Spring 2022: The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-CH

exploring illness, caregiving, & medicine

THE HEALTH HUMANITIES JOURNAL

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

MISSION STATEMENT

The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-CH aims to inspire and facilitate interdisciplinary thinking and collaborative work while developing and embodying a variety of ideas that explore the interface between arts and healing. This publication allows for dialogue, meaning-making, and multiple representations of the human body, medicine, and illness.

To learn more about the publication or to submit, visit the following website: https://hhj.web.unc.edu.

DISCLAIMER

The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-CH adheres to legal and ethical guidelines set forth by the academic and health communities. All submitters maintain patient privacy and confidentially according to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The Health Humanities Journal of UNC-CH do not endorse or sponsor any of the viewpoints presented in this journal. The opinions presented in this journal are those of the corresponding authors.

SPONSORS

The Carolina Parents Council

The Health Humanities Journal

of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill SPRING 2022

Editor-in-Chief

Art Director

Treasurer, Editor

Editors

Design & Layout Editor

Assistant Design & Layout Editor

Marketing Director Graduate Editor

Faculty Adviser

EDITORIAL TEAM

Iris Kang (Psychology / Class of 2023)

Ellen Hu (Biostatistics, Mathematics / Class of 2023)

Malik Tiedt (Nutrition, Medical Anthropology / Class of 2023)

Olivia Delborne (Psychology / Class of 2022)

Miranda Almy (Medical Anthropology / Class of 2023)

Rhea Jayaswal (Nutrition / Class of 2023)

Su-Ji Cho (Neuroscience, Psychology / Class of 2023)

Iris Chang (English, Biology / Class of 2025)

Lydia Meltonlane (Psychology / Class of 2025)

Rotem Olsha (Neuroscience / Class of 2025)

Maura O’Sullivan (Psychology, Disability Studies / Class of 2025)

Iris Kang (Psychology / Class of 2023)

Annette Varghese (Neuroscience / Class of 2022)

Kamyrn Mcdonald (Psychology, Interdisciplinary Studies / Class of 2023)

Jesse Bossingham (Fourth Year Medical Student; Literature, Medicine and Culture MA)

Kym Weed, Ph.D. (Co-Director, HHIVE Lab / Department of English and Comparative Literature)

EDITOR'S NOTE

Dear Readers,

Not too long ago, my psychology professor mentioned something called the “optimistic bias.” Essentially, the majority of people innately believe they are more likely to experience positive events and less likely to befall unfortunate ones than the average person. We’re optimistic that we’ll hold the acceptance letter from that great college, get that great job at Silicon Valley, and live a life that’s...well, hopefully better than the average fellow’s down the street. This optimism is oftentimes referred to as a mistaken belief: after all, it is statistically implausible that most people are actually better than the average.

However, the optimistic bias captures an intrinsically crucial part of the human experience. Without these high expectations naturally wired into every living being that has passed through this world, I’d venture to say humanity would still be plodding through the Dark Ages.

When we look at the trajectory of human history, this mindset of high expectations is what underlies each era and generation—each person. It’s behind the resolve of the hundred-man army that beat a thousand, the strength behind the weak nation that triumphed against the oppressive, and the power of pioneers before us who didn’t waver in opposition. We don’t give up when something goes wrong the first, second, or third time. We keep going. It’s high expectations that have us trying and trying again. Today, we see it on billboard signs with messages like “No pain, no gain” and in common sayings like “There’s light at the end of the tunnel” and “Every winter has its spring.” Hope is innate; it’s in our blood and bones. And it’s hope that drives progress.

As you read this spring’s issue of The Health Humanities Journal, I hope you will decide to join the mission the authors leave us with. In this current season that is still aching from an arduous economic period, political strife, and viruses, they remind us that we cannot become an exception to this legacy of humanity. Our generation will be another that fights back, another great era to be written in the history books, another to be remembered for its tenacity and perseverance. Even when faced with a still-broken world and a nation that has yet to fully acknowledge the interweaving

of medicine and humanness, these stories ask us to take up the burdens of others and to journey together on the road to change. In each struggle that is faced, each battle that is not yet won, there is a glimmer of hope that peeks through the words. And if not hope, there is at least an unshakeable desire for progress that is yet to come.

As with every one of the eleven issues that have come before, this issue would not have been possible without the work of many individuals and organizations. I’d like to thank our sponsors for their continued and generous support. A special thank you to our adviser, Dr. Weed, for guiding us through many unforeseen obstacles this semester and for all of your support this past academic year. To the editorial staff, I am grateful beyond words for your zeal and diligence these past months as we toiled together every Monday night to share this issue. To our graduating staff, we can’t wait to see the soaring places the roads will take you. Thank you to the authors who have made this journal an especially memorable edition and for reminding us that the sweet never fails to accompany the bitter. Lastly, the staff and I would like to express gratitude to our Carolina community: thank you for showing us what it means to fight for a compassionate future.

So we hold onto that optimism, even in the face of doubts and even if it is illusory. For we believe that greater things have yet to come.

Here’s to a better today tomorrow,

Iris Kang Editor-in-Chief

Dear Readers,

As I prepared to return to in-person teaching this fall, I could hardly contain my excitement. The last time I stood in front of a classroom full of students, I was saying farewell to my Disability Studies class as they left for Spring Break in March 2020. As they filed out of the room, I assured them that I would familiarize myself with virtual technologies over the break “just in case” we had to make temporary adjustments. Little did I know that those ‘temporary’ adjustments would last more than a year. During that time, we adapted, learned, built community, and pined for the in-person classroom where, we were sure, we could cultivate more meaningful exchange than we could online (Astute readers will notice my shift to “we” here. It is a deliberate choice to connect my experience of the virtual classroom with the many teachers and students who experienced it similarly). Every time I spoke with my colleagues and students that year, there seemed to be a consensus that things would be better upon return—return to campus, return to the classroom, return to normal.

In those first days of return to the fall semester, I was energized by the presence of masked, yet eager, students. This was the teaching that I had longed for during those months of isolation. Sure, the return was an adjustment in routine, teaching strategies, and, of course, wardrobe. Still, it was largely a welcomed adjustment. Carolina was back!

