Print Fall 2022

ONLY IN MY DREAMS

Standford Lipsey Student Publications Building 420 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

MELINA SCHAEFER Editor-in-Chief

SOPHIA GAJDJIS Publisher

Creative Director SARAH ORY Marketing Director APOORVA GAUTAM

Design Editor

EMMA PETERSON

Video Editor SAM RAO

Finance Coordinators MAGGIE CLARK MAKENZIE KULCYZKI

Human Resources Coordinator MOLLY KENNEDY

Print Fashion Editors ABBY RAPOPORT ANASTASIA HERNANDO

Digital Fashion Editor MADISON PATEL

Events Coordinator SENA KADDURAH

Social Media Coordinators NEHA KOTAGIRI LAUREN ROSENBERG

Operations Director SOPHIA AFENDOULIS

Print Features Editor BROOKLYN BLEVINS

Digital Features Editor JANICE KANG

Managing Photo Editor NOLAN LOPEZ

Public Relations Coordinators IZZY SAUNDERS KALI HIGHTOWER

Digital Content Editor HELENA GROBEL Design Team

Digital Content Team

Print Photo Editors GABRIELLE MACK SAM MCLEOD

Print Beauty Editor YOUMNA KHAN

Digital Photo Editor RILEY KISSER

Street Style Editors SUREET SARAU ROSALIE COMTE

Camille Andrew, Kai Huie, Kimi Lillios, Margaret Laakso, Rino Fujimoto, Sandy Chang, Mary Wurster, Liza Miller, Hannah Salameh, Nick Pippen, Kamryn Almasy

Fashion Team

Ben Michalsky, Dhruv Verma, Gigi Kalabat, Janae Dyas, Kelsea Chen, Olivia Mouradain, Peter Marcus, Sandy Chang, Sarah Dettling, Sophia Mckay, Elissa Li, George VanHaaften, Quincy Bowles, Linsey Wozniak, Sian Tian, Skye Thompson, Mia Lolo, Ava Wadle, Quri Kim, Peyton Benjamin, Minh Phan, Dana Gray, Darnell Perkins, Angela Li

Features Team

Ava Shapiro, Hannah Triester, Nadia Judge, Neha Kotagiri, Melissa Dash, Lucy Perrone, Jayde Emery, Tiara Partsch, Meera Kumar, Amina Cattaui, Natasha Martin, Catherine August, Sailor West, Dana Gray, Lynn Dang, Shelby Jenkins

Photography Team

Pearl Thianthai, Oliver Segal, Ebba Gurney, Hannah Anderson, Paulina Rajski, Taylor Pacis, Selena Sun, Margeaux Fortin, Vera Tikhonova, Tess Crowley, Alexander Kim, Korrin Dering, Lindsey Archibald, Alex Lam, Yueshan Jiang, Sam Rao, SinYu Deng, Jessica Cho, Maggie Kirkman

Videography Team

Coco DelVecchio, Samin Hassan, Eaman Ali, Hannah Hur, Riley Kisser, Sam Rao, Gianna Galette, Olivia Ortiz

Benjamin Decker, Sonali Pai, Esther Murray, Jessica Cho, Sarafina Chea, Esther Murray, Jessica Cho, Sarafina Chea

Finance Team

Elle Donakowski, Suma Moolaveesala, Manvita Battepati, Rendie Zhang, Olivia Jabari

Human Resources Team

Sarah Lindenbach, Lily Watchel, Emma Lewry, Diya Nambiar

Public Relations Team

Harini Shanker, Brandon Cole, Katherine Lambert, Devin Vowels Ava Ben-David, Ava Ray, Samantha Wright

Events Team

Tara Nayak, Erin Segui, Shruti Patel, Tiara Blonshine, Paris Rodgers, Allie Cain, Lottie Winegarden

Social Media Team

Samedha Gorrai, Olivia Sun, Charlotte Foley, Hannah Ding, Aubrey Borschke, Camila Escobar, Ellie Ngassa, Aarya Padhye, Luiza Santos

Street Style Team

Alexa Rind, Jordyn Hardy, Jenna Frieberg, Xander Bower, Ernest Hawkes, Anika Minocha, Ellie Ngassa, Nina Walker

“Isink down on the black plumes of sleep.” -from The Waves by Virginia Woolf

Let this magazine be your dream journal. Let it be the receptacle of all the fragments of your nighttime hallucinations that you failed to grasp. Let it be the record of those liminal spaces, where you plummeted from wakefulness to sleep, snagging memory, fear and anxiety on the way. Let it be your dreamscape, sometimes horrifying and sometimes blissful, but always fantastic.

