I hope you spend the remaining days of right now not just focused on the tangible things you accomplished (although those are cool too!) and give yourself the space to realize you made it through another pandemic year.

Figuring out how to move forward when pieces of you feel stuck in what was and what could have been.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this year, these past year(s) while sitting at the same desk, looking at the same view.

My littler corner of the universe.

The same place I’ve been sitting for almost two years watching the world move while I remain unmoved.

But that isn’t totally true.

The loss of them and the loss of self. Asking for time to speed up but also begging it to stay still.

We brought them home. Even though you know home is more than a physical place.

And you still have conversations together. Replaying that last one as a stamp between what was and what is.

We walked away from things that no longer served us. We took a chance by hoping for the best.

We were disappointed and let down. We saw people reveal themselves over and over again.

We weren’t completely surprised. And yet it continued to take the wind from our sails.

We feel cautious for what’s next, but maybe-just maybe- there’s some optimism in that future plan ahead.

Maybe your view from the corner will change a bit soon, a microscopic pivot, a different perspective.

I hope you see what I see.

And I hope you take a moment to celebrate you as this chapter comes to a close.

Here’s to the next view you find

Your little corner of possibilities.

Tsunami waves become stronger after the first initial wave hits. The first wave is typically not the most impactful.

Emily and I were middle school acquaintances who became high school besties. We both fit the profile of not popular but not considered nerd level. Average height, medium-length brown hair and glasses that we quickly switched out for contacts so we didn’t have the dreaded metal on metal effect: braces plus glasses.

Emily was smart beyond her years. You can credit the fact her biological parents were a chemical engineer and a Mayo Clinic, MIT-educated medical doctor. But she never gave off a know-it-all vibe, she would just hint at larger measures of insight. A way to show she knew more but with no ego attached.

Our routine Friday night in high school consisted of a sleepover, almost always at my house.

Her house, an old Victorian model that dated back to the 18th century, sat in the middle of the woods within Louisville, Kentucky. It was a house that held hidden doors, servant stairs, and stories of mysterious liquids running down mirrors. To this day we wish we had taken a sample to figure out exactly what the liquid was at the time of discovery. I assumed ghost juice, she assumed faulty piping.

Tsunamis continue to affect people long after the waters have receded.

The house would experience lights flickering on and off throughout the day. A hairbrush once soared through the living room. Her sister even heard a little kid crying while in the kitchen, turning around to realize she was all alone. The ghosts that perhaps lived in those walls did little to rattle the tension between her mother and stepfather.

For Emily, my house served as an escape from that world. That house in the shadows that held bigger conversations our 16-year-old minds couldn’t fully comprehend. My house, a bit of peace and quiet which kept doors unlocked and conversations flowing. Our open floor plan gave way to high ceilings and warm lights. The family conversations held at the dinner table filled with laughter and positive intent. My parents, always ready for a hug and kept their mess, at least to me, behind closed doors.

A house unlike her home deep in the woods. The slammed doors, the obsessive spending, the pile of excessive things that cluttered each room. The notes her siblings would slide under mom’s door when she was sick and couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. “Hope you feel better soon, Mom,” scribbled in crayon and taped to a locked door.

Tsunami waves can be as huge as 100 feet.

In my house, we turned to TV and late-night Oxygen shows to pass the time together. “Bliss” and “Talk Sex with Sue Johanson” were two of our routine favorites. Who knew you could learn so much from an older woman with a treasure pleasure chest? We snacked on treats and ate onion dip until our stomachs were sick. My mom checked in here and there to see if we needed anything before bed. We were quick to change the channel whenever we viewed late night content, a muscle memory of keeping my finger hovered over the remote just in case.

One night, my parents home from dinner out, brought us a coveted chocolate cake back for a treat. This giant slice of chocolate delicacy, perfectly separated with thin chocolate icing and crumbled chocolate bits to finish. We carried the delicate piece of art upstairs to my room, situating the two of us between the Styrofoam prize. Forks in hand we began to cut through the sponge of chocolate scent. We settled to watch a recent documentary on the 2004 tsunami that had destroyed Sri Lanka.