Then, just weeks into the first term, a palpable wave of fatigue seemed to wash over my classes. Attendance dropped off and engagement waned. The rush of return gave way a feeling of collective burnout. While I had been so sure about the benefit of returning to the classroom at the start of term, by the end of September I started to wonder about the cost. What were we asking of ourselves, or each other, in our eagerness to return? Had all of those months of longing for a pre-pandemic world ill-prepared us to inhabit a world fundamentality changed by it?

I have spent the better part of this year trying to understand what exactly made this academic year so different from pre-pandemic years. The conditions of the classroom are relatively unchanged (minus the masks and Zoom attendees), and yet they feel fundamentally different. The writers included in this issue of The Health Humanities Journal articulate much of

what I have not be able to identify this year. “Palpable yet unreachable”—a phrase one author in this edition uses to describe unanswered questions in a clinical encounter—seems to capture the affective experience of our return.

To be clear, COVID-19 is not the focus of this issue. In fact, it only overtly appears in a couple of pieces in these pages. Still, it is the backdrop of the writing and artwork collected here. It is the condition under which the authors experienced these scenes or wrote their stories, and under which the brilliant editorial team compiled this issue. As the journal returns to a more typical issue (Even at the peak of the pandemic, HHJ never actually strayed from its mission to “allow for dialogue, meaning-making, and multiple representations of the human body, medicine, and illness”), our readers will be reminded of the complexity of embodied life in all its beauty and brutality.

In its attention to the individual as well as the structural, health humanities is well-suited to explore both the individual and collective effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors in this volume make use of poetry, prose, and visual art to make meaning out of their experiences with illness, caregiving, and grief. They cope with loss and extend care to others. They challenge the stigma of menstruation and vaginismus. They explore the intimacy of dissection and the fragility of memory. They draw readers into the experience of “not trusting [their] own perception.” They combine “both the old and new” in collages that explore systems of care, and they express frustration when the healthcare system fails, when they can see a medication “right there—nestled on the white metal shelving” of a pharmacy but cannot afford to pay for it without insurance. Experiences like those that fill this issue existed before the pandemic and many will continue beyond it, which begs the question: What exactly are we returning to?

As we enter into our third pandemic year, we must acknowledge that there is no “return,” nor should there be. Rather than aspire to return to pre-pandemic life, we can instead imagine new futures of care, connection, and justice. This edition of The Health Humanities Journal helps us start to do just that.

All the best, Kym Weed

Everybody has a story

Hannah Hetzel-Ebben Yarolimek

Everybody has a story is a piece intended to portray the profound nature of making the first cut, an experience every medical student undertakes during their first moments in the cadaveric dissection laboratory. I wanted to convey the thrill of learning anatomy, with the feelings of sadness and curiosity that swell within each medical student as they ponder about the life once lived laying on the table before them. I wanted to depict how each individual we encounter in the lab is a person with a rich history.

They each had their own stories and lives, people who were important to them, moments that were unforgettable, and loved ones that were left behind. The first cut of the cadaver opens up the “book” of that person’s life. Color, light, and memories flood out with the opening of the body, and consequently, the book. This is signified by the splatters, which represent pieces of an individual’s memories and experiences bursting forth with the first incision. My own dissection experience allowed me to fully grasp the incredible gift which these donors gave for us to learn. Through this piece, I hope viewers can appreciate and ponder on everyone’s unique story and precious life.

—Hannah Hetzel-Ebben Yarolimek is a first year medical student at Case Western Reserve University from Lexington, KY.—

Building a Lighthouse

Jared Ontko

Lately I’ve been fascinated with a realization I had a few months ago that inside the body, it is totally dark. I guess I had a silly notion that cells needed to see to do their jobs. It’s pretty amazing we know so much about them—trillions of tiny little balls, each slightly different from their neighbor, talking silently to each other.

Out here, it’s light.

My eyes swim with diagrams of molecules, drawings of cells, depictions of organs and their networks of communication. So many colors and smooth edges that fit together as tightly as a perfectly tuned watch. A beautiful watch.

In the body, it’s dark.

In the dark, we begin to hear a faint tick-tock. More of a lub-dub, but it’s counting the moments either way, squeezing each one tight for safekeeping. And this collection of moments is what life is made of.

Stepping out of the colorful atlases and into the dark, it’s easy to lose one’s heading. The cells don’t need to see—they trust their biochemistry to take care of them, so that we can focus on other things, on the experiences and people we love out here in the light.

A medical student is, at heart, a mason of sorts. We carve our own bricks and mix our own mortar, laying them one by one to build a foundation on which to build a life in medicine, to help people make every moment count. Some bricks are especially important to the foundation’s integrity. Your gift was the template I used to carve a special set of those keystone bricks.

Your collection of moments was yours and your loved ones’ to keep, but you trusted me with the heart that counted them. You let me shine a lantern into your body to learn what happens in the dark, so that I won’t have to reach out blindly to the people trusting me with their own lives—so that I can light a beacon in their dark. It is something only you could teach me, and I am honored and grateful to have been your student.

—Jared Ontko is a second year medical student at Case Western Reserve University from Oklahoma City, OK.—

sour categorical

Stephanie Hsu

Can’t promise you the police won’t be called but in the interim I’ll tell you about these Meyers lemons: how my uncle cried out at their sourness, thought they’d solve the somatic, cure his cold with perpetual spring. I too am scared of all the refrigerator magnets flayed out—

—meaning your family will have found out. Strangers will have brushed past the pretty Yosemite trinkets to pump your stomach out. I don’t know if that was too many pills you took. Undisclosed Advil. I don’t know if you’ll consider this a transgression, a regression, I don’t know how those kids do it, the ones who keep sucking on sour lemon Warheads, waiting for a contractual sweetness.

Rate your mood from 1 to 10, 10 for the best time of your life. Also categorize the heaviness, the ruined

hunger of yesterday. Last week you said 4. No one wanted to send you to the ED then: How are you doing, and how are you, back again, reflexive, reflective. Look, my uncle says, at this surplus of fruit. How greedily the lemons eat the sun, carve out space for their proliferation. But you downsized, didn’t want your mother to find out. So I’m sorry it will be the police who come. Last week, we’d talked, and I know all you ever wanted was to unchain that denseness, set your hollowness free

Wanted to not see the world under this type of cling film to stop this cycling between numb and numbed.

—Stephanie

Hsu is a Columbia University graduate and current student in the PostBaccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College from Fremont, CA.—

A Memory of Sickness

Teresa Ruiz Vazquez

Revised version of previous work titled “From June to September”; this version is titled “A Memory of Sickness.”