Our greatest challenge when setting out to create an issue centered around dreams was conveying the complexity and the intensity of emotion which they inspire. To do this, we selected certain sensations that dreams invoke, and created shoots to emulate these experiences. “Entanglement”, for example, examines the dream trope of a partner or friend’s betrayal. “Sinking in” emulates the experience of falling from one dream setting straight to another with helpless abandon. Even “Dinner is Served”, a fantasy world of extravagant, maximalist fashion and opulence, is colored with a certain strangeness: see how the eyeless people all stare at you, as though you’re an unwanted guest at this nighttime gala?

The features further explore the individual experiences of sleep, and how our feelings and anxieties can bleed into our dreams and haunt us there. In “Jasmine Only Blooms at Night”, Tiara Partsch explores the watery bounds between a boy’s bed and the backroom of our minds; the relationships we make and break might visit us there long after the end.“You’re a Dream, Darling” by Natasha Martin paints us a sickly sweet scene; but wait, what’s that sinister feeling lurking beneath the surface of this perfect fantasy?

It’s my hope that before embarking on the journey which is to come in these following pages, you can surrender yourself to the strangeness, off-ness and otherwise perplexing-ness of dreams. I hope that in these photos and features you can spot yourself, and perhaps regain a piece of that long-forgotten dream that told you something about yourself. Because after all, what are dreams if not the strange reflections of a funhouse mirror?

Now hush, it’s time for bed.

Melina Schaefer Editor-In-Chief

Each night, as we’re ushered out of reality and into the land of dreams, our inner creative awakens. Our sleeping state acts as a blank notebook page, the ideal backdrop to craft a fictitious realm in detail. In the process, our unconscious mind immerses us in a state of limbo; we fade in and out of our make-shift realities, constantly teetering on the edge of imagination. We’re pushed to the edges of our consciousness– hearing the calls of reality from our dreamscape, will we choose to re-enter the concrete? Or do we dare remain an actor on the stage set by our inner visionary?

It’s said that the cast of our dreams can only consist of those we have come across in reality. Maybe we’ve passed each other on the street, both making our way to class, absentmindedly sipping coffee or checking a recent text. Perhaps we’ve occupied the same lecture hall, fingers tapping against our keyboards, synchronized in a flurry of typing notes. Maybe, just maybe, you’re sat across from me in Angell Hall, where I’m perched, brow furrowed, chewing on my lip as I draft this letter.

Although nothing more than two isolated paths intertwining, these minimal encounters all set the stage for us to appear in each other’s dreams. Each fleeting moment, just barely facial recognition, is enough for you to find yourself embedded in my subconscious. What creative interpretation of you will my unconscious mind conjure up? Will you be the antagonist of my dreams? The love interest? A background character?

ONLY IN MY DREAMS looks to uncover the complex nature of our dreams, whether they be grounded in reality or born from our imagination. In exploring how our dreams take shape, who appears in them, and what they mean, we can traverse the innermost corners of our minds, intimately learning about ourselves and our surroundings along the way.

So allow yourselves to nestle into this issue as if it were your favorite satin sheets. Pulling your duvet up to your chin, we invite you to drift off into a haze of your deepest desires, most absurd fantasies, and darkest fears. Upon the break of morning, who knows how the landscape of reality will have altered.

Sweet dreams.

Brooklyn Blevins Print Features Editor

Plaid Dress - Isabelle Fisher, inspired by Taylor Dorry Fur Coat - Roberto Cavalli

STYLISTS

ABBY RAPOPORT ANASTASIA HERNANDO PHOTOGRAPHERS GABRIELLE MACK SAM MCLEOD MAKEUP YOUMNA KHAN GRAPHIC DESIGNER RNIO FUJIMOTO MODEL DANA MINOR

