Forgive me not for how I see the Soul: when I first saw you by the river I knew of your kinship to the ethereal; if you had decided to be one of the objects of a lower doctrine, the fields would bend away from you, and Nature would not be your friend. Nature may be my lover and She is also yours… however you should remember She has been crueler to me than She has ever been to you. You have the innocence of the paradise I left in my adolescence, and somehow you having never truly loved and been loved is both a blessing and a tragedy. 

Prose of this spiritual servitude does not indicate that the intention is on par with that of a televangelist, though often it is as if I am speaking as a preacher when I contemplate the art of the cancer of the Oasis; but all readers must know that I am aware that god deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden. I know of the myth of Revelation that purges the visions of the good Christian under Nature before Splendor. When I speak to men I speak of meliorating personal prophecy that I can only presume applies to the method in which the Garden shall return. 

By the build of the shadow self, I saw this age’s Oasis as a portal to my liberation – but by the seams of my most oblivious senses, there were only reels of stagnant energy, clogs of once-abundant energy channels. Befriend no one in the Oasis, and you shall have no one to hide from… for when one abandons her role as the martyr of the megachurch, one ultimately continues to find a savior in all of the most fatal places. Of course, I am certain past preachers have been in my position before — but none of them I extrapolated the pleasure of knowing below the flesh recalled a recollection of the great biblical myth. 

When the discrepancy between mind and body is deemed an object, or a system of objects, the crux becomes the project of the powerful and the cynical, soon the Soul shall find herself as a curation of commodity  — for what else should she deserve, even when she left her manhood behind in the front pews after the final sermon? All to be drawn to the winds in which the scorn has set out for you to avoid? Leave god but never leave God:
To whom do I speak to when I turn to Selene when by morn my dominion sways to Eos? I am progressively indebted to no god at this locus of the winter, but I sense that by the summer I will be tied to the mechanics of a higher consciousness… Has God made me destined to love a man who sees me as more than a craving? For in my time in this chamber I have found that love is a means of Splendor and not that of a flesh wound. It’s all I see here: hunger binding thirst and thirst binding hunger. We unfold under our own lusts because we let ourselves, yet when I find myself in the front pews again the jurisdiction is that I am not made to be loved like a woman — I made to love a woman by restricting her and tying her down according to scripture. Essentially, before the Soul breathed in the elixir, the air in which Selene casts her shadows and Eos her light – the woman God designed her to embody had her body deteriorated and bourne rotten in the chains of the very strongholds the wisest of preachers warned against: Eden was a slave to the devil because her gentle hues were condemned to the same threshold of the bible’s most evil transgressions. Soar high, great Soul! Fear not the men with all of their dogmas, stifle the man that once possessed the body, and seek Love in the Garden – if Babylon is the final station in the myth of Revelation, then your prophecy has been instilled back to Genesis.

Take me there, Selene, to the place where I am not merely a rib of another man – where Thy world shall not collapse by the intention of the deception you implanted in the Garden’s fig tree. Let me taste the fruit, relish in it, and forget Adam – who in an alternative dogmatic narrative robbed me of the Love brewing within me since before I had truly decided to start living: for the first taste of the fruit treks beyond the mere enslavement to the sensory. The bite is the gate to the true fulfillment of humanity: the raptures of free love and all of the beautiful notions that the Earth provides the mirror to both the valleys and the cavities of the Spirit. 

This is the holiest life I have ever known… this experience of loving without consequence, healing with no expectation of restoring the genealogy of the supposed “evils” of the original sin. I am both man’s fall and redemption; Nature is brutal and so am I; Nature is loving and so am I; Nature is gentle and so am I; Nature is maternal and so am I. 

Written by Eden Mann

Edited by Isa Gattamorta and Julia Brummell

“Are you speaking Spanish?” and “Hola…” were some of the things I would often hear from children my age when I was 6 to 8 years old. I would then reply with, “No, I’m speaking Japanese.” With my response, children would then make a strange facial expression hearing a language that they’ve never heard of. Many shy away from understanding that, even in our generation today, languages are all around us. There shouldn’t still be this ideal form of how an individual is expected to speak. Since this was what I was used to, the habits of pronunciation continued to carry on with me. Strangely enough, as I got older and stopped communicating as much with my grandmother the way that I used to, my proficiency in Japanese has also gone down. Still, I seem to sometimes make the same grammar mistakes when speaking English to those around me because my native tongue is often stuck in the past. 