I stare at the nurse practitioner and she stares back at me. I stare at her pursed lips and frowning eyes. I wonder if she already knows I am sick as the last remnants of my voice fade away, filtering through the vents of the small room. As she exhales with pity, I wonder if she is afraid. After all, I had just told her of my alarmingly long list of symptoms that could not have been allergies despite my wishful thinking of the past few days. I stare at the unnamed middle-aged lady as she unwraps offensively long cotton swabs and wonder if I could have just stayed home, ignorant to my reality. On the exterior, I stare into her eyes as she approaches me, exhibiting a strange calm; I wonder if she can smell my sweat and misery. As the cotton swab is pushed down my throat, I know that there is nothing I can do but wait.

Three days after getting tested, I stare blankly at the ceiling as I listen to the nurse over the phone that I have positioned to lay on top of my chest as I am sprawled across my favorite couch. My father stays asleep on our other couch. The nurse confirms what should’ve been obvious since the beginning: my family has this new virus. Suddenly, I am annoyed. I want to fling the crusty, gray home phone that is almost as old as my younger sibling across the living room, smashing it into little pieces as I feel my composure beginning to deteriorate. My mind screams: LEAVE ME ALONE! Instead, I ask: “When is this going to be over?” The nurse’s excruciatingly patient voice fills the room once more. Anxiety, fear, and worry are not on the CDC’s COVID-19 symptom checklist.

In my state of sickness, sleep is like a luxurious spa treatment. In sleep, all of my worries are washed away. I dream that the particles of sweat and sebum that cling to my face wash away as a charming young esthetician attempts to work magic on the tired and dull appearance of my face. But when I awake, the throbbing headache is still present, my face is just as dull and emotionless, and my thin mattress feels uncomfortable on my back, a sleeping position I adopted out of fear of suffocating.

In a rush towards recovery, I frequently sip a boiling hot remedy tea in my favorite flower-stained mug that my mother places in my too-cold hands despite the summer sun rays filtering through the windows. Ingredients include: one whole lemon and three aspirins crushed into a pot left to boil. My mother tells me that it should cure the painful tightness in my chest that happens whenever I try to take a deep breath. She does not know that I already carry the extra weight of the secret tears during the quiet night. I do not tell my mother that I am afraid. She does not tell me, but I know that my mother’s prayers are her secret ingredient. I can almost see her whispers of Padre Nuestro mix with my tea as her breath intertwines with the steam from the mug, rising to escape through our popcorn ceiling, on a mission to reach the sky. ***

Tonight may be the night when I no longer exist. Tonight may be the night when I will wake up to the sound of ambulance sirens, to a paramedic wheeling a stretcher towards my guest bedroom where my father is turning purple. Tonight may be the night they lift my father’s heaving body onto the stretcher before shoving an oxygen tube deep into his nose that may or may not save his life. Tonight may be the night I see my own discolored body though my ghostly eyes. Tonight may be the night when I ascend to heaven and see that my father will join me. Tonight may be my night, but everyone has his, or her, or their, versions of night. Everyone has his, or her, or their versions of flight too; flying through a dark abyss is coming, but we can choose to not be afraid.

—Teresa Ruiz Vazquez is a junior from Dobson, NC majoring in English and Political Science with minors in Medicine, Literature, & Culture and Latino/a Studies at UNCChapel Hill.—

Naturopathy

Zuhaa Asrar

“Naturopathy” is a digital media collage piece centered around themes of revitalization via nature. I attempted to create a resonating aura of solace and healing. The woman depicted as the subject of the piece is meant to symbolize the importance of immersing oneself in nature. With the help of modern medicine, the process of healing has become increasingly catered to the individual, yet within these processes, the impacts of exposure to nature are often overlooked. “Naturopathy” signifies the need for more immersion in the outside world and the rest it can bring to the individual. The contrasting textures within the blues of the sky are meant to imitate the wealth of beauty that nature provides while the use of a vintage image for the subject indicates the ability of nature’s health benefits to transcend time. Time spent in nature is time spent healing, enriching, and bettering one’s health, and as a result, should be considered more often in the process of developing care systems for others.

—Zuhaa Asrar is a freshman from Cary, NC majoring in Public Health with minors in Spanish for the Health Professions and Medical Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill.—

The Two Sides of Science Roopa Bhat

Did I just run somebody over? I ask as I begin to pull out of my parking spot for the third time that day. No, the other voice responds, I think you would have seen somebody the first ten times you turned your head to look.

But what if it was a kid or small person, and I couldn’t see them? I push back. Again, I think you would know if you ran somebody over, with the sounds and the movement of the car, the other voice responds, providing me with a mental image that’s both unnerving and calming at the same time.

I whip my head back again. There was nothing there a second ago; there can’t be anything there now. That’s how physics works, remember silly? the other voice cajoles. How could I argue with physics?

I am a scientist. I went to an engineering school and studied physics, math, chemistry, and biology. I work as a researcher and employ the scientific process every day. Yet I have these unstoppable thoughts that contradict science—thoughts that tell me I run somebody over every time I drive over a pothole or that force me to check my mirror every few seconds, convincing me that a car can magically appear out of nowhere. It’s the same conversation in my head every day. So how, with these intrusive thoughts, can I drive to work? How can I work as an EMT, driving an ambulance with a patient screaming in pain?

When I was first diagnosed with OCD, I didn’t know that my thoughts were unfounded and intrusive and that I could push back on them. I didn’t know what the terms obsessive, compulsive, and disorder meant individually, let alone together. But even at that young age, I knew OCD didn’t stand for Obsessive Cleaning Disorder or Organizational Capability Disorder. I knew that it was inappropriate to say “Oh, you’re so OCD” for lining up pens on a desk or checking that the door was locked more than once. Even then I knew that having OCD went beyond that; it meant visualizing random, graphic images of mangled bodies and ultimatums that my brain

creates, telling me someone will die if I go to sleep at a particular time. Sometimes it does look like an obsessive need to tidy up my room, but other times it looks like me not trusting my own perception, forcing me to ask myself: is that reality or is that OCD?