WRITER MEERA KUMAR GRAPHIC DESIGNER RINO FUJIMOTO

It started in the 9th grade. A rush of emotion followed by shortness of breath. Blurred vision and a rapid heartbeat. I had no idea what was happening—all I could think about was my recent breakup, final exams, and my grandmother. It was the first time I’d experienced that feeling, the one that would become so familiar to me. That feeling that I wasn’t quite there all the way—like I wasn’t quite in my body, wasn’t quite on the ground and wasn’t quite okay. Each time I experienced another bout of panic, I would feel that strange feeling and each time it lingered just a little while longer. Until eventually, that feeling just stayed. My eyes would constantly seem out of focus but my eyesight was fine; my friends would be talking to me and it’d sound like they were a mile away; my words were slurred but I wasn’t tired or drunk; I couldn’t remember something that happened to me five seconds ago. I didn’t have a name for that feeling, all I knew was it was terrible and it was there all the time. That was when I figured, I’m truly losing my mind.

It wasn’t until, in the rush of discovering a new content creator and gulping down all the content they made, I found a video with a title I couldn’t help but look twice at. It was by a person I still love to watch to this day—Dodie Clark. Coming across her video “depression, anxiety, and depersonalization” I thought, what’s the harm in giving it a watch? I didn’t necessarily know what she meant when she said depersonalization, but I had plenty of experience with the other two. I started watching the video with the hope of hearing another account of how depression and anxiety felt to her and learning what depersonalization even was.

My memory was always perfect and all of a sudden I can’t tell you what I said two seconds ago.

I can’t remember that I told you I can’t remember.

My life feels like a dream and I feel like I’m going mental.

The things she was feeling sounded familiar in a concerning yet comforting way. Hearing that she thought she was going mental made me feel a little bit less like I was going mental. It didn’t necessarily make my weird nameless condition any better knowing that she was experiencing the same as I but it made me feel slightly less alone. Like her, I too ruminated on how difficult it would be to live the rest of my life like this.

To constantly be in a state of confusion, never really living my life. I would always be detached from every experience I had and from every moment that passed. I would never fully experience my first day of college, my first concert, my first time having a drink. I would never have those experiences to keep with me in the way that everyone else would. I tried telling as many people as I could about what I felt in the hopes

that it would lessen the burden even just a little. It didn’t. All I would hear was I’m sorry and all I could think was me too. I’m sorry to myself that I have to live the rest of my life in this weird limbo I’d never quite understand.

I’m sorry for myself that I can’t stop spacing out and that I can’t remember the wonderful day I had yesterday—all I have is a trace of that happiness. I’m sorry for not listening to what you said the first time and for forgetting that thing you asked for ten minutes ago (was it your phone you left in the other room?). All I could ever think about was how dreadful it was that I couldn’t recognize my body or my face, how I always felt drunk and how I would constantly live my life as a bland and detached haze of events. I was too preoccupied with thinking about my horrible condition and my horrible life to actually experience the things happening in my life.

I started therapy and I told them about what I felt. It’s just part of the anxiety. I knew it was the anxiety but why is it that I can never shake myself free of it? Why don’t the coping mechanisms I learned help with this feeling or make it feel less dreadful? They put me on medications and I told them I still had that feeling. Eventually, they seemed to give up and I was just about ready to as well. What would that even mean for me? Would I have to spend the rest of my days resenting my own brain for making me experience this dreadful feeling every day?

What if that wasn’t how it had to be? What if Dodie, the one who told me what I was feeling, also told me that there was a way for it to get better? Mental illness isn’t something you can wish away with a good attitude and a couple of rainbows. It takes work and it takes time. So work and time I gave. I worked in therapy on my emotions, I took my medication, and I changed the people I surrounded myself with. However, my daze didn’t disappear because of all this.

The condition has been called things from depersonalization to derealization to dissociation and a bunch of other “de” words. With time, I learned to coexist with this weird feeling I always carried with me. I realized I’d spent all those days and months feeling sorry for myself but never quite realized how the feeling sorry was what wasn’t letting me experience my life. Now, I can’t imagine living a life without this insane and weird condition. I can’t tell you the exact name of it but I can tell you that if you’re feeling it, you’re certainly not alone. I hope that those living with it know there is most definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. Getting to this point wasn’t an easy journey and I apologize but I can’t really remember how I got here. All I can say is that living the dream isn’t quite everything you might think it would be but it isn’t quite terrible either.

sinking in

he Volkswagen drifted along the winding path through the hills, emitting a polite beep as it turned a corner. Neil Young’s muffled voice crooned through the car stereo, “just like children sleepin’, we could dream this night away…” My eyes slowly edged open, adjusting to the light streaming in through the window. The warmth of the April sun coated my skin, making me feel drowsy and content and at peace. Justine was in the driver’s seat, following the path the motorbikers we’d met a few stops back had drawn out for us on the map.