As I’ve gotten older, I began to learn other aspects of grammar, especially through education within certain communities. Since then, I’ve begun to dive back into the branches of languages within the real world, studying Spanish and minoring in it during my time at university. I have always surrounded myself with different types of languages, and simply sticking to English because it is apparently the “default language” disappointed me. In turn, my passion and appreciation towards other cultures besides mine have heavily influenced me over the past few years. 

It’s crucial for me to recognize the differences there are within languages and how each person uses that to acknowledge their backgrounds, along with facing their challenges too. A lot of aspects of my identity come from my mother. But, because of her appearance and slight accent, people often become impatient with her speaking and eventually resort to me being the (unneeded) translator, since her English is considered “broken.”  It felt belittling to think that teachers may have viewed my mother as unintelligent because of this. While the conferences were going on, the teachers would also look toward me to answer a question that they were asking my mother first.

Language has become a reflection of identity with unity and understanding that there is never a “right” way to speak, or having to lose out on your native tongue because of what others expect of you. Learning about simple kanji and Chinese characters in that same third-grade class was challenging. I knew that I wouldn’t move as quickly as the others. But, at the same time, I wasn’t reminded of that. I was instead taught just the same as the other students and they helped me adjust along the way. Languages do not always imply who we are as human beings. It is a form of our identity, yes, but there is a line between what we should and shouldn’t expect to hear when a person of color or a foreigner begins speaking. 

My identity has reflected upon the differences that different cultures and nations presume from outsiders. In the end, it is the conformity of life and how we are subject to categorize the things we observe and hear, that decrease our abilities to engage with each other.

Written by Alicia Sayaka

Edited by Leigh Marks and Julia Brummell

The thrum of knives on ceramic dishes in the Applebees 

next door cuts through the silence of the therapist's office. My little brother

and I move around—restless—on the squeaky

leather sofa. Lisa asks a question 

but my brain is too swollen to recognize the words. 

I lurch at the sound of my parents’ (my dear parents) 

on the other side of the door. A flurry of tears

fall from my eyelashes to my bare legs, white and chalky 

from gymnastics practice. My brother 

wails the song of a begging 

baby bird, pitiful and hungry for answers. 

Don’t Say It. My body shudders and jerks as my brother

kicks his legs repeatedly 

against the couch we sit on. His voice

whispers through the buzzing of the space heater.

I look to Lisa. Don’t Say It. My mouth fills with gibberish

and the gibberish spills out through the gap in my front teeth

and my clenched jaw and my flared nostrils. Don’t Say It.

A knock on the door. Lisa stands. Times up. 

And I don’t say it,

I never do, 

and I never go back to therapy.

Edited by Tia Douglas and Elisabeth Kay

I’m sitting in what my family calls “the basement,” but in reality, it’s just a large room on the second floor of the house we just moved into following their wedding. I’m only nine years old, but my Internet access is unlimited, so a pink Dell laptop sits in my lap as I peruse YouTube to find the next Shane Dawson video that piques my interest. You probably shouldn’t be watching him, my sister advises next to me. I shrug as I continue my scroll. Our kitchen playset from IKEA stares at us across the room.

I met her and her mom in a humid airport a few years ago. I used my dad’s body as a shield as we approached them, not yet ready to step out of my shyness. She held out a Beanie Baby as a peace offering, and after about an hour in the car together, we started talking. Our parents joke that we never really stopped after that.

Our first picture together is in Disney World, standing in front of the castle on Main Street. It’s pouring rain, and neither of us are really smiling. In twelve years, we’ll make mixed drinks in Mickey Mouse cups while we’re home alone and turn a YouTube video titled Disney Jeopardy into a drinking game.

