Witches Mag, Issue #6: Fear

Cover art by Charis Copp, @dakimabloo on Instagram

“Does being afraid help?” I’m not sure. Thank god, she thinks, that she's already gone back to the closet for bravery and faith. This night wouldn't have happened had she not. They see me as a spinster, defective because I am not marked with a ring of approval like some USDA rating. You’re living in a free country, but you’re not free. You’re stuck and you’re afraid. The huffs and puffs as I walked by the room he stowed away in doing his crossword puzzles. They spouted Tr*mp’s hateful words, when they don’t know the first thing about immigration policy. I was taught to fear my body, and all it could do. At 20, fear was the absence of a body—another person, who I was told would make me whole. I've never experienced someone dying. But it's not someone, it's *the* someone. It's my grandma. Being here in Mexico, seeing her so skinny and tired, I'm reminded of the life I was robbed from. But fear now; it is a catalyst too. Of impossible optimism. Of joyful outrage. Of better days to come. And just like that, I was no longer married to him. The world sees this kind of narcissistic personality abuser as the good guy, the partner as the problem. She dedicates pages to Manhattan, the magical maze of distraction that makes her feel like she's going somewhere, always. Fear that he was right, and I really was crazy. “How can you trust your decision

ISSUE #6: FEAR

making when you have been told over and over that your opinion is wrong?” The number one indicator of whether a domestic violence victim will stay, leave, or return is financial independence. I hate the men who have ruined intimacy for me. That light switch fury. Perhaps unwarranted fear, but fear all the same. Like we just complain about men and didn't like the sex. Like how we want to be a number in this box so we can relate. Empowered women are only raped ones and dead ones. I'm much happier now than I ever was when I was married. My life was different, I was different. I miss myself even though I am still here, being and breathing. Angry Menstrual Death Vibes of Doom. Fear kept me there, like a rootless tree in a puddle of water. It is terribly likely that SomeThing will happen to disrupt this life, this happiness. It feels so silly being too scared to go back, but hand on my heart, bare feet on the ground, I'd rather leave everything behind. My choices keep others up at night. They forget pregnancy is not irrevocable. It was too upsetting for him. I already knew that; I was raised Catholic. How did I contribute to the teaching field at large today? I am scared this is my life now. I googled it and naming something specifically doesn't statistically decrease the likelihood that it happens. I am only worried about these things metaphorically. Currently, 75% of teachers in the US are women. Someday I will get over the affairs and trust him again. Someday he will see me as smart and capable. Someday I will have worth beyond my house cleaning and mothering abilities. “Can I buy you a croissant?” Yes, my students are getting better at using the bathroom. No, I'm afraid there is no section on the report card that

Several of the pieces in this issue discuss sexual assault, harassment, abuse, and suicide. Please take care.

MANIFESTA

Witches Mag began as a handwritten idea in the back of an old notebook. It was born in October of 2018, after 2 am, when my cup of tea had gone cold, my graduate school assignments had been pushed to the far side of my desk, and my thoughts were racing like I was living through a fever dream. I’d spent the week keeping up with the U.S. senate hearing during which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford bravely shared the story of her sexual assault, and then watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice in spite of Blasey Ford’s testimony. Sick of sulking in my growing disappointment and anger, I felt compelled to do something, to make something that was overtly political and overtly feminist. The results of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony had proven to me that women’s stories were not valued like men’s were, even in 2018, and I wanted to work to change this. I decided then that I would begin a publication that centered girls’ and women’s voices.

I scribbled down that Witches Mag would try to create a space for girls and women to discuss sexism and feminism honestly, to write with nuance, to critique our culture, to mess up and teach each other, to admit our hypocrisy, and ultimately, to have our voices, artwork, opinions, stories,

and experiences centered and listened to. With these goals in mind, for each issue of Witches, girls and women are asked to contribute work related to a particular theme. For this sixth issue, the theme is Fear.

The Witches you’re about to meet understand that feminism is messy, uncomfortable, and difficult. It is both personal and political. It’s about challenging a sexist culture, not just making individual, empowered choices. It recognizes the downfalls of the gender binary. It knows that men are negatively affected by patriarchy as well. It requires an intersectional approach to be effective. It is often exhausting and disheartening, but it is ultimately rooted in optimism. Our work in Witches is meant to reflect these values.

This publication does not claim to be representative of what misogyny feels or looks like to every woman and girl. As a woman who is very white, mostly straight, and relatively middle class, I recognize that mainstream feminist movements have historically and contemporarily marginalized women of color, working-class women, queer women, and transgender women and that I have a responsibility to make space in these pages for girls and women who are different than me. This is an essential element of my understanding of feminism and it consistently shapes the manifestation of my values in my

personal, professional, and creative endeavors. Witches Mag was designed to challenge existing systems through work that is actively anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anticlassist. The girls and women in this issue are committed to these ethics, and we are aware of our responsibility to continue learning, challenging, advocating, and growing with each issue. That being said, anyone who identifies as a girl or woman and is interested in sharing work that reflects her experiences within a sexist culture is invited and encouraged to join us.

During the development of this issue, one of our fears came true: Roe v. Wade was overturned by five Supreme Court Justices, including Brett Kavanaugh. A few of the pieces in this issue discuss abortion explicitly, and every piece was created within the context of living in a society that endangers our bodies. Although this publication focuses on those who identify as girls and women, we recognize that the fight for reproductive justice affects people of all gender identities. We believe that there is space for both within the conversation—acknowledging that the bodily autonomy of non-binary folks is also under attack does not negate how the U.S. government has historically and consistently tried to oppress women through anti-choice legislation.

This is arguably the most disheartening issue we’ve ever released. Though not impossible, as you’ll soon see, there are few ways to speak positively of fear. While editing, I worried that this issue was too dark to release, that it would only have a negative impact on its readers. But then I realized how many girls are written about by the women in these pages: we’ve told stories about our daughters, our students, and our younger selves. And as painful as it often is, they deserve our best efforts to provide them with the fearless lives we couldn’t have.

May this issue become an outdated relic of the things women and girls once feared. May it never again need to remind us of lecherous eyes on a thirteen-year-old, of that light switch fury, of the three-panel window facing a mural in Detroit. Of amateur party chemists, of a return to junior year Spanish class, of violations at a summer camp. Of forbidden walks, failed virginity pledges, men, and the taste of garlic bread. May it render itself useless.

The Year of the Boogeymen A Scary Story by a Former Brooklyn Resident

She's alone and pale. Thin in the way people get when they're deprived of a truth that they believed in just last week. Crumpled in on herself atop a king size mattress, the white sheets and comforter just as blank as the opposite side of the bed. The sheets were designed to look that way, but the bed wasn't.

When they toured 439, they were captivated by its light and its deck and most of all, by the fact that they finally agreed on a place. They signed the lease within a day: two signatures, same terms. And then they spent weeks falling asleep in front of furniture websites, thrifting the bed frame and finding discounts on the sheets. When they picked up the mattress (technically used, but never taken out of the plastic), they brought it to her parent's basement to store until the move. It fell out of the pickup truck into the driveway. A look, and they sprawled out in unison. For six glorious minutes, they laughed about the fact that they found a way to fit a king size bed into an apartment in Brooklyn. Six glorious minutes, spent high on their cleverness and the August sun and each other.

Walking through that first pale week after it happens, every moment of the day feels like a decision. She stays on her side of the mattress, even though his is suddenly an option. And then she wonders. Does the picture frame on the

bedside table stay up, or get turned over? Does the second toothbrush stay out, or is the sink hers now? Is the spiral staircase still beautiful, or does it remind her too much of the first time they saw it, in awe of the type of life they could step into, mid-twenties and together?

She dedicates pages to Manhattan, the magical maze of distraction that makes her feel like she's going somewhere, always.

Within months of moving, colder weather confined them to 439, but the space was warm. Her desk was at the bottom of the stairs, and she started spending nights there, between words which would become pages which would become chapters. As she worked on scrapping together The End, he creaked down that spiral slowly. She pretended not to hear, but smiled as she fixed her eyes on the screen. Sentences later, he had his arms around her and his lips on her forehead and was making a case for how past time for a movie it was. She pleaded exhaustion, but slung herself around him. They took each step in unison, marching up towards their cozy routine and giggling about how goofy they would look to anyone watching. They spent six glorious months like this, creating games and habits and the type of secret language that comes with sharing a space. But those six months rotted, and she's staring down the

seventh. The world is thawing now, and she's making decisions based on instinct. It's the only feeling she can trust anymore. Somewhere between the stairs and the bed, she finds a closet and takes a deep breath. Mind tired from trying to understand, she decides to fold everything beyond instinct away in that closet: love, faith, bravery, sadness. She packs them in without stopping to look. And so she doesn't know. It's the same closet where the boogeymen live. Then she packs herself up. Moves away from that closet, that sink, those white sheets. With the color back in her face and muscles that've been trained to run, she fills up on a new truth. One she can trust. An apartment in Manhattan. She hasn't cried in days by the time she signs that lease.

But on the first night, she crumples into the full size bed. Alone in an entirely new way, she realizes: she won't survive this transition on just instinct. She needs something more, something she left in the closet. But when she opens the door, looking for bravery, her stomach hollows and her cheeks get wet. She finds what she needs, but another feeling grabs hold too. Something foreign and menacing. She can't look—not now, not as her new life is beginning. Without a second thought, she pushes it off and slams the door shut. It's summer and she can't write about him. The words won't come, and she doesn't go looking. Instead she dedicates pages to Manhattan, the magical maze of distraction that

makes her feel like she's going somewhere, always. Between subway rides and skyscrapers she sprints, pulling long hours at work and then pulling her hair into a high pony and laughing with new friends at outdoor bars. One night she finds live music and a place designed for dancing and a long-haired drummer, all at once. When she introduces herself after his set, her first distinctly New York romance takes hold. She kisses him a week later with the skyline in the background and is shaking when she leaves, having only one clear thought: God Bless Manhattan.

The thing about mazes is that they only create the illusion that you're going somewhere. You move through them, but not necessarily forward. And when she hits her initial dead

end with the drummer, she remembers something else she left in the closet—a key piece for dating. So she retraces her steps and ends up in the same spot she was in that first metropolitan night, opening the door and searching. She finds the piece–faith–but it's too late. The darker feeling slips out of the closet too. Sadness wraps around her and tightens, her vision blurring. Suddenly she is back in that king size bed, barely breathing, heart and brain writhing in unison until–no. This summer is hers. She yanks the invisible monster off of her like a leech and flicks it back behind the closet door. We're not facing that, she thinks.

Thank god, she thinks, that she's already gone back to the closet for bravery and faith. This night wouldn't have happened had she not.

We're moving forward.

And she does. But like any determined new maze runner, she bounces around a lot on the way. She strings bistro lights up on her fire escape and spends twilights out there by herself, with her sister, and with men whose reactions range from amused to enchanted to disapproving (the last kind don't get invited back). She befriends the Italian baristas at the coffee shop on her street, she dresses up and flies cross country for work, and then finally one night it happens. She goes on a date with a man who has the potential to stick. Across the table over white wine and oysters, they discuss his love of trees. He's wearing a baseball hat and a jean jacket even though they're having dinner in a glitzy hotel restaurant, and he feels the way the entire scene looks: familiar and exciting.

She smiles for five minutes straight in the Lyft home. He texts her something about being golden, and her whole body almost lifts out of the car. Whirring down Sunset she opens the window and relaxes her palm into the passing Los Angeles air. Thank god, she thinks, that she's already gone back to the closet for bravery and faith. This night wouldn't have happened, had she not.

But the clock is already ticking towards her next return to the scary space where she packed so much away. Over the next few months, she spends time away from the Manhattan maze, from the West Coast to the middle of the country to the mountains in Italy. One early morning in a Comfort Inn,

she sees how she could fall in love again. But when she goes to begin, to release, to fall, she realizes: she packed love away in that closet too.

Knowing what's coming, she treks back to 439 with tears already scarring her face. Core aching with the memory of exactly how terrifying this is, she steadies herself and unlocks the door handle with a grim expression. For a minute, nothing. She brushes away cobwebs, moving past the picture frame, the king sized sheets. And then finally she sees what she's looking for and—

An icy tap on her shoulder. She breathes, and turns to face this figure head-on for the first time. Before she can even see it, though, it knocks her to the ground. Dizzy and weak and only able to make out the darkness, she tries kicking and pushing it away. She begs for a name, for a reason, for a genesis from it. It responds with nothing but punishing movements, ripping at her heart and beating her body further into the floor. But she claws her way back towards the closet, even as the feeling continues to yank her in every direction, and grabs the last important thing she boxed away in there. With that tucked in her arms, she closes her eyes and spins into the heart of this mutant force. Finally ready to see it for what it is: a boogeyman.

The girl and the boogeyman make eye contact, and for a moment they are completely still. There's strange recognition there. But of course–this is the feeling she's been in a relationship with for the last year. She has refused

to look at him, denied his very existence. The boogeyman is fear, personified. And since that first pale week a year ago, she has made the same choice over and over again: to be adamantly not afraid. Her mind goes as blank as the sheets and his side of the bed. In that vastness it's clear: the boogeyman's leeching and scare tactics were nothing more than efforts to get her to

see him. Now that she does, he quiets and waits for her next move. How do you interact with fear once you're face to face? It doesn't talk back. It just looms, hangs, floats like dark smoke without any flames.

She comes back to instinct. Gathering all the boogeymen from the closet, along with everything else, she lights a fire in Brooklyn. They are free, and suddenly their looming looks more like dancing. Together, they throw the sheets and the picture frame and the fearful disappointment into the blaze. Then, finally, they burn the lease to 439–the words on it were never shared terms, anyway. They were just a scary story.

By Kaley Roberts

This is the feeling she's been in a relationship with for the last year. The boogeyman is fear, personified.

DACA

I’ve never publicly spoken about this, and I'm submitting this anonymously because I'm still afraid, but I was a DACA recipient. My parents' visa expired and from then on I was undocumented. While all my friends turned 16 and got their learner's permits, their first jobs, and then their licenses, I couldn't. I also couldn't explain why. I always had friends pick me up and drop me off so I could hang out with them. It wasn't until President Obama passed DACA in 2012 that I felt like I could start my adult life. Driving, working, paying taxes. But still ultimately being stuck.

I renewed my DACA status 5 times. $2,475 dollars in total. But how could I get the money to pay for DACA if I couldn't even work? I couldn't apply for student loans, which meant going to college required paying my state tuition in cash every semester.

It always sucked feeling the same as my friends but still different. Born in Mexico, but not feeling Mexican. Living in America, but being considered illegal, undocumented, a Dreamer. Except DACA isn't exactly set up for someone to live out their American Dream. I mean, sure, you pay taxes, you work, but you don't get the government assistance and money that Tr*mpies angrily shout about. It's not set up for you to succeed; you don't get the freedoms other people have. You're living in a free country, but you're not free. You're stuck and you're afraid.