“Just a couple minutes out from Asciano!” she called out.

I rested my head against the back door again, watching as the red poppies and cypress trees passed by in double time, bathed in golden light. It was our fourth month in Italy, and I wanted this feeling, here, forever….

As the song faded out, and the last chords on Neil’s guitar were strummed, the grating sound of “Radar” broke through my deep sleep. My eyes, still shifting rapidly beneath their lids, snapped open. 7:30 AM. I was late. A jolt of panic shot through my body, propelling me out of bed and into the kitchen. Cursing, I peered into the fridge through still-bleary eyes. Out of creamer. Begrudgingly, I poured myself a glass of cold brew out of the can and braced myself for the bitterness as I retreated back to my room.

By eight, I was pacing by the bus stop, muscles tensed in the September morning chill. Upon the 8:05’s eventual arrival, I swiped my card, the wrong way at first, and smiled apologetically at the driver. She stared back blankly, tapping her fingers against

the steering wheel. The bus pulled away from the curb as I unsteadily navigated my way down the aisle and collapsed into an empty spot. Same blue seats. Same yellow rope. Same people buried in textbooks and cell phones. I looked down at my phone’s lock screen, lit up with a recent message. Do you want to go out tonight? it asked. I assumed the suggestion would be to the same sports bar where I’d squandered fifteen dollars on a pitcher last weekend (and many weekends before that). It was like this town had been suspended over the eight months since I’d left it. Maybe I’d been sucked into a time warp.

By five, I was clocking out and ready to collapse. By six, I was unloading my body back onto my bed. As my head hit the pillow, I felt myself go under, submerged into the space between reality and the world of my subconscious. I drifted off, my mind navigating its way back into the realm it had basked in nearly eleven hours earlier.

The Volkswagen drifted along the winding path through the hills. Neil Young’s voice, once again, roused me out of my slumber. I straightened up in the backseat, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes as I strained to see out the front windshield at the road ahead. I yawned and shifted my gaze to the poppies passing by in the right-hand window…. My eyes snapped back to the driver’s seat, apparently deserted. The car was being guided along seemingly of its own accord. Alarms went off in my brain, and I instinctively unbuckled my seatbelt and pushed open the back right door, tumbling out just in time before the driverless vehicle plummeted off the country road. I stood, in shock, in the

middle of the dirt path, struggling to catch my breath in the thin, shimmering air.

Neil’s voice was long gone; without it, the silence crept in on me. The birds still chirped and the wind still rustled in the olive trees, but now that our rental had nose-dived down the side of the hill and was out of commission, I noticed that the background hum of an engine had vanished. There wasn’t a single car or motorbike in sight for miles. So much for hitchhiking. I would have to find my way to the next town over on foot.

I trudged along the side of the highway for what felt like hours. My head was spinning, and the hands on my watch were spinning quicker. I looked down at the grass beneath my feet. It was taking on a new appearance, the matter rearranging itself before my eyes. It became unyielding, the dirt hardening into cobblestone. This must be Asciano, I thought. But as I glanced up at my surroundings, I registered that I had somehow ended up back home, back in Bologna, one hundred kilometers from where I’d started. Huh. Oh well. I began making the familiar journey back to my apartment.

The sound of my heart echoed, bouncing off of the graffitied walls, as I clocked the vacantness of the street. Was today a holiday? A Sunday? I racked my brain trying to remember what day it was. It couldn’t have been—the bars and restaurants that lined the road had left their doors wide open, the smell of fresh tortelloni and tagliatelle pouring out and brushing under my nose, the notes of Mina’s “Città vuota” spilling from a radio propped up on the bar. But behind the bar, there stood no

bartender; inside the trattoria, no waiter; and at the tables, no patrons. The once-bustling Via del Pratello was devoid of life. I picked up my pace.

When I arrived at my building, I scrambled up the stairwell to the third floor and struggled with the always-unlocked doorknob, which now refused to budge. I fumbled with my key, before finally twisting it in the lock and closing the door behind me. Stepping into the hallway, I sighed with relief, seeing the Jägermeisterlined pantry shelves and the ever-full drying racks for the laundry. I knew this. This was safe. I called out to my flatmates. Crickets. I knocked on Marc’s door, on Delia’s, then on Daan’s. The silence welcomed me home. I crumpled onto the tiled floor, and it dropped out from under me, falling, falling, falling….

