have two places I call home, and can say, come visit anytime.

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Julia Brummell

Graphic by Genevieve Harmount

I’ve always known that holding a grudge only hurts you. When you stay mad at someone, that anger really only takes life away from you, but simply knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to act on. In high school, I encountered many challenges: drama, jealousy, and even the loss of friendship. After my senior year, I lost one of my closest friends, and I found myself clinging to our friendship and our memories. I held on to anger and jealousy. I’m still holding on, like keeping the friendship close might somehow fix it; like the fact that my feelings haven’t disappeared must mean something. 

Could this attachment be a good thing? To love someone so deeply that you can’t let go of the good or even the bad? I feel anxiety and nervousness even returning to my hometown because our memories live everywhere here, and I am scared of facing those, facing her. I replay what happened over and over again, as if thinking about it might change something. 

Maybe the friendship itself hurt more than the ending. Maybe letting go of it feels like letting go of a part of myself;I’m not ready to let go, but I know I should be. I feel like I’m spiraling. 

I saw her in public the other day, like strangers carrying so much anger and love for each other. I can’t believe there was a time when I knew everything about her, and suddenly it was like a switch flipped. It just stopped. No closure. No real ending. 

Maybe that was the least painful way it could have ended. But was it? Can she even understand how much pain she caused me? My mom tells me that she’s not losing sleep over this, that she’s not overthinking it like I am. But that thought still sticks: what if she is? What if she’s waiting for me to reach out? I can’t even reach out; I am blocked on every social media platform, a quiet reminder of how carefully she manages the image she shows to the world. 

But what if she’s not waiting? What if she’s completely over it? How could she be? And even if she isn’t, could we ever reach a point of civility? With people from my hometown, it always seems like they either love you or hate you. I don’t want a best friendship again; after everything that happened, I don’t even think that’s possible, nor do I want it to be. But I do wish we could reach a place of simple cordiality - to be able to smile politely, to pass each other without tension, to exist in the same place without fear. I wish I didn’t feel scared to come home because she’s still talking about me, keeping my name in conversations I never asked to be part of, long after our friendship ended. 

Sometimes I think it would be easier to move away, to escape the memories, the people who disregard me now because of what she said and the power she holds over them, and the

places that remind me of what I once went through. I’m angry and hurt for what she did, for how she didn’t listen, for how she took the word of a person she unfriended over mine. I’m angry and hurt by how she handled the situation after it unfolded and the lengths she went to turn people against me. I’m angry at her friends. I’m angry and hurt that I can’t know her anymore, that I can’t show her my pictures from college, or have long talks about our lives. 

I want to leave here and never look back. But how would that fix anything? How would disappearing teach me how to face things like this? How could I ever learn from it if I can’t even stay? 

People say these things take time, but how much time? I’ve heard it takes half the length of the friendship to get over it. Do I really have to wait nine years? For eighteen years, I’ve known her. For eighteen years, we have had some kind of relationship. For eighteen years, we promised we’d stand in each other’s weddings. So how do you move on from someone you’ve known for so long, someone you loved so deeply? 

Maybe the answer isn’t about forgetting or forcing myself to “get over it”. Maybe it’s learning to live with the ache, without letting it define me. Maybe it’s accepting that love can change shape, that people can grow apart, and that sometimes the most painful endings teach us the most about who we are. 

I don’t have closure from her, but I’m beginning to realize I can give closure to myself. I can honor what we had without holding myself hostage to it. I can carry the good, learn from the hurt, and still keep moving forward, knowing that I am proud of myself for how I handled that situation. 

Maybe moving on doesn’t mean letting go of her, it means choosing not to lose myself and living in the love we did share and the love I am capable of giving and receiving. 

And maybe, deep down, somewhere in her heart, she’s holding a grudge or still holding on to what we shared. Maybe she does know the kind of person I am - the kind of person I showed her throughout our friendship. Maybe she will read this and take a true moment to think. Maybe she thinks it was a mistake… or maybe not - I’m not going to lose sleep over it anymore.

Written by Avi Mucci

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Johannah Ryder