Instead of Shane Dawson, I pick out a One Direction music video, to which she shifts her attention to watch with me. We scream and jump and giggle and go on to pick a new picture of Niall Horan to make my laptop background. I post about it on a social media account I’m too young to have. She’s the only person to like it. She’ll be the first person I text when Liam Payne passes away eleven years later. It’ll be the first text I’ve sent to her in a few weeks.

As we grow older, we’ll keep going through fandom phases like this, together, under the same roof. We’ll put the same music videos we’re used to watching on the TV and scream over them as a break from whatever work we were previously doing. When I move away, she’ll send me new songs to listen to. Usually I don’t right away, but they always have a way of getting into my playlists one way or another. 

We’re called to dinner downstairs by our parents. The dining room table we sit at will follow us to the next two houses we move into, still standing in the house she’ll live in alone when we’re in our twenties. It’s served for birthdays, Superbowl parties, New Years Day card games, late night art projects, and Christmas Eve dinners, and it still has yet to let us down. There’s a chair in the corner that our dog, Gibby, occupies, until he goes blind and can’t quite tell where he is when he’s put up there. 

Our after-dinner ritual begins to play out. After chatting with our parents, I gather up the dishes and table decorations while she diligently scrubs the plates before putting them into the dishwasher. When I decide I’m done cleaning, I slip away to our shared bathroom to take a shower, my bit of solace. When we grow older, our parents will move out and the ritual will dissipate. I’ll stand in front of the kitchen window and scrub through piles of dishes in silence. When I have an apartment in my college town, I’ll assume the same position but with a YouTube video about an interest we don’t share anymore. She’ll let the dishes back home stack up for a while, but she’s the only one who knows that.

We change into our pajamas and cuddle up in our shared bedroom– two twin beds line the wall, mine with a green striped comforter, her’s blue. These are the colors our parents decided to use to distinguish us in the way parents distinguish twins, despite our three-year age gap and lack of shared blood. But we might as well be; when I talk about her to others, I drop the “step” in stepsister. I’ll still do this when I’m older, ignoring the miles between us. 

Written by Elisabeth Kay

Edited by Diya Aneja and Julia Brummell

I hadn’t read a book in three years. For pleasure, that is. See, I’m an English writing major, so all I do is read. Don’t get me wrong, the readings are wonderful. I’ve had the chance to read Chekhov and Dostoevsky, Kincaid and Baldwin, Oats and Kafka; so many incredible works I’m glad I’ve read so early in my life. However, I hadn’t used any of my free time to engage with what I now considered, school work. When reading creative, ingenious pieces began to take over almost all of my waking moments, I lost my hobby. 

That loss sat on my mind like deadweight. There was this shame and discomfort that had been brought upon me. At the age of sixteen, I formed an entire identity around my love for books. I would show up early to sports practices and plop myself down on the sidelines with an 800 page fantasy novel. I was in multiple English classes my senior year of high school because my high school English department made an exception for me. I won awards because of how much I read. I worked in the local bookstore in my hometown. Every spare moment of time I had, my nose was buried in a book. Being a reader is who I am. It is a fundamental part of my very existence. 

Coming to college, my love shifted slightly. My eyes shifted away from reading and began to focus more so on writing. I want to put into words the stories trapped in my head like so many other authors I admire. The books I had once engaged with for pleasure became my study material. I dissected the literature and picked apart the aspects I deemed good, and trained my attention even more so on the parts I thought weren’t. It got to a point where I couldn’t turn off this lens. I have tried to sit down and read a book over the past three years, in fact I have a stack of about fifty books I have only read the first thirty pages of. Starting was the easy part; I’d pick up a book, read the first few chapters, determine what I liked and disliked about the writing style, and close the book, never to be opened again. Now, this isn’t an effective way to glean the insights and true styles of the authors, but it was the best I could bring myself to do. I had lost my enthusiasm to consume. 

That was until the first week of January this year. My New Year's resolution was set– to read one book a month– the same as every other year, despite my telling myself I had already failed before the clock struck midnight. Then, it was like I had stumbled into a dream. 

Most of my weekends at college are spent visiting a thrift store with my friends. I usually dart through the aisles, quickly glancing at the pieces laid out before me, only stopping my walking pace if I see something that truly catches my eye. But I always end my exploration in the book section. This is something I have been doing since I first got to college. I do not think I have ever bought a book from the thrift store – the majority of books on the shelves are not really my style, more so novels I think my father would enjoy. 