There was a knock at the door.

I shot up in my bed, heart racing, head pounding. I checked the time. 7:30 PM. Tasia poked her head in.

“Hey,” she said. “When did you want to leave?”

“Oh,” I blinked. “Uh, I’ll just get dressed.”

She closed the door. I ran my fingers through my hair, took a sip of water to slow my breathing, and pulled my white dress over my head. Just a dream. Just a dream.

I heard a knock at my door again.

“Yeah, one sec,” I yelled back. “Do you need something?”

There was no response. She must have gone back upstairs. I grabbed my bag and left my room, closing the door behind me.

Fifteen minutes later, my roommates and I were making our way down the sidewalks through the outskirts of Kerrytown. The

early evening had brought slightly warmer temperatures, and I relished in the last remnants of summer—the cicadas buzzing in the trees, a golden retriever barking hello! through a fence, the way you could almost see the particles of the shimmering golden hour air, our new neighbor mowing his lawn. Julia waved and greeted him as we walked past. I couldn’t quite make out his face, but I figured it must be someone she knew.

We stopped in a tucked-away park outside of the city, takeout and three-dollar Trader Joe’s wine in tow. Jo set her speaker on the edge of the blanket, the beginning strings of Jon Brion’s “Thanksgiving in Sacramento” providing the soundtrack to our dinner, and poured the red into Solo cups. The slim crescent moon, barely new, was rising into the pink sky.

I heard my name. It was close, yet distant, muffled, as if there was a wall between me and the speaker. I glanced up, but the only people in my vicinity were the three that I had arrived with, who were happily chatting and sorting out whose order was whose.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, shifting my eyes towards Tasia.

“Hear what?”

“I don’t know. It just sounded like someone said my name.”

“I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones here.”

She squinted at me, a question forming behind her gaze. Jo and Julia looked up, peering at me from behind paper boxes and plastic cups, their conversation now at a standstill.

There was a knock at the door.

As I Lay

o one keeps more than one foot in the present. There’s always some new storm on the horizon– a date, an interview, an argument to contend with– where the other person is an unknown. In hopes of mastering the situation, many choose to rehearse the future; locked in a thousand-yard stare, we predict what our interlocutor might say, do, and feel. Lost in a procession of scenarios, we spend most of our waking hours talking to nothing and no one. Let us call this tendency “social projection”: entering a daydream to better respond to life. It is a mental mechanism to cope with social uncertainty. In social projection, anxieties are manifested so that they may be overcome. They come as bosses, as family members, as prospective paramours– ghostly appartitions of real people. Like the Cottingley Fairies, we superimpose images of others over life, fanciful renderings of what they might do, and we respond as if they’re real. Pull back the curtain, and we’ve only ever been in conversation with ourselves.

It’s a thrilling fantasy to be able to say what you mean. Everyone knows it well; winning an argument in the shower is a sublime joy that scarce few get to act upon. Behind opaque glass, spangled with hot droplets, you’re given a private refuge– more importantly, the space to express yourself without

consequence. You might worry that they’ve won: after all, you’re the one thinking about it four hours later, naked, muttering under your breath. But you have this moment of quiet triumph, and that’s all that matters.

Social ostracism is a primal wound that’s stuck with humanity since its dawn. In vigilance against this outcome, the human ‘sociometer’ is miscalibrated; we tend to believe ourselves less-accepted than we are. Humans are built to catastrophize: if this situation goes badly, everyone will leave me. For fear of drawing the short end of the pottery shard, we try, however possible, to win over the tribe. The knee-jerk reaction is to practice again and again, to train until victory is certain. Left unchecked, this can become rumination: a repetitive, borderline-obsessive thought pattern that unites depression and anxiety in comorbidity.

This habit lies somewhere between wishfulfillment and error-correction. Unlike the shower argument, though, social projection is a response to a hypothetical scenario– nothing’s happened yet, nothing but fear. Even so, they come from the same impulse: to make oneself perfect, to represent oneself perfectly. We imagine, in flights of fancy, that we can ‘win’ the social situations we find ourselves in. As if rejection is not only preventable, but unacceptable.

