I Am Tired of Every Hobby Needing to Become Content
I am tired of every hobby needing to become content. Somewhere along the way, it stopped being enough to enjoy making something. If you write, you…
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Category: The Deep Stuff
Personal essays about identity, grief, relationships, failure, growth, fear, resilience, getting older, and the parts of life that are harder to turn into a joke.
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What Chronic Illness Does to Your Sense of Time
Chronic illness and sense of time are deeply connected in ways that are hard to explain until your life starts getting measured in appointments, symptoms, test…
Eight Years of “It’s Anxiety” Changes the Way You Trust Doctors
Medical trauma from being dismissed by doctors does not always come from one terrible hospital visit. Sometimes it builds slowly, appointment after appointment, every time you…
I Was 14 When the World Changed on September 11, 2001
My September 11 remembrance begins in a place I would rather not remember at all. I was 14 years old and living in a group home…
Labor Day Weekend Was Supposed to Be a Break. My Body Had Other Plans.
Labor Day weekend with chronic illness did not feel much like a three-day break this year. I went into Saturday already feeling bad, with my left…
I Miss Hobbies I Technically Still Have
There is a strange kind of frustration in missing hobbies you still love. Nothing dramatic happened to them. You did not wake up one morning and…
My Oldest Child Is 18, and I Am Not Emotionally Prepared
My Oldest Child Is 18, and I am not emotionally prepared for that sentence. I knew this birthday was coming, obviously. Birthdays tend to follow a…
I Still Call Myself a Gamer Even When I Barely Have Time to Play
Gaming as an adult looks very different from the version of gaming I remember having time for. I still call myself a gamer, although that occasionally…
I Would Practice Self-Care, but Everyone Keeps Asking Me Where Things Are
There is a version of realistic self-care that exists almost entirely on the internet. In that version, you light a candle, take a long bath, put…
Nobody Warns You That Your 30s Might Require a Complete Character Respec
When I pictured my thirties, I thought this was supposed to be the part where everything finally settled down. Apparently, reinventing yourself in your 30s was…