Tr*mp becoming President was the worst thing ever. Imagine marrying into a family that supported him. That had his stupid ugly signs in front of their house for both elections. His being

President for 4 years was sad and scary. All you felt was helpless and afraid that one day your protected status would be ripped from you.

Then also came the ignorant, stupid Tr*mp Trolls coming out of the woodwork. They spouted Tr*mp's hateful words, when they didn't know the first thing about immigration policy.

For 21 years, since I was 5, I couldn't go back to Mexico. Couldn't leave the country. When all my friends went on school trips abroad, summer trips with family, or trips with groups of friends, I just had to watch through an Instagram lens.

I met my now husband in 8th grade. We started dating sophomore year of college. We got married 6 years after we started dating. Marrying him provided freedom. Residence status in a country that only took from me and never cared about me.

After 21 years, I returned home. To my grandma and grandpa. Without my parents, by myself on a random day in October. Growing up I had this idea of how I wanted to return to Mexico, with my parents by my side, with my brother who had DACA too. Our first trip back, seeing all the places and people we left behind, would feel like a movie. We would all be the main characters returning home.

Then my grandma got sick. I left like I was running out of time. So that movie-like return dream didn't happen.

After patiently waiting 21 years to go back to Mexico, I returned to a place I didn't fit in. Nothing was the same. Now, I am afraid of what will happen next.

Now that I can leave the country, I can't spend normal summers with my grandma or go to Cancun with my whole family, because my grandma is sick.

I've never experienced death before in my life. I'm scared of the day the family group chat rings, and they say that my grandmother has passed. What will people say? What are the next steps? What follows next?

I've never experienced someone dying. But it's not someone, it's *the* someone. It's my grandma.

The person who has made the most effort in my life. The person who was there for every graduation–preschool, high school, and college–as many birthdays as she could, Christmases, and family trips. She was a travel day away from us and she made that effort.

I already cry thinking about her passing and she's not even dead. I think about what my Instagram status will be, of all things to think about, and I'm mad that I won't get a 4th generation photo with her if I have kids one day. These are the things I think about and I feel guilty because she's not even dead but I'm scared about what happens next.

And this time, I'm truly afraid, because before, I knew one day I would get status, and the waiting would be over. But now there is nothing, and I'm afraid. The waiting is now being afraid that some of the most important people in my life are going to die. Being here in Mexico, seeing her so skinny and tired, I'm reminded of the life I was robbed from. And I can't help but be sad.

Ali McIndoe

You are not just underage, you are barely teenage, thirteen.

Just thirteen and seen as an object. Catcalled. Wolf-whistled. Heckled in the street. And you are left feeling dirty and more than a little worried.

What the fuck?!

What the actual fuck is that about? Thirteen and objectified by lecherous eyes, peeled back in size and worth and value. And I want to punch faces, unleash my anger in places that would really hurt them.

But I cannot be with you all the time.

So what do I say?

What advice do I give you?

You are still finding your voice; do you really have no choice but to retort: “I'm thirteen” or

“I’m thirteen”

“Please leave or I'll scream” or “What are you looking at, you dirty old man?” or “Pedo”

I don't think I would have had the gumption at your age.

And does confrontation just invite escalation? The last thing I'd want is more aggravation for you, or for you to feel more exposed, for it to erode you even more. Because of this you can be sure— you are worth a million of them.

These men, these shitty specimens of men, are not worthy of your breath, not worthy of you. And I will remind you of this at every chance. Do not believe their degrading stance. I know it will feel demoralizing, terrifying at times, but do not believe a word. And I hope that it is heard by another,

that they will be your voice, they will call it out for what it is, head-on. So wrong. Because every thirteen-year-old girl who is catcalled, Wolfwhistled, Heckled in the street, is someone's daughter.

And we all have a responsibility, women and men, to stop it in its tracks. To say enough is enough, call it out, report it. Every. Single. Time.

So that thirteen year old girls do not have to return home feeling dirty, and more than a little worried.

oh fuck. was this the covid test… or the pregnancy test?

erin barrett

Fear

Used to be a doubledecker train rattling through our backyard

While we sat on the banks of the tracks Dirt on our knees, we smiled through it.

At 14, facing the world with newly slouching shoulders, One foot in the realm of fearless youth, The other in ambivalent adolescence, I was taught to fear my body, and all it could do.

Once, treading water in the bay felt like breathing But at 15, it was a means to an end— How many calories have I burned? My only thought, staring into a perennially blue sky.

At 20, fear was the absence of a body— Another person, who I was told, Would make me whole.

At 27, fear is changing. Fear is mortality, it is an abnormal mammogram, It is the thought—no, the certainty, of loss.

On a mass scale, it is the melting of glaciers, Of wildfires blazing.

But fear now; it is a catalyst too,

Of impossible optimism

Of joyful outrage

Of better days to come

by Kendall Stark

INNARDS IS a depiction, or rather a confession, of my deepest, darkest secrets. I live in a constant state of anxiety that if I were to ever really expose these inner parts of myself, I would no longer be worthy of love, friendship, or compassion. I know this is not true, but I convince myself that it is real. The idea for Innards came from my personal nightmare that if someone were to cut me open (or more likely open and read my diary), I would no longer be able to hide my true self. Blood, guts, and decades of shame, guilt, anxiety, and repressed memories would pour out of me.

So I created this tapestry to try to let some of those buried

secrets go. The pattern you see is created by repeatedly writing these confessions and their illustrations over and over again with strands of my old bedsheets, fabrics lefover from my grandmother's quilting studio, and yarn.

Creating the tapestry was a very meditative process. As I drew out secrets with fabric and yarn, I realized that they are not so bad afer all. I realized that they may be ugly but they are genuine and whole. My innards are beautiful in all their imperfections. Glimpses of gold embroidery thread tie the tapestry together as notes of beauty in a larger mass. Though the secrets are still mostly hidden underneath the layers of fabric, the act of acknowledging, meditating, and practicing on these deep reflections has been a very healing process for me.

The tapestry is visceral. Created by the parts of me that I am ashamed to admit, drawn with remnants of materials from people and places that feel like home. These secrets are my home; they are a part of me that I need to accept and grow with, rather than be afraid of. The repeated layers of materials begin to erase the original shame that once was, and transforms it into something new. It is raw and complex, yet in all its grotesque qualities, represents an authentic portrait of myself that I am learning to be proud of.

By Sonja Czekalski

Innards, 52”x 54”x 8”, 2021. My grandmother's fabrics, my old bed sheets, yarn, embroidery floss, flax paper, pulp, natural dyes, RIT dye, red wine and adhesive on canvas.

Uncoupling From Fear

By Catherine Berresheim

Like some eerie spell cast with a crack from a switch cut from a weeping willow tree, the stereotypical bang of the gavel reverberated around the courtroom, and just like that, I was no longer married to him. After thirty years, we were pronounced divorced. The judge said the magic words, accepted the terms we hashed out in our Marital Dissolution Agreement, and wished us well. Standing outside on the courthouse steps, shivering inside out, not from cold, but from anxiety, I inhaled the crisp December air, feeling less afraid. Only then did the shaking finally begin to ease.

***

People don't file for divorce after a long-term marriage without good reason. Still, when folks learned about our uncoupling, many said, “My God, after 30 years together, why not just stick it out?” Clearly, they hadn't seen the footage of our daily life or they wouldn't say that.

Others more aware of our circumstances said, “What took you so long?” Their judgment made me realize that they didn't understand either. Fear kept me there, like a rootless tree in a puddle of water, ungrounded, unable to thrive.

It is no mistake we paired up. Like an alcoholic finding the perfect codependent, we matched in all the broken, unhealthy places and used each other to mend them. I met this man-boy when I was only 19 in our college theater department. We

both came from families of divorce: both our fathers married three times before their deaths. My mother did as

Someday is a false promise; a younger woman's favorite panacea that made me stay put.

well; his mother committed suicide over one of his father's affairs. Ironically, that same affair became his first stepmother. We were the last of our college cohorts to file for divorce. Despite our marrying young and coming from dysfunctional families ourselves, both huge divorce predictors, some of our friends thought of us as the example to follow, the measure of a successful couple-ship. But we knew the truth. We had been faking it publicly for years, privately even longer. At least I was. I think he was happy enough; ours was a Leave It To Beaver arrangement. He worked, provided income, and had outside activities and relationships. I cooked, cleaned, and cared for our three children, and held out hope for someday. Someday is a false promise; a younger woman's favorite panacea that made me stay put. Someday I will get over the affairs and trust him again. Someday he will see me as smart and capable. Someday I will have worth beyond my house cleaning and mothering abilities.

Someday I will get over the affairs and trust him again. Someday he will see me as smart and capable. Someday I will have worth beyond my house cleaning and mothering abilities.

Someday, maybe he will love me…first. What we shared, I would learn later, wasn't love. It was a reenactment run its course.

What I wanted to say to those who criticized me for staying so long, I had no words for yet. I could only grow in understanding after the separation, when I was removed from the potential for harm.

The main reason my marriage failed was complex. I didn't realize fully at the time, the extent of the abusive relationship I was in—how fear controlled me. No, he didn't beat me, knuckles to face; he berated, yelled, and shook his fists. He manipulated me, used money to control the relationship. The abuse came in the form of gaslighting, my therapist said.

According to the website for the Domestic Shelters Organization, “Gaslighting in intimate partner relationships is a manipulative abuse tactic where the survivor begins to question their own reality. This is done by the abuser questioning facts, denying memories the survivor has, undermining their judgment and bullying them into believing the abuser's reality.” For example, he would say, “I didn't sleep with her, I only hugged her. It was an emotional affair.” He had a Bill Clinton definition of sex.

The effects are so deep, the cycle so imperceptible, even the survivor is unable to see what is happening, or describe the events causing their sadness. Doubting their own sanity, doubting whether they would be believed if they did disclose to someone what was happening. The world sees this kind of narcissistic personality abuser as the good guy, the partner as the problem.

It is an invisible danger, like the deadly fumes of carbon

dioxide…acting slowly until we are too sleepy to care.

Fear and its hundred relatives controlled me: Fear that he would have another affair. Fear that I couldn't take care of myself if we really broke up. Fear that he was right, and I really was crazy.

The trepidation of making a mistake paralyzed me of all decision-making ability, including filing for divorce. “These are the after-effects of emotional abuse,” my therapist said. “How can you trust your decision making when you have been told over and over that your opinion is wrong?”

So, my inability to leave is common. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, it can take up to seven attempts before a survivor permanently leaves an abusive relationship. The number one indicator of whether a domestic violence victim will stay, leave, or return is financial independence.

For example, at the time of the first affair I “really saw” back in 1997, I considered leaving. I even went to an attorney, paid cash for advice to keep the meeting off the family records. I interviewed two, both cautioned leaving at that time, citing there weren't enough marital assets, that the children were young (6, 9, 13), and that I would have a hard time supporting myself without a job. They said we could petition for rehabilitative alimony and funding for education and training, but the resources may not be there with his

How can you trust your decision making when you have been told over and over that your opinion is wrong?

income.

When he learned that I wanted to leave, he threatened to take the kids from me, saying he made all the money, the judge would see I wasn't capable of supporting them. He gave the example of another couple where the father was awarded full custody. What he didn't tell me was the mother approved of the arrangement.

In the final year or so before I filed, I remember going to the doctor's office and the nurse running through the typical intake questionnaire: “Do you feel safe at home?” I didn't feel safe at all at the cusp of divorce, when testosterone flew around the house, the huffs and puffs as I walked by the room he stowed away in doing his crossword puzzles. Or before then, on Sunday mornings, the only day off we had together, when I felt like he just simmered his rage waiting for an excuse to pounce and scold me for spending too much money on (fill in the blank). But I would have never said those things in that setting. Besides, the nurses just obediently ran down the list, barely pausing to hear an answer. I wondered if they ever detected the hidden truth.

When I actually feared for my life was when I made the decision to leave him. It was an ordinary quarrel–about a mistake he made with one of our children's tuition payments, with the stress of juggling the “down to one car, because the other is in the shop” when we needed to get said payment to the bursar's office—kind of fight. We were traveling together in the Honda Civic to drop him at his office, so I could continue to campus and resolve the error. On the ride, we talked, trying to understand how the purge from classes and the cancellation of the meal-card happened. Apparently, he

Both marriage rates and divorce rates have dropped significantly in the last decade. Women are no longer indentured servants to their husband's breadwinning. We bake our own artisan loaves.

missed several warning emails and the final deadline. We had just gotten onto the interstate proper from the onramp when his temper exploded. I apologized again and again, saying I just want to get to campus to help our son. There were lots of f-yous and I'm doing my bests and more words I can't recall. What is solid in memory (and confirmed by my contemporaneou s journal entry) is my then-husband pressed on the gas pedal hard and fast and the car charged forward traveling from the easy 15 mph from the on-ramp merge, to well over 60 mph while screaming at me, “I don't need you to tell me that I fucked up! I feel like a bad father! I don't need you to tell me that! You bitch!” At that point, he slammed on the brake, making us lurch forward in the sudden stop. The car jumped like some racetrack trick, my chest yanked back into the seat cushion so hard I lost my breath. “Can we please just…this is dangerous, honey, you can cause an accident.…”

“I hope I do! I hope some fucking car comes along and smashes into me and kills me!”

Shaking at his sudden rage, I thought we could both die. I recognized this terror from witnessing my father's outbursts at my mother and brothers and sometimes me. That light

switch fury. Thankfully, no one was behind us. “I'll figure it out,” I said.

In that moment I understood I was unsafe in his presence and that the verbal teasing and ridicule had moved to the physical realm. I couldn't recall what I said to provoke such violence, but I realized I could not make an excuse for this behavior, or take the blame on myself—not for this. This had crossed a line into a different kind of fear. I resolved in the silence in the remainder of that ride that I would protect myself from these unmistakable indicators of escalating harm. My safety had changed, like burned skin. I lost a basic bodily trust.

He, of course, later denied this happening, saying that I was exaggerating, saying I was overreacting. Saying I was “sick.” That was one of his favorite gaslighting tactics, “Well I'm sorry that is your perception…” or, “You're misremembering…” But this time, I knew. I knew with my primal need for survival in charge that what happened was abusive. That night I called the YWCA Hotline and began to go to support meetings. In the room, surrounded by other women with stories similar to mine, I learned staying was more dangerous than the fear of leaving. In two-years' time I would lay the groundwork to leave.

After six years on my own, I encounter unexpected misconceptions about a “woman my age.” People assume things about the divorcée that aren't true or objective. Unsolicited advice and opinions come from unexpected

places. Even my neurologist had something to say at my recent appointment.

“You were married a long time, weren't you?” “Yep, 30 years.”

“I have one patient in his forties, who is just devastated by his divorce.”

He asked me point blank if I thought I'd marry “this guy” I've been dating. Without hesitation, I said, “No.”