In social projection, the mental images soon stop resembling their real-world counterparts. They fit into the roles we proscribe, distorting them in the process. Like Amigara Fault, the further they burrow into our psyches, the more impossible their dimensions become. With enough time, they emerge on the other side, grotesquely and unrecognizably deformed.

Some let their imagination show on their face. I don’t just replay the scenes mentally; there’s a physical aspect as well, a rehearsal before showtime. Reality doesn’t quite melt away, but it blurs at the edges, leaving room for welcome spectres to materialize. Many late November nights, I would stalk the streets of my city awash in a dream, thanking God for the advent of masks to conceal breathless speech.

In the eighth grade, I repented on my livingroom couch. Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite strummed softly into the pitch-black living room. I was taken somewhere nice. I imagined, for a moment, speaking to she who wronged me. We’d been here many times before. There was dead and crackling grass, dry enough to engulf us both in brush-fire; there was thunder, roiling-red, rippling like muscle overhead. In daylight hours, I’d tried to deliver my ultimatum; my efforts fell on deaf ears. But here I could be heard. I had forever to find the words.

There’s an unattributed proverb that goes: to conquer a beast you must first make it beautiful. Social projection, at its core, seeks to conquer the beast– social ostracism– by conquering the hypothetical conversation. We ensure our stories

come across as cleanly as possible, wrangled into a tight five. Beware: enough time grooming the beast risks it going unslain. You grow so attached, so sunk in your cost, that the beast becomes a part of your life. Eventually, like sea glass, our ruminations become so weathered that they’re soft at the edges. Something erodes in that process. And then, with a clink, we add it to the collection of processed moments.

My moment for confrontation arrived in June, over chamomile tea. Now or never. I told her, in the kindest way I thought possible, the animosity that had been festering for years. How she’d hurt me. How we could move forward. Halfway through my speech, though, she was agape with horror: I would never even think those things. I remembered, suddenly, that I had no enemy in her; it was envy, all envy, and every word from my mouth pushed deeper the red-hot poker of shame. It was plain as day: using social projection, I’d only ever been hurting myself.

We haven’t spoken in months now. I hope that’s a coincidence.

Sometimes she comes to me in dreams; sometimes I let her hang around when I wake up. Lean on my kitchen counter, take something out of the fridge. Light conversation from a world just out of reach. In reality, this process leaves us chasing our tails ad infinitum, never to say what we mean. Spend forever finding the right words, and they will rattle around the walls of your skull.

WRITER AMINA CATTAUI GRAPHIC DESIGNER KAMRYN ALMASY

You’re a Dream, Darling

The day I met the love of my life felt so surreal. It was a quiet and sun-soaked Sunday afternoon. The night prior I had a peaceful evening where I got a hearty eight hours of sleep, on the dot, so I could wake up fresh-faced at six in the morning to get in a shower and then have a welldeserved, nutritional breakfast of overnight oats and an omelet made from farm-fresh eggs and locally grown bell peppers. I awoke to the sound of my alarm and promptly turned it off to thrust my feet into my pink bunny slippers that are placed parallel to my bed every night. As I went through a montage of outfits with differing aesthetics that I would never actually wear, I settled on a basic outfit consisting of an overpriced plain, white t-shirt; a neutral-toned, chunky knit cardigan; black, flared leggings; and a pair of tan sandals. An ensemble I knew I was going to end up wearing in the first place.

I had just finished my weekly devotion of gratitude— a picturesque brunch filled with bottomless mimosas and empty laughs with the girlies— when I found a sudden urge to fill the empty void inside of me by ignoring my real problems and taking myself on a hot girl walk through our wondrous city to find an obscure form of entertainment. I surprised even myself as I walked into the public library. Yet, once I was among the stacks of stale literature dying to be cracked open and truly appreciated by a pair of eager eyes and flitting fingers, I felt a sense of calm and tingling excitement all at once. I found myself casually perusing until I arrived at the mystery section and made a beeline for my favorite author— Caroline Keene, of course.