But, for the first time, the book aisle had me frozen in my tracks. The thick orange spine of the complete The Chronicles of Narnia stared back at me. A series of books I had once loved as a child that I had not thought about in well over a decade. It was as if the Universe heard my resolution and planted the seeds to succeed right in front of me. I reached for the intimidating 700 page book – not as intimidating on closer examination, “The Chronicles of Narnia” is composed of seven individual books – and instantly felt my mind find equilibrium. When I got home, I started reading immediately and this time when I closed the book, I was excited to pick it back up again. As I write, I have already finished the first book in the collection, The Magician’s Nephew, and am half way through the second, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I have been sucking the words straight off the paper and I have enjoyed every second of it. My mind has found no critiques for Mr. Lewis, instead I

have found only bliss in my reading endeavour. While on this kick, I also picked up a copy of The Secret Garden, another beloved book from my past. 

That’s when it hit me. This was my solution. The thing that had finally worked to get me out of my slump: Childhood literature. Books I had read in a different life, ones that revitalised a child-like wonder I had been lacking since “growing-up” and starting college. These books I cherished for so long now took on new shapes as I dived back into them. The fantasy and mysticism I loved in Narnia now makes me giggle as I find the clear metaphors to Christianity in Aslan. The Secret Garden brings tears to my eyes as I find a new sense of empathy for the young narrator I had once deemed annoying. And, as I fall down this rabbit hole, soon I will be joining Alice (who is next on my developing “To Read” list), I have realised how important it is to maintain my love. For a second there, I almost forgot why I chose to be an English major. I am pursuing this passion because of how incredible it is to be forcefully pulled into the author’s world. Because of the magic and wonder one can create with the written sequence of words. It is something I hope I never lose sight of again. All thanks to the first New Year’s resolution I actually stuck to.

Written by Angela Hoey

Edited by Clare Vogel and Elisabeth Kay

I've always loved gold jewelry. From the minute I outgrew my plastic dress up jewelry, I set my sights on something better, that something was gold. The way gold jewelry twinkled in the light caught my eye, drawing me in. I loved how it complimented my complexion and completed each outfit of mine.  

My mom always wore gold jewelry. I would spend hours digging through her jewelry box and trying on her pieces. I would hold my hair up as fastened the delicate jewelry around my neck. My face would light up as I felt the cold weight on my skin. In a way, my love for gold jewelry was just another thing I inherited from my mother—another aspect that brought us closer.  

Each morning, when my hands fumble on the clasps of my favorite gold Kendra Scott necklace and bracelet, their weight against my skin serves as a reminder of so much more.  

To me, gold has always represented a level of perfection. From its long-lasting beauty to its sense of rarity, gold remains the perfect metal. My association of gold with perfection traces back to the Olympics. Every two years, I watch athletes eagerly jump up on the top podium and bow their heads to receive the prize in which they have trained their entire lives for: a gold medal. Not a silver one, not a bronze one, but a gold medal. Seeing the athletes bite into their gold medals ingrained in me the belief that gold is the ultimate symbol of perfection and nothing more.  

I’ve struggled with perfectionism my whole life. My perfectionism is an old, unwelcome acquaintance that has rooted itself in my brain. It's a constant voice in the back of my mind, pestering me about if I used the right words in my article or about the flyaways that keep escaping my ponytail. In moments when the voice of my perfectionism drowns everything else out, I find myself fidgeting with my gold necklace. The weight of it lays heavy on my chest as questions flood my mind. Am I worthy enough to wear gold? Have I earned it? How can I proudly wear this perfect metal when I don’t even feel close to perfect?  

The thing about perfectionism is the stronger it plagues you, the farther you feel from perfect. It forces you to work, and work, and work until you finally complete something just right. By the time you’ve completed it perfectly, however, you are so completely drained and exhausted. The fact that it took you so long to complete it to perfection makes you feel like an absolute failure. My perfectionism has left me exhausted by even my strongest passions in life, as it has rooted itself within each project I take on.  

