From Chinese and Japanese folklore, the Red String theory states that the people whom we love are connected to us by invisible red strings. We are destined to be with them regardless of the time, place, or circumstance.

I have always believed in the Red String theory since the minute I learned about it. I believed that too many “coincidences” happen in life for them to truly be coincidences. There are too many people I have met in my life that I am strangely connected to, or that I have met more than once, for that matter. 

But I think that the Red String theory is more specific. I think that Pittsburgh is actually the red string, pulling together my life. 

Since I was young, Pittsburgh has pulled me like a magnet. I lived in Vermont as a kid, and loved every minute of it, but when I acted up in preschool, I would tell my teacher that, “it doesn’t matter if I listen because soon I'm leaving for Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh was always on the back of my mind. When it came time to pick where I was going to college, I was given the choice between New York and Pittsburgh, and I chose Pittsburgh. It wasn’t my first choice, but something about Pitt reeled me in. 

Unlike other large cities, there's a chance you know someone from every part of Pittsburgh. It’s small with a population of 310,000 people. New York has a population of over 8 million, and Chicago’s is nearly 3. Of course, this means that you are more likely to run into people, but that doesn’t explain the Pittsburgh diaspora- the people I’ve met thousands of miles away from Pittsburgh, who are from Pittsburgh. 

I wanted to hear other people’s stories, and I wanted to reach as many people as possible. Strangely, the way to reach the most people in Pittsburgh, whose demographic is mostly students and old people, was through Facebook, so I put out a Facebook post asking people to share their Red String story– specifically one that related to Pittsburgh. 

On the first day, I got 15 replies, and by the end of the week, 54. The stories were heartwarming about love, friendship, and overall how Pittsburgh brought together people’s lives, proving my theory that Pittsburgh ties us together; it is the center of the universe.

Here are some of my favorite stories. The ones that made me laugh, cry,  and realize just how much I love Pittsburgh. 

Ella’s Story

“I'm from upstate NY, and I went to high school at a boarding school in northern Michigan. I had a lot of wonderful friends who I stayed in touch with, and some who I didn't. 

I went off to college in NYC, then worked around the country for several years until I moved to Pittsburgh in 2016. I sublet a room in a house from a grad student who was gone over the summer. A few days after I moved here, the landlord let me know I'd be getting a roommate. I came home and there was a stranger in my kitchen: my new roommate.

She introduced herself as having just moved to Pittsburgh for med school and said, ‘Hang on, do I know you?’

No, I said, I'm not from here.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Did you go to boarding school in northern Michigan?’

Turns out she lived across the hall from me our sophomore year. She'd graduated a year ahead of me. We'd been friends but not super close, so we'd lost touch. And then about a decade later, we ended up subletting from the same grad student to start the next chapter of our lives in Pittsburgh, hundreds of miles from where we first met.

Now we're good friends, and I love her like a sister. She moved away a few years ago but she's moving back soon, and I can't wait.”

Judith’s Story: 

“Had my knee operated on by Dr. David Steele at Allegheny General Hospital and was in Hilton Head, SC, recovering... sitting on the beach when a runner came by...we exchanged pleasantries. He asked who did my knee surgery, and I said Doc Steele...he asked which one... I said David... he said... ‘that's my dad and I just finished talking to him on the phone.’”

Bonnie’s Story: 

“My dad arrested a guy in North Strabane Twp in the early 80s. Arrested him in Pasco County, FL, and then again in North Strabane. All in the early 80s!”

Donna’s Story: 

“When I met my husband, I lived in Crafton, and he was from Carrick. After dating for a while, when our parents met, we learned that 40 years before that, our moms had been friends and walked to grade school together!

We also had many mutual friends through the years... but he and I never met!

Now, we have been married for 38 years.” 

Audrey’s Story: 

“My one grandfather came as a young man with only a couple of kids; the other came to Pittsburgh as a four-year-old. They lived a block away from each other in Allegheny City (now the North Side). Twenty years later, they were living two blocks apart in the Bluff. Thirty years after that, my folks would meet and get married, one set of grandparents lived at one end of a long street in Squirrel Hill, and the other remaining grandmother lived at the other end! The remaining grandma actually met my mother before my folks were married, but she was in the hospital and did not live to see their wedding. 

We presumed that both sets of my grandparents had never met, but after we researched where they lived, we found out they may as well have!”

Barb’s story: 

“I live in a small town in Eastern PA near Wilkes Barre, but I grew up in Shaler Twp. One Christmas vacation, my husband was in a bar with my father. They were talking to a friend of my dad’s, and he was introduced to his friend as being from Berwick, Pa. My dad’s friend said his daughter just bought a house there! My husband asked where it was, and it turns out they moved into our house that we just sold! His daughter and I both graduated from Shaler and lived in the same house 250 miles away! The reason we never knew that is that her mother-in-law actually purchased the house for them. In addition, the people we bought the house from were originally from Pittsburgh, too!”

Michele’s Story: 

“Years ago, when I moved to Ohio from the Pittsburgh area, I randomly picked a place to get my nails done. After chatting with the nail tech, I learned that her parents were from the same town as me. Turns out her parents were in my aunt and uncle's wedding, and her uncle was my softball coach when I was a kid!”

Nick’s Story: 

“I travel the tristate area and run into Pittsburgh natives all the time, especially those living in WV and OH. Many are connected to someone I know; it seems like Pittsburghers do have tighter connections than other cities. Mitch Albom wrote a book that said everyone can connect within six questions. In Pittsburgh, it's three. My dad worked at Westinghouse and J&L steel, and there is never a failure to be a person whose relative also did!”