Nancy Drew had been my favorite for as long as I could remember, but this system must have been set up in a strange order because I could not find it until I got to the end of the aisle. A wave of comfort crashed over me as my hand reached out for this book of wonder and stolen je wels when it suddenly made contact with something warm. A man’s hand. Going for my book. I looked up and met this stranger’s gaze. I should have pulled my hand away. He should have pulled his hand away. Yet, neither of us moved. We stayed in this moment for what simultaneously felt like forever and not long enough. I suddenly wanted to study every part of him in case I might not get the chance to again. His calloused and sturdy hand attached to a strong, toned form enveloped in a black, leather jacket and brown V-neck sweater. He wore a pair of Levi’s that hugged him in the right places and exposed the top of one of his hips. His chestnut brown hair fell in his face. And that face— I was not a religious woman, but it had to be made by the gods. A straight nose, long face, high cheekbones, furrowed brows, and plump, peach-colored lips left him in a sort of pout. A perpetual state of sadness and seriousness. Round, wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose and I had to fight the urge to reach out and fix them. Or kiss him. One or the other. The moment broke and we pulled away from each other. “I’m sorry,” he said bashfully. Oh, you touched it first. It’s yours,” I said as I averted my gaze from his to the floor and a blush crept over my entire body. There was nothing but silence, and I thought I had just royally humiliated myself. How could I exist in t he same space as this man AND have the same taste in

a book? It was unheard of. And then it happened. It is hard to say how much he wrestled with himself on this decision that would affect the remainder of his life on this Earth, but without another word needing to be spoken, he did the one thing that could have made me blush for an entirely different reason. He reached his hand out and extended this deeply loved piece of literature to me. I did not know his name. I did not know his age, his background, what he did for a living, or if he even spoke the same language as me; but that was not important. Who had ever heard of losing out on love because the two of you had differing core values and believed in two separate after-lives that discredited the other’s views to the point that you grew to resent each other? Not me.

How did I know that I had found something special? Well, how can I possibly explain it to someone who has never experienced the true magical touch of the love bug? Let me take a moment to contemplate my own blissful existence with a partner that understands and sees me for who I truly am—- as long as I am in complete wrinkle-free attire with effortless makeup that took six hours to perfect and a smile that stretches from ear to ear while my eyes speak a thousand sad songs.

If you look too long, I will break. Good thing he never looks me in the eyes anymore. He is so dreamy.

As we got to know each other more, the more responsibilities that he took on and the less that I had to worry about. He began to choose what clothes I wore, what friends I had, and what I did in a day all because he cares so much and wants me to be awakened to the best version of myself. He is so much smarter than I am and thank god for that. If I had not met him, I don’t know how I would navigate this crazy world. He makes me feel like I am walking on clouds while telling me all of the things I wouldn’t understand as a woman. I couldn’t ask for anything better… right?

WRITER NATASHA MARTIN GRAPHIC DESIGNER NICK PIPPEN

ENTANGLEMENT ENTANGLEMENT ENTANGLEMENT

Purple gloves - Sarah Ory Knit shirt - Sarah Ory

Y

ou have a very comfortable bed, I once told the guy I was seeing at the time, half-asleep in his arms. He was surprised: Oh – well, I’m glad, he replied, and he edged closer before letting his head fall onto his pillow, right beside mine.

We didn’t last very long, but every so often, I find myself thinking back to his bedsheets, wondering why I ever found their dark blue so homey. It really wasn’t anything special: the Target blanket he had miscellaneously picked out early sophomore year turned out to be a pretty common bedroom choice for Kerrytown. And yet, it felt as if the very sinews of his body blended into the blue threads: it was his embrace, clumsy, but ever so endearing, that I found comfortable. My clothes never smelled like him by the time I would get home. I sometimes wondered whether this meant I’d dreamt him up.

When my friend and her partner went through a rough patch, back in high school, she would ride the bus to his house every single night. It was an hour-and-a-half long trip, and none of us were even close to knowing how to drive a car, so she’d pack a bag and make the journey out. It just feels like everything’s alright when we’re sleeping together like that, she tried explaining.

By that time, the closest I’d ever gotten to love was a prank call pretending to ask me out, and I could not understand why she’d put herself through this, only to fight with the guy. Worst of all, she would come into class the next morning, clearly distraught, and would sit me down in the cafeteria to tell me that she kept imagining him cheating. She would dream of him cheating, actually; she would dream they’d fight; she dreamed he would leave. And she would wake up the next morning and kiss him. And she’d write poems about it– she’d never written poems before, and her frail letters echoed through her crumpled paper, but her words ached with a conflicting feeling: I love this person so much, I want to leave.