Twelve years later, I’ve learned how to manage my illness. That includes training myself to answer that question every time I have a thought. Despite having a scientific basis, OCD creates thoughts that have none; in fact, they actively contradict the things we know to be true. And as a scientist, I can use my knowledge to push back on these thoughts. I can create this mental match between science and science—one side of science that creates the intrusive thoughts I have to battle, the other side of science that I use to actively dispute those thoughts. Now, the mental conversation has changed.

I think a car just appeared in my rearview mirror even though it wasn’t there a second ago. Let’s ask physics if that’s possible. It’s not? It must be the OCD then.

I think I’m going to get a life-threatening disease because I stepped in some muddy water. Biology and chemistry tell me that’s not how that works. Remember that thing I have that creates intrusive, untrue thoughts? It must be talking again.

My OCD is like a little kid always pulling at my shirt trying to get my attention. Managing it is not as simple as saying no once and hoping it gets the message. Even the moments of quiet make me eerily suspicious; I know that annoying voice will come back at any moment. But when my OCD does briefly take over and it always will no matter how hard I push it away I try to remind myself of the two sides of science: the science that creates these thoughts and the science that actively disputes them. Both serve to comfort me and confirm the distinction between reality and OCD. As a scientist, I know that my illness is real. But that doesn’t mean the ideas it implants in my head are.

—Roopa Bhat is a research coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard Medical School and a recent Columbia University graduate from Manchester, NH.—

Una Simple Gripa

Anonymous

“She says she has had a fever since Tuesday,” I explained to the nurse, who wrote furiously to capture every word I said. She then responded asking the triage questions most know by heart :

“Do you have a sore throat? Are you experiencing chills or nausea?”

“Dice que si tienes dolor de garganta? ¿Tiene escalofríos o náuseas?” I repeated, waiting for my mom to respond. She nodded to indicate yes to all the symptoms. My 10-year-old eyes wandered the cold room into which the ER nurse had led us to nearly an hour ago. I could hear the skin of my mom’s palms rubbing together to keep herself calm. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and her foot beat a staccato rhythm into the floor. Her panic apparently was as contagious as the virus she battled inside, and my foot joined her rhythm as I began to shake in my chair.

“The doctor will be in shortly,” said the nurse as she left. I waited with my mom, silent except for the rhythm of our tapping feet on the cold linoleum ground. ***

Earlier that morning, I watched my mom pace around the room before we left for the ER. She grabbed her “license,” and bowed her head praying at the Rosa de Guadalupe image hung above the door of our house. While she was meant to protect us from evil spirits, I doubted that she’d be able to defend us from what lurked outside our door. I grabbed my jacket and muttered a prayer myself before getting in the car and turning the radio to 101.1 FM, a well-known Hispanic station. I listened as the radio host said words I wish I did not comprehend. “287(g), La Migra, Retenes” blasted from the radio, chilling us more efficiently than the AC ever could. The sound of my mom blowing her nose shook the car every two seconds and she trembled with chills that seemed to worsen every time we passed a blue and white car. The fear, and the virus, seemed to be contagious.

The symptoms my mom was experiencing intensified as we entered the hospital. I felt heaviness in my heart as I watched my mom shuffle unsteadily towards the front desk, as if she was on the verge of collapsing.

“Ma’am, if you have an active fever please wear a mask,” said the lady at the front desk, eyeing my mom’s diseased figure warily. My mom’s puffy red eyes looked at me in confusion. I quickly handed a mask to my mom, and the registration lady began her questionnaire. My mom gave the lady her ID.

“Thank you, you are all set,” she told my mom. “Also, just letting you know that this license is expired.” I stepped back immediately as my mom threw up across the sparkling hospital floor.

Waiting for the doctor seemed to take forever, and the anxiety my mom had spread to me. I paced around the room, unsure why I felt threatened. I was not sick; I was “safe.” My anxious thoughts were interrupted by two knocks on the door. My mom shifted in her seat, her pale face looking tired and defeated.

“HOLA,” the peppy doctor said as she washed her hands in the sink. My mom relaxed her shoulders, “I am going to check on you really quick, we will take a quick look, run a test, and get you out of here, super simple!” My mom’s shoulders stiffened and I stepped in to translate what the doctor had said to my mom.

The doctor sped through her examination and I was sent out the door clutching a prescription in one hand and my mom’s sweaty palm in the other. It seemed that the farther away we got from the hospital, the better my mom felt. I even smiled as we walked through the empty parking garage. Maybe the doctor really had helped. The sense of peace I felt was soon erased as we began to approach the main roads on the drive home. My mom’s symptoms resurfaced. Her chills returned with a vengeance and I began to tremble as well. Why was I scared? I had no disease; I was in the “clear.” Yet I wanted to throw up and run away from the hotness I felt spreading across my body. Approaching stop signs and long lines of traffic lights on small roads made my skin itch and heart race, as much as any flu or fever. My mom coughed in the background and I counted the minutes till we were home again.

The red paint on the neon glowing CVS sign grew bigger as we approached the drug store, and I was dreading re-entering public space. My mom rushed out of the car and went straight to the pharmacy. As we waited in line, I watched the cluster of sick people huddled around us, waiting for the pharmacist to dispense well-being in a white paper bag. Mothers were wrangling their children with one hand while handing insurance cards and money across the counter with the other. I watched as one mom got her prescriptions, executed a sigh of relief and walked out the door. We finally neared the counter and my mom asked, in broken English, the cost of the medicine. I stood by, ready to translate. How do you say insurance in Spanish? I racked my brain as the cashier looked for the prescription price. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that I could not find the word; as soon as my mom heard the price she sighed and declined the prescription.

I felt angry at the thought of my mom having no medicine. Her cure was right there nestled on the white metal shelving that technicians scurried through like busy worker bees. Yet I could do nothing. She was sick, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. After what felt like ages, we arrived home. I looked at the Rosa de Guadalupe above the door and thanked her for at least allowing my mom to return home safely this time. After all, it was just the flu.

It’s 2022, and We Have a Situation: Menstruation

Mayra Kalaora

Shimmering rays of sunlight lit up Mina’s room as we lay down on her bed in Marmaris, Turkey. It was a blazing hot July afternoon during the COVID-19-ridden summer after our senior year. We had nothing to do but go for a swim to escape the Mediterranean heat. I lazily turned to Mina.

“Come on, let’s go to the sea today.”

Mina groaned, mumbling, “Can’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m

Confused, I light-heartedly asked, “Why don’t you just wear a tampon?”