We can only remember pieces of the documentary. The devastation after the wave came, the impact of what was left. The missing. All the missing family members that would never be found again. I remember the taste of cake on our lips, the sensation of tasting something so delicious while watching disaster in front of us.

We both remember one moment in detail from that documentary. The story of the couple in a boat, somewhere out in the middle of the ocean. Unknowingly the earthquake would trigger right underneath them. A small pulse would ripple under their boat. They felt it and saw it before it took off. That earthquake, that ripple, would change the rotation of the earth and history.

It takes about 15 to 20 minutes after the earthquake for the wave to come next.

Emily and I sat with our bellies full and our forks empty. Mind fucked by the education that was shared with us. Did they just say the tsunami caused time to change? Yes Yes. The tsunami caused the earth rotation to change and changed time. We folded the empty Styrofoam box, with forks hanging out of our mouths, carted ourselves downstairs to clean up during a commercial break.

Recently on a phone call connected between twenty plus years of friendships, marriage, and moves across the country, we somehow got on the topic of the ‘tsunami documentary night.’

“Why was that documentary so enthralling?” I asked Emily, our friendship enduring the common path frantic texts, birthday phone calls and a few long-distance moves. Emily would add an MD to her name and would quietly say goodbye to her mother a year before her marriage.

“I really don’t know,” she offered. “Something about it stuck though. Considering we still talk about it all these years later.”

Regions in tsunami danger zones often have warning systems in place to give people as much time to evacuate as possible.

My dad was in the kitchen getting water from the tap, we filled his ears with our most recent learnings: earthquake, tsunami, time change, rotation. We spit out the words in a chocolate high as he nodded kindly to our excitement. He asked deeper questions about our scientific discovery, what did we mean exactly by time change? How did rotation cause the time to change? We both stood there deflated. Well, we aren’t sure how the trigger was caused but it made sense when they explained it on TV. He chuckled and told us to have a good night as he turned back to the hallway.

We shrugged and ran back upstairs to finish our education lesson on tsunamis and time. We sat on my bedroom floor, the crisp carpet under our legs as we discussed how time shifted, or did they say time stopped? And this change happened because of one major moment. Imagine one moment changing the way the rest of the world would continue forward. One effect to set off a series of other after-effects. A catalyst to a larger boom. We wondered how that couple felt, now looking back, as they realized history was happening directly underneath them. How often do we witness something so catastrophic from the safety of our personal lifeboat?

It only takes 15 to 20 minutes for the wave to strike after the first quake.

The documentary wrapped. No surprise ending and no resolution to what had happened. We carried on with our nightly routine of brushing teeth, washing faces, and climbed into my queen-sized bed. Both of us traded our contacts for our glasses.

We switched from documentary to a friendly face, Sue, and stared in awe as she counseled a woman via hotline on how to navigate loneliness while a boyfriend served out his sentence in jail. The pleasure chest re-emerged from under her desk and a showcase of battery-operated devices were advertised as a friendly solution to not cheat.

Emily and I laughed in unison as we discussed how it would feel if our grandma was Sue. Sue was probably 70 and we didn’t know her background or history in the sexual education field at the time (turns out she was a major queen in sexual reproductive rights), we only saw her as the old lady who gave sex advice late at night. Can you imagine if this was your grandma at Thanksgiving dinner? How wild holidays would be.

We lay in bed until sleep fell on us and I turned off the TV for good. Our stomachs full of sweetness and our minds churning with new education. A few miles east sat Emily’s house, tucked back in the woods, only the moon to light up the wrap-around porch.

The trees stretch their branches across the roof and tap softly on a bedroom window. Somewhere in the house a small rumbling was likely happening.

Perhaps a slammed door or the opening of a bottle. A tiny rumble that would constantly build upon the last one, and with not enough time to prepare, a crash.

A Tsunami Documentary and Louisville’s Finest Chocolate Cake was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m not upset that only one friend called me after my grandmother’s death in March.

The swiftness of her death surprised us all. She was fine. She was healthy and then suddenly she wasn’t. This was before the world had shut down. Before hospitals were telling family members, they couldn’t say goodbye in person to their loved ones. The clock was ticking on closures and in less than 12 hours I had booked, boarded, and taken a flight to North Carolina to see her one last time.