“Really?”

“Mmmhmmm…” I said through our TeleHealth portal. “You've been seeing each other for a while, right?”

“Yes, Dr. So & So, but I'm happy dating.”

“Really? What about him?”

“He knows how I feel.” Something about the look on his face made me add, “I'm not leading him on, if that's what you are worried about.”

He's never even met the man I'm dating; come to think of it, he never met my husband either. My serious multiple sclerosis disease didn't garner my husband's concern or involvement. It was too upsetting for him.

“Well, it's none of my business,” he says as if he suddenly realized this conversation had nothing to do with MS.

“No, it isn't. For your information, my partner knows my scars and how I got them. He would never push beyond those broken limits. And your male patient might just be having trouble figuring out how to do his own laundry, like my husband did. It took him almost two weeks to figure out that once he banished me from the bedroom and into the finished basement bedroom after one of our arguments, I wouldn't do that chore for him.” I wanted to say this but didn't.

“Good for you that you are so happily married, but I wonder what your wife would say to your obviously sexist, and dare I say misogynistic, comments.” I don't say that either.

I also don't break down and cry, like I used to when confronted with such disapproval. Instead, I think, I divorced all of that , and I do say, “You know, I'm much happier now than I ever was when I was married.”

Like many disparities between the sexes, I think I'm judged more harshly than my ex-husband is, especially because I am an older woman. I'm 60 now, and people like my doctor, like other women righteous and smug in their happy marriages, reading their eulogies in our writing group to their dead husbands who have become sainted in their absence, see me as a spinster, defective because I am not marked with a ring of approval like some USDA rating. Unlike the death of a spouse, the death of a marriage isn't recognized as a true grief. Our loss is housed in a different kind of graveyard. We don't visit and lay flowers down; there is no stone to mark the spot.

My divorce evokes fear in others, both women and men, either because a breakup of such a long-term marriage unrests their idea of “death do us part,” and they secretly wonder if their partner is sitting in an attorney's office right that minute going over options and strategies, or checking out books from the library about the Gray Divorce Revolution. Or they fear that this “divorce bug” is contagious. I was told by a dear female friend right before the divorce was finalized that “men will think you are easy for sex, and women, even friends of yours, will guard their husbands from you.” Both

have proven to be true.

Psychologists say that for every five to seven years of marriage, at least one year of recovery time is needed to heal

Now I am the peace. from a breakup. Only a third of marriages even make it to 25 years. We were married 30, and dated almost five before that. According to the math, I should be getting close to the end of processing this ambiguous loss, and onto recovery. Only there are no chips awarded to mark these milestones like in a 12-Step meeting.

That light switch fury.

The basic reason why I don't expect to contemplate remarrying is more lizard-brained survival instinct. Embarrassed to admit it, I do hold the fear that my ex-husband's prediction will manifest—that I will die alone. But I also know being alone doesn't mean I will be lonely. Lonely was what I felt when I was married pretending to be in love, knowing I couldn't muster that emotion anymore. Each of his “I love you's” were a hostage solicitation to mimic the words back to him in a required adoration. Like a slap in the face at my disingenuousness, it kept the peace.

Now I am the peace.

Some fear lingers. I live with the lasting effects of more than 35 years of conditioning. For example, if there is some conflict with a relationship, my kids, co-worker, lover, writing group, I have to consult with another trusted friend to check and see if my perception of the situation is accurate. Do I have the right to be upset? Would you be hurt by this kind of behavior or comment? Only then can I feel comfortable with my take on things—but not for long, if the other person is

clearly taking a different stance, or if they are displeased with me. I have learned to accept blame any time this impasse happens. It was the only way out of the cold silent blame. Might as well wear it.

I also fear I'm too broken to ever fully trust a partner enough to share a home let alone an income. Mostly, I don't ever want to experience divorce again. The decision is purely self-preservation. The statistics support my choice; 60% of all second marriages end in divorce. Funny, both the marriage rates and the divorce rates have dropped significantly in the last decade. Women are no longer indentured servants to their husband's breadwinning. We bake our own artisan loaves.

***

So, what does one do on a cold Tuesday in December when ending the longest relationship she's ever had? I went for my first pedicure.

That night, showered, powered, and dressed in my “nobody's going to see me anyway” pajamas, I poured a glass of pinot noir and watched one of my dramas without ridicule. Free in the roar of solitude with Cajun Pink toes—enjoying my own good company. Content and fearing—less.

the joy of ritual by caitlin peck

I used to be unafraid of everything—fearless. As I got older, I became afraid, but I kept it hidden. No one could know I had worries. And then I grew afraid of everything and feared what others thought of my fear. Today I feel I still am afraid of everything, but I've come to embrace it, to understand it. And in some ways, it's like being unafraid again.

I bleed and I fuck and I birth I gnaw and gnash on fridge food and fridge poetry I sit, I eat The fragility of a man in distress faced with a no-body/ a dangerous curved hip/a dripping mouth story:

My head and my labia are thick and wet I'm just laying hung over the edge of my bed And no words pour out of me Just mucus and semen Each isolated thrust like a comic book “POW” And I am counting 12345…678..fuck -breaths hoping I can hold it long enough

To not make a sound. Or die Choking gets harder every time I try it on for size It's losing its grip on me, so I try new things Less severe like laying, lying, and taking pink and purple pills Cuz they're cute.

an aside: i could fall in love with this girl, we were raped by the same man.

“a sword means no” and “having a dangerous body”

I don’t want to forget B2 on Prentis Street. Its deep window sills, John and Claire. The Wifi Box and Blender incidents. The brown couch, our tiny kitchen, and subpar lighting. The way Ari loved looking at the mural across from my Bedroom. Waving through a window At the Baileys, Allies, Emilys, and Rachels Of Detroit.

I don't want to forget Warren Avenue…the time you Let me piss in the house and get a snack before work. Shitty pizza. Hart Plaza. Stupid parties that gave me vertigo. My refusal to drink. My refusal to hold your hand or go In your bedroom. But you took me and her plus thirty-eight. You took our lives and gave us headaches and comas. Left us blood blisters and dirt crumbs on kneecaps.

in

i am not a liar.

am not disgusting.

I tell people about Us. But it has no shock value. Everyone's been raped… like no one knows what to say Like we just complain about men and didn't like the sex Like how we want to be a number in this box so we can relate 'Cuz empowered women are only raped ones and dead ones

…like no one knows what to say

Like the ex who laughed

The ex who stared and sighed Both while spit pooled in my mouth corners

All I could do was look up and nod, Get a good slap to the face Or cold water to the wrists

Also not knowing what to say.

-

We were 19. That's all I was.

Chloe. 19. Blonde hair, green eyes. 5'03. Number [redacted].

Raped at 612 Prentis Street, B2, Detroit, Michigan, 48201.

Where the three-panel window faces the mural.

by chloe tomasovitch

What do I deserve?

By Lindsay Owen

I have feared my own mind since 2010, when I realized I could not feel any emotions while in England at Epcot, Disney World with my family. Why did I feel unbelievably passive in what is supposed to be the happiest place on Earth? Four months later, I started seeing a therapist regularly for the first time in about a decade. I was fifteen.

Being my own worst enemy keeps me on my toes. My mind gets in its own way on a weekly, if not daily, basis. I convince myself not to flirt with my boyfriend, not to wake up on time, not to go outside. Deciding to move from the East Coast to the West Coast, I put myself first in the most extreme way. And in doing so, I came last. Space from toxic relationships, a new environment to breathe in, and the beach? Just what I need after years of a pandemic in a Jersey City apartment. But was it really for me? Or was it because my boyfriend wanted to move home?

Did I really want to trade the Path train for a car in the suburbs of Los Angeles? I don't have a driver's license.

Did I actually want to have to make new friends? Trying to find friends as an adult is the worst.

Could I aford this? I’m in graduate school; I still have tuition to pay.

Could I keep my job? I just started going back to the office. Did I really want this? I do not know.

I did not realize when moving that I would mourn my life in Jersey City. I do not have a community 2,814 miles west from the city where I built friendships, romances, and a neverending list of jobs I've worked that I look at fondly on my LinkedIn profile. I cannot look at the New York City skyline in a movie or tv shows without my eyes welling up. Phone calls and texts from friends go unanswered because it makes me more sad, missing them.

Even in a place with sunshine and no humidity, my anger, depression, and anxiety has built and peaked with too much white wine and time alone. Missing family, friends, and coworkers all makes sense. I did not expect to grieve my favorite Jersey City Pure Barre studio, or commuting through the Oculus. My life was diferent, I was diferent. I miss myself even though I am still here, being and breathing.

What do I want? When my therapist first asked me this, I did not have an answer. I could not see a path ahead of me on this diferent coast. I have reframed that question to ask myself what I deserve.

I deserve to adjust on my own timeline, to build momentum on this new path. I deserve to walk outside, feel my skin take in the vitamin D, and breathe clean air. I deserve to go to the beach whenever I want. I trust myself and don’t ask as many questions. Now when I look in the mirror, I see sunkissed skin and baggy under eyes. I take a breath and smile.

Angry Menstrual Death Vibes of Doom

Yet again another man randomly apologized for merely daring to breathe in the Beloit Wal-Mart. There was neither rhyme nor reason to the forgiveness that they all sought, which none of them, regardless of skin tone or apparent affluence, would receive. I realized I was emitting Angry Menstrual Death Vibes of Doom after about the fifth one. Secretly reveling in their newfound fear, I bought ice cream and popcorn and went home.

By Rose Menyon Heflin

I Am Scared You Will Die in a Car Crash, Metaphorically

Is this what happiness is? A place I'm scared to leave, a feeling I'm terrified I can't make stay, something I can't possibly hold on to? I'm scared you will die in a car crash, metaphorically. I'm scared of chaos entering the narrative. I like it here, where I am, and it just about brings me to my knees to think about how fleeting this moment is, how unpromised, uncertain the next one is. And the one after that, and the many that follow, and how easy it would be, it will be, to eventually end up not here. Lately, we've been talking a lot about what scares me the most.

You are seven (long, chaos-filled, wisdom, by necessity, crammed) years older than me, and a lot of our now decades-spanning relationship has been you walking me through developmental crises you've already managed to make it to the other side of. I'd grow tired on that side, but you never seem to.

Lately, I confess my fears to you and you assure me that I have nothing to be afraid of. I cry that I can't control A Thing, cry that chaos has to enter the narrative, sometimes, can't possibly be held at bay all of the time. Or? I worry that maybe if I was just a better mom, better wife, better teacher, better person, chaos could be vanquished once and for all,

we could settle into this perfect and predictable life, finally, forever. You laugh at control as a goal.

I spend most of my days ensuring chaos can't possibly enter the narrative. You have lived your whole life as a machine that manufactures it.

One night, not too long ago, after spinning my wheels about the tiny things that scare me for a few conversations, I told you the Big One. You listened while I told you my deepest, darkest fear, almost choking on it, near tears, as I willed it out of my mouth.

It is terribly likely that SomeThing will happen to disrupt this life, this happiness.

You said, “Isn't that basically the plot of Armageddon?” And it was. My deepest darkest fear, articulated, basically sounds like the plot of the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon: that there is an asteroid the size of Texas hurtling toward Earth and humanity's only hope for existing beyond tomorrow depends on an unlikely, arguably unqualified trio the likes of Steve Buscemi, Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck flying to the literal moon basically to stop it. Also my kids haven't seen the Eiffel Tower yet and never will and there's no toilet paper in the grocery store and even though you say we wouldn't have to tell them the world is about to end, I have this policy about lying to my children and also what if I couldn't stop crying during all of this—the

stuff of nightmares. But, yes, basically Armageddon. “Why are you so scared of that? Do you know how unlikely that is?”

I do know how unlikely Exactly That is, but I also know it is terribly likely that SomeThing will happen to disrupt this life, this happiness. The things I can't plan or course correct for, they might as well be Armageddon. I spend my days the Ben Affleck of the story in my head. The only person standing between my perfect happiness and inevitable, impending doom should I ever choose to just relax, for a moment, to turn down the challenge of taking action to stop the freak chaos coming straight for our love story. On the worst days, the imagined weight I've placed upon my own shoulders is incalculably large.

“I am not scared of Exactly That, really, I guess, I am just scared of something like that.”

Lately, I confess my fears to you and you try to make me believe that just by speaking my fear into the universe I have willed it into some powerless impossibility.

I try to explain to you that it doesn't ever make me feel better actually because 1) I googled it and naming something specifically doesn't statistically decrease the likelihood that it happens and 2) I am only worried that we die by asteroid, that we die by jet engine crashing through the roof of this house, that you die in a car crash, of the butterfly effect that a single, unplanned action can have on this mercurial, temperamental happy life–I am only worried

about these things metaphorically. Really, what I am worried about is that anyThing happens and we are suddenly pulled irrevocably far from Right Now, toe to toe on our teal couch, four year olds who still think we are the reason the sun sets and rises asleep upstairs, dog nuzzled between us, happy and perfect, because I like it so much, and that is terrifying.

We are suddenly pulled irrevocably far from Right Now, toe to toe on our teal couch, four year olds who still think we are the reason the sun sets and rises asleep upstairs, dog nuzzled between us, happy and perfect, because I like it so much, and that is terrifying.

"I'm afraid you or I or all of us will die in a car crash, but like, metaphorically. I'm terrified that something out of my control will happen and you and I and all of us and all of this will disappear or change irrevocably."

"It will."

"It can't!"

"But, I mean, it definitely will. Even the good things take us further away from this exact place. We don't stay here forever."

“We have to stop talking about this.” “Does being afraid help?”

I'm not sure. I don't immediately have a reply. It pains

me, someone with so little time, to consider that any small effort, mental or otherwise, has been wasted, not in the name of forward progress. Relishing the moments I love even has felt like a task I could fail at sometimes. We talk about “living every day like your last,” a turn of phrase that, like many rarely explicated but somehow widely accepted pieces of sage wisdom, has always perplexed me.

“It's either happening tomorrow and you can't change it, or it's not happening tomorrow, so you don't need to try to. And you can't know. So you chase the thing you can bear to die doing.”

If you live to sow chaos, I live to point out holes in the solution, but I am okay with this one for now, holes and all.

I wish we could live in this moment forever, but I know we can't. I know either bad things or good things or different things or things I expect or things I can't imagine are ahead. And I know Armageddon would have been okay if Ben Affleck stayed on this planet with Liv, walking animal crackers across her belly, the future not promised, Aerosmith playing in the background.

By Stephanie Meuse

so silly

I am always leaving something behind, It's so silly how I do that.

Once I left my shoes in the backyard of a party in Colonia Roma, they were just three rooms away, but I couldn'tMartín didn't even notice until we were halfway home, muttering “Que loca” and shaking his head. Why wouldn't I go back, this crazy Gringa, one mile of dirty D.F. streets on the bottom of my heart. It was so silly

being too embarrassed to go back. Everyone laughed the next day, so funny me leaving my shoes, so silly the filthy undersides of my feet.