I have spent countless hours hunched over my laptop, my eyes burning and my back aching as my sentences remain unfinished. Over and over, I type out sentences and delete them just as quickly, vanishing the words before my eyes. Writing has always been one of my favorite endeavors but that nagging voice in the back of my head always reminds me that I can reword a sentence or find a better word. Perfectionism leaves me insecure about my writing, no matter how many high marks I receive for essays or how much praise I get from loved ones. So, I write and write and write, with perfectionism always present—a phantom behind me, breathing down my neck. It’s only when my fingers stop typing that I am finally left with a sense of quiet for mere seconds. But it never lasts long. My eyes always wander back to my work, and the cycle begins again.  

It’s taken a long time to quiet that voice of perfectionism.  

Two years ago, in the heat of the summer, I packed my bag and went to swim practice. Along with my bathing suit, cap and goggles, I wore one of my favorite gold necklaces around my neck. Throughout the practice, I was plagued by this voice telling me to kick harder or angle my arm better so that it entered the surface of the water smoother. By the time the practice ended, I was exhausted both mentally and physically.  

It wasn’t until I arrived back home and showered that I finally knew something was wrong. My hand instinctively went to my neck, fingers frantically searching for my necklace that wasn’t there. I immediately jumped in the car and drove back to the pool, my heart pounding in my chest.  

I walked circles around the pool, searching desperately for my necklace. I had almost given up when I heard a tiny voice from the shallow end of the pool shout out, “I got it!” A young girl proudly held my beloved necklace up above the surface of the water. I ran over to her, thanking her profusely, as she handed it to me.  

When I looked down at the pool of gold in my hand, I noticed that it was no longer whole. The clasp had broken, along with one of the chains. My golden necklace—the one I had once questioned whether I was worthy enough to wear—had broken.  

Standing there at the pool, clutching my broken necklace, I learned an important lesson. Even the things we deem perfect are not inherently perfect. Although gold is considered the perfect metal, it still can break and shatter, still scuff and be damaged. I have finally started to realize that if gold doesn’t have to be perfect then neither do I.  

Now, when I wear my gold jewelry, I am reminded of growth rather than a pursuit of perfection. I am reminded of how far I’ve come and how I have been able to succeed despite how critical of myself I can be. I am reminded of the little girl who loved trying on her mother’s jewelry. And slowly, I am becoming the girl again who felt worthy enough to wear gold.

Written by Ashley O'Doherty

Edited by Marissa Granite and Julia Brummell

The woman you meet in the Dream Realm is certainly not the woman you are on Earth; delirium is an old friend I never see while I am awake, and lately, I am awake but never dreaming. In my adolescence, I foresaw a shadow cast by the moon’s sinister smile, and I cupped it in my palms to extrapolate a fire of all-encompassing clarity; but must the woman find clarity when womanhood is deemed a certain kind of madness? 

When I was young, not yet surpassing the years of my boyhood, I read stories that struck the lilies in my mind with bluely peculiar hues; the most dangerous implication was that these lilies grew. Their petals did not cease to grace the barriers of my cerebrum — and I knew the moon would keep smiling down on me — and by the last violent August, I realized that my servitude was for all realms of the spiritual plane. If you waited for the right time of the night (and you were fast asleep), you could see a fountain where the nightjars mingle and whisper secrets about God. To discover these proverbs, I knew I needed to pass the threshold that rejects magic as a supernatural condition. I was in desperate need of a Wonderland. 

As my adolescence preceded me, I examined my soul as a product of the garden I nurtured here on Earth. The mind is certainly a curious product of God because inside of it you cannot distinguish the difference between Eden and Wonderland. I understand that in Eden when you cry you do not make a sea of tears, and the remedy for these tears is not to race away from the lagoon that is your heart. By Earth’s law, sensitivity grounds you in the roots that birthed you. In dreams, you can reach the heavens. 