She was placed in a medically-induced coma before she departed from us. We had a window of time to gather family members. For each of us to squeeze her hand and tell her it’s okay to let go now.

We played her Frank Sinatra and rubbed lip balm on her chapped lips. We lathered her arms and skin with moisturizer and squeezed her hand, hoping maybe she would squeeze it back one more time.

We played the ocean in her ears so that she could hear the waves and hoped the memory of her favorite beach trips would hum her some kind of lullaby as she left us. The beach trips she had taken with my grandfather every summer for twenty years.

“Does she have any unfinished business?” someone had asked us as we waited for the final breath.

Her family gathered and rotated turns in the hospital room. We traced the lines on her arms and fingertips. The way her skin folded, the sunspots that creased her arms. A body that told stories of everything she had been. A mother, a wife, a sister, a grandmother.

It’s been five months since my grandmother passed and I’ve been having dreams about her house in Connecticut. The way the screen door would pause and shutter softly before closing behind you, the giant tree that sat just outside the kitchen window to the left. The short white and red curtains that bordered the sink and her refrigerator composed of magnets from all the countries, islands, and cities she had visited.

It’s been five months and most days feel like five years have passed or five seconds depending on the day. I still find myself catching my breath, short and stuttering when I remember how quickly her last week went. How 94 years could be reduced to just 48 hours, how 48 hours became those last two hours. Those last few minutes.

How we rubbed her hands and felt the warmth leave her fingertips, making sure the fluff of the pillows were comfortable under her small legs. We pulled the covers a little tighter to her chest and listened to her breathing become more strained until her sharp inhales and exhales were reduced to one final sigh.

Only one friend called me the day after she passed.

I get why most people resort to texts or comment on your farewell goodbye social note instead of an actual phone call. They are afraid they will hear the break in your voice, the feared silence on the other line, as you try your best to not breakdown. They’re afraid they won’t find the right words and prefer a text line of condolences to sit between you two. She can respond when she’s ready. I don’t want to bother her right now.

We shuffle our lives around grief for the fear of imposing. As though we bring the reminder of grief with us in our reach out. One more condolence would surely be the tipping point for them. I better not.

I get it. Death is weird. Grief is an endless loop of emotions you aren’t sure when it will hit you next. I don’t blame them for not knowing what to say and not wanting to hear me cry on the other side. We don’t want to remind people of the pain they are in, as though we ourselves need a reminder of our grief.

Those last two days felt fast and slow at the same time. I saved messages I had written to one friend to use as the same copy for another friend. I didn’t know what updates to share. Was I even talking to them at that point or just to myself?

They don’t expect her to make it through the weekend.

She opened her eyes for a minute when I got here, and I think she saw me at least.

She’s getting colder. Doctors said that once her feet get cold it’s getting closer.

Death starts from the feet and works its way up.

I saw my dad crying and it broke my heart. His eyes are so puffy right now.

A time capsule marked by outgoing text messages to anyone who checked in on me.

“I wish I could hug you.” The friend who called me said that morning after it was all over. This was when the world shut down. When shelter in place was mandated across the country. She had left just in time. One more day and we wouldn’t have been able to see her.

If anyone would have called that day or week after her death, I would have told you this:

My gammy worked in the same town she grew up in Connecticut and had worked for a publishing company that produced song lyrics. She would type out lyrics to the latest songs, so teenagers had the words available in their hands to sing along to as they played the latest song on the radio.

I would tell you how she met Dolly Parton, Neil Diamond and many other famous musicians and how she would speak of them fondly twenty, thirty years after.

I would tell you that when my grandfather died suddenly in his 50s, she spent the next 30+ years of her life traveling the country. She flew in a helicopter over New Zeland’s countryside and rode a camel in Greece.

I would tell you how she and her best friend spent their lives traveling the world together and she saw every inch of this world while she was still able to, while her body was still able.

I would tell you how we chatted almost every week, typically Sunday nights, and her mind was still so sharp in her 90s. She remembered plans when even I had forgotten about them.

I would tell you how she asked me how Ezra was doing every time we spoke.

