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

In middle school, I loved to read. My favorite books were the ones with unassuming scrappy heroines. Hermione Granger in Harry Potter, Annabeth Chase in Percy Jackson, Tris Prior in Divergent. Those girls were never the bold girls. Sure, in their own way, they were, but they didn’t start off bold. They came from a sub-average background and worked their way to the top. They were cutthroat. They were no-nonsense. They were not focused on boys. They always wore their hair up in a ponytail. 

When the subject of cotillion came up, I had no idea what to do. I was sure I’d find a dress, but I knew nothing about makeup. I couldn’t curl my hair. I decided I’d just wear my hair up so people forgot what it looked like down, and that would be extra enough. Well, I liked wearing my hair up. It was always out of my face. I never had to worry about it falling into my face during a Latin quiz or getting into my mouth during lacrosse. A ponytail became my thing. 

As high school approached, I adamantly protested the all-girls Catholic school I would be attending. Yes, I attended private school for the majority of my life, but never a Catholic school. Never a school with uniforms, where everyone would look the same. I despised the grey mini kilt every girl wore with their black sweater on top of their crisp white polo. That could never be me, I thought. My protests shortly wore off. I liked the camouflage the new uniform brought me. I was able to blend in and look like everyone else. I didn’t have to worry about whether people thought my outfit wasn’t quite like everyone else’s because we all needed to wear the same thing. 

Sophomore year rolls around. I have my first boyfriend. He’s a senior. I wanted to do anything so badly to impress him. To remind people (and him) why he chose me. I knew I stood out from the girls at his school. They were blonde, played field hockey, and drove Jeeps. I was brunette, did theater, and couldn’t drive yet, but knew my car would be a Subaru. I started learning how to do my hair. I wore my hair down around him. I talked less about theatre and more about college in order to fit in. I pretended like I knew what a penalty kick was around his soccer friends. As spring came around, St. Christopher necklaces were all the rage. At a school with a uniform, fads often flew over our heads because we couldn’t alter the decades-old uniform. St. Christopher necklaces, though, those were different. First, they were necklaces featuring a saint, perfect for the Catholic demographic. They were unassuming and small, but you could wear multiple. They came in every color imaginable. In order to fit in, I bought two. I was Catholic. I didn’t believe in the Church because I thought it was oppressive. Here I was, donning a necklace named after a saint. 

After the boyfriend and I broke up, I began to feel like myself again. I cut my hair shorter, read more, and talked about theatre. This stayed true for a while. I kept my focus on getting out of my small town and excelling in any way possible. My hair returned to its ponytail and did not leave. I shed the St. Christopher necklace. I wore my unassuming uniform with pride.

When I came to college, this all changed. I was surrounded by former homecoming queens. They infiltrated every aspect of my life. As someone who did not grow up understanding how to best pose or determine what my color palette is, I felt out of place in the world of glamour I suddenly entered. When I didn’t have my uniform to hide behind, I found other ways to conform. 

I shared clothes with the homecoming queens I befriended. I wore my hair down. No matter how hard I tried, I was still the black sheep of the group. My hair wasn’t glossy enough. My going-out top was thrifted. I wasn’t different enough for the “cool girls”, but too different for the “basic girls”. I lost myself. How are you supposed to find yourself again? Are we defined by what we wear? Are we defined by the clubs we’re in? Our major? At what point do we begin to define ourselves? What does redefining yourself look like if you don’t even know who you are?

Written by Olivia Kessler

Edited by Julia Brummell and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Giulia Mauro