Ten years before that, I left my backpack in junior year Spanish class, Señor Perreya didn't even notice until the woman who found me in the bathroom came to get it, because I wouldn't go back. It's so silly, being too scared to get my backpack, but I couldn't -

by Colleen Kam Siu

everyone laughing that day, so silly everyone's mouths moving to whisper “slut” as I walked by, so funny that Jason had done what he did to my body.

And it's so silly I am always leaving something behind, and it feels so silly being too scared to go back, but hand on my heart bare feet on the ground I'd rather leave everything behind.

@feemaleartist

CHOICES

By Lindsay Owen

My choices have always been taken to heart by people who should be affected the least. My choices are held over my head for years to come by those who mean well. Choices, and the responsibility of making them, have driven my anxiety and depression over a cliff edge into the ocean below. My choices continue to drive the disappointment and anger of those closest to me, people who continue to hold onto choices I have long let go of, or tried to.

My choices keep others up at night. They hold onto my experiences so incredibly tight, thinking they were a part of them. They grab on and do not let go, stretching and molding my choices to fit into their idea of me.

In their minds, I did not decide to have an abortion after rationally considering all the options and results. I could not possibly be mature enough to make that kind of decision for myself and my body. Rather, I made the impulsive decision to kill my mom's grandchild after making an irrevocable mistake. They forget pregnancy is not irrevocable.

In their minds, I dated abortion rebounds. Whatever that means.

In their minds, I chose instability when I moved across the country. Away from them. I get sick to my stomach before picking up the phone, opening the door, or going home, knowing what I may encounter. Why do I still answer their calls? It is my choice. https://www.choicesmedical.com/volunteer/

I have had three. Three abortions.

These are the words I cannot share out loud and with my name. I know now my fear was valid.

One. The first, my home state, there were only two places to go, both hours away. An expensive drive away. In that clinic they charged you by how far along you were. I miscalculated. We counted pennies and quarters found in my friend's Bronco. We counted them in the office before that crappy abortion. It was not a clean place, but the only thing the protesters outside cared about was that I was “going to hell.” I already knew that; I was raised Catholic.

Two. For the second, I learned that in my home state, you could get an abortion in the fancy neighborhoods of the city. It was not advertised anywhere. My boyfriend came from that part of the state and he knew. I had my boyfriend call. We wore fake wedding rings. I dressed up. No protestors, only tea.

Three. The third, it was a large clinic in an abortion-safe state. It was the first time I had a counselor talk to me before and after.

My partner stood by me. My roommate gave me a card in solidarity. I knew that I was not going to hell. I knew I needed to teach my self sex education. I needed better access to birth control. I needed a system that supported me. I wanted to be sexually healthy.

Today, I teach my kid with a uterus sex education. We talk about bodies and how they are funny and serious, what are the facts and what conversations we are growing into. I share books and articles with my fellow grown-up friends with kids. Roe v. Wade was not enough, we needed more. Today, two-thirds of my past choices are illegal.

WILL WE EVER BE ALONE?

I feel his breath warm against my neck. My hips flex against him in anticipation. I want this. He removes my shirt–god, I hope he plays with my nipples. I pull him in for a kiss. I love feeling our bodies so close together. He backs away and starts to pull my underwear off. He is kneeling before me as my underwear gets stuck around my knees. My entire body freezes. His breath becomes too warm. I squeeze my eyes so tight that white fireworks light up on my eyelids. The fan above me is squeaking. A pit of anxiety overwhelms me. My chest is tight and it feels as if my lungs have gone missing. I think I am hyperventilating. Why is the fan making so much damn noise? Why is it so hot in here? Am I sweating? Why is my underwear down there? Do I want this? Who am I even with? I think I feel hands on my body. Are they mine? Are they his? I thought I was still, but I think I am shaking. How is there no air in this room? How did I end up here? Panic has overwhelmed my body. I try to find my voice, I try to think. I remember what friends have told me, how important it is to ground yourself when panicking. It is so hard to think, I am gripped by fear. Several faces flash before my eyes.

I remember handprint bruises on my body. The smell of unwanted cum on my chest. Waking up to a man's hand down my pants. A voice lying when he says he used a

condom. A trusted friend saying, “I don't want to know what he did to you, he was my friend first.” Where am I? Who am I with? How did I end up here?

I start to hear my voice in my head. Take a deep breath Cat. Find out where you are Cat. Open your eyes Cat. Take a deep breath Cat. You are safe Cat. Open your eyes Cat. Take a deep breath Cat. Open your eyes Cat. Take a deep breath Cat.

I feel my lungs inflate with air.

I hear a voice say, “You are safe Cat. Take a deep breath Cat.”

I don't think it is my own. The air leaves my lungs. They do not refill. Where am I? Who am I with? How did I end up here?

This cycle continues for what feels like forever. When I finally open my eyes, I see the worried eyes of my trusted partner. He knows my reaction is not a fault of his own. He does not seek any comfort or explanations. He waits until I tell him it is okay to touch me. He pulls me in for a hug and sits with me until my breathing returns to normal. I feel lucky even though this should be the norm.

I hate the men who have ruined intimacy for me. I have bought new clothes, switched homes, and moved states. I do not know how to prevent them from penetrating my safe new spaces. Will my partner and I ever be able to be alone?

By Caterina H LaRocca

You'll feel differently when you're older. You're being selfish if you don't want kids. You can fold your brother's laundry. You need to learn how to cook for when you're married.

You don't want to get married? You'll feel differently when you're older. Y el novio?

You need to date someone rich. Your children need to be tall. You're wearing that? You can't move out until you're married. You should be speaking better Spanish. You're white-washed. You're not making any money from your hobby? You should've gone to USC. You could've been a doctor. Your generation is selfish. You'll feel differently when you're older. - The fears, failures, and disappointments of a Latina

By Marisol Diaz

A Ghost Is Nothing but a Game of Clue

My new sleep paralysis is strange men coming into my bed. This is the first time that someone else has been in the room with me. Most of the time it's just me, alone, with an overwhelming weight of exhaustion that presses me deeper into the white linens, which should really be replaced with all the holes that have started to sprout up, and back into unconsciousness until the late hours of the morning. I'm not sure why they started appearing, but they seem to have no intention of leaving any time soon.

It's not a particular fear: men. We get along fine, but it's a little off-putting when they intrude upon your personal space, especially while you're trying to sleep peacefully. I didn't always mind the attention. I used to enjoy it when I was in my early years of college. Coming from a socially conservative Mexican household, you're taught from a young age that you shouldn't attract the attention of boys too much‒itʼs not a good look according to numerous family members. It would be a bad thing to have all that attention on you, even if you're just keeping to yourself. It's never the boys' fault for looking your way. They don't know any better, but you definitely should. Your sexuality is shamed upon before you even step outside the house. You're the one who must always carry the burden of shame.

You're not supposed to be desirable until you get

married, and there is no in-between. So the best you could do as a young person living at home was get good at saying that you're with your group of friends while you're actually spending time alone with your boyfriend driving around in the middle of the night. Things are more bearable that way.

After leaving home, there was a sense of relief and excitement in having a say in what I could do without regulation. I was able to decide what I could do with my own body on my own terms. It was childish fun exchanging kisses with strangers on dance floors during Footloose Fridays, and in dark bar corners after too many $3 Long Island iced teas, and having one-night stands. It was fun not being able to think too hard about any of it, or having to talk to anyone the next day. We got to go our separate ways and that was that. They were easier than wasting time on unrequited crushes and flirtations with acquaintances that never came to fruition. It was easier to say “fuck it” to everything all the time, to not have to care about anything before others started getting greedy. It was a small window of opportunity to bask in my own space before everyone started sneaking in.

Maybe all the one-night stands are trying to make their way back as sleep demons to get back at me for ghosting them.

College is supposed to be fun until it gets to the point where the boys yell at you from their cars,

demanding that you show them your ass while you're just trying to walk back to your dorm after a movie. Or when you get a feeling that you might be getting followed after leaving the library late at night. And it's then that you come to the realization that you're more vulnerable than you initially thought. There's always an endpoint. No one makes it through young adulthood unscathed.

Sometimes I miss being able to roam around campus late at night. I miss breathing in the thick, late spring air, sweetened with the scent of southern oak trees, listening to Bon Iver with both headphones plugged into my ears, because there is a comfort in soaking in all the sad songs. I've seen so many others do it while walking around campus, but I'm okay with knowing not to do those things anymore. I blame that one student who stopped me in front of a closed CVS and asked me if I thought I would go to heaven or hell when I die. No matter what I said, he told me that I was going to hell, and he prayed for me. I wished to go to hell out of spite.

Foolish innocence does come in waves though. Sometimes you want to make out with the person asking you to dance, and you have a good time while keeping your mind off of your failed biology class. Then they bring your high crashing down as they reach down for your pants button in the center of a sweaty crowd of bodies, and you sneak off and lie about getting another

drink at the bar before ditching him. Other times they force you to figure out what to do when you feel someone pinching your ass under your dress when you're alone on a crowded bus heading back to campus, and it sinks in that you're too scared to do anything

because you might get followed. You didn't think to have your friends walk in the opposite direction with you because you were so close to your car. There are also those times when someone's car lights flash in your face to get you to come over when you're not even ten feet away from your apartment door that just you and your cat rent out. The same apartment where you don't tell the leasing company that you have a cat because you're still bitter about them not telling you about the massive roach infestation. It made you more sketched out than that one time you got a letter from the building informing you that someone was stabbed to death a few doors down. Fuck that apartment. A large part of your brain just goes towards how to not die the longer you're on your own. The scary parts don't last too long, but they get tiresome. There's the sound of someone opening the door. Neither of the dogs are bothered by the intrusion. Heavy

A large part of your brain just goes towards how to not die the longer you're on your own. The scary parts don't last too long, but they get tiresome.

footsteps get closer and closer to the bedroom. Maybe it came from accepting my pansexuality during the worst of the pandemic, and they're just ghosts from back home coming to me in some Shakespearean vision. My family was okay with others' orientations, but back then it was more of a conditional acceptance. When friends of mine came out in high school, some were dismissed as them going through a phase. It was mostly the girls that they dismissed. They were okay with it all, as long as it wasn't ever me coming out to them. It was said as if it was like a cold they didn't want coming into their home. They never explained what would happen if I did, but I also didn't question it out of discomfort. We all tried to stay out of as much confrontation as possible. Since then, they have learned the wrongness of their perceptions, and have grown as people, but their warning still stuck with me the most. I let it scare me into thinking I was just into boys the whole time I was going to college. It added on to my anxiety of trying to get through a new life on my own, and I suffered for a long time from it. I don't let that memory get to me as much as it used to, but the sting from that wound returns every now and then. It definitely did as I had time to sit at home as an unemployed barista. Then things just felt normal, nothing grand or momentous. It was more of an “oh, okay” afternoon. Things feel better now, at least.

Someone once told me that in order to break the thread of dreaming, you should look into a mirror. There's something about the act of being aware of your own presence and how your brain perceives how you truly look that triggers you awake, like you know you're in a dream and you should wake up now. I've always thought of it as being because an honest version of you can't stand to look at the truth about you; it's terrifying to see that. But sometimes it's just hard to look at yourself when there's no mirror to judge with.

I feel the weight of a knee pressing into the mattress. A panicked tingle sends a spasm into my side that he's next to. He doesn't touch me though‒he never does. He just whispers angrily into my right ear, but I can never understand what he's trying to say. What makes me want to solve why I'm having these night terrors is that it's never actual demons or monsters. It's just men hidden in the darkness who have to get their message to me while I can't move. I want to know why I'm having to receive violent whispers. Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be someone else's midnight haunting. I wonder if they see a real version of me or if I'm just an outline. I imagine how I would feel holding that power over someone like that just by being there. If I would unleash all my anger into their stolen ears, or if I would look for a mirror.

By Christina Miranda

THEY WANT US TO BE QUIET

Sinister gentlemen sway, past boundary. Stale ale whispers of sweetheart. Unwanted, plucky palms on my hips, my knees, my neck. The Uber driver spends freeway conversation asking how many men I've slept with. Persistent, pestering for phone number. I wait for tail lights before entering home.

Sidewalk sniper interrupts my walking peace with whistles and passenger seat smirk. Sees me as pavement darling, paints me prey.

Government goons close my local clinic. The one that gave me shelter from impending storm. Screened for disease, lent options when there were none. They aim to own my womb.

Amateur party chemists, tampered drinks. I memorize the bars to avoid. And hallucinate the faces of monsters who harmed my friends. Curate pocket knives, pepper spray, self defense courses. I buy time.

Every day brings reminder that my body is commodity. My autonomy, theirs to take. At night, my brain drags my image through abandoned streets, seeks saving from approaching shadows. But when I open my throat, fear devours my screams.

Sometimes I succumb. Become contortionist, fold myself into polite smile, into a dullness

I would not recognize in the mirror. But other days, I push back, summon a supernatural solidarity with every violet lipsticked rebel that has marched before me.

Last witching hour, I awoke from another voiceless nightmare and spit onto paper: Reject subtlety. Take up space. Be a menace. Be a miracle.

I am rooting for you to do the same.

BY HADLEY DION

i lied by caitlin peck

sometimes, when he rises from the bed and leaves me

sometimes, when he rises from the bed and leaves me behind, bare-backed and turned from the light of the bathroom, face averted from the gaze of the camera, i feel like i am part of the furniture, a set piece designed to fill a vague role: girlfriend, lover, woman. he pisses in the toilet then stands at the sink, washing his hands, driving the narrative forward in the way that only men can do. i am a foam block, filling out the scene. i am afraid to move, lest i disrupt anything.

bathroom, face averted from the gaze of the camera, i feel like i am part of the furniture, a set piece designed to fill a vague role: girlfriend, lover, woman. he pisses in the toilet then stands at the sink, washing his hands, driving am a foam block, filling out the scene. i am afraid to i wonder if the light and shadow reflect upon my figure in a flattering way.

i wonder if the light and shadow reflect upon my figure in a flattering way.

adriana beltrano

Googling Fear of God

By Rachel Dean

I looked for the God of my life everywhere—in traditional and sacrilegious places, both. I didn't find much. I came up empty, emerged exhausted, a mystic with no inspired mysticism. This is not a formula for a successful spiritual life, but then, such prescriptions tend to be useless.

***

I wonder, sometimes: out of the percentage of my life lived thus far, how much of it has been informed by fear? When I Google Fear of God, the first search result is an overpriced men's clothing brand, selling hoodies and t-shirts in calm pastels. I alter my phrasing, and search: What does Fear of God mean? But I know what it means already—it's more that I appreciate confirmation of my expertise. After all, I don't need the necessary context. The context is my life.

