Dostoevsky is one of my favorite authors, which feels almost ridiculous to say because reading him is rarely an enjoyable experience in the normal sense of the word. I do not finish one of his books feeling refreshed or particularly optimistic about humanity. Usually I feel like somebody reached into my head, pulled out a thought I had never properly admitted to myself, and then made some miserable Russian man say it two hundred years before I was born. I think that is why I

I met the Rose family when I was around seventeen or eighteen years old. I had just started working as a hostess at a restaurant, and most of my job was exactly what you would expect: greeting people, welcoming them in, learning names, remembering faces, making small talk while people waited for their tables. But when you work in a restaurant long enough, especially when you see the same people over and over again, some of those little conversations stop feeling like customer

“It’s genetic” sounds like an answer. For most of my life, I think I heard it that way too. If something was genetic, you were born with it. It was written somewhere inside your DNA before you had any say in the matter, and there wasn't much you could do about it. Genetics felt almost like biological fortune telling. Here are the instructions you were given. Good luck. I still catch myself thinking that way all the time. Something about my body looks like someone in my family

I think empathy can be a curse. I know that sounds dramatic because empathy is supposed to be one of those qualities we can never have enough of. We are always telling people to be more understanding, more compassionate, to put themselves in somebody else's shoes before judging them. And obviously, I understand why. The world could use a lot more people who actually give a shit about each other. But I also think you can understand people too much. I've been thinking about thi

I think the part of The Bell Jar that stayed with me the most was the fig tree, which is probably not very original considering it's one of the most talked-about parts of the book, but whatever. I get why people don't shut up about it. Esther imagines all these different versions of her future hanging in front of her like figs. One has a husband and children, another has her becoming a poet, another has a successful career, another has travel and experiences and a completely

The universe had to make carbon before anything like me could exist, and for some reason that has been stuck in my head all day. I obviously knew carbon was important for life. Carbon is in DNA, proteins, fats, sugars, basically all the important stuff that makes living things living things. But I never really stopped to think about where the carbon itself came from. I think I just treated the elements like they had always been here, like the periodic table was somehow part o

I keep thinking about how Frankenstein’s creature and Barbie are kind of the same person, which sounds ridiculous until you think about it for more than five minutes. One is an eight-foot-tall creature assembled from pieces of dead bodies by a young scientist who becomes immediately horrified by what he has done. The other is a blonde plastic woman with permanently arched feet, a microscopic waist, and a Dreamhouse. Frankenstein is dark and miserable and full of death; Barbie

Mushrooms are more closely related to us than they are to plants. Us, as in animals. As in me. I don't know why this information got to me the way it did, but I immediately started looking at mushrooms differently. I think my brain has always categorized them as honorary plants. Obviously I knew fungi were their own thing, but come on. They grow out of the ground, they live next to trees, they don't move, and they are literally sitting beside the spinach at the grocery store.

I keep thinking about how insanely hard it must be to parent a child who has already been through some shit before they even got to you. And I don’t mean “hard” in the basic parenting-is-hard way. I mean having a child in front of you who is angry, shutting down, lying, screaming, throwing things, refusing affection, saying horrible things, or acting in a way that seems completely irrational, and you somehow have to remember that you are still the adult in the room. You do no

I knew the basic story of The Picture of Dorian Gray before I ever actually read it. Dorian is beautiful, someone paints his portrait, he somehow gets to stay young while the portrait gets older and uglier, and obviously this arrangement does not end particularly well for anyone involved. I went into it thinking the creepy part would be the painting. A secret portrait upstairs slowly turning into some horrifying version of you sounds like the obvious nightmare here. But after

There was a version of myself I created specifically to be easy to love. I called her the chill girlfriend, although I don't think I ever consciously gave her that name while I was being her. She wasn't insecure. She wasn't jealous. She definitely wasn't going to be the crazy girlfriend asking who some girl was or why her boyfriend was talking to her. She trusted her boyfriend because why would you date someone you don't trust? At least, that was the logic. If he wanted to ma

I don't spend much time looking in the mirror trying to figure out which parts of my face belong to which parent. I've been told I look like my dad, but I've also been told I look like my mom. At some point, that became confusing enough that I stopped trying to see it myself. Maybe I have his eyes or her smile. Maybe there are pieces of people I never met hiding somewhere in my face. Genetics makes that possible, which is strange to think about. I am made from biological info

dear stranger, I read somewhere that the transition from one season to another can be hard for those processing loss. We split at the end of winter, and when spring and summer came, they felt like a breath of fresh air. The sun warmed my skin, kissing my mornings, and the heat felt bearable, almost cleansing. For me, it was the opposite of what I read. I thrived in the summer, far from the chill of winter. I never liked the cold, and I reveled in its absence. But now November

I read somewhere that the transition from one season to another can be hard for people processing loss. We split at the end of winter, and when spring and summer came, they felt like a breath of fresh air. The sun warmed my skin, kissing my mornings, and the heat felt bearable, almost cleansing. For me, it was the opposite of what I read. I thrived in the summer, far from the chill of winter. I never liked the cold, and I reveled in its absence. But now it’s the end of Novemb

There is a moment in Dracula where Lucy Westenra asks why a girl can't marry three men. I underlined it because, first of all, girl. She has just received three marriage proposals in one day, which is a ridiculous enough situation on its own, and she is genuinely upset that accepting one means hurting the other two. Then she writes to Mina, “Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as want her, and save all this trouble?” It is funny. It is also one of those line

There have been times when I have typed someone's username into a search bar while actively thinking, I'm going to regret this. Not after I found their page. Not after I saw something I didn't want to see. Before. Sometimes I hadn't even finished typing the username yet and I could already feel the anxiety building in my chest. I knew there was probably nothing productive waiting for me. I knew I wasn't going to reach out. I didn't want them to know I was looking. Half the ti

My earliest memory is the letter A. I was in kindergarten learning how to write it, and the page had a picture of an ant. I don't remember what the classroom looked like. I don't remember who was sitting next to me, what I was wearing, what happened before the worksheet was handed to me, or what happened when I finished it. I just remember the A and the ant. At least, I think I do. That's the strange thing about trying to locate the beginning of your own memory. There is no c

1. Always Be Nice; Always Be Selfish Finding the balance between kindness and self-preservation is something I’ve struggled with. I’ve always wanted to be a person whose good intentions are never questioned, someone people see as compassionate, trustworthy, and sincere. But I’ve learned that being kind doesn’t mean letting people walk all over me. Sometimes, I have to be selfish. Not in a cruel or thoughtless way, but in a way that protects my peace. For a long time, I wanted

“Heartbreak is our greatest teacher, and if so, thank you for making me wise.” — Joe Goldberg I’ve always been so surprised by the choices people make when they’re heartbroken, especially because sometimes those choices don’t even seem true to who they are. And I don’t mean the version of themselves they show everybody else, because we all perform a little bit for the people around us. I mean who they know themselves to be when nobody else is there. I think heartbreak can mak

I have always thought zombies were one of the more believable monsters. Not believable in the sense that I think a dead person is going to crawl out of a grave and start eating people. I know enough biology to understand that death presents a few logistical problems there. Once circulation stops, oxygen stops reaching tissues, cells start dying, decomposition eventually begins, and we have officially passed the point where a person is going to get up and start sprinting after