It came out of nowhere and with someone I never expected. So many things were wrong: our lifestyles, our beliefs, our habits were all discordant. In fact, I strongly disliked him at the beginning. The first time we met I couldn’t remember what his face looked like. I felt he was a remote mountain whose peak was shrouded by rumbling clouds. He was obstinate and strong-willed and bristling with self-defenses, while I was an open book filled with optimism that I have come to suspect is just stubbornness in a prettier dress. 

I wrote this piece 7 years ago. I often cringe reading back my old work but this one is an exception. Looking back at your old self is always uncomfortable but I think this is when I began using words in an interesting way.

A friend reached out to me recently and asked me to teach him how to write. How flattering! He said he often felt like he would try to write down how he feels but that he never seemed to be able to convey the feelings correctly. He confessed that oftentimes when he would read back what he wrote he would find himself editing down the more vulnerable things he wrote so much that there was no substance left after. I laughed and told him that this didn’t surprise me since I often felt talking to him was like walking in a maze. Or like trying to track someone’s footsteps on a snowy night. 

My therapist asked me why I decided to come to her. I told her that I have become jaded. I am a naturally hopeful person but I fear I’m losing that. I assume the worst in men, but in order to do that I must deny them their complexity - in other words, their humanity. And denying another person’s humanity also in some way must degrade my own.

There once was a Mother bird.

A very, very good Mother bird.

Every day and every season, 

with every new Baby bird,

the Mother bird looked at them with pride 

and knew that she was a good Mother bird.

I was sitting in a coffee shop looking out at a snowy Prospect Park. I had just bought a newspaper for the first time. There is no blasé way to read a newspaper, it turns out. They’re noisy and unwieldy and take up an unbelievable amount of space. I felt self-conscious. I wondered if everyone at the cafe was rolling their eyes at the performative girl reading a newspaper.