***

I'm not sure I'd ever experienced awe until I accepted my own insignificance. Sometimes, this allegiance to minimization feels like a betrayal of feminism, which I once interpreted as a way of centering my gender, or rather, as a way of confronting my minimization in the minds of men. My route to this realization—that is, the realization about my own insignificance—is not very original. I spent a lot of time outside. I cared for tiny plants with impossibly miniscule root systems in a warm greenhouse. I started paying attention to the trees. I found bugs in my compost and cried in disgust. I observed the horses at the farm, their giant bodies and cautious attention, the way they stared at me out of blinking black eyes while I refilled their water buckets. I woke up to my mint plant

sitting on the sill by my window, contorting its greenery toward the light. There were processes taking place around me that involved me only peripherally, or not at all. This was an immense relief. It became easier to see that I was simply a contributor to an ecosystem, not its arbiter. But perhaps I'm skipping an important chapter. One can't supply the solution without imparting a formula that will yield it. In my young mind, in the mind of recent years, being an arbiter of my environment was an antidote to fear. And the equation is simple—if you grow up afraid, if you grow up grasping at control in every scenario, you feel inevitably threatened when you cannot have it. So then the solution can be further reduced to its simplest form: girl learns fear, girl uses control to stamp out fear, girl fails.

***

A curated list of the things I was afraid of in childhood and adolescence, in no particular order: spiders, being raped, ketchup, being kidnapped, that my parents would go away for a trip and never return, the start of the first Hocus Pocus movie, windows without closed blinds or drawn curtains, mortal sins staining my soul, my body, broken bones jutting out of torn skin, confessionals, cracked-open closet doors, men, long division, walks alone, forgetting my own phone number, being observed in the act of crying, accidentally setting the church on fire while lighting the candles before altar serving at Sunday

A curated list of the things I was afraid of in childhood and adolescence, in no particular order: spiders, being raped, ketchup, being kidnapped.

mass, feeling fraudulent, that internet porn would somehow infiltrate my computer while I was watching Miley Cyrus music videos on YouTube, sex, fights in my high school cafeteria, that I'd fail to adhere to the virginity pledge I'd signed in eighth grade, death.

In her essay “Decreation,” Anne Carson writes about three women writers spanning time—Sappho, Marguerite Porete, and Simone Weil. She discusses each woman's progression toward a denial of selfhood, which emerges as a central theme in their work. Each woman entertained an obsession to merge fully with God. Carson observes—not in criticism of each woman's writing, but in an attempt at tactful theorizing—that “to be a writer is to construct a big, loud, shiny center of self from which the writing is given voice and any claim to be intent on annihilating this self while still continuing to write and give voice to writing must involve the writer in some important acts of subterfuge or contradiction.” When I read this paragraph, sitting on my mother's couch, I see myself and the see-saw effort of my imagined identity. I don't want to merge with the Divine, but I want to be open to the possibility of decreation, to the idea that my selfhood is no more real, no more important, than bugs in my compost, or tiny plants and big horses. I think, paradoxically, that accepting this is an antidote to fear. But central to my selfhood is also my urge to write and record, to annotate my life with causal footnotes—to place myself as the hero of my

That my parents would go away for a trip and never return, the start of the first Hocus Pocus movie.

story, conqueror of my terror. I am still trying to find use for that.

***

One afternoon while rock climbing, I talk with my friend, A, about my relationship to Catholicism. In between tying-in and belaying one another, we trade childhood tales. She seems to understand the complexities of organized religion more than anyone I know because of her Jewish faith. We met at a climbing class, and I like to project, maybe childishly, that some divine energy placed us there on the same day. She tells me a lot about Judaism—stories of community, complexity, and rich history. I can't help but find it all beautiful. When A talks about Judaism, she seems genuinely inspired, not at all cynical or hardened. In contrast, when I talk about Catholicism, I sometimes hear my words from some far off place—like I'm witnessing another person relay a cynic's sad story. It's not that it isn't true—this disgust toward most of what I was taught in childhood—it's more that I'm learning there's no singular takeaway in a backstory. And if I look hard enough, I really can find the good. Sunday mornings spent sitting between my parents at Mass. The smell of incense. The comfort of the gospels. Later, while A and I eat tacos at a restaurant, I tell her that I find it hard to communicate how I feel about religion to people who weren't steeped in a community of faith during their formative years. These people can't relate, I say. But then,

it's not their fault. They seem to think it's easy, one way or another, to subscribe or not subscribe. Like putting on a coat or leaving it at home, per the day's predicted weather. The trouble with me is that my predictions are always failures.

***

When it was time to select a saint in preparation for our 8th grade Confirmation ceremony, I mulled over the choice for

Accidentally setting the church on fire while lighting the candles before altar serving at Sunday mass, feeling fraudulent, that internet porn would somehow infiltrate my computer while I was watching Miley Cyrus music videos on YouTube.

some time. I liked that we were given agency to select our own guardian—the saint whose story best reflected our own circumstances, or revealed how we wanted to sustain a relationship with God. All my classmates selected beautiful saints whose histories were as peaceable as their multi-syllable names. I wanted that, too. But even at thirteen, I recognized a hunger for bravery. Already, my anxiety was strangling, a fact I kept mostly to myself. I'd grown up very familiar with Joan of Arc's story and had a few short biographies of her life on my bookshelf—some meant for children, some slightly more gristly in their detail and intended for young adults. I loved her and felt a strange closeness to her story, despite that my reference points for her life were merely the buzzwords of any martyr's life. The truth about Joan of Arc is that she's been co-opted, in

the way all historic heroes are—she's flexible enough to fit varying narratives or agendas. She can be the sacrificial lamb, the bravest underdog soldier, or the witch taken before her time. But no matter which iteration is offered, it was still clear to me that she was an emblem of impossible courage. She cross-dressed. She led men into battle. She was burned at the stake. The opportunity to die for God was the highest actualization for those seeking the decreation Carson identifies, and even if that brand of zealousness wasn't mine, even if I sometimes fixated on how she might have suffered at the very end of her life—imprisoned, possibly raped, tortured and burned—I longed to have that specific suredness and strength.

***

In the car one afternoon, after a glass of wine at a restaurant, I attempt to explain to my mother that I don't want to get married at the church I was raised in. I'm not engaged, but I am in a serious relationship, and naturally questions of marriage and its associated rituals often arise, especially in conversations with extended family and friends. My relationship with my mother is one I've explored in numerous essays— it's convoluted, long-winded, a story that fails to ring true in its varied iterations. But I think this is how it goes, when writing the tale of one's mother—there is no obvious angle, there isn't even a singular truth, there's just the way that two people feel and the impossibility of communication. But it doesn't matter. I've always loved my mother—I reserve a kind of loyalty to her that I've never offered another person, not even those that know my strangest secrets. So when I tell her in the car—no, I do not want to stand at the altar and make oaths before a God I cannot understand—she is understandably distraught. She says: Well, I have a long way to go if that's the case. Later on, I think

Sex, fights in my high school cafeteria, that I'd fail to adhere to the virginity pledge I'd signed in eighth grade, death.

over this—the semantics of that sentence. A long way to go. To what destination? Toward accepting my spiritual failure? Toward compromise? I don't fault her. I have disappointed her in plenty of circumstances. This isn't the first time and it won't be the last, as the saying goes. But I've reserved a specific kind of courage for this conversation—it's accrued over years and years of small disobediences. As the conversation waxes and wanes, I say to her, or maybe it's more of a plea: Aren't you proud of me? Don't you think you've raised a moral person, regardless of everything else? She tells me yes. Of course, of course, she repeats. When I get home that night, after we hug goodbye and she drops me off at my apartment, I feel I've accomplished a revelation of magnitude. Nothing so important as martyrdom, but something has still been sacrificed. I feel it is one of the first times we have looked at each other, my mother and I—really looked—and accepted the truth.

***

To be frank, the church of my childhood—the place where I learned the function of fear—would be a beautiful place to be married. It's historic, ornate, and rich in tradition. As a young girl, I imagined myself walking down the red-carpeted aisle in a white dress, the center of attention, every pair of eyes on my carefully curated beauty. This might be one theory for why so many women pine for years over their weddings—it's a day when they can welcome being ogled over, stared at, the receiver of a hundred compliments, because it's a socially acceptable

form of objectification. The woman is en route to a respectable life—her role as someone's wife. But surely that's cynical, too, and maybe a reductive take. I've watched a few couples get married there, and every ceremony is beautiful. In fact, weddings are always beautiful, even when they are badly done or too expensive. Even when everyone is drunk and sweaty. Weddings make me cry, even though I know, very obviously, that love is everything but a show of ceremony. And for Catholics, at least, the sacrament of marriage is paramount: vows of love made before the truest declaration of love in Catholicism's history, the crucifix—God sacrificing his son to rid the world of the stain of sin.

***

It's impossible to trace a causal relationship between my Catholic upbringing and my early romantic relationships, despite how many times I've tried. I always come up short in my interrogation, maybe because endorsing any fixed opinion appears to me now as a trap. Religion ruined me, or it saved me. The truth is neither. The truth is both. In any case, these challenges don't stop me from theorizing. I told myself I couldn't be known; I promised myself that the solace of intimacy wasn't worth it. There were caveats, always, and a lover who knew you well enough owned a control I was fearful to surrender. When your earliest representation of divine love is one of brutal sacrifice—someone had to die for your sins, had to pay a price of consequence so that you might live in the world—it's arguable that your understanding of reciprocity and vulnerability might be a little fucked up.

After seeing my cousin for the first time in three years, she asks me what my plan is. I know what she means, subtext included. When will I get married to the man she met yesterday

afternoon? We spent so many hours of our childhoods hypothesizing about our futures, and I miss this closeness. She's married now. I don't know, I tell her. But for now, I'm happy. Everyone has an opinion on the timeline. She understands, but promises me that marriage makes things easier. The truth is, I would love my boyfriend in any moment, across any timeline. And I've worked through my wounds, including every single trapdoor I built into my past relationships that granted escape when things got hard. But you don't get credit for that, not for the healing, not for the self-awareness—you only get points when you defeat your fears at an altar, as a kind of public performance for everyone's pleasure.

***

For my 25th birthday, a close friend brought me a postcard printed with the words: Oh, all right, I say. I'll save myself. The line is from a poem of Anne Sexton's titled, “Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound.” In the poem, the speaker is mulling over heartbreak—how simultaneously immense and banal it can feel. Sexton writes, “Dearest / although everything has happened, / nothing has happened. / The sea is very old. / The sea is the face of Mary, / without miracles or rage / or unusual hope, / grown rough and wrinkled / with incurable age.” The Virgin Mary was once my sole point of connection to my faith. I was fascinated by her grace; she was the only woman so revered in Catholicism. It's not hard to see why—in keeping with patriarchal structures, through which much of Catholicism's central argument depends—Mary did everything right. She bore a son, the savior of the world, without ever losing her virginity. And she, too, had to sacrifice him—watch him die on a cross because that was what God asked of her, and she was nothing if not obedient. But

I didn't care that this narrative was too neat to accommodate reality. I just liked that she was ours—a feminine intercession for every broken soul. I'd grown up with the promise that Mary was the shortcut; if you needed something from Jesus, ask for her help, too. When I move into my apartment, the first one that will be all my own, a statue of the Virgin Mary sits right beside a tall hedge, arms outstretched, courtesy of the landlord downstairs whose family owns the house. A small spotlight in the ground lights up the statue at night, so that in the evenings, when I get home from work, she's the first thing I see. There's something symbolic, I think, about having to walk by her in the darkness to get home.

***

Eventually, I took the Anne Sexton postcard gifted to me by my friend and hung it on the wall in my kitchen. It reminds me that I actually cannot save myself. My fear isn't something I need to destroy, nor can it be rebranded as humility or cautiousness. Maybe, though, it can be resourced. I can use it to see myself, and to notice the infinitude in everything—in the sea, like Sexton writes, and in the decreation of selfhood, like Carson and her three mystic women. I'm no longer so interested in discovering the source of everything—my existence, pain, what it all “means”—an impulse that once guided every action. The root of the word “essay” is “to try”—and central to any essay's success is the effort of its argument. So this is the effort—one that comes up short of a conclusion. Sometimes that's enough, I think. Any attempt requires courage.

This is a digital collage of 2 oil pastel pieces. Note the figure’s hunched and fearful posture. She represents having all eyes on you: being judged, patronized, and treated like a problem, until finally you feel confined. But I don’t want this piece to be perceived as entirely hopeless. Her legs are beginning to spread, and in that she is taking the first step of spreading. In other words, she is taking up space.

Depression Drama Queen

By Jaclyn Griffith

European paintings are on the second floor of the Met, but I don’t care much if I get there. I’m sitting on a bench beneath a glass ceiling, wiping the January sweat and snot from beneath my mask after walking toward Central Park in a harsh wind. I take out my phone and search for the motivation to walk upstairs.

There’s a superpower I crave when I’m in a museum: I wish I could teleport into the scenes I’m looking at in frames, wish I could dive deep into another world. This wish stems not from a desire to escape my own life, but from being so taken by the richness of being alive that I want to experience it all. Moonlight on a cypress tree, a group of children on the beach. If I could, I would pop into ancient Rome and ask the women in white what their lives are really like. How would I feel in another place and time? What would I struggle with? Who would I sleep with? What would I make for dinner tonight? But today on the bench, I feel none of this. The paintings feel painfully two-dimensional, the sculptures too. I’m in the midst of the worst bout of depression I have ever experienced, and getting to the second floor feels monumental. I think of Sisyphus and that boulder, feel the metaphor on my shoulders. When I tell my mother that I’m depressed, she lists the logical reasons why. A global pandemic and my two-year-long struggle to find full-time work are easy to blame. But these are sadnesses I can map and trace: the stress of financial insecurity, the rejections from hundreds and hundreds of jobs. I think of the word proportionate, feel normal for a minute.

But when I hang up the phone and get ready for bed I find myself tossing and turning until two, three, four in the morning. Falling asleep requires vulnerability; the night begs me to let my guard down. I am afraid of my own sadness, afraid of my silent, empty bed, lacking distractions from the physiological symptoms of depression. It isn’t sad and hopeless thoughts that keep me awake, but the feelings of sadness and hopelessness. This distinction is pivotal for me when distinguishing between a bad mood and a depressive episode. Of course thoughts and feelings are connected, but when I am clinically depressed, they feel miles apart from each other. In these moments, moonlight on a cypress tree illuminates what I’ve always suspected: there is something fundamentally wrong with me.

Because my thoughts tell me to wake up at a reasonable hour and go to a museum, but my body takes hours to get out of bed. You love museums, and you can walk to the Met from your apartment on a weekday, and you are wildly lucky to be able to do so, I think, I always think. But my feelings leave me numb at best, futile at worst. What’s the point of walking to the Met just to sit on a bench in the lobby?