Barbara’s Story: 

“My parents married in 1941 at St. Mary Magdalene in Homestead. They found out that they had both been baptized at that same church on the same day in 1918. Their families did not know one another until years later, when my parents were dating.”

Alice’s Story: 

“Just a few days ago, we were visiting in Eureka, California, and we went to a little tiny lighthouse near Trinidad, I believe. While we were searching the low tide area, there was another couple doing the same thing, and we started chatting. It turns out he was from my hometown of West Newton (near Pittsburgh).”

Paul’s story: 

“I was born, raised, and educated in Pittsburgh. In 1970, I moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for law school. I stayed in Tulsa and have been a private practice attorney since 1973. I have met many expat Pittsburghers in Tulsa and on my travels. Many of my connections have come up because of Steelers or Pirates gear. I met one man at the Tulsa Drillers (minor league baseball), and he was wearing a Steelers shirt. It turned out that we were the same age; he graduated in 1966 from North Hills High School, and I graduated from North Allegheny. We both played sports in high school and probably competed against each other. My new friend's father was a coach at West View High and later at North Hills. He coached several of my cousins!”

Annie’s story: 

“My partner and I actually tattooed our red string of fate on our pinkies. We fell in love in HIgh school in a tiny town three hours from Pittsburgh, but lost touch for seven years. We both moved out here and reconnected. We've been together for almost two years now!”

Carrie’s Story: 

“My story doesn’t start in Pittsburgh, but it came all the way to Pittsburgh!

When I was three years old, I had a babysitter named! She was 16 at the time. 

V had a rough home life and eventually ended up in foster care. My parents informally adopted her, and when she turned 18, she took a nannying job in NYC and went off. She’d send Christmas cards the first few years after moving out, which is how we were able to keep track of where she was, but after a while, the cards just stopped. This was before the age of cellphones and social media, so we fell out of touch completely. 

I’d think about V sometimes and hope she was doing well. I had fond memories of those few years when I had a big sister. I’d never had a way to reach out to her, and if she was on social media now, she wasn’t using her full name. 

Fast forward to 2025, I am 31 years old and married. I met my husband at Syracuse University and ended up settling down in Pittsburgh, closer to his family. 

Recently, out of the blue, V called my parents’ house. She wanted to thank them for everything they did for her all those years ago. During their conversation, V mentioned that she was now living in Pittsburgh, PA.

My parents had a trip already planned to come visit, and while they were here, we made plans to meet up with V. Since then, we have met up on numerous occasions for coffee, dinner, and game nights. She has a 7-year-old daughter and is the best mom. 

It’s incredible to have her back in my life nearly 30 years later, and somehow, we both ended up in Pittsburgh.”

My Story: 

“I met my boyfriend, Nick, more than once before we actually started dating. First on social media (like every 21st-century couple), but our conversation didn’t last very long, and I ended up unfriending him on everything. A few weeks later, I was at the Medallion ball, which is an event for girls in Pittsburgh who have completed over 150 community service hours. Each girl is required to bring a “suitor” to dance with, who, most of the time, is just a good friend. When practices for the ball had just started, I barely knew anyone in the program. I just so happened to sit next to a few girls from Pine Richland High School. Turns out, one of them ended up bringing Nick as her suitor for the night. Two days later, we went out for breakfast, and Nick was our server. My Nonna tried to get his number for me and wouldn’t stop talking about how cute he was. 

Eventually, he reached out to me again on Instagram when he found out I was going to Pitt; turns out he was going to Pitt, too. We never actually made plans to hang out; I was far too nervous, and my sister had been editing us together in photos for the past six months. We even wrote a song about him. . . needless to say, we were obsessed.

Fast forward to freshman year, I was wandering around the dorm after a Thursday night in Mario’s, and I just so happened to run right into Nick. He didn’t even live in my dorm; his friend had swiped him in. A year later, I would look back at those photos from that fateful Thursday night at Mario’s (before I met him in the dorm), just to find that he was in the background of every single photo. It was fate.And, the best part about this was that we didn’t even start dating until months later at Christmas. We just kept running into each other until Pittsburgh’s Red String of Fate finally tied us together."

Written by Giulia Mauro

Edited by Julia Brummell and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Allie Ewbank

I’ve always defined myself by my pursuit of love. I’m addicted to anything romantic, even if there’s no happy ending. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor in high school, ready to define myself by another Internet-chosen trait: my love language. I tapped through different options on my illuminated screen, excited to see how I could apply these results to the relationship I’d make up in my head with the person I had a crush on that week.

My infatuation with love hasn’t gone away; if anything, it’s grown. But through years of heartache, delusion, and throwing myself away, I’ve abandoned the notion that love can only find me through a partner– and, funnily enough, love has found its way back to me through that, too. My obsession with love is rationalized when I count up all the different languages it speaks to me in, and I pray it never stops.

Quality Time

My dad’s favorite part of every day has always been sitting at the dinner table. While he’s happiest when eating, it’s the people occupying the table that make it his favorite. At home, each member of the immediate family has unassigned assigned seats; this even includes Gibby, our family dog who’s gone blind in his years of old age, who sits on his own chair in the corner. We don’t believe in leaving anyone out, obviously. In high school, when a friend of mine would join for dinner or a family member from out of town would be in for the holidays, our seats didn’t change. Instead, a new chair would be added, and the top of the small dining table would become crowded with a few more plates than normal. When I come home now, my seat waits for me, and so does my dad with a bottle of wine instead of Diet Coke.

In my apartment, the brown pleather sofa is my dinner table most nights, occupied by my roommates and I. Usually a YouTube video is put on the TV that sits on our decorated mantle, and one video turns into five or six. Our empty plates go cold as our laughs grow harder, putting off the work and evening routines that wait for us in our respective rooms. I’m spoiled enough to never want to spend another dinner alone again.