Mina sat up and rolled her eyes. “My mom won’t let me. She thinks it’ll take my virginity,” she retorted, using finger quotes to emphasize “virginity.” We burst out laughing.

It’s been months, but I still constantly think of our seemingly light conversation; there was something tragic in there that we’ve gotten too accustomed to to recognize. It’s 2022—we’ve made monumental progress with the #MeToo movement, incorporated intersectionality into feminism, and increased the representation of different body types in fashion and the media. Yet, there’s still immense, universal shame and misinformation stemming from the stigma surrounding menstruation.

A study conducted by the International Women’s Health Coalition revealed that there were 5000 different euphemisms for the word “period” (O’Connor, 2016). In fact, we’ve normalized stigmatizing menstruation to the extent that we’ve forgotten that “period” itself is a euphemism. Period, after all, simply means “a portion of time”—it is practically no different from “the time of the month.”

on my period.”

If we delve into the etymology of “period,” we see that it comes from “a course or extent of time; a cycle of recurrence of a disease” (Online Etymology Dictionary, n.d.). Even in the English language, we see patterns of menstruation being implied as something “unnatural” about the biologically female body. This linguistic trend of “disease-ifying” menstruation is also present in Turkish—we are taught to say hastayım when we were on our periods, which translates to “I’m sick.”

Characterizing menstruation as a disorder is enough of an insult in itself (and a factually incorrect categorization—there’s something wrong if you aren’t getting your period). It’s even more absurd that saying you’re ill is considered as more appropriate than saying your body is going through a completely natural, biological process. Illness, obviously, is not an inappropriate event in itself. It’s just incredibly counterintuitive that we’re conditioned to be more comfortable lying about how there’s something wrong with our body instead of proudly saying that our physical health is functioning perfectly.

I used passive voice in my previous statement of “we are taught to say hastayım.” Let me correct myself—my role models were the ones who taught me to hide my period with “I’m sick.”

I was 12 when my grandmother told me to not tell anyone that I’d gotten my first period. I’d whispered it to a couple of friends but felt immense guilt afterwards.

I was 15 when I got told off by my literature teacher for not hiding my pad as I went to the bathroom.

I was 17 when my mother told me that I shouldn’t ask for tampons from the male neighbor who kindly offered to go shopping for us when COVID-19 first hit. I was bleeding heavily, and we were out of sanitary products.

I am now 18. I feel no shame when I explicitly state that I’m on my period or ask a friend for a tampon in front of others. As Gen-Z’ers, many of us have had access to endless information on social media; sex education is improving around the world (Landman, 2019; Montgomery & Knerr,

2018). Thus, we’ve been able to educate ourselves and work to raise awareness on menstruation.

Yet, I still hear the voices of all the women I’ve looked up to in the back of my mind, telling me I’m being “inappropriate” every time I refuse to hide that I’m menstruating. Coming from varying socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds and being part of a much more conservative generation, my Turkish role models have a much more fixed mindset compared to me and my peers. The Turkish translation for period is âdet—custom, tradition, rule.

And as customs get passed down from generation to generation, so does internalized misogyny. This is not limited to Turkey—having begun my freshman year at Columbia University, I’ve already exchanged countless stories with peers from around the world who’ve gone through eerily similar experiences.

The experience of having role models influence the younger generation’s ideals is universal, whereas having access to the Internet and the privilege to self-educate is not. As long as older generations retain their “set” ideals around menstruation that they have consolidated throughout the years, the collective enlightenment that Gen Z has gained still has a long way to go. Thus, to combat the tyranny of generational influence, we must extend the scope of sexual education to all older age groups.

You can’t break tradition from the bottom-up; no matter how hard you try, older generations still hold remarkable power in determining societal norms. We must not limit sex education to a young, upper-middle class demographic but make it available for individuals of all ages and backgrounds, so that one day, not a single person will think about their “virginity” before going for a swim.

References

Landman, K. (2019, Aug 8). How #MeToo Is Changing Sex Ed Policies, Even in Red States. NBCUniversal News Group. www.nbcnews.com/ health/kids-health/how-metoo-changing-sex-ed-policies-even-redstates-n1039616.

Montgomery, P. & Knerr, W. (2018). Review of the Evidence on Sexuality Education: Report to Inform the Update of the UNESCO International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/ pf0000264649.

O’Connor, R. (2016, March 1). There are more than 5,000 ways to say ‘period’ around the world - these are the best ones. The Independent. http:// www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/menstruationstudy-finds-over-5-000-slang-terms-period-a6905021.html.

Period (n.). Etymology. (n.d.). http://www.etymonline.com/word/period.

—Mayra Kalaora is a sophomore from Istanbul, Turkey majoring in Neuroscience and Behavior with an English Concentration at Columbia University.—

For Grandma

Haorui Sun

I am told that grandmother was quite an artist in her day, and when she scowls at the paper and raps her paintbrush against her knuckles, I can hear echoes of masterpieces past in the knock of brush meeting bone.

But when I first come to my grandmother with watercolors in tow, the nurses tell me she remembers less and less every day. They say that forgetting is in her blood like iron, passed from mother to mother. So, when grandmother tells tales of climbing hawthorn trees sprawling in orange courtyards, I wonder why the forgetting would take her husband’s name, and granddaughter’s face, but leave the trees.

My grandfather used to joke she can’t hate me if she can’t remember me and laugh till their framed photographs trembled on the walls and their children blinked their unease.

Maybe you need a name to hate, but on the days that grandmother stares me out of existence, reminding me she’s forgotten me again, I fold a paintbrush into her hand and her hand into mine and we paint a splotchy tangerine courtyard with hawthorn trees the size of the sky and I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, you don’t need a name to love.

—Haorui Sun is a fourth year medical student at Penn State College of Medicine from Lower Merion, PA.—

In My Grandfather’s House

Julianna Fischer

Everything looks so familiar, and yet, nothing is the same.

The fat, jewel-toned muscadines that once lavished the branches of the vineyard are gone, leaving behind withered vines. The old barn, once a treasure trove of mischief and make-believe, looks more dilapidated than ever. Even the rusty old bell in the yard which once beckoned and pleaded to be rung sits motionless above the yellowing grass. The slats on the wooden porch creak beneath my feet as I survey the backyard with an ache in my chest. I have returned to my kingdom to find it a ghost town.