We use terms like anxious and depressed liberally—myself included—and I’d be a massive hypocrite if I criticized anyone for speaking with a dramatic flair. To distinguish between manageable reactions to hardship and a mental health disorder, I think it’s important to know what depression looks like when it arrives. And I think it’s more helpful to know your own patterns and behaviors than to read a generic definition saying that depression is two or more weeks of low mood. I remember reading this definition in a Safari tab on my iPod Touch in eighth grade and thinking I couldn’t have it because at some

point in the last two weeks I must have smiled or laughed. I’ve rarely ever been the stigma-ridden zombie that WebMD describes.

Now, in my mid-twenties, my depression often shows up disguised as heartbreak. While I beg for sleep, I feel a guttural

longing for my ex-boyfriend, despite being broken up for nearly a year, and despite my being the one who chose to end our relationship. I count the months since I last touched him, the weeks since we last spoke, as if I’m tallying the beads of a rosary, my thumb dragging along each white ball. Before I acquired this particular ex-boyfriend, I chose wistful crushes indiscriminately, and I convinced myself that my sadness must be coming from my longing for them—even when the crush was someone I only went out with once, even when I exaggerated our connection in my imagination, even when I was 21 and hadn’t seen him since high school. I struggle to distinguish between my genuine feelings of heartbreak and my search for something—or someone—to blame for my otherwise inexplicable sadness. This is not pessimism or negative thinking or an inability to be single; it’s a relentless search for reason. I imagine myself as the stupid character in a horror movie, walking through the dark basement with only a flashlight, searching for something that can only be bad, can only lead to

I’m acutely aware of the sexist stereotypes that I dodge left and right: don’t be a drama queen, don’t be a spoiled little girl. Everyone has bad days. Don’t try to manipulate people into feeling bad for you. Stop seeking so much attention.

existential dread.

When I am depressed, one drink turns into drinking everything I can get my hands on. The initial buzz provides a temporary reprieve from my sadness, and holy fuck do I want more of that. Then I set rules for myself, like I cannot drink alone, or I cannot drink during the week, or I cannot drink at home, or in any other circumstance where I’ll have to limit my own intake because I know that I won’t, maybe I can’t, and I don’t want to have to give it up forever.

In the depths of these depressive episodes, I do not have the energy or optimism to find a new therapist, and I cancel on any therapist I’m currently seeing. Why haven’t you had an appointment with Camille all month? My mom asked me in the summer of 2019. Because I’m depressed, I said back, and she knew what I meant. I spend hours on Google and Reddit reading about antidepressants, wondering if I should be more afraid of brain zaps as a side effect or of big pharma using me as a pawn. I chastise myself for changing my antidepressant prescription from Zoloft to Prozac over something as superficial as 30

pounds of weight gain (plus an uncontrollable appetite and an inability to take a shit).

Two years of under-employment—lacking both health insurance and a stable paycheck—inhibited my ability to find care to help me deal with the stress of the under-unemployment itself. The privatization of healthcare in the US implies that if

The subtext of all of these messages is that I should not trust my own feelings, should not believe that my own lived experience is valid or true.

you are not working, then you do not deserve to be healthy (nevermind happy). It’s a vicious cycle that needs to be addressed structurally. But this January, my mother insists I return to therapy—even offering to pay for it herself because she’s worried about me. I start seeing someone new, ironically named Joy. I begin our fourth session by revealing my fear that I will feel this depressed forever. I have tears in my eyes immediately—a vulnerability it took me eight months to reach with Camille. So what if your depression does last forever? Joy asks me. Puzzled, I reply, I don’t think my life would be worth sticking around for if that’s the case. It’s the first time in my life I’ve admitted this out loud, and a part of me expects men in lab coats to storm the room with butterfly nets. Instead, Joy says, You’re looking for instant gratification from me. You’re not willing to do the work to make yourself feel better. I insist that I am willing to do the work, but I also am seeking hope that the work will pay off, because that’s difficult to believe at the moment, and I could use some encouragement to keep trying. It doesn’t feel like instant gratification to me, I argue, when I have been struggling with this for thirteen years. I never return to Joy’s office.

I try to remind myself of a lesson that Camille taught me: nothing lasts forever, all things must come to an end eventually, both good and bad, and yet my sadness has been following me around since I was thirteen years old, since the day a guidance counselor who mispronounced my name came into my English class and told me to start thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I went home and told my mom that I felt lost and purposeless, and I lay face-down on my twin bed with my headphones in, and I cried and cried and cried, and sometimes it feels like I haven’t stopped crying since

that day, like nothing has changed and I’m irreparably broken and everything bad will last forever.

I recognize my mom’s unconditional presence in these episodes, how she takes on my sadness like only a mother can. On my worst days, my most intimate relationships suffer, because no one has the power to make me feel okay again, and amelioration is all I’m looking for from anyone and anything. I convince myself that no one should ever choose to marry me because my sadness comes and goes violently, it always has, and it seems like it always will. I’ve spent my whole life trying to opt out of this ricocheting—who would opt in?

As a result, I run in social extremes: I hide away from phone calls and visitors half the time, all my sentences feeling too heavy and hard to say, and the other half, I put on a show, faking all the necessary smiles and laughter when I am forced to emerge. Sometimes the faking helps, sometimes it’s salt in the wound, and it’s impossible to predict which it will be. Socializing becomes a gamble each time. Other times, like when I am at my parents’ house on New Year’s Eve, I simply slink away to their gray couch with their yellow Labrador and sleep all afternoon.

When I hide away, I start to judge the people I love and the people I hate—harshly, ruthlessly, silently. I recognize the resentment I feel toward moderately happy people is an ugly trait—normal me, the real me, teleporting-around-a-museum me, she doesn’t endorse the judgment. Then suddenly I’m down on my knees with the ceramic tiles of the Roman Catholic Church I was raised in pulling at my reconciliation tights, and I

It’d be easier to get help if you didn’t have to ask for it.

am begging everyone I know for forgiveness, if only in my own mind: I’m sorry, I’m really, truly sorry, these are my feelings, not my conscious thoughts, I swear I don’t believe the way I feel about you. I ask myself: are you pushing them away or are they avoiding you? If they are, can you blame them? You cannot. You’d do the same if given the chance. Maybe they are feeling the door for warmth with the backs of their hands, afraid of the flames behind it. I think of Pliny and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the disintegration of Pompeii outside his window, how all he did was sit and write.

Despite all of this, I have experienced more imposter syndrome in psychiatrists’ offices than I have in any corporate cubicle or university lecture hall. When I have appointments to ask for an antidepressant, I am terrified that the doctor will think I’m either not depressed enough or that I’m exaggerating my symptoms. I’m acutely aware of the sexist stereotypes that I dodge left and right: don’t be a drama queen, don’t be a spoiled little girl. Show some gratitude and look on the bright side. Don’t be lazy and stop looking for a quick fix. Don’t try to pass off normal PMS symptoms as a serious mental health disorder. All women have mood swings. Everyone has bad days. Don’t try to manipulate people into feeling bad for you. Stop seeking so much attention. You’re not special.

The subtext of all of these messages is that I should not trust my own feelings, should not believe that my own lived experience is valid or true.

I have always described my symptoms with a disclaimer to make others more comfortable, to prevent anyone from thinking I’m just being dramatic, and to give credit to people who have attempted or died by suicide. I will always recognize that I am wildly privileged to walk around the greatest

museums in the world and dream about living in the art on their walls. When I first went on medication, I believed I had dysthymia, or minor depressive disorder. I identified with this diagnosis until an afternoon last fall when my sister sat on my pink couch and gave me the validation I have always sought: Jac, there’s never been anything minor about your sadness. My sister sees a truer version of me than anyone else in the world, so I trust her word more than my own. Because on most days, my depression isn’t an ocean of tears. Sometimes I wish it were—something about that blatant, undeniable vulnerability, that indisputable sign of mental illness, I think, would be validating. It’d be harder to deny if everyone could see it. It’d be easier to get help if you didn’t have to ask for it.

Sometimes, in the midst of a depressive episode or as one starts to fade, I catch a glimpse of hope and it scares the shit out of me. Feeling hope triggers a fear response, as I immediately begin my anticipation of the next downswing in my mood. In these moments, it feels logical and protective to do so, given the cyclical nature of these episodes. Having

depression is traumatic in and of itself. During an upswing, I am still processing the damage that was done when things were bad. I mourn the experiences that were tarnished by this illness, I grieve what my teenage self deserved to enjoy but couldn’t. All reprieves become tentative. When I book a trip or plan my future, I don’t know who I’ll be once I get there. Which of the two versions of me will board the plane? Will she be able

Feeling hope triggers a fear response, as I immediately begin anticipating the next downswing in my mood.

to get off the bench? She comes and goes, she gives and takes. I think of Icarus and the too-close flight, feel the hot, melted wax gluing my shoes to the ground.

There is a quote hanging on my living room wall, a lyric by singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus printed on a canvas: “You don’t have to be sad to make something worth hearing.” This is my reminder that it’s a myth that sadness leads to good art. I couldn’t write this essay until I started to feel better, and it was still one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to write. (And one of only two essays I’ve completed in the last year—my personal worst.) Depression is a high price to pay for being creative, and from a purely logistical standpoint, a bad investment—see aforementioned under-employment and social isolation.

If I had a choice, no, of course I wouldn’t choose to cycle through these episodes. I’d rather be less artistic, less deep, less empathetic, less appreciative of music and lyrics if it meant I would be happier, as the myth says. Appreciating the sweetness of the upswings does not outweigh the pain of the downswings, at least not for me, not right now. But this doesn’t matter, not really, because it’s not an option I did or can choose. I don’t want to be the manic pixie dream girl, the dark girl, the sad girl. I’m not willingly paying this price for attention or sympathy, not making strategic branding choices to seem more intriguing

I don’t want to be the manic pixie dream girl, the dark girl, the sad girl. I’m not willingly paying this price for attention or sympathy, not making strategic branding choices to seem more intriguing or be welcomed by caring souls with open arms.

or be welcomed by caring souls with open arms. And even if I were—it doesn’t work.

Music like Lucy Dacus’ always sounds better when I’m not allowed to listen to it—when I’m editing a boring textbook for freelance money, I try to focus on the page, but every song that comes on shuffle sounds like the greatest, most important song I have ever heard. Verse-chorus-bridge becomes a complex and beautiful kaleidoscope representing the human experience. It becomes an opportunity to teleport into a painting at the Met. The difference between being depressed and not is kind of like this: while depressed, I am skipping every song, bored by them all, numb to them all. When I am not, I feel so much relief that I want to lean into every day of being a human woman. I want to feel everything so deeply, whether good or bad, knowing that nothing lasts forever, not feelings or relationships or even life itself, and God is it beautiful out. I can feel the sun on my skin through the window of the train and I want to pause time in this moment and sing a song of gratitude and think this is it, this is all worth it, oh yes. There you are again, welcome back, old self. I missed you desperately. How long will you be staying with us this time?

Forbidden Midnight Walk

The dark sidewalks consume my sight

The howls of night yelling in my ear

Drowning in the darkness; unreachable light But sadly this is not my fear

Shadows of the night follow eagerly behind My fist aches as it grips my keys

Pace increases as I decline

Standing strong, as if I'm not buckling at the knees

Looking over my head constantly, feeding anxiety Worried about the people following near. Molded by the harsh truths of society

When the sun goes down this is reality.

The light is gone, along with my shield. The safety barrier has disappeared

Vulnerable to the surrounding elements

Thoughts and fears become relentless

“Get back inside”

“Get on the phone”

“You should’ve driven instead”

“You shouldn't have walked alone”

Midnight walks are forbidden, never to occur

Unless gathered with many; walking safely in a herd.

By Jillian Violet

A Study in Begging for Forgiveness

Picture this: a young girl cowed by a striking hand a thin switch torn from a tree tender flesh of inner thigh a line of pink welts. She learns how to cover bruises. She learns how to snap a branch clean.

By Gabby Gilliam

SOPHIE SPIERS

I'm bitter. I've never been bitter before. I'm bitter because someone fucked with me. It wasn't all at once, and it wasn't always obvious. It was gradual and sometimes quiet. It was pervasive. There was a feeling—a feeling of “this isn't right, you don't feel good, you ate something bad.” But there was also excitement, which was like an alka seltzer in my stomach that coddled the bad and made it calm.

Things don't stay good just because they once were. That's what I learned. You can start on a peak and ski down the mountain and hate where you end up. You can look back up at the peak and wonder why you ever left.

Someone fucked with me and I'm bitter.

Someone told me the things I did weren't “normal,” and I— someone who'd never wanted to be “normal”—started to change. “It's not normal that you're anti slut-shaming.” “It's not normal for women to be in charge in the bedroom.” “What you said to that guy wasn't normal.”

And then: “That man said that to you because you asked for it.” “Why are you so slut-positive?” “Don't wink at your male friends.” “Don't have male friends.” “Don't look at men.” “Don't look.” “Just be mine.” “Just be normal.”

And also: “I'm doing this because I love you.” “You make me do this.” “I've changed everything for you.” “I'll wait to have kids. You're worth it.” “We'll be a family.” “I don't want you.” “No, I do.” “You saved me.” “But you're a whore.”

“I know you went downtown to fuck.” No one goes anywhere unless it's to get laid. To betray the one they love. To be a whore. “I know you're lying.”

“You're my world.” “Don't leave me.” “Can I buy you a croissant?”

“Why did you look at him?” “Is it because he's tall? Or Black? I know sluts like tall, Black men.” “You've got plenty of saliva and mucus for giving blow jobs.”

“How dare you say that word in front of a man.” How dare you say anything to men. “How dare you talk.” “Just talk to me.” “Just be normal.”

“I may not be perfect, but you're worse.” “You're no Mother Theresa.” “You never say sorry.” “I say sorry.”

Because I fucked you without permission. Because I slapped you without consent. Because I took a video of you blowing me and then dumped you one hour later.

“Don't tell anyone I'm crazy.” “I'll get help. I want to be better for you.” “I'm not crazy.” You're a whore. “I'm not the problem.” You are. You're a slut.

“It was my mother's fault.” “It was my father's fault.” “It was my teacher's fault.” “It was my brother's fault.” “It was my ex's fault.” “It was their fault.” “It was your fault.” “This is your fault.” “Help me.” “Don't I seem sad?” “I need you.” “Your friends don't need you.” You don't need friends.

“I know you're out cheating.” It's not normal for women to have that many girlfriends. “Don't wear makeup.” You're so pretty without it. “Men will whistle at your ass in those pants.” Because you asked for it. “I didn't give you that UTI.” You got it because you're a whore.

“Smile for daddy.” Atta girl. “Call me daddy.” Atta girl. “Wear these.” Atta girl.

“I don't believe in abortion. I want kids.” “I didn't know you were such a feminist.” “I didn't know you cared.”

“I didn't know you'd been assaulted.” “I didn't know you'd been hurt.” “I didn't know I scared you.”