I would tell you how our last conversation, over the phone, while she was in her hospital bed, the last conversation she would have before she fell asleep forever, was about how she didn’t want us to be sad and that she had a wonderful life.

I would tell you that I still can’t bring myself to delete her number from my cell phone. How I have a heart emoji next to her name in my contact list.

I would tell you there are two voicemails I have saved when she called me on my birthday, and I can still hear her voice and the way she would say hello picking up the other end.

And I would tell you that we ended our last conversation, the same way we ended every conversation we had for the last thirty years: “I love you.” “I love you more.”

I thought after five months my grief wouldn’t still feel so foreign, but it hits part of my body that I forget can buckle at a memory. I tell my husband about the latest dream I’ve had about her, and while no one really wants to hear about your dreams, he asks me what I think each version means.

The feeling of being in her kitchen, the smell of dial soap in her bathroom. The sound of the AC window unit kicking on as my sister and I slept perpendicular to each other on the two couches in the living room. The clock in her bedroom that ticked and ticked, a hum you could hear in the living room.

I don’t necessarily want the dreams to stop. I wake up always trying to retrace what the moments were unconscious, just in case she’s visiting me somehow and I spent the next day trying to remember subtle cues.

Did she look happy? Did she seem at ease? Maybe she’s back in her old kitchen, running her hands under the faucet and staring out the window at the tree that was planted by her father all those years ago.

Let Me Tell You the Best Parts About Grief was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2010 I joined millions of other bright-eyed and naive college graduates ready to trade in their cap and gown to join the version of “workforce” we had heard about for the past four years. We shook off our routine semester schedules, parted ways with our housemates while deciding who would keep the squeaky futon and other collected furniture pieces.

While we lived in our bubble of ignorance those glorious four years, a recession was happening outside our padded walls. As an English major, I thought finding a job would be simple and didn’t take into consideration the shake of my dad’s head when I proudly solidified my major at 18. “You sure about that one?” he asked gently. “Don’t worry, I’ll minor in political science,” I retorted.

Many could argue no one should be asked what they want to do for the rest of their lives at an age where hormones are running rampant and the biggest obstacle each week was what you were going to do that weekend. This was a time of flip phones and digital cameras that we hoped would make it through a Saturday night. A moment in time of slide-out keyboards, no memes to convey our emotions in a photo and Facebook was the first social media platform and was limited to those with an edu email address.

My political dreams fell flat when I realized I would cry more in a courtroom than be a progressive lawyer and me plus standardized testing resulted in an anxiety attack. This tossed the law school hope into the wasteland of “if you can dream it, you can do it” dumpster fire. That sing-songy tagline really needs a disclaimer if we want to pitch it to kids.

After no luck with paid jobs, I took an unpaid internship with a non-profit theatre company that was and is still one of the best experiences I ever had as a young adult. I was responsible for a budget, responsible for writing fresh copy, people depended on me and I had somewhere to be at 9 am each day. I didn’t get paid, and I was grateful to have a working job.

At 23, I didn’t know this was a stepping stone. I knew it was something good but only with time could I know how humbled I would become. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pay our interns, we totally should, but for some of us, that was never even an option.

I was lucky enough to join a team that invested in their interns and 10 months later had a polished resume that didn’t rely on just my GPA to get me through the next interview. Post-college is a shock and nothing will prepare you for the disappointment no matter where you land. Unless you somehow have it all figured out and are thriving, which in that case, no one wants to hear about it.

The last ten years have been a rollercoaster of figuring out a career. I somehow got away with incorporating writing and research into my role (see Dad?) but only after a stint in retail management post-internship when job openings were low and no one wanted to hire a 23-year-old English major. I kept pushing my GPA to the top of my resume and cramming in as many adjectives as possible. Only recently did I remove the GPA from my resume after my husband commented, “You still put that on your resume, how old are you?”

We’re in a recession again and I hear a lot of lamenting around me. People upset over pay cuts, employees feeling like they are being taken for granted. I have those moments too. I read that COVID-19 is the snowglobe of 2020. We’re all in this bubble being tossed around, unsure where we will land and have no control of where we are going. For some of us, this might be a wake-up call that we want something else. For others, we are grateful to still be part of that wobbly globe.