Physical Touch

The brown pleather sofa in my living room has a love language of its own. When responsibilities are limited and couch time can be never-ending, I’ll find my body inching closer and closer towards my roommate’s next to me, until something in a movie or TV show will make us scream and grip each other’s arms. This isn’t a rare occurrence; I’m lucky enough to have found myself two girls who are just as reactive as I am, making every moment feel big.

Our couch has seen other lovers, too. It’s seen me nervously put my knees on top of a boy’s I’ve known for a while, blurring the lines between friends and more as my cheeks flush. Weeks later, we sit in the same spot, but the couch is full of my roommates and more friends, and I’m nuzzled between his arm and chest; a spot I’ve grown comfortable in. My roommate sits next to a boy who once laid his head in her lap in the same nervous way, until they decided their love was better platonically.

Acts of Service

My college apartment has taught me a lot about what it means to be an adult, and the mundane tasks that come with it. It’s taught me to appreciate walking into the kitchen to see the dishes cleaned after a long week, or my laundry neatly folded for me after time had slipped away from me. If I ask who did it, the answer is always the same: a fairy.

The fairy that lives in our apartment does more than just dishes and laundry, though. I keep a note the fairy left me on a particularly bad day once on my wall above the ceramic gnome it was left with. It catches my eye at least once a day as I do my make up or agonize over an assignment, reminding me of those who love me when I can’t find it in me to love myself.

Words of Affirmation

I’m quick to say I love you. I’m not shy to remind those I love just how much I do, through notes, or cards, or a simple text. Sometimes, I’ve been convinced that I’m almost too much when it comes to this– convinced I didn’t deserve that back, and that’s why I wasn’t getting it from the one person I wanted it from the most.

But it’s all around me, in other forms. It means more to me when my roommate surprises me with an I love you before leaving for break, or in a barista complimenting my outfit on a day I didn’t try as hard as I normally do. Hearing simple I love yous or compliments feels better when they’re genuine– and now, that’s all I’m surrounded by. Because I’m not too much, I was just loving the wrong people.

Gift Giving

I get my love of reading from my mom; so much so that every year for Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or her birthday, at least one gift will be a book. I learned that when I was four, and my dad decided to let my brother and I tag along to Christmas shop with him. I’ve never been the best at keeping a secret– my brother continues to remind me that I have a big mouth– and when overexcitement took over my tiny body, I couldn’t contain myself. I got home, crawled into my mom’s lap, and began to tell her everything we’d bought for her, starting with books. It didn’t take long for my dad to shout from another room to get me to stop.

While I’m still not the best secret keeper, giving gifts comes naturally to me. It’s worth it– I watch my roommate open the gift I ordered her months before, tears brimming her eyes as she jumps up and down with incoherent screams of thanks fly from her mouth. I physically shake as my brother and I execute a surprise for my dad’s sixtieth birthday we’ve been orchestrating for months in advance. I make at least four different Valentine’s Day cards, until I can perfect my cursive writing or decide on something else.

Written by Elisabeth Kay

Edited by Julia Brummell

Graphic by Elisabeth Kay

I mean, can you blame us? It's hard to break habits—even harder to break addictions. And that's what the constant scroll on social media is. An addiction. An addiction that has become so normalized that it's been mystified as natural. But there's nothing natural about waiting for the elevator in your building and choosing to stare at a small rectangular screen instead of engaging in conversation with the complex individual standing next to you. 

Even waiting for the bus has become a sight for sore eyes. I'm filled with this dystopian dread when I observe my surroundings. Necks are drooping, and fingers are scrolling. 

And it doesn't have to be this way. We can all agree that we don't want it to be this way. When talking with my friends and peers on this subject, not one has expressed that they want to spend more time on their phone. It's always, “Ugh, I need to stay off of TikTok” or “Yeah, I’ve been setting time limits for Instagram.” Maybe we are beginning to realize how much we are missing out on. We are missing out on the world around us. Missing out on conversations. Missing out on hearing new voices—untamed volumes. Missing out on seeing new sights: new shades of sunset and new shades of natural blush on people's cheeks. We are missing out on the college experience we were promised. 

This is certainly not the college experience I was promised. Not the dinner table I was promised. Not the world I was promised. 

So let's not accept this world. 

Older generations worry about our social capabilities. But let's not give them a reason to worry.

Let's connect. 

Let's welcome boredom. Let's welcome boredom and let it take us to creating art. Take us to talking to a new person in class, to meeting our lovers, and to finding our passions. 

I shouldn't have to compete with this uninvited, digital third party. When I'm with you, I shouldn't have to fight for your eyes' attention.

My senior year of high school, I was given the opportunity to go on a retreat with 40 of my peers. None of us had access to our phones for three days. It was an adjustment on the first day—hands reached for empty pockets and were quickly met with the reminder that a phone is not a body part. But that initial discomfort faded quickly. Friendships formed fast, and conversations flourished. You could feel this collective starvation of deep human connection. And finally, when our phones were nonexistent, we starved no more. 

I made close friendships with individuals that I had barely even spoken to before the retreat. Others had the same experience. It was beautiful. We invented games and created art and formed genuine relationships. At one point, all of us gathered in a circle and orchestrated a rap battle. We experienced pure joy. 

It felt refreshing to know that, as young adults, we’re still capable of experiencing this pure joy. We’re still capable of cultivating creativity. We just need to resist reaching for our phones. 

We are capable of so much more when our eyes aren't glued to those tiny screens. 

We are capable of connecting. 