“I didn't know.” “I didn't know.” “I didn't know.” “I didn't know you.” But I hated you anyway.

Panic By Tori Thomson

Content warning: suicide

On August 20th, 2021, during the last day of a vacation, I had my first panic attack. Having been prone to periods of extreme anxiety my whole life, I thought I'd had panic attacks before. Over the months that followed, I would learn that actually, I'd had no idea what panic really felt like. In case you've never had a panic attack before (and if you haven't then I'm truly happy for you) I will describe it for you.

Imagine you are going about your day as usual. Maybe you're doing the dishes, playing with your dog, driving to work, something normal and mundane that you've done hundreds of times. Suddenly, you begin to feel that something is not right. Your heart rate begins to climb and you feel flushed. Your limbs all start to tingle and shake and you feel your legs might give out from underneath you. As your heart starts hammering even harder and faster in your chest, you realize you can't quite get a full breath in. And is the room spinning? As these sensations all mount to a fever pitch you become convinced doom is just around the corner. This is it; you're going to die.

This is what happened to me in a hotel elevator. I didn't know what was happening. I gave my fiance's phone number to my cousin, who I was traveling with, so she could contact him if the worst happened. Eventually paramedics came, checked me out, and said I was just dehydrated. I went back to our room where I did nothing but drink Gatorade and eat Saltines until it was time to get on my flight home the next day. Over the next month, I would see my primary care doctor, an urgent

care doctor, more paramedics, and an ER doctor (and the inside of an ambulance), and a cardiologist. All of them told me the same thing: there's nothing wrong with your body, it's in your head.

Perhaps unwarranted fear, but fear all the same.

By late September, thanks to therapy, Xanax, and a lot of rest, I was feeling better. My habit of intellectualizing everything actually sort of helped me reason my way through the experience. One of my big victories was getting back to hiking by myself. Just over a month after my first attack, on September 21st, I was in the car driving to a trailhead when I got a call from my dad. My brother had taken his own life.

Late September to early November is a blur. I know that I was in denial of how hard grief had hit me, I know that I went away for a weekend with my fiance, but I don't remember much else. What I do remember is that mid-November, my life came to a screeching halt. All the work I had done on my anxiety and panic seemed to be undone. I was convinced I would die at any moment. I was virtually incapable of leaving the house; everyday activities like laundry left me dizzy and exhausted; I was constantly crying, wholly unsure of why this was happening but certain it would lead to my death. The following are journal excerpts from November to January:

November 20th, 2021

I feel like I don't recognize myself. Who is this fearful person? Scattered, incapable, scared, scared, scared. Everyone keeps

telling me it will get better, it will pass. What if it doesn't? WHAT IF IT DOESN'T?! I'm afraid this is me now. I broke something inside me and now I'm fucked up. Why do I always feel like I can't breathe? Imagining all sorts of scenarios like dying from a gas leak, suffocating on nothing, my throat closing on its own unprompted, just because. Who is this??? This can't be my life. The only time I'm not anxious is when I'm sleeping. What if I don't actually know anything? What if I don't know what's best for me? What if I get addicted to Xanax? What if I fuck up my work? What if I'm too broken for life? What if I can't take it anymore? What if everyone thinks I'm crazy? What if I am crazy? What if everyone gets sick of dealing with me? What if I get sick of dealing with me? What then?? November 24th, 2021

When I wake up in the morning there's a period of time before I'm fully awake, maybe 5 or 10 seconds, where I have yet to remember it all. For those seconds, I'm not the person who thought I was going to die last night. I'm no one. It's perfect. Then as it all starts coming back I feel weight descend onto my body. Another day of this? When this first started I used to wake hoping it'd be a better day than the last. Now I lay in bed as long as I can. I wonder how long I have today before my heart starts to race, before I feel breathless, before the fear sets in and won't let go. Another day of this? What's the point? I guess I want to keep living, but not this version of life. I feel like I'm in a purgatory between two versions of myself but I don't know how to break through. I'm exhausted from fighting my own brain. I want to let the fear swallow me

whole, sacrifice myself to it so maybe it'll leave me alone. Thanksgiving tomorrow, don't know if I can do it.

January 3rd, 2022

Feeling really sad tonight. Two panic attacks today. Feeling like my body is out of control. Still feeling exhausted from dealing with this. Hard to get out of bed in the morning. Will try again tomorrow.

I feel like my perfectionism and love of control are part of who I am, as a person but especially as a woman.

January 22nd, 2022

Feeling very anxious and on high alert tonight. Really want to relax but can't stop being afraid I am losing my mind. Why does having a good day make me think something is wrong?

January 30th, 2022

We went to PPAC with the whole family today. I had a panic attack that delayed us getting out of the house and then traffic and parking was a nightmare because of the snow. I'm embarrassed by how out of sorts I got and mad that I made us get there late. I feel badly about the level of interaction I feel capable of engaging in with people. I've lost some of the ease I used to feel. I'm afraid that everyone will think I'm being standoffish or rude and I'm a disappointment to everyone. My

emotions feel disproportionate to what's happening lately and even though I recognize it, it's hard to rein in. I can't deny that I'm doing better, as everyone is quick to point out to me. Hope I sleep better tonight than last night. Wish the neighbors upstairs would shut the fuck up.

***

Looking back at my own thoughts from these months, I'm struck by how present danger felt to me every single day. If it wasn't a heart attack, it was a gas leak. If it wasn't a gas leak, it was something else. I became terrified that one day I would lose all control of my body and brain and hurt myself, whether I wanted to or not. I was truly living in fear every second of every day for months. Perhaps unwarranted fear, but fear all the same.

What isn't reflected in these journal entries is that throughout this entire experience, I was living my life. Granted, it was a restricted version, but despite the emotional agony I was in every day, I felt the need to keep up with all of my commitments, to keep up relationships, to continue appearing capable and smart, to not let something as silly as my emotions keep me from achieving.

I started my doctoral program the day I found out my brother had died. In retrospect, I can see that deferral was an option, but it didn't feel like one at the time. I did what I have always done during challenging periods of my life and pushed through anyway. I took a few days off of work here and there, but didn't even take a full week off after his death. There always seemed to be something I needed to do. My coworkers would have been supportive if I'd needed more time, whether

to grieve or deal with my anxiety, but I didn't feel entitled to take it. I continued keeping up my apartment to the best of my ability, even when getting out of bed was a monumental effort or bringing the clean laundry upstairs made me feel like my chest would burst. Again, my fiance would have done anything I'd asked, but I often didn't feel entitled to ask. I felt there was no option other than to keep my plates spinning and ask as little of other people as I possibly could. I kept most of my darkest thoughts to myself and tried my best to will them away.

Throughout this experience, many people have given me the advice to “let go.” Let go of perfectionism. Let go of control. That's what caused all this in the first place. Give yourself a break. In the eight months that I've been hearing that advice I still have yet to understand how to put it into practice. I feel like my perfectionism and love of control are part of who I am, as a person but especially as a woman. I feel an obligation to hold it together under all but the most extreme circumstances. To what degree this obligation is real or in my head I can't say. What I can say is that it made my anxiety worse. On top of worrying I would die, I then began worrying about what would happen to people in my life if I died. I wouldn't be there to help them plan my funeral or go through my stuff. I felt an

I felt an obligation to be of use to my loved ones even in death, holding it together from beyond the veil. I imagine myself panicking in the ether, able to see them struggling but unable to help.

obligation to be of use to my loved ones even in death, holding it together from beyond the veil. I imagine myself panicking in the ether, able to see them struggling but unable to help.

I am unsure of how to conclude this, because my battle is still ongoing. The question of how to reconcile my need to be a “good woman” and my need to take care of myself is an open one. I'll leave you with a verse, from the poem “Mayakovsky” by Frank O'Hara, that caught my eye months ago and has stuck with me: That's funny! there's blood on my chest

oh yes, I've been carrying bricks what a funny place to rupture! and now it is raining on the ailanthus as I step out onto the window ledge the tracks below me are smoky and glistening with a passion for running I leap into the leaves, green like the sea.

If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, help is available. You deserve hope. You deserve life.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255 National Alliance on Mental Illness Helpline: 800-950-NAMI Find resources at: nami.org

by Sara Schwartz

Will you stay?

You make me wear my seatbelt

the fear of dying never scared me enough

now the fear of missing you or breaking your heart at the deprivation of me is reason to protect myself at all costs

Every time I left the house my mom would yell out to me “be safe”

And I called back with “always” as one foot was already out the door

For the first time since I lost the person who cherished my welfare most

feel obligated to protect myself

shield danger and harm from my life

only for you but for yours truly

have gifted me the prospect of a future

had only ever dreamed of

The fear in your eyes when you worry about me is a feeling I had long forgotten Like finding a shirt you had torn apart your room for years in search of At some point you gave up, thinking it must be lost forever Then one day you open an old backpack as a wave of relief and excitement overcomes you

The very thing you'd been searching for all this time Along with the fear of ever putting yourself through that stress again

The sheer terror at the thought of losing someone, I always felt for others but it was never matched with the feeling of comfort knowing that maybe I don't have to put myself through the journey that lead me to you ever again.

by Krystal Olsen

DO IT FOR THE KIDS

March

By K. Gri th

Schools are closing for two weeks. I am sick. I am coughing. I just had parent teacher conferences last week. Do I have it? Did I spread it to all of those parents and my students? I am scared and uncertain. Everything feels fake.

May

By now, I have stopped crying and accepted that we will not open schools again this school year. I troubleshoot with parents, coworkers, students. Copy, paste, screenshot, repeat. Scroll up, two ngers, double click here, capital letter for the password, check your email, I sent you the link. One of my students parents is illiterate in both English and her native language. Every morning I make a video tutorial of what the assignments are, how to complete them, where to click, where to place your ngers. She calls me Ms. Gra ti. That is not my name. Another student s parent has never used a laptop before, and I FaceTime her to explain how it works. Another student disappears, never logs on and doesn t answer the phone when I call. Did I post the asynchronous assignment? Did I take attendance? Did I try that new platform? Did I make a Bitmoji classroom? Did I go to that Zoom conference session? Did I plan my own Zoom conference session? How did I contribute to the teaching eld at large today? Did I consider my students varying language needs, learning di erences, social-emotional competencies, tech uency, developmental milestones, screen time management, parents work schedule, and their happiness when I planned that twenty-minute reading lesson? Did I teach them how to read? I am so scared I haven t done enough, taught enough, tried hard enough. Copy, paste, screenshot, repeat. Copy, paste, screenshot, repeat.

June

George Floyd and countless other people around the world are dead. There are res in the streets, store fronts broken into, marches down the streets in my city. There are Facebook debates and Zoom debates as we try to gure out howthefuck we navigate this new world we live in, still tainted by centuries-old problems. If you’re not actively anti-racist, you’re racist. Am I racist? I am scared I m racist, I am scared I haven t donated enough time/money/energy to being actively anti-racist. Then my students faces pop up on my computer screen, bouncing from corner to corner, baby sister crying in the background, sitting in the kitchen/living room/bottom bunk, kittens on their laps, favorite stu ed animals joining our synchronous sessions. I tell them I m scared too. I tell them I m confused too. I tell them sometimes grown ups don t have the answers, but maybe things are scary now so that when they re grown ups things can be peaceful. I hope it helps, but I m scared it doesn t do anything.

August Schools are opening again. The City says we will do this, the Teachers Union says we will not do this, instead we will do that. My administration says we may have to try this other thing. There are masks, there are small groups, there is hybrid learning, there is in-person learning. There is kindergarten. There are parents and families and four- and ve-year-olds looking to me for answers. I do not have answers. Is it time to rip the bandaid o ? Healthcare workers and grocery store workers and cops never got time o . Do we just try it? What is it? We don t know if we re going in. I am scared to go back to work, but I am also scared to go back to teaching as it was just a couple of months ago. I cannot tell what is worse.

October Okay, schools are open. I see small groups of kids, maybe - at a time, - times a week. I work closely with my teacher team and the teachers that see my kids on remote days. We try to plan lessons with authentic-

ity and delity. I m scared to get close enough to the kids to hug them, so I teach them about air hugs. Kids do not hold hands, do not share materials, do not sit near each other, do not talk while they eat lunch. Teachers sit far apart from each other, I wash my hands constantly, I wear two masks. I go to work and I go home. I go to work and I go home. I go to work and I go home.

November

The percent positive rate in New York City reaches % and schools close just before Thanksgiving. Okay, I am Zooming with kindergarteners. We are live at : for a kindergarten teacher meeting, then I see the kids at : for morning meeting, : for phonics, : for reading, : for writing, : for small group help, : for virtual lunch, : for math, : for social studies. I post the daily schedule, the daily assignments, I give feedback, I troubleshoot parents through technology problems, I rewrite and rewrite and rewrite my lessons so that I can teach them remotely. We practice raising our hands, keeping the camera on ourselves. The twins in my class need to join on their own computers but in separate rooms in their house so that their microphones don t squeak. Some of my students join from daycare, with big headphones over their ears and masks on their faces. When they unmute, I hear everything. I mute the kids, I unmute the kids. I mute the kids, I unmute the kids. I mute the kids, I unmute the kids. I am scared this is my life now.

December

The positivity rate rises in New York City. Elementary schools open again. Middle and high schools remain closed. Historically, teaching has been a female-dominated eld. Currently, % of teachers in the US are women; the majority of them are elementary school teachers. The mayor preaches at his nightly news conference about the importance of keeping our youngest students in school. I cannot help but feel like I am being used as a form of childcare. If the mayor actually cared about learning, why wouldn t he prioritize mental health, increase

COVID testing or availability of PPE, o er training on remote kindergarten? No, silly, we do it for the kids.

One of my students has symptoms and their neighbor tests positive. It is days before Christmas. I cry hysterically, call my principal, she tells me to work from home. I do not explain to my students why I am working from home again because I am not allowed. My school is open, but the middle school three blocks away is unsafe. My school is open, but I cannot see my family for the holidays. My school is open, but the hospitals are overwhelmed. My school is open, but do not leave your house unless you need to.

January

I am vaccinated and I feel like shit. I have avoided getting sick for so long, what is happening in my body? Why are my glands not swollen? Why won t medicine help my fever? I only choose to get vaccinated because I am so scared of getting sick. I do not think about my elderly

neighbors, I do not think about the immunocompromised, I do not think of my students. I think of myself. I want to be safe and I want to stop worrying and I want to stop living in fear. It doesn t help. Middle and high schools remain closed.

February

New York City Schools must close for - days whenever there are two unlinked positive cases. By this point, my colleagues and I can count down to periods of closure. We cannot stay open for more than

Elementary schools open again. Middle and high schools remain closed. Currently, % of teachers in the US are women; the majority of them are elementary school teachers.