As beads of sweat meander down my spine, I lackadaisically examine the constellation of mosquito bites on my legs. I hate Arkansas in the summer, I whisper to no one. I feel nothing but lethargy and sorrow, churned up like mud from the bottom of the Mississippi. I imagine that murky, brown snake of a river and try to count how many times I’ve passed over it on the Memphis bridge this year. When did those ill-fated trips begin? This all must’ve started months ago when it didn’t seem quite so bad. But when did things go from bad to worse, and from worse to this?

The slap of the screen door against its metal frame pulls me from my daze. “Are you gonna come see him or what?”

I follow my brother silently into the house. We shuffle into the back bedroom, where a hospital bed with wires and tubes has replaced the giant wooden desk.

In the bed lies my grandfather. He looks pale and wan, unlike himself. Then again, so do I. I stand in the corner focusing on the pattern swirling across the drapes. The room smells of stale cigarettes. I try to draw closer, but my body recoils. It’s as if some force is pulling me away from this room, to anywhere but here, to anything but this.

I excuse myself to the bathroom and stare at my reflection, unseeing. How do I say goodbye to the man who taught me to drive in the old truck and took me to waterski on the lake? Who loved to watch me play basketball and buy me dresses at the shops in Memphis? I can’t. I don’t know how.

I return to what I do know. In the kitchen, I recount my day in numbers: 145 calories here, another 90 there. Was that 260 with lunch?

Cancer is a kicker. It claws its way through the body like a parasite, leaving nothing but a husk behind. The time in-between is arduous and awful for everyone involved. Find a hobby, anything else to stay preoccupied. Mine just happens to be starving.

“No thanks, not hungry,” I lie when offered from the potluck that grows and grows as his friends come to say their goodbyes. I imagine vultures circling above the trees, signaling that the end is near. My stomach gnaws at me in displeasure.

I retreat to the bathroom where a long look in the mirror reveals that my ribs are protruding in a way that makes me feel giddy. The illusion splinters as I notice that my hip bones aren’t sticking out as far as I’d like, and I can still pinch the skin around my waist. My mind salivates at the thought of my body, emaciated. With renewed will, I return to the kitchen.

My aunt motions me over. “He needs more calories.” I make him a milkshake with peanut butter and chocolate syrup and ice cream—all the delicacies I can never taste. I bring my offering before him and hold the straw to his lips. I don’t know what else to do.

The dwindling crowd has moved to the living room. “Are you excited for high school?” someone asks as I pass by. I nod weakly. High school feels light years away from this, my world of skin and bones, of tubes and morphine drips.

Shadows stretch across the wooden floor. When I return to take over the post at his bedside, my mother’s eyes are full of exhaustion and relief. I kiss his cheek, and he whispers the name that only he calls me, the one that

makes me feel four-years-old, sitting on his lap at the breakfast table. My heart shatters into a million pieces.

Back in the kitchen, my body stages a prison break against the warden of my mind. I shovel forkfuls of cake into my mouth, barely tasting the sickly-sweet frosting as I race against my mind. When the last bite is eaten, my mind punishes me with anguish.

In the bedroom in the back of the house, my mother bears the brunt of my grandfather’s anger and fear. He knows he is dying. She wipes his brow and gives him pills to stave off nausea and nicotine patches to lessen the craving.

In the bathroom in the front of the house, I ingest baking soda to vomit my mistake. My stomach reels and pitches in anger, but nothing comes. Defeated, I kneel at the toilet bowl and bow my dampened head like a sinner at the altar. I repent and repent. Still nothing comes.

At dusk, I travel through the house like a ghost. I pause outside his room, listening to the shallow breaths, steadying my own to match his. Two bodies, shrunken and weathered. My jutting bones and mosquito bites, his mottled skin and callouses. He staved off death one more day, but how much longer?

I push open the screen door to the porch and lean my bones against the rail. Two strangers share a lighter below me. The smoke fills my nostrils, and I surprise myself by inhaling deeply. For a moment the smoke carries me to an autumn day, brilliant and blue, just he and I out fishing on the lake he loves. In an instant it’s gone, carried away by some northbound wind.

—Julianna Fischer is a senior from Wake Forest, NC majoring in Human Development & Family Studies with a minor in Chemistry at UNC-Chapel Hill.—

He Cries

Francisco Nibungco

His name is Joaquin and his atopic march finally reached full blown asthma this June. He’s a regular patient, being treated by yours truly for his allergic rhinitis for the last six months. He’s a good kid and his parents love him. But it’s his father I usually talk to and, lately, he’s been crying every time he brings Joaquin for a consult.

He cries because of Sophia. She’s Joaquin’s older sister. I never met her, but she was in treatment at my hospital for stage IV lung cancer. They had a few small victories during treatment, I learned, but when I met Joaquin last December, they’d just received bad news. More cancer—not just in the lungs, but everywhere. Joaquin’s father struggled to find the right words. I remember a movie line saying, about cancer, that the patient’s scan lit up like a Christmas tree. Joaquin’s father described a similar situation. He may as well have said the same thing. She was hurting, so he was hurting. And it showed.

He kept a brave face after that first meeting. I saw Joaquin periodically for his rhinitis and the hurt didn’t show much on his father anymore. When I occasionally asked about Sophia, the answers were always cautiously optimistic. They were still in the fight. Previously being treated at another hospital, they transferred to ours to see if expert care might improve Sophia’s condition.

I hoped so. I only had to deal with Joaquin’s stuffy nose. Sophia’s fight was beyond me. There was some comfort in knowing that doctors wiser than I were helping Sophia through her much tougher battle. She was in good hands.

I saw Joaquin again a few weeks ago, and maybe two or three times since. Every time we saw each other, his dad would cry. He shared that he cries every time he sets foot in, or even just sees, our hospital now. In the summer months when Joaquin’s rhinitis went on hiatus, Sophia’s condition took a turn for the worse, and she breathed her last with her parents by her

Gabriel

side. There was no anger in his story—just a deep sorrow I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

During the conversations I have with his father, Joaquin sits patiently. He’s always been this way. He rarely says a word, preferring instead to keep silent, seemingly with something to hide behind his blank stare and runny nose. I wonder what he feels. I wonder if he kept the same poker face when it was time to say goodbye to his sister. I wonder if he wishes the asthma would just go away.