So go on your phone in solitude. It's your choice to devote your alone time to scrolling. But how dare you choose to scroll when you're surrounded by interesting minds just waiting to be explored?

Let's connect.

Let's view scrolling like how we view smoking a cigarette—indulging occasionally, knowing it's bad for us. We look down on the idea of doing it in public and around others.

This is not to say that filming TikTok dances with your friends is bad. Let's keep doing that. Let's keep sending our friends memes, and let's keep using social media…in smaller doses. Because it is fun. But with the dosage we are using now, is it more fun than playing outside all day? More fun than having a movie night? Is it more enjoyable than going for a walk with your roommate and having a philosophical conversation? Is it better than being challenged and feeling you've grown because of it? Than experiencing love? Than hugging someone? Than being complimented by a stranger? Than making up a game to play on a long car ride? Is it better than the feeling you get when you're laughing with the people around you, so immersed in the present moment? 

So let's hold each other accountable. Hold me accountable. Talk to me. I'd much rather talk to strangers and have my own experiences than be consumed by the experiences of others on TikTok. 

Inevitably, this addiction will consume us some days. But it doesn’t have to every day. Don't let it. Don't let it become so normal. Please. 

Let's be able to have memories to reminisce on. 

“Remember that beautiful hike we went on?”

“Remember when we laughed until milk came out of your nose?”

“Remember when we would get frozen yogurt every Friday and catch up?”

“Remember when we stayed up until 1 a.m. playing Uno?”

Let's not be able to say, “Remember when we stared at our phones all day?”

Let's connect.

Written by Ella Aben

Edited by Liv Kessler and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Ella Aben

I have long heard the sentiment that ‘the space reflects the mind’. My mom used to tell me that in high school.  when you couldn’t see an inch of my carpet, and when it was clean but looked like a prison cell. We moved before my senior year of high school, and I never decorated my walls (on one hand, I am glad, because the decor I chose reeked of 2020—cow print bedding, tarot card tapestries, Monster Energy can garland, you get the picture). In essence, I had no personal style, so I put decorating on pause while I figured it out. 

I remember going to one of my friends’ houses and seeing that she had an entire room filled with stuff for her dorm.Contrastly when I was moving into my own dorm for the first time, it only took two trips with the housing cart to move all of my stuff, and one of those was just for clothes. There's this stereotype that everyone overpacks for their first year of college, but I only bought the things that I absolutely needed, like Twin XL sheets, shower shoes, and a Brita. 

I had already been commuting for a semester, so while I was excited for dorm life and being on campus, moving into the dorms during the spring semester didn’t seem like that much of an ordeal. My random roommate had been living there during the fall, and our room didn’t feel like mine. When I first opened the door, I was greeted by creepy dolls, mess everywhere, and her stuff in every piece of furniture that was to be mine. I knew I could never have anyone over, but I printed some pictures from FedEx to decorate my walls, in the hopes that it would get me through the next few months. 

Later, I found my first apartment on Facebook, and it met the one criterion I had: cheap rent. The apartment was in the farthest part of South Oakland from campus, and, as I came to find out, there was a mouse infestation. Since there were already 3 roommates living there, I got the shoebox room with no closet and popcorn walls. So, I didn't make that space my own. 

We moved into a new apartment this year, and I finally felt compelled to spend the money on real posters (really, why does a piece of thick paper cost so much?) and show off all the treasures I’ve been collecting over the past few years of college. There were a lot of things I cheaped out on, and I am constantly reminded of it—when my fabric dresser drawers collapse, when I put weight on my desk chair and almost fall backwards, when I move a muscle in my bed and the entire frame creaks—but decorating my room has made me feel so much more at home. 

Just as I’m starting to feel comfortable in my apartment, I find out that my lease will be cut three months short because the apartment is being demolished for new student apartments. The fun summer with my roommates before we all go our separate ways will be cut short,

By the time I graduate next semester, I will have lived in six different places while completing my degree. I’m excited for a new year in a new apartment (goodbye South O!), but, even more, I look forward to the day when I get to live somewhere for more than a year at a time. Moving

makes it hard to decorate—knowing everything will have to come down as soon as it goes up—but decorating adds a bit of stability during these times of uncertainty. It might be a while before I am ready to invest in quality furniture or frame something on my wall, but decorating does feel a bit like creating my own art exhibit, and I’m just moving on to the next gallery.

Written by Renee Arlotti

Edited by Ella Connell and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Sydney Williams

I’m sitting in a coffee shop listening to “Such a Funny Way” by Sabrina Carpenter, feeling sick with guilt as I write this. I don’t think I like my friends. Am I the problem? Do I do this to myself? Do I not like my friends or am I just frustrated with them? Do I have a right to be frustrated with them? 

I recently saw a Tik Tok explaining how you should never be upset if your friend group hangs out without you. While this definitely reframed my perspective on my complex feelings, I couldn’t help but offer some pushback against this idea. The video explained how friend groups are a social construct (are friendships not a social construct as well?), and that no one owes you anything in a friend group to include you. You are not entitled to someone else’s bond with another friend; that is separate from you. While I understand and respect that, is it not slightly cruel? Should you not seek to include your friends? 

I do see validity in this argument. There are some things I only want to experience with certain friends. I would not go see a musical with my non-theatre friends; I would reserve that occasion for people who would value and respect that experience. But when it comes to hanging out, if you feel your friends are unable to value and respect time with you, is that a sign to distance that friendship? 

Dynamics in a relationship change. People change. I know that it is okay to outgrow people, and that we are not indebted to each other. No one owes you anything. But shouldn’t people want to have loyalty to one another? Shouldn’t you want to show up and seek out your friends?