The strangest revelation in Wonderland was found when I peeked through the garden hedges, I heard no song of a nightjar. A sight I remembered, however, was the etching of words on a stone wall: MADNESS IS A CONDITION OF YOUR WOMAN. Considering the time of night, I assumed I might have misread the message on the stone wall. Instead of rubbing my eyes from the muck of exhaustion, I gazed up at the moon again — which only grinned at me tonight. Usually, I am confident in the ability of the moon to provide me with a solace that can only be felt by the motions of my occasional Earthly devotions, but in this world, the sensation of this consolation does not protect the Soul from the truth of the Earth’s cruel dictations. Even in Wonderland, you are approached with the truth that you cannot reach on Earth, and this makes me question if I have truly reached the heavens.

I channeled my vision once more into the crack of the hedge wall, and in an abrupt instant, the greenery diverged into a vast clearing — with a stark absence of polluted structures. Unsure if this was an indication of impending calamity, I chose to pinpoint where I felt the turmoil inside of my body: it was a deep moan in my abdomen, which made sense because I was quite behind on my daily devotions in the Earth Realm. The frame in front of me was subject to constant fluctuation, and it was only because my body submitted to cycles of constant and unprecedented change. On Earth, I flaunted a beauty that accessed the deep pride of my forefathers, but in this cool and empty realm, my body was a beautiful white rose that could be painted with any color I wished. 

Back to Eden: I still cried, but I could not produce an ocean. Spiritual hunger is mythological. My body is subject to biological essentialism. Madness I do not know. I still read stories, but they do not reach the access points of the lilies brimming in my mind. The only lilies that I ever have the luxury of accessing are strictly material, a delicate sensation between my fingertips — whose conception involved the serenation of soulful tears, Earthly tears. Once the Earth discovered the daughters of my tears, She turned them to ash and ordered me back into the Dream Realm. She could not understand that in this ideation I could not sleep, for I was mourning my children; I urged Her to disclose the reason behind her cruelty, but the only answer She could muster was that my greatest Earthly transgression was mistaking the cruelness of the Earthly body for the clarity of the Earthly spirit. 

Exhaustions do not precede you: they transfix you back to the truth. I was a white rose once again, with no desire to reach a hidden inventory of infinite color. Above the tranquil barrier between the sky and the horizon line floated the moon. Laughing. With each soft sonic shiver, the colors in the sky transformed gradually from a deep plum to a perfect indigo to a quiet lilac and then a subtle infantile blue. It was in the final phase that I could see the full face of the moon. Above the smile now was a tiny button nose bordered by two equally aquamarine eyes. The ground of these features was that perfect indigo, consumed my white rose body in previous successions of the amply cool dawn — shaped with a chin as sharp as her smile and as piercing as her feline ears: 

I am cheerfully guided by Earth

Just as kind and just as cutting 

I am a cat, yes – but I am Wise.

I coordinated with Earth before you returned, 

and She told me of the lilies! 

How curious…

Because when I smile down on you, 

I greet the petals of roses! 

I welted in my rose body, both an imposter and a stranger to my sorrow. And here now, this Great Cat was laughing at my delusions! With each jolt of tears that spawned in response to the Great Cat’s cackle, my height diminished, and I felt less and less like a lily. How terrible to realize that heaven was not heaven……for in that final time I gazed at the smile of the moon my body was met with an entire valley of lilies. I felt the pages of my book of devotions between the touch of my leaves. These were the lilies of my mind in their most natural form. I knew by the valley’s vastness that I was still in the Dream Realm, but in this season I did not seem to be the subject of mockery. Then I rediscovered the power of my wonder: Was it the laugh of the Great Cat that sprouted the lilies up from the soil of the empty valley in the Dream Realm, while in the Earthly Realm, it was my tears that conceived my daughters? My sadness is certainly curious, but God is certainly curiouser.

Written by Eden Mann

Edited by Justin Pello and Julia Brummell

Telling someone you’re a pastor’s kid is never easy. Following the statement, there’s often a lull in the conversation, occasionally followed by the comment, “I thought pastors didn’t have kids” (that would be Catholic priests, they’re different). And from there, it’s even harder to explain your own complicated relationship with religion.