He cries. Every time. But his son needs a good doctor for his asthma, and we have some of the best. I wonder if that’s all it is. There are many other hospitals. There are many other doctors. Why come to us, to me? Why come here and be subject to painful memories? Maybe he’s used to it. Maybe, despite the depth of the sorrow, there is still a presence felt within these walls. Maybe he’s just a dutiful father.

But he cries, too, I think, runny nose and all. We just don’t see. The tears are a failing grade, a fight in class, a bout of insomnia, a faked asthma attack, or a well-practiced poker face. The drops are bigger but harder to see. The sobs are louder but harder to hear. I’m sure his father can recognize his tears far better than I can, but his own might be blurring his vision.

I’ve always dreaded being there at the time of a child’s death. You hear parents whisper the love overflowing from their breaking hearts. You insert an IV line. You run the medicine. You write down orders. You wait. And you cry too—preferably when others don’t see. The tears are a failing grade, an argument with a colleague, a week of coming in late, a drink or twelve, or a well-practiced poker face.

He cries. Every time. And maybe we do too. Because someone’s son needs a good doctor for his asthma, and we are to become, supposedly, some of the best.

—Gabriel

Francisco Nibungco is a graduate student at Case Western Reserve University and pediatrician at Philippine Children’s Medical Center from Manila, Philippines.—

Vaginismus: A Shameful Pain

Anonymous

A part of me will always hate the gynecologist—the cold chair, legs spread apart. The metal, torture-like speculum. The promise of, “This won’t hurt,” when you know it will.

I was fourteen when I first went to the gynecologist, after a year of being unable to insert a tampon. It was excruciating every time I tried—my mother, on the other side of the bathroom door, saying, “You’re just being dramatic.” I felt like there was something horribly wrong with my body, in this unknown, foreign part of it, too scared to even look at my vagina in a mirror. Years of a failed sex education system and parents too private to ever openly discuss sex created a profound physiological anxiety about my own body. During my period, I avoided pools, and ignored the box of extra-small tampons under my bathroom sink that I knew would only make me cry in pain.

At the gynecologist, laying on the chair, I tensed my legs as the doctor spread them apart, laughing. “We need them wider than this,” she said, then: “This won’t hurt at all.”

The pain was white-hot and loud in my ears, and I squeezed my mother’s hand very tightly and cried out—“That hurts, that hurts.”

“You’re okay,” said the gynecologist. “I’m not even in that deep.”

She kept prodding around my body—a part of my body I didn’t know anything about—as tears streamed down my face. Maybe if I were older, I would have sat up and said, “Stop. Do not continue.” But I stayed silent, writhing in pain.

A year later, I was referred for a hymenectomy. The gynecologist decided that my hymen—the tissue around my vagina—was blocking too much of the vaginal opening, and they would need to cut it back. It was a very easy surgery, they said. No more than twenty or thirty minutes long.

I went under anesthesia early one summer morning and woke up, groggily, with my underwear back on, with a pad attached. “Let it heal for a few weeks, and you’ll be able to put in a tampon.”

But even a surgery didn’t change the pain that came with inserting a tampon—the uncomfortable wall of skin the tampon seemed to hit. I couldn’t even insert a pinkie finger. The surgery was a failure—or perhaps, fixed a problem with the creation of a new one—and I felt ashamed of my own body’s inadequacy.

As girls around me were losing their virginities, I began to look at my body for the first time. Understood, only in high school, the anatomy of a vulva. Googled, and saw the word “vaginismus” for the first time, praying I didn’t have that condition but knowing deep down that I did: the automatic contraction of pelvic floor and vaginal muscles, making any type of penetration painful or impossible, often linked to anxiety or trauma.

I struggled, too, with the concept of virginity—the rigid, patriarchal definitions of what sex and virginity meant. In university, a close friend became my boyfriend. Early on in the relationship, we sat down on my bed and I tried not to cry as I told him we couldn’t have sex. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice shaking. “I feel terrible. I’m trying to fix it.”

He was understanding, but I felt like I had failed him and society—my sexual role, it seemed like, in a heterosexual relationship, was to be penetrated. I was depriving him of sex, and the opportunity to lose his own virginity. Even taking off my pants was difficult at first—it seemed almost clinical. And I was nervous to perform poorly in other intimate acts, feeling like I needed to compromise for our lack of “normal” sex. When friends asked about sex, and whether we had done it yet, I squirmed uncomfortably.

After we began dating, I went to the Campus Health gynecologist after years of putting it off. “I think I have vaginismus,” I told the nurse as she asked pre-appointment questions. She looked at me. “What’s that?”

This gynecologist was much nicer than the one I had at fourteen, and told me she’d stop the second it hurt. “I won’t insert anything,” she said,

trying to calm my obviously heightened nerves. And again, with my legs spread uncomfortably wide, I stared at the ceiling—when she was done, a wave of nausea washed over me, and I threw up in the garbage can, apologizing over and over to the shocked doctor. I was diagnosed with vaginismus.

From Campus Health, I was referred to a local pelvic floor therapist. She was empathetic and likable, and she put her pinkie finger inside my vagina weekly as electric shock stickers were placed around my stomach, designed to retrain my muscles and distract my mind from the pain. She said, “Some people can cure vaginismus in a few months. You’ll need a lot longer your case is more severe.”

It’s a frustrating feeling when your body isn’t working the way you think it should. Not having a clear person or thing to blame for the condition, either. My parents, and my anxiety-riddled upbringing? A sexual education that wasn’t comprehensive or inclusive? The gynecologist I had at fourteen? A medical system, centered around men, that dismisses women’s pain? Vaginismus is curable by physical therapy—I shouldn’t have it forever. Now, I explain to my friends what vaginismus is, and I do my weekly stretches, hoping to continue unlearning and untraining a deeply rooted physiological anxiety. But I still wish I had someone to discuss sexuality with when I was younger to tell me it was okay to ask questions. To tell me that my body wasn’t something to be afraid of.

A Scalpel Cuts More Than Skin

Laura Saavedra Forero

August 8, 2016 was the day she lost herself. The little girl that thrived on the soccer field would never be the same. As she got dressed in her gown and grippy socks, she reassured her parents she wasn’t nervous. Thankfully, she was good at hiding it. She took smiling selfies on Snapchat, happily Facetimed her sister, and got ready to embark on the journey that would finally lead her back to the soccer field. Months of pain and sitting on the sidelines were about to be resolved. She would finally be able to continue chasing her dreams of playing college soccer.