People often get caught up in the self-care movement. Media today tells us that, if you feel any sort of anxiety in a relationship, you should cut it off. It’s not serving you or bringing you happiness; get rid of it. But is this mindset not creating a double standard? You don’t owe anyone anything, but if they don’t work in your favor, be done with them? In a world that craves self-care and improvement, have we become worse? Have we become so caught up in the idea of what being a good person looks like that we’ve forgotten our own sense of self? People make mistakes. That’s inevitable. People change, that’s also inevitable. But a good friendship should change and grow with you. You should water each other's branches. People aren’t perfect, and you can’t expect them to be. 

I think about the best friendships that I have. I’m a person with many flaws. I’m arrogant at times, I don’t like vulnerability, and I’m immature. My best friends see this, and don’t critique me for it. They make me feel whole. They remind me that we all have flaws; it’s what makes us human. We work through our issues. We put our pride aside and shrug it off. I’ve recently been plagued by people who don’t operate that way. Who aren’t okay with accountability. Who don’t see their own flaws. When you’re met with failure you must recognize it, but you can’t get hung up on it. You don’t get better if you don’t fail. I’ve failed in many friendships. I’ve failed in other ways too. I hate failing, but I know you don’t get better if you don’t fail. There are times I’ve been a bad friend. I’ve chased a guy instead of hanging out with them or I’ve made a rude comment. But I’ve learned from my mistakes. I am not the best friend that I know, but I try. 

Is that the issue? Have people forgotten how to put in the effort of trying? Of thinking for yourself. Of looking at an issue from multiple perspectives and analyzing how it can be improved? Or am I the freak? I’ve always been told I’m chalant, and I agree. I’m an overachiever, gold star, eager geek, but I never want people to question their worth because of me. When I love, I love loudly. People don’t applaud that anymore. People applaud whose Instagram posts of their curated group of friends look the best. People put you in a box: “This is my friend! She’s my favorite person to go out with!” Somehow that friend you met freshman year who has seen you cry and studied with you re-labels you, gives you a new identity because you changed. They can’t fathom the idea of you being human.

As a member of a sorority, people make different presumptions about me. My closest friends at Pitt not in Greek life have done so. They assume that, because I spend time with my sorority, I never want to spend time with them. They don’t invite me to things unless they gain something from it. Friendships must serve you, but not require too much effort. Suddenly, friendships stopped being meaningful and grew superficial. After a week filled with exams and meetings, no one reaches out asking to get lunch or study. Suddenly I’m only relevant on the weekend. Did people lose passion? When did everyone get so fucking shallow? 

I recently hung out with that group of friends and felt like such an outsider. None of them spoke to me. I sort of just sat there. If they were met with a question, they deferred it to someone else.. Every single conversation seemed to include some new inside joke I wasn’t privy to and no one felt like explaining because “you just had to be there.” I couldn’t find a place to fit in. But of course, the next morning when someone had Sunday scaries they asked me how to fix them. It seems that my role as a principal character in the friend group has shifted. I was written off just like Reneé Rapp in The Sex Lives of College Girls and am now a recurring character. I came in for a fun weekend montage filled with flashing lights, or to remedy a lead’s problem. I was not included in the studying scenes, or the sleepovers, or the after party. There was never a closeup on what was happening in my life. Suddenly, the audience stopped caring. 

It’s not normal to feel this way. It’s not normal to have friends who do this to you – by my standards, at least. While everyone expects my sorority relationships to be superficial, they’re more real than  the people who pride themselves on being different. The people who don’t “pay for friends,” who maybe need to start doing so. 

I’m ending this piece, still in the same coffee shop with greasy hair and headphones on. I’m listening to “Better Than This” by Lizzy Mcalpine now, looking at a room full of people and guessing their dynamics. Across from me are 4 moms catching up, talking about their spouses and the hijinks their kids are getting up to. I’m looking at a table of 4 freshmen, giddy with excitement at having found a new coffee shop off campus. Now, I'm looking at 2 people on a first date, trying to be nonchalant. I wonder if they ever feel this way, like an outsider looking in. If they ever wake up everyday and wonder where they should spend their energy. Getting to know new people, or staying stuck in the same cycle with old friends, hoping one day they’ll remember how things used to be – how they used to sleep in the same bed after a night out and talk about the people who hurt them. The next morning one of them makes eggs as the other cuts up fruit. I guess time will tell. I’m ending this piece listening to “I might say something stupid” by charliexcx. 

Written by anonymous

Edited by Ellie Stein and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Liv Kessler

My mother talks incessantly about her jowls as she pinches the skin of her neck and pats her stomach with a self-deprecating thump. She comes back from the hair salon, relieved to have a new box of blonde dye in her hair, so she can feel young just for another while. She rages against her age, drawing it out over painstaking years.

But for the life of me, I cannot see her as anything but beautiful. We grow up idolizing our mothers as pinnacles of beauty, and it’s so strange to see her loathing the features I will always see as perfect. 

Female aging is marked by changes that are inherently uncomfortable in a physical sense. But it becomes a psychological battle against time only because of standards that directly contradict nature. 

Today, human beauty seems more and more to be defined by unattainability - what takes hard work, sacrifice, money, or a winning ticket in the genetic lottery to achieve. It is a victory over nature, as if the incredible privilege to be born a human being, just as we are, is not enough.

We worship nature – its grandness, its diversity, its evolutions. But we ignore these same things, even condemn them, in ourselves. Especially women; when we wrinkle, our hair darkens or silvers, our body composition changes, we are taught to hate ourselves for it. But everything alive undergoes the same progression, and we’ve always wondered at its beauty.