I feel for new graduates entering the workforce this year. But I also hope they learn to see the lesson, even if it takes them 10+ years. At the risk of sounding like a parent, when I was their age I didn’t expect to get catered meals at my corporate job. I didn’t even expect fresh coffee.

Many non-tech 30 something-year-olds can remember the pit in their stomach as they scrambled to make fresh coffee before hopping into their car only to realize halfway through their commute the fresh coffee, sitting in its thermos, was left behind on the counter. You had to gamble with time if you could turn the car around and still make it to work on time.

We didn’t have companies dangling bonuses and other amenities in front of us. You were grateful if your chair reclined back and was slightly comfortable. As an individual who became aware of the niceties of tech life in their early 30s, I get the appeal. And I have empathy for those younger professionals who feel like their lives are unhinged. This isn’t your first recession and you’ll get through it, maybe not where you thought you would land but you’ll be okay. You’ll have that metaphor called a ‘chip on a shoulder’ perhaps, but you’ll be more seasoned because of it. And when the better times do come back around, and they will, you’ll remember what grateful feels like.

This is my second recession and I’m a lot more grateful than I was at 23 or even 28. I don’t have to like all the changes, but I can still try to see the lesson in the snowglobe. Hang on, kids, there’s beauty in the landing.

‘When I Was Your Age’ and Other Nostalgic Statements Aging Me was originally published in Age of Awareness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My grandmother died around 7 pm on Saturday, March 21st, exactly 13 days after celebrating her 94th birthday.

Her last few days felt unfairly fast and chaotic compared to the long life she led. She was admitted into the hospital early Wednesday morning, after a night of unbearable back pain. A few hours later doctors held up x-rays under fluorescent lighting, in a small cramped room, explaining to my parents how there was cancer “just about everywhere.”

Six months was the initial sentence. My mom explained to me taking shallow breaths and in between cries. I can make it to Charlotte and see her a few times, I thought. Concerns around COVID-19 were just starting to bubble up, no mandatory shelter in place notifications. I can get there when all of this clears up, I told myself.

Six months is a long time when you process each day as a 24-hour cycle.

I called my grandma’s hospital bedside, she was finally a bit more comfortable with a dosage of drugs pumping through her system. “We can manage her pain,” the palliative team informed, “We can make her comfortable.”

My grandma’s voice was firm but tired, and after breaking down hearing the sound of her voice, she reminded me she didn’t want any tears. She was going to take it one day at a time she assured us.

We ended our call the same way we ended every call between us for the last 30 plus years.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you more,” she replied.

It would take 12 hours for the worse of it to come. The pain so unbearable that she kept repeating to my sister, as she sat bedside, “I just can’t do this.” Once the medication was increased, a stronger amount of morphine that I can only assume is just below the legal dosage of an overdose, she finally settled into a deep sleep.

Less than 12 hours between my sister’s call, “We don’t think she’ll wake up,” and boarding an eerily empty flight from Austin to Charlotte, I found myself next to her, watching her body take in and out calculated breaths.

Our family huddles around her, tucking a sheet under her frail limbs. For a moment her eyes fluttered and she saw us, all of us, her crew of four, smiling between tears and assuring her we were here. She pawed for a moment at her oxygen tubes, a foreign instrument in her nose, and grabbed my hand. A squeeze that was warm and soft, before her eyelids became heavy and she retreated back into the dark.

“I feel like she’s stuck in two places,” I lamented to my dad the next morning rubbing my Grandma's fingers between mine, as he flipped through a brochure on end of life care in the hospital room.

“That’s because she is, my dear.” he said softly.

Hospitals around us began to tighten restrictions, initially no visitors allowed even for those at final stages of life. We were offered no more than two people in her hospital room during visitation hours. An increase in participants thanks to a nurse who advocated for our family.

“You enter this world with two people to greet you, you should be able to exit the world with two people at your side,” she had told us.

Headlines now remind me how lucky we were that she went when she did. An unusual way to look at death, my grandma was able to exit this world after those she loved had arrived to see her off one last time. I read stories of families saying goodbye through phone calls, and video chats, or asking a nurse to put the phone by their loved one's side so they can hear a final breath.