- days before there are two positive cases and we close fordays. The building is safe today, the building is not safe tomorrow. I have come into contact with a person who has COVID. I have not come into contact with a person who has COVID. I am safe, I am not safe. Middle and high schools remain closed. Sometimes, we close at pm and I have twelve hours to digitize everything. It is not enough time. When do I sleep? How do I sleep? I smile for the kids, I cry to everyone else. We are open, we are closed. We are open, we are closed. We are open, we are closed. When was the last time I saw my family?

May

The city has decided that we can stop hybrid learning and welcome all students back into the building full-time. We will no longer close schools when there are two positive unlinked cases. I now have kindergarteners in my classroom, sitting in rows, desks feet apart from each other. We still do not play together, we still do not share materials, we still do not stand too close to one another. Kids can be seated in desks feet from one another. Teachers must stay feet away from other teachers. Teachers must stay feet away from students. We cannot eat snack in my room because the kids need to be feet apart from each other while they are eating. We eat snacks outside on the playground, separated by six feet. The kids learn to count the foam tiles to separate themselves adequately. I am scared it will rain, I am scared one of my kids will be stung by a bee. I open juice boxes and peel clementines and zip lunch boxes. I go to happy hour, but I feel guilty. Did I get someone sick? How many more days until I m in the clear? How long until I know that I didn t get infected that one time I had a glass (bottle) of wine with the art teacher after work?

September and October

I try to spend the summer not thinking about my job or my students because it has been so long since I've had a break. The city has decided we do not need social distancing anymore, class sizes can return to

normal, kids just need masks and regular testing. I have students. Regular testing means that % of the unvaccinated students who have parent consent can maybe be tested once a week. All teachers need to be vaccinated, which means I am no longer eligible to be tested at work. My kindergarten students maybe attended hybrid pre-k, did not attend daycare, were toddlers in March . They do not remember a world before masks. They also have never had to be solely responsible for their bathroom habits before. Three of my students have never used public restrooms before, and the sound of the ush terri es them. When I teach them to ush the toilet, they sob and hold their tiny hands over their ears until the sound stops. They are too scared to use the bathroom and have accidents. One of my students, her pre-k teacher tells me, refuses to use the bathroom or eat when she is not at home. She is scared of using a toilet that isn't her own. I am in constant contact with her mom, sending updates (She ate a cracker at snack! She went into the stall, she told me she peed!). One day she sobs, she has to go poo and wants to go home. Another one of my students yells my name from the bathroom we share with the classroom next door, Teacherrrrrrrr!!!!!!!! He asks me to wipe his butt, tears in his eyes, he can't do it by himself. I call his mom and stand in the bathroom, trying to calm him down, until she can come pick him up. One of my students goes into the bathroom with polka dotted leggings and leaves with oral print leggings. She tells me she had an accident, but took care of it herself. Her mom tells me they are teaching her to listen to her body and knew this would be an issue for her in kindergarten because she s never been out of her home for more than a couple of hours at a time. On Halloween, one of my students who refuses to use the bathroom at school has a juice box after our Halloween parade. He pees his SpiderMan costume, he tells me through tears that just barely touch his skin before they pool at the top of his mask.

The mayor talks about learning loss, I am scared there is more life loss. That is harder to make up.

December

Cases rise again in New York City. I get my booster shot and feel sick again, angry again, resentful again. This time it s Omicron more contagious but less severe. Don t worry, most people will get it and then it will pass. Don t worry, you ll just have a cold. Don t worry, you re young and healthy. It is impossible to nd at-home tests and the lines for PCR tests wrap around the block. Will this be just like last Christmas? Will I be able to see my family? My sister hoards at-home tests and I take two a day for the two days I see my family. My mom buys a HEPA air lter for our Christmas Eve dinner. I am so scared that I, the teacher with these young kids, these young kids that need me to help them in the bathroom, and need constant reminders to lift their masks over their noses, and need hugs and need love I am scared that I am dirty and germy and tainted and I will be the one who arrives on Christmas Eve with the most unwanted present of all: a deadly virus.

January

Will the new mayor close schools for the week after break so that students and teachers can quarantine and get tested? No, he won t. Half of my students are sick and so are their families. I teach students on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday. I am now responsible for posting asynchronous lessons for all of my students who are sick at home, while also continuing with our curricula in the classroom. The union ghts for us to get compensated for an additional two hours per week to post asynchronous assignments and host Zoom o ce hours for students who may be sick (oh wait, no they don t, yes they do, just wait till you get that email, what email, Zoom, don t Zoom, yes, wait, no). One of my students comes back from lunch sobbing, the tears pouring over her kid-size KN mask which she refuses to take o . She nally verbalizes to me that she is scared because two of her friends were sitting too close together at lunch she doesn t want them to get COVID and miss two weeks of school.

February

My students have nally returned, and with February break on the horizon, the city promises at-home tests for everyone. It s time to do report cards. That s when it s o cially con rmed to me that no, we will not be adjusting academic benchmarks for this school year. No, I cannot give my kids a grade of pass or fail like we did the last two school years. No, it doesn't matter that the academic benchmarks were never developmentally appropriate. No, it doesn't matter that kids have been in and out, absent and present, learning to be students for the rst time. Yes, my students are getting better at using the bathroom. No, I'm afraid there is no section on the report card that re ects this growth.

March

The city will continue to provide teachers with at-home tests weekly, but masks are now optional in schools. I have just caught my breath, and all of a sudden the air seems too heavy, too thick, too scary. But this is a good thing! We should celebrate! Cases are low! People are healthy! I don t recognize some of my students without their masks on. I teach my students to keep their hands out of their mouths, out of their noses, how to sneeze and cough into their elbows. All of my kids are sick again: sneezing, coughing, stomach viruses. I keep my mask on.

March

I am in second grade. My basement smells like cement and fabric softener. I skip over to the far corner of the large un nished space, past my dad s Budweiser poster and towards the tall book shelves that are lit up by the small stream of light that oods through the -inch byinch window, peering out towards the driveway. The tall bookshelves are lled with old workbooks, collected from my and my older sister's schools, free books from the library, story books I have memorized by heart. For Christmas, my Nanny bought me a pink metal desk with a top that lifts up from a yard sale it is priceless. I pull the string that

hangs from the single lightbulb in my classroom, erase my chalkboard, align my lesson plans. Okay, come down now! I yell. The sound of my little sister s feet running down the wooden stairs echoes throughout the space. My school day has started. Good morning, class, I say to only my sister, pretending to greet her and at least a dozen other classmates. This is it, this is the dream. I have a busy day ahead of me; I am a teacher, after all. But here, surrounded by the familiar smell of freshly sharpened pencils, the sound of my mom s footsteps overhead, the cool air of the basement on my skin, I am safe.

overloaded

by claudia sousa

HALF-LIFE

lilacs are spring's last song and I was born unhurried in their temperate air. late May's mercurial tendencies taught me early that some years, I'd count candles before swimming and others with the lake in my hair. how strange to be the last to notice my distance from the mise-en-scène; the steadfast architecture of protection, sacred or cursed with the heft of meaning.

when childhood's porcelain cross shattered on impact, transfigured by hardwood to holy severance, I knew the symbolism couldn't be glossed, or lost in the wails of christening photographs—

I had to laugh, knowing there's no shortage of ache from afar, even having lost my head.

you are the one who does the breaking: halved, strewn open with your seeds all showing, freckles in a dragon fruit's nectar pincushion; a cutaway drawing you jam fingers inside, trying to scoop out healing.

By Megan LaPierre

In The Gap

By Caroline Guerrero

She held on to me tightly, one arm locked rmly around my side, the other hand stroking my hair. Whispering Mommy's not mad, mommy's just scared."

These were the words that sent me into a hysterical sob. I was weeks pregnant when I began reading Chanel Miller's powerful memoir, Know My Name, about her experience and trauma as a sexual assault survivor. At this part in the book, Chanel had just told her parents about what happened to her and her mother's reaction evoked in me a deep terror. Between my choking sobs, I rested the book on my small belly that cradled my baby and I yelled at my husband, I can't have a daughter. I can't protect her from this world.

But I do have a daughter. A wonderful, ery daughter who roars in her lion towel and runs head rst in her rainbow sneakers without watching where she is going. She's months old now. She's a tiny sour patch toddler with her tiny bouts of sweet and sour phases. Her favorite word is no. And I relish in how she says it. Very matter of factly. With the sweetest little voice. Without hesitation. Without

the need to appease anyone. Unyielding. Zara, do you want to take a bath? No. Zara, do you want to watch Encanto? No. Zara, do you need a hug? No. If I could bottle it up, I would. And I'd give it back to her, when the world starts to make her doubt herself, as it has done to many of us, as we grow older.

Maya Angelou said that a mother is really important because in an interesting and maybe an eerie and unworldly way, she stands in the gap. She stands between the unknown and the known. I think that's why I lost it that day, because I knew the world that I was bringing my daughter into and that she will also learn what kind of world this is.

The safest place that Zara has ever known is my body. She knows that her iPad plays Elmo and Bluey. She doesn’t know how this country treats girls, how it treats women. She knows that her Baby Shark bubble maker isn't as good as the camera bubble maker. She doesn’t know that around age her con dence may plummet like it does for so many girls because this world rewards perfectionism and people-pleasing in young girls. She knows her ngers, her eyes, her ears, mouth and nose! She doesn’t know that there is a current assault on her bodily autonomy. She can't even string together a full sentence,

but her reproductive rights are under attack. She knows that her best friends at daycare are Francisco and Penelope. She doesn’t know the harrowing statistics on women and sexual assault. She doesn’t know that one day I will share my survivor story with her. And that I pray every day that she's spared from having a story of her own. The terror is still here. I feel it every day. I'm learning to navigate motherhood in spite of it. And I've learned that fear does not impede me. That the love I have for my sour patch toddler is greater. That I will do whatever it takes to a rm my daughter, to console my daughter, to empower my daughter. I know I cannot protect my daughter from every bad thing in this world. I know what awaits her and that terri es me. But I will be here when she looks back to me for strength. And I will stand in the gap and mirror her intrinsic worth back to her.

Now that Zara is steady on her feet and full of energy, we've started to go to the park on the weekends. I hover, perhaps too closely. Recently, I watched as another toddler, a little older, a lot bigger, ran up to Zara while we were on the playground. I started to walk forward to get into her line of sight and say gentle hands out loud. But before I could do so, Zara threw up her hands, furrowed her brows, and yelled ahh louder and louder. The other

toddler stopped and watched Zara as she kept up her arms and angrily stared at him. He quickly lost interest and ran away. She immediately looked back at me. I told her Good job, Zara. You don't have to play with him if you don't want to. If you do want to play with him, you can. I'm right here. She smiled and slowly ran up to him on her own terms.

Zara, our youngest Witch.

Garlic Bread

By Morgan Grubbs

I'm standing in the corner of a Pizza Hut, holding the garlic bread while my friend Shane pays. It's crowded. I notice a man's eyes on me, and I subconsciously try to make myself as small as possible, to melt into the corner. He walks up to me and stands closer than necessary. A group of teenagers move in front of me, and I can no longer see Shane.

I stare at my dirty white keds, the man is now standing so close our arms are touching. I am holding the greasy pizza box like a shield, practically hiding behind it. He says something to me, but I can't hear him over the sound of my heart beating in my ears.

I'm completely frozen, eyes still fixed on my shoes. I'm staring at a green grass stain from recess with my first-grade students. I remember being annoyed at the time, but in this moment I would give anything to be running in the school garden, safe and warm. Instead I am frozen in this Pizza Hut, with this strange man stroking my arm and whispering to me.

He taps on the pizza box and snaps me out of my reverie. He leans close, I tilt my body away but I am trapped in a corner between him and an ATM. I look around, trying to make eye contact with anyone, but we are in the back of the shop, and it is crowded and I am unable to call my friend's name around the lump in my throat.

His hot breath is in my ear and he whispers, “I can smell your pussy, slut.” A small gasp comes out of me. He presses

against me and breathes in deep. I am staring straight ahead, trembling, unable to move.

A large group of people leave, and we are suddenly visible, exposed. The man chuckles and leaves. I am holding the box so tight my fingertips are white. After some time, Shane appears and says, “Ready to go?” I nod numbly and follow them out of the shop. “That guy in the store told me he could smell my pussy,” some sort of strangled sound comes out of me that I think is supposed to be a laugh.

It takes another 10 minutes for me to really come back into my body. By that time we are at a stoplight, and my hands start to shake. Tears fall hot and fast and I start to hyperventilate. The light turns green, cars honk and swerve around us. I finally make it to a quiet road of row houses and pull over. I tell Shane the whole story and they are furious. I cry for a long time. “Why didn't I do anything? I just stood there.” And finally, “I was so scared.”

It has been almost 4 years since that night. I've journaled about it, processed it… I’ve even joked about it in my writing. It's now a story I tell my friends when we get together to drink wine and talk about the fear that comes with being a woman. But I've never been back to that Pizza Hut. I drive by it occasionally and still feel the white hot shame of my inaction, the cold dread that paralyzed me that night. Sometimes garlic bread still tastes like fear.

The sixth issue of Witches Mag is dedicated to the next generation of fearless girls.

witchesmag@gmail.com

To subscribe and learn more about Witches Mag, visit www.witchesmag.com.

reflects this growth. It's now a story I tell my friends when we get together to drink wine and talk about the fear that comes with being a woman. I’m no one. It’s perfect. I feel like my perfectionism and love of control are part of who I am, as a person but especially as a woman. I felt an obligation to be of use to my loved ones even in death. You’re the one who must always carry the burden of shame. But I also know being alone doesn't mean I will be lonely. Lonely was what I felt when I was married pretending to be in love, knowing I couldn't muster that emotion anymore. It was fun not being able to think too hard about any of it. Maybe all the one-night stands are trying to make their way back as sleep demons to get back at me for ghosting them. You’re too scared to do anything because you might get followed. A large part of your brain just goes towards how to not die the longer you're on your own. The scary parts don't last too long, but they get tiresome. Amateur party chemists, tampered drinks. I memorize the bars to avoid. And hallucinate the faces of monsters who harmed my friends. Curate pocket knives, pepper spray, self defense courses. I buy time. Women are no longer indentured servants to their husband's bread winning. We bake our own artisan loaves. The question of how to reconcile my need to be a “good woman” and my need to take care of myself is an open one. Reject subtlety. Take up space. Be a menace. Be a miracle. I am rooting for you to do the same. I feel like I am part of the furniture, a set piece designed to fill a vague role: girlfriend, lover, woman. A way of confronting my minimization in the minds of men. Girl uses control to stamp out fear, girl fails. The truth is neither. The truth is both. You only get points when you defeat your fears at an altar, as a kind of public performance for everyone’s pleasure. Thanksgiving tomorrow, don’t know if I can do it. Not only for you but for yours truly. It kept the peace. Now I am the peace. Muscles that’ve been trained to run. Things feel better now, at least. She has made the same choice over and over again: to be adamantly not afraid.

@witches_mag

sending gratitude &

by founder of Witches Mag

by claudia sousa