The wind and water that eroded the Grand Canyon trace valleys into our skin. The sun that bleaches the ground and greens the grass – it warms, freckles, and burnishes our bodies. Dewdrops ripen, soften, sweeten on the surface of leaves that shrivel and fall. How can we love this innate earthly transformation, yet idolize firm, unchanging versions of ourselves? 

These wrinkles and ridges and marks are trophies of experience. Memories engraved in us like etchings in stone. Evidence that we have achieved vitality, not just an aesthetic of societally dictated worth. 

Only we humans aspire to stay young, hard, and smooth forever. But that is not living, because life – sentience – is defined by change. We know there’s grace in natural change because we marvel at every sapling and sunset. We are beings just as they are, and as our bodies age, they gradually come to resemble the earth itself, which gives life to everything we know. That, undeniably, is real beauty.

Written by Real Beauty

Edited by Clara Jane Mack and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Sydney Williams

At 16, my teeth shifted from their position once perfected by braces, leaving me with an ugly snaggle tooth. At 19, I developed an intolerance for lactose. At 20, I gained 30 pounds in the span of eight months. At 21, my worsening hormonal acne and deteriorating vision were unignorable. An ophthalmologist gave me glasses and a dermatologist gave me prescription skincare. I bought clothes that fit my new body. I began taking Lactaid when needed. 

I learn to move on. It does me no good to agonize over the person I used to be. I am better off taking these hits as they come, growing with my changes, and accepting that it truly is not that serious to gain weight or have acne. And yet, fear festers in my bones when I am reminded I will live the rest of my life with less than 20/20 vision, unable to eat whatever I please without checking what it contains. I used to be grateful I didn’t suffer from these ailments. Now I must place my gratitude elsewhere.

Sometimes I forget a lipstick in the pocket of my pants when I run them through the laundry and nearly all of my most-worn items become speckled with imperfections. I kick myself for making a foolish mistake, but try to not wallow in the regret. I can not wish away stains. I can, however, acknowledge that clothes hold no real value. This feels similar to my bodily imperfections. I’m able to ignore my teeth most of the time, but I become uncomfortable and insecure when I feel how far my front right tooth sticks out. I notice it in photos and regret not wearing my retainer enough as a teenager. It’s just a tooth. It holds no real value and reflects nothing of my personhood. 

I think many women in the 21st century suffer this same type of existence – knowing the insignificance of surface-level complaints, but feeling their weight regardless. I am told to care about my skin and then I am told I am shallow for caring. Joan Brumberg wrote a chapter in The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls titled “Perfect Skin” in which she explained the origins of our obsession with acne. She explains that parents saw their child's appearance as necessary to success, and pimples were seen as a sign of moral failure. By the mid-1900s, acne was causing psychological distress in adolescents, as it was seen to block economic opportunity and result in failed performance. The pressure to be blemish free is inescapable, but I’m not sure it’s where I owe it to myself to place my energy. 

Perhaps the adage “change what you can, accept what you can’t” is relevant here. Was it laziness that made my teeth this way? Am I doomed to continue my downfall if I don’t wear my glasses? Is the medical field correct when they insist my mental health will improve if my skin clears? Or are they at fault, profiting off of obsession with appearance? Can I single-handedly reframe how beauty is perceived by choosing not to care? Or am I lying to myself, forever a product of the society I reside in?

Written by Clare Vogel

Edited by Elisabeth Kay and Julia Brummell

Graphic by Maggie Knox

I remember being in 7th grade when the term “tryhard” became a popular insult. I remember being taunted in algebra when raising my hand too many times, asking clarifying questions. Or when someone tried too hard in gym class, scoring too many goals. If you wore a dress on a day other than picture day. Or when the popular girls started wearing mascara. “Tryhard” was a term that the boys in my grade loved to throw around. It was never my female peers who said this about one another, but we were the ones who were torn apart because of it. The term was the boy's way of telling us they saw us working too hard, and it needed to stop. They thought we were trying too hard to impress them, when the truth of the matter is, we did these things for ourselves. 

I attended an extremely competitive private preparatory school. People cried if they did not receive an A on their Latin exam and taunted each other if they did not make the science olympiad. While I’ll never know for sure, I feel like most other middle schoolers were not this obsessed with their academic performances and instead focused on their outfits or something more age-appropriate. Even though we were extremely encouraged to succeed at high levels, we were penalized when it seemed like we were displaying too much effort. We don’t want to seem like we are working hard, even though we were working ourselves to tears. I still do this now. 

At 20 years old, the “tryhard taunt” that was the soundtrack of my adolescence still plays in my head. It’s cool to be effortless. It’s chic. The “cool girl” aesthetic so many people try to fit into is effortless. You have a loose blowout and slightly frizzy hair, not the neat pin curls of a pageant queen. You have slightly smudged eyeliner instead of a crisp, clean cat eye. As a person who has always been an overachiever and extremely type A, I’ve learned to shrug off the tryhard comments. I never want people to know how hard I am trying to seem perfect. To seem effortless. To seem cool. I’ve rarely, if not ever, felt any of those ways. Nothing has ever come easy to me. I’m a person who has had to work toward every single accomplishment. I’m tired, a lot. I don’t hide my undereye bags, only my accomplishments. If someone brings them up, I shrug them off and turn the conversation elsewhere. I don’t want to dominate the conversation and be a tryhard. 

I’ve never been able to find comfort in the in between. I need a plan, and I need to know what’s happening. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that, as a child, I received an OCD diagnosis, or that I’ve always been extremely vocal about voicing my concerns and questions. I’ve never been okay with uncertainty. While this neurotic behavior has proved helpful in school, I have no shame in asking a teacher a clarifying question or advocating for myself; this intensity has spilled into every aspect of my life, leaving stains everywhere.  