I’d always associated forgiveness with the idea of mending something. It seemed to me that it implied a dialogue, a negotiation of sorts: can you meet me halfway? And yet, the Latin root for the word, Perdonare, means “to give completely, without reservation”. I like that it does not come with compromise. My friend does too: she and her partner ended up separating, after four years on and off, and she’s never been happier. It’s the best thing we could have done for each other, she declares. Of course she still loves him, but they were never meant to last; forgiveness could only ever equate to letting go. She’s grateful she finally did.

The end of a relationship can often feel like a backroom: you can write on the walls all you want, you will not be able to sketch out a door that you can walk in and out of. And yet there is something so tangible about holding another person so close, wrapped in the sheets and narratives you have come to love, that makes leaving feel so difficult. We cherish the familiar. No matter how much clarity or tension the morning light might bring, we dream for the person lying next to us, praying they’ll want to stay, hoping we’ll be enough– and sometimes, we dream we could just leave. In our definition of a future, we find ourselves caught by a blur of past and present.

I have never felt bad about dreaming of an ex when I was with someone new. I find it harmless. All my life really, I have dreamt of visiting people I once swore I would never see again: in my dreams, I apologize to them. Regardless of whether this takes place in my grandmother’s backyard, the chipped entry door of an apartment, or the fuzzy mirrors of a dance studio, my subconscious takes great care in imagining the heart-to-heart conversations I was never able to have. I forgive wholly, devotedly. I dare to apologize. I ask for your love, I ask for you to come back. Sometimes you do; and sometimes, you kiss me on the forehead, and I know you mean no, and I forgive you.

My imagination soothes over the bumps my reality refuses to acknowledge. I enjoy the many endings I’ve gotten to rework; writing is useful in this way as well– a passing film to throw over any difficult passages of my existence, I write to reappropriate or challenge my circumstances. I filter and obscure. I circle back.

I have never been one to fight to make a relationship last, and I have not gotten back with anyone once we’d broken it off: I do not find it in myself to take the bus back and forth every night. Although I might tenderly cherish our shared memories, I refuse to allow our ending to become familiar My comfort ebbs away when faced with the rugged ends of a relationship. And yet, it’s all I can ever find in my writing: I circle back and back and over again onto my collection of heartbreaks, spelling them out. Misplaced love is all I seem

to think about. I dream of forgiveness, I write of it, and yet I find myself utterly unable to really ever understand it, until it’s too late; comfort feels ever so ephemeral. It feels safer to dream it. And yet I cannot help but wonder whether I have sworn myself to living in fragments of wishes and images, rather than a present I can actually live in.

A boy’s shadow spills out from his sheets over to his bookshelves. I enjoy being in his bed. I don’t know him very well just yet, and I wonder whether it’s the tension between the known and the unknown that I find so fascinating: it’s fun to fill the gaps. I marvel at this pair of eyes I do not recognize, even now. And yet I ache to make this situation intimate, if not familiar– so I pull onto his linen sheets, and I smile.

You have a very comfortable bed, I laugh.

WRITER TIARA PARTSCH GRAPHIC DESIGNER HANNAH SALAMEH

Dinner is Served

Our dreams tell us who we are. Who we’ve been in the past. Who we want to be. What we really want. They exist as aspirations and anxieties. They are our passionate love affairs and gruesome horror stories. They are mirrors, sometimes shattered, but still showing a glimpse of your face.

While making this issue, I have been thinking a lot about the role dreams have played in my life. I think of the freshman girl who joined SHEI four years ago, certain the dreams she held so tightly would be the ones she writes of now. Now starting my senior year, I can hardly remember the time when most of those dreams were my own. The print team spent a lot of this semester discussing our dreams, both the silly stories we told through laughter and those that woke us up in the night drenched in sweat. We ultimately decided on five ways in which we experience our dreams in; love, fear, belonging, absurdity, and peace. Through our explorations while making this issue, a lot of what we initially thought about dreams has changed. I encourage you as the reader to interrupt these dreams as you please and as they relate to your life and challenge you to take a moment to reflect upon dreams of your own.

For the past four years, SHEI has existed to me as a daydream within the chaos of my life and school and I have so much love for the publication and those within it. I cannot express my gratitude enough for those who helped to make this issue and everyone who made this possible.

Thank you for taking the time to look at our work.

PHOTOGRAPHER GABRIELLE MACK

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