I grew up completely enshrined in the church. The house I called home for the first 12 years of my life was only a block away from the church my dad had pastored; the house I now call home is less than 300 feet away from the church. As a kid, I spent more hours at church than I could count, and attended so many funerals in my childhood that I named all the fish in the town funeral home’s aquarium. I went to church camp and did Bible quizzing. I was pushed to be the model pastor’s child–full of grace and faith–always ready to lend a helping hand to anyone at the drop of a hat. I followed everything blindly, taking every word as law. 

Until one day, I stopped. 

I began the questioning in my teenage years. I wasn’t so blindly willing to follow everything. I was no longer willing to accept that someone loving who they loved was wrong, or that the migrant and the refugee weren’t exactly who we were meant to care for. Slowly but surely, my eyes were opened to the wider world, and to the pain that so many in the church were inflicting. I wasn’t seeing the God I had been raised with and had come to believe in and connect with. The God I had been raised with was meant to be full of love, hope, and reckless abandon. During my years of the most intense questioning, I was still asked to put on a happy face, to be the idealized girl my parent’s church congregation still wanted me to be. I was asked to tamp my opinions down, to keep politics outside, even as I felt these ideals encroaching on my life and my body. 

All of this would culminate in my parent's church no longer being a place I could so easily call home, but rather, a place where I was uncomfortably squeezed into a version of myself that now feels much too small. And this isn’t to say that I’ve left my faith behind, or that my relationship with my parents is broken (they’re some of my favorite people in the world), but rather it is to say that my faith looks different than I ever imagined. That I am so much different than I ever imagined. In high school, I began attending a different church with some of my friends, one where the pastors proudly marched in Pride, where I saw the refugee and the outcast being seen, valued, and cared for. It was here that I realized the church wasn’t just a building. It wasn’t just the things that had harmed or disillusioned me. There was still goodness. There was still love.

Now, my church isn’t confined to four walls and a steeple. It’s people in community action, it’s the actual real and true embodiment of loving your neighbor–every neighbor. It’s the synthesis of so many faiths, the urge to learn and grow and do better. It’s an attempt to embody all of the messages I was taught, against so many of the harmful systems that the church has continued to uphold. When people ask me about my faith now, I always say it’s complicated. There’s no easy way to explain it, no short sentence that encapsulates everything that’s changed for me and everything I continue to hold close. But if I were to try I would say this, my faith is so vastly different from what I ever imagined it would be, but at the core of it remains a steadfast belief in enduring love and a God that values the lesser and the least of these. Faith is a hard thing. It’s deeply personal. To have questions and to discover things for yourself is painful and confusing, but also rewarding. This is not meant to be some pro or anti-religion piece, but rather to say that it's okay to explore, okay to be different, and it’s okay to follow your heart, wherever that may lead you. Maybe, in that exploration, you find something even truer than before.

Written by Lauren Deaton

Edited by Kaitie Sadowski and Julia Brummell

The first snip echoed through the quiet bathroom, louder than I expected. A long strand of hair fell to the counter, curling against the surface like it belonged there. I froze, scissors trembling, and stared at the girl in the mirror. My breath caught as I took in the mess I’d already made of my hair, but there was no going back now. 

Behind my reflection, the mirror wasn’t just a mirror–it was a canvas, covered in affirmations Mom had written with colorful Expo markers. Pink, teal, yellow, and purple words overlapped in a chaotic but deliberate mosaic. 

You are enough. 

You are worthy of happiness. 

You are beautiful inside and out. 

Those words had been there for months, showing up one day during one of the hardest times of my life. Back then, I was too depressed to believe them. Any time I looked in the mirror, I couldn’t see anything beautiful staring back. The affirmations felt more like distant hopes than truths, and I avoided meeting my gaze in that mirror out of fear that my reflection would confirm my worst thoughts about myself. 

But something about this night was different. The air smelled faintly of lavender soap and hairspray, and Fleetwood Mac hummed softly from my phone. The warm, golden light of the vanity bulbs felt oddly comforting like the room was cheering me on. I wasn’t just looking at my reflection anymore, I was changing it. 

I made another cut and another. Heavy, lifeless strands slowly fell away, leaving soft, curtain-like bangs grazing my cheekbones. They weren’t perfect—longer on one side, a little

jagged on the ends—but they felt like freedom. I didn’t mind looking at the girl in the mirror. For the first time in months 

She wasn’t perfect, but she was trying. 