The doctor aggressively opened the curtains and greeted her. His enthusiasm was met with both her hope and her parents’ anxiety for a pain-free future. The surgeon tried to check her hip prior to surgery but the examination resulted in excruciating pain, so he finished once she was under. He summarized the consent form and instructed her mom to sign it. He failed to read the fine print. So did her parents, but who reads the fine print anyway? The surgeon signaled his readiness for surgery with a signature on her right leg, and before she could say goodbye to her sister on the phone, she was wheeled back to the operating room. The small surgery center made for a quick trip. She was greeted by her surgical team and Taylor Swift playing on the speakers. The surgeon introduced her to the anesthesiologist and nurses as “my soccer player and Taylor Swift fan.” Her naivety made her believe Taylor Swift would keep her safe.

Before she realized where she was and what had happened, she noticed the tears streaming down her face. The cold, dry air was piercing, and the cannula made her nose itchy. She tried to focus on her saltine crackers and Coke instead of the excruciating pain she was in. The pain she thought was temporary and normal following hip surgery. The pain that only worsened as the nurses forced her to walk to the bathroom because they couldn’t find her crutches and didn’t know how to put on a hip brace.

After what seemed like too long, her parents were finally allowed to come back to the PACU. Papi kissed her forehead while mami held her hand. She got more pain medicine and fluids before being discharged. The surgeon had already left since surgery took much longer than expected. He left the hospital unscathed. She went home with more scars than incisions made. ***

They never told her she would end up being the 0.001%. That three months after her surgery her surgeon would resign. That a ripped soul was a possible complication. That a scalpel cuts more than skin. But she figured it out when she put on her hospital gown on December 1, 2016, and again on August 5, 2020. When she got her surgeon’s resignation letter in the mail. When the narcotics couldn’t numb her emotional pain and physical therapy couldn’t put her back on the soccer field. When she sat in her wheelchair on November 20th to write this story.

Not even the fine print could tell her that.

—Laura Saavedra Forero is a freshman from Charlotte, NC majoring in Neuroscience with a minor in Public Policy on the pre-medical track at UNC-Chapel Hill.—

Windows AnneLiya Siddiqui

I first met her at school. It was in the 5th grade homeroom; we both had Mrs. Jacobs. She was sitting in front of me, but on my left, so I could still see half of her face. I looked at her: dark hair loose down her back, gently rounded face, thin silhouette, with skinny jeans and an amorphous grey sweater. Slender fingers tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and I thought I caught the scent of lavender. She could have looked like any other girl at school, if it hadn’t been for her posture. She didn’t slouch like the usual shy introvert, but neither did she engage with anyone around her. She just sat there, still and composed, quietly looking out the window. And that’s how I knew.

Just like me, she never really talked to anyone in class, so, like me, no one asked to be her partner for our class’s group project.

“You two work together,” Mrs. Jacobs had neatly solved the problem.

So, we agreed to meet in the library later on. When I walked in, she was already waiting for me. It surprised me, though I guess it shouldn’t have, that she wasn’t shy: no, instead she immediately took control of the project, confidently threw out her ideas, and pushed for her way. She wasn’t afraid to talk, I realized; she simply didn’t see the need to. After that day, we were friends. We sat next to each other in class, ate together at lunch, and even biked the same roads back to our homes.

Most of our conversations were made up of pure silence. She would sit at the table, eating lunch and looking out the window, completely at ease with the world both around and within her. I had never done anything with confidence and ease, though Jayson, my brother, used to make it look that way. He could make me feel big when I was squashed down and laugh when it would have been so much easier to cry. But he was gone.

Sometimes, she would look me directly in the eye and say the strangest things.

“Do you ever think about dying?” She asked me once.

It was hard for me to talk, ever since Jayson left, but that time, I forced myself to answer.

“I think more about the dead.” And why they died, I added in my mind.

She seemed satisfied with my answer, and she went back to looking out her window. I knew what she was thinking, and it scared me. I couldn’t talk though, so I took a bite of my turkey on whole wheat, though it went thickly down my throat. I remember, sitting there, chewing, thinking of all I wanted to say—that I think life is worth it. That I liked her. That she was my only friend. That I needed her to stay. That my brother had thought the same way as she did, and I didn’t want her to leave too.With crumbs still coating my throat, I stared at her, trying to force the words out of my mouth, trying to push them free. But she just kept looking out of that window—her window—and I couldn’t make myself do it.

They say that you shouldn’t feel guilty. That the people closest can never see it before it’s too late. But what if you did? What if you had seen reflections in a window, but thought, oh, maybe, that’s just a car passing by or the shadow of a moth in the night. What if you had seen, but chosen not to speak? What if the words just could never find a way up from the well of your throat?

That night, I had a dream. She and I stood at the edge of a cliff. Around us, behind us, the world was a familiar amorphous gray. She looked directly in my eyes, and for a moment, a glitch in time, she turned into Jayson. She took a step back, towards the cliff. A breeze, light and teasing, blew around her, playing with the strands of her hair. I tried to speak, but all the words were buried, buried deep like a coffin in a tomb. She took another step. I thought of all that I wanted to say. Words blew like a storm within me, twisting and pummeling, wildly pushing up at the pounds and pounds of soil. They writhed like a dying insect, desperate, so desperate, to live. She took another step. One more, and I knew she would be gone. I shoveled—I shoveled like crazy. I tried to dig down to the buried coffin, my arms pushing and scooping and throwing at a rate far faster than time. But my hands were sweaty, and the shovel slipped

from my fingers. Wait! I screamed, but the words were still only thoughts. Tears were pouring from my eyes as she lifted a foot for her last step of life. Then, finally, finally, I made it to the coffin. My hands bleeding, I tried to pry open its lid. But it was locked. She stepped back. I screamed, but there was no sound. The wind blew to me from where she once stood, holding lavender in its breath.

I woke up in the middle of the night. In the dark, I walked to her house. I threw a pebble at her window. It opened. I took a deep breath, and for a second, I saw my brother’s face in hers.

“Please stay,” were the words that escaped my lips. She stared out of her window and into mine.

Finally, she nodded. “Okay.”

—AnneLiya Siddiqui is a freshman from Wake Forest, NC majoring in Psychology on the pre-medical track at UNC-Chapel Hill.—