In high school, I had two boyfriends. I asked both of them on our first dates, and to start dating. My first boyfriend and I met the summer before my sophomore year, the start of his senior year. I remember the first time we kissed. I didn’t know what it meant afterwards. The next time I saw him, we had a shift together (we both were lifeguards at a local pool), and he drove me home. While I sat in his car, I remember having the most direct conversation ever. I simply turned to him and went, “So we kissed. And I like you, and you like me. Anything you want to ask me?” No flirting, no room for confusion. Direct and to the point. Although our relationship started direct, it quickly descended into a period of uncertainty and grey area. We never broke up; he just stopped responding to me and moved to college after we dated for a year. Needless to say, this was a tumultuous time for my 16-year-old self, who does not handle confusion well and had never been broken up with before. I couldn’t ascribe a label to what was happening to me. I had never lived it, my mom didn’t have this experience, my friends hadn’t dated yet, and this had never happened in any of my favorite rom-coms. During this weird breakup without a breakup, I remember texting him a lot. I remember slowly realizing that I had been ghosted. I remember feeling embarrassed, confused, and hurt. Hurt does not even begin to encompass how I felt. 

Even though I’m now a sophomore in college and have spoken about this issue extensively in therapy, it is still something that haunts me. I cannot pursue people. I can’t show that I’m a tryhard. I can’t put myself in a vulnerable position. Even though I am so apt for clarification in every aspect of my life, my love life is not one of those. I let things happen to me. My candor is no longer labeled as cute or charming, but instead weird. “She is so clingy and obsessive” is a refrain that echoes through my head. I realize that I encourage my friends to always tell people how they feel. I realize I am a hypocrite. I realize that I have written a piece called “Getting it all out,” in which I encouraged people to be vulnerable, but suddenly, when I’m in that position, I can’t. 

I hate being a tryhard. It’s so juvenile, to feel this way, but I hate to feel this need for people to constantly understand me. I hate that I have to overexplain every little step in my head in order to justify all of my actions and reactions. It takes a lot for me to let someone in. In my mind, letting someone in includes showing all of these vulnerabilities that I hate about myself. I have an even harder time knowing when it’s appropriate to let someone in. I don’t understand the spaces in between. I don’t understand the uncertainty. I don’t do well with rejection. I recently felt the need to explain all of this to one person, as an attempt to end the in-between phase I was stuck in, and for the first time in my life realized it was a gift to feel this way. 

I let someone in for the first time in almost 2 years. It ended badly. It felt like a Taylor Swift song. Starting over the moon, and then watching it all collapse down. Walking out into the rain, crying, and being followed out. Regardless, I learned a lot. We fought. And as usual, I felt the need to shine light on my side of the story. I needed to explain my perspective and why I acted the way I did because I cannot fathom the idea of not fixing something. Truth be told, I can’t handle not being a tryhard. If I’m ending something, I need to know I did everything in my power to keep it from happening. I can’t leave anything up to chance. I explained exactly how I felt. I explained why I reacted in the way I did. I brought up what hurt me. I explained that I was sorry, but that I felt used. And that when I feel used, I freak out. I explained that I don’t do well with uncertainty, and I know that’s something I need to work on. I explained that when I’m going through a difficult time, I know how to cope. I explained that I had been in this situation before, and would not do it again because I put effort into myself. I try hard on myself. And I was met with a blank stare. How lucky am I to know why I feel the way I do. I was met by someone who explained to me that they’re sorry. That they don’t know why they acted the way they do. That they don’t know how to cope. How lucky am I to know how to cope. How lucky am I to know how to articulate my feelings. How lucky am I to know how to fix issues. 

So, maybe being a tryhard isn’t so bad. Maybe the years of taunts from my peers calling me a tryhard, clingy, or obsessive proved to be helpful. It shaped me into who I am today. It shaped me into a person who will work hard to fix my issues, who will never let someone assume something about me. I am the only person who can control my life, and my fate. I will not let something happen to me. That’s a beautiful thing, to be able to care and show people that you care. For once in my life, I’m glad to be a tryhard.

Written by Liv Kessler

Edited by Giulia Mauro

Graphic by Declin Mageau

Heated Rivalry, 10 Things I Hate About You, 27 Dresses and, hell, even Glee. Besides being almost perfect works of media, what do these all have in common? They all show us the ups and downs of relationships. When you think about romance, or consume any form of media dedicated to it, you see the emotional rollercoaster ride that comes from being in a relationship. Most stories end with the couple together, overcoming their difficulties for the sake of their love. They show us heartbreak, but usually also a form of forgiveness. I’ve been told that’s not necessarily realistic – not that I would know. The romance we usually see is either happy, feel-good fluff or explosive drama-filled angst with exaggerated characters and situations, which isn’t representative of realistic relationships with boring days and disappointing endings. 

I love a good rom-com as much as the next person (maybe more, if we’re being honest) and I get overly invested in fictional couples. Maybe it’s my lack of experience when it comes to relationships that makes me so excited when two (very fictional) people get into a (very fictional) relationship and makes me sad when they have a (very fictional) breakup. I live in a time where there's a new romcom every weekend and at an age where my friends are all getting in and out of relationships or situationships or hookup-ships or whatever the ever-growing lists of terms is. 

On one hand, I resent my generation's obsession with love and sex. It feels like all anyone cares about or wants to talk about and it bores me. It just feels shallow and repetitive, as though we should be spending time on other things. On the other hand, I’m a bitter and petty person who is willing to admit I only care because I don’t have much to say. In situations like these, I cling to the same pathetic stories that have been told so many times that they don’t mean anything personal to me beyond being anecdotes I tell for the sake of feeling included. 