My hands shook as I smoothed the edges of my bangs, the scissors resting on the counter amid the scattered remnants of what I was leaving behind. They say hair holds memories, that it carries the energy of the moments we’ve lived. Standing there, I wondered what I was shedding along with it. 

Suddenly, the affirmations written on the mirror didn’t feel like lies. “You are strong.” I believe it now. “You are worthy of happiness.” Maybe I am. Mom’s words, written so long ago for a version of me that couldn’t hear them, finally felt like they were speaking to the person I was becoming. 

Something shifted that night. It wasn’t just the way I looked—though the bangs framed my face in a way that felt fresh and bold—but the way I felt. The simple act of cutting my hair, of taking control of something so small yet so personal, sparked something in me. Confidence. Curiosity. A quiet bravery I hadn’t known I possessed. 

The world outside that bathroom seemed to change with me. The music felt richer, deeper as if Fleetwood Mac and Bowie had always been waiting for me to hear them like this. Art called to me louder, colors and shapes drawing me back to the sketchbook I hadn’t touched in months. Lines flowed from my pencil effortlessly, as if the scissors had unlocked more than just a new look. 

Before the bangs, I didn’t know who I was. I’d felt stuck, burdened by a sense of helplessness, unsure how to move forward. Cutting my bangs wasn’t just an impulsive

decision—it was a declaration, a line in the sand between the person I had been and the person I was ready to become. 

But was it really the bangs? Or was it the act of change itself, the bravery to snip away at something old and see what lay beneath? Maybe it was the affirmations finally taking root, or the music wrapping itself around me, or the way the night seemed to hold its breath as I found a spark of something new. 

I don’t have all the answers, and maybe that’s the point. As I stared at the girl in the mirror, the one with uneven bangs and a quiet smile, I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: hope. 

They say hair holds memories, and maybe it does. Or maybe it’s the act of letting it go that matters most. Sometimes, change starts with the smallest step, the tiniest cut, and grows into something bigger than you ever imagined. Whatever the truth, that night, I stepped closer to myself—and that’s a feeling I’ll carry, even as my bangs inevitably grow back.

Written by Kaitie Sadowski 

Edited by Karlynn Riccitelli and Elisabeth Kay

Let me make one thing very clear: I am, in no way, shape, or form, an expert on romantic relationships. In fact, I am quite the opposite, and have a few failed boyfriends, girlfriends, situationships, and oddly romantic friendships to prove it. However, as I approach the end of my teenage years and officially step into my twenties, I have become quite certain about one relationship: the one I have with myself. 

As I began fawning over romance in my early elementary years, I yearned for a passionate, grandiose, fairy-tale-level relationship. While I wasn’t sure if this was achievable at twelve with the brace-faced boys in my geometry class, I thought, surely, by the time I reached college I’d have met someone. They would be charming, intelligent, kind, and a whole slew of other positive adjectives. My own Mr. Darcy. Well, as you can imagine, that hasn’t happened.

Regardless, this leads to the point I am trying to make. I have spent so many years looking for a partner in someone else that I lost sight of the partnership I had with myself. I felt so lonely searching for myself in someone else that I failed to realize that I had neglected the lifelong, inescapable tie I had to my own attributes. I find that many of us– and perhaps I’m speaking too broadly– fail to nurture what is within us. We pine over finding out what our romantic interests are like, what their good qualities are, how they spend their time, and lose those parts of ourselves. 
While I cannot say I have successfully cracked the code to romantic partnership, I am confident that I have begun to work on that I share with myself. I have reopened parts of myself I haven’t cherished since I was a child, rediscovering what I like to do. While it’s shifted from a passion for my Barbie Dream House to political activism, and Popsugar to an intense love for books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, it serves me. There is no ulterior motive in appealing to someone who might want to date me, it just satisfies my soul. I know I am empathetic and strong-willed, but unfortunately stubborn and often cynical. I may not have a romantic partner to psychoanalyze, and there are things I still don’t know about myself too, but I have now dedicated my energy to the one that matters most.

Written by Ella Romano

Edited by Emily Hudak and Elisabeth Kay