Whilst I’ve come to terms with being single for as long as I have, that doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what I’m missing out on. The experience and the feelings of someone loving you and choosing you are something I’ve only ever imagined in my head, over and over. In my head, I’ve been loved but never heartbroken. I’ve never had to experience the kind of pain that everyone talks about being the worst thing they’ve felt. The feeling and experience that has so many songs and movies written about it that everyone knows how much it sucks, even if you’ve never had it personally, like me. The weird part, though, is that it doesn’t make me scared of it or want to avoid it. It makes me want it more. 

Obviously, I’m not saying that I want to be hurt, by no means. The funny part is that I have had my heart broken in other ways (friends, family) but never the classic way – never because of a failed romance. And truthfully, it’s not the same. I feel like there’s an important, pinnacle human experience that I’m missing out on. That I’m listening to my favorite songs or watching my favorite movies from an outsider perspective. I love them and I understand how important they are to people, but to me it’s just another form of entertainment that is almost as unrelatable to me as the serial killer horror movies I watch. 

So I guess all of this is to say that at the root of it, no matter how fucked up it makes me seem, I want to be heartbroken. Because heartbreak – the romantic kind, that is – proves that at some point you were in a relationship with someone who loved you and chose you. Yes, that ended, which could've been a result of something as simple as falling out of love or bad timing or something as painful as cheating. But what matters is that it happened. One day you can look back on the heartbreak and the memories – good and bad – fondly or at the very least as something that helped you grow as a person, a partner and maybe even a friend. 

Each time one of my friends has been heartbroken by their partner, they come out of it for the better. It gives them an opportunity to be better in future relationships and look for something better in future partners. I’ll be starting from scratch pretty much. When I get into my first relationship (though at this point it’s starting to feel more like an if than a when), I’ll be behind everyone else. I won’t have firsthand knowledge or experience for what I want, who I want to be with or how I want to be in the relationship. And, if I’m being honest, that scares me a little.

So the truth is, I wanna be heartbroken. I want to experience the joy and excitement, the love and beauty and fun of being in a relationship with someone I love and who loves me. I want to experience the pain and sadness, the horror and tragedy of being heartbroken. I want to experience the growth and the satisfaction of the aftermath, of being a newer and better person. I want that normal human experience.

Written by Daria Shepelavy

Edited by Ashley O'Doherty and Elisabeth Kay

Graphic by Elisabeth Kay

When I asked my mom to describe what I was like as a child, she told me I never cared what people thought of me. I was content to play by myself, but that might have been an adaptation to my environment. The little street I lived on was connected to a highway—if you drove too fast, you would miss it (sometimes the school bus did). There was the lady who never had fewer than seven dogs at a time, my babysitter and her entire extended family, and a bunch of old people who all looked the same. They were great for buying Girl Scout cookies, but not so much for camaraderie. Daycare and entertaining my younger siblings were typically the closest I got to playdates, and my elementary school friends changed every year, depending on who was arbitrarily put in the same homeroom as me.

My memories become a lot more vivid when I get to the 6th grade, but maybe that’s because I never really forget. I remember the two girls I created a comic book series with (one of whom became my best friend the following year), who decided it would be funny to ignore me and see how long I would follow them around, trying to get their attention. In the 7th grade, my best friend and I walked to the dollar store (our favorite place to hang out) to buy supplies for a school project. We were mummifying Barbies. I came to class the next day, and she told me that another girl’s mom had called her mom and told her to switch partners, so her daughter wouldn’t be left out. My teacher didn’t allow groups of three, so I had to stick wet gauze on a doll by myself, while failing to hold in my tears. Looking back, I’m not convinced that phone call ever actually happened. 

Given my somewhat sheltered childhood, it’s no wonder that I never found my place with the kids my age. I could never tell when people were being mean—if they were laughing at me or with me. I seemed to always find myself in trios–that were probably duos I didn’t realize I wasn’t included in– or being best friends with a girl with a big personality whose shadow I always let myself be forced into. This girl was always the “funny friend”, the “social friend”, or the “mom friend”, but what kind of friend was I? Was I the charity case? Was I the pity friend? I might've been the weird friend, but by the end of high school, I definitely became the quiet friend; the one who, in a class of the same 60 kids since Kindergarten, they could never quite get rid of. My little sister tells me that she was always jealous of my high school friend group, but she didn’t know how I felt—caught between the guilt of having everything I thought I wanted, but wondering why it didn’t feel like enough. 

In college, I threw myself into academics because I was determined to “make it out” of my small town; to prove it to myself or to others that I could… I’m not really sure. It shouldn't have mattered what they thought, knowing I would never see any of them again. I will never show my face at a high school reunion because I've outgrown them all and have no one to go with. It's a bit weird to suddenly have so much control over your life after years of making choices to appease others. I still find myself uncertain of what role I should take on in friendships, because the greater part of my life has felt like a performance. Who am I when I try to break these patterns of submission? Where is that little girl who was unapologetically herself? Can I still find her after all that I know now?

I crave guidance and direction, and maybe a small part of me craves someone to tell me who I'm supposed to be. I kept thinking I would have it all figured out when I reached this loose definition of “older”, but I woke up at 22 feeling more lost than ever. This year has been a time of picking up the pieces of all the phases and changes I’ve gone through, and deciding what parts of myself I want to take with me into the next stage of my life. There are so many sides of myself I have yet to explore, and childhood interests I’ve reclaimed that bring me closer to the girl I once was so ashamed of—I hope I will have more compassion for myself this time around.

Written by Renee Arlotti

Edited by Lauren Deaton and Giulia Mauro

Graphic by Andie Shultz