How grateful to look at saying goodbye as an option we had, a positive perk, before others did not.

My grandmother passed with the sound of the ocean playing in her ear. She passed after my sister and I had spent two hours playing Frank Sinatra (her favorite), rubbing her hands and face with lotion, and leaving her with the rhythm of waves crashing on a sound machine nearby as we exited the room.

Before we left, I squeezed her hand and told her she could leave if she was ready. We were all good here. She could let go and know we would be okay.

A few hours later she left this side of the universe. Before cities and states mandated shelter in place, before hospitals reached capacity numbers forcing makeshift hospital beds in abandoned places, before bedsides and waiting rooms were left vacant from families who could no longer hold space for their final goodbyes.

Grief is love with nowhere to go. My sister hummed this phrase in my ear as we sat side by side in her condo, cradled in each others arms, shortly after a phone call that confirmed her departure.

I don’t know what my grief would look like if we had not been immediately rushed into quarantine shortly after her death. I imagine the distractions would be more robust and when a friend texts you, ‘I wish I could hug you in person,’ you knew you actually could.

I do know the sudden loss of air, the sharp pain in the pit of the stomach, the wave of sadness that hits from seemingly nowhere, would still be playing through its performance.

My grandmother’s final moments marked the end of what normalcy looked like in our hospital windows. A kiss on the forehead, the gentle squeeze of a hand, and the permission to let go of this world. An outside world that would look completely different after she heard one last wave crash, guiding her to final sleep.

It took me five years to accept that I needed medication to help balance my mental health condition.

I did all the right first steps. Scheduled an appointment with a psychiatrist, got an evaluation, took his advice on possibly needing medication and therapy. I accepted the therapy only option and went on my way.

Therapy helped but it wasn’t enough. I stuck to the routine and did my best to follow my therapist’s instructions. I thought, If only I change the way my mind works, then I’ll be okay. I was convinced I could cure my anxiety.

What no one tells you is that your anxiety isn’t curable, you simply have to make room for it.

Over a year ago I woke up one day to feel the weight of my body ringing in my ears. I felt stuck. Literally and physically. This feeling hung around for weeks and only spiraled. My thoughts scared me to the point where I didn’t want to be alone. This is no way to live and if it is, I don’t want to be here was a constant mantra I recited.

I told my therapist what was happening and immediately went for a psych evaluation.

“Maybe it’s time to look into medication to help,” he said matter of factly. I sank into his couch, unmotivated to learn what these next steps would look like. How many different medications would it take? What if none of them work? What will side effects be like? Will I lose my creativity?

I had a laundry list of questions I was ready to throw in the middle of the room. A flag to halt the discussion.

But I didn’t have the energy to say no or ask for more time to help see, maybe, what could happen if I went a little bit longer. I knew I didn’t have more time. My brain was asking for help. More help than I could give it on my own.

It took a few months to find a medication that worked.

There were conversations on getting the dosage right, and working through the side effects. This new occurrence of waking up at the same time every night, apparently when the medication would peak, and adjusting my schedule accordingly.

A few months after starting the medication, a combination that worked, my body felt lighter. Situations that would normally cause me to spiral or react emotionally, didn’t. I wasn’t devoid of my emotions, I simply was in control of them.

Then came the good-natured questions from my partner and friends, “Does this mean you have to be on medication for the rest of your life?” “Do you want to be on medication forever?”

Forever is a long time. Forever on medication sounds unhealthy and costly to any outsider looking in.

My initial reaction was to say no, to assure everyone I would find a way to slowly get off medication so I didn’t have to rely on it. To be dependent on a drug feels unnatural. No one wants to be dependent on that, right?

The more I eased into my medication, the more I realized how much better I felt each day, I started to change my narrative. If you do a quick search online for reassurance of others who are committed to staying on their medications for the foreseeable future, you’ll find victory stories of people ‘finally getting off their meds’ or ‘in control of their anxiety and depression without medication.’ All labeled success stories. All consumed by others as the way to live a healthy life.

I can’t speak to those personal stories because I don’t know what their journey looked like before or after medication.

Here’s what I do know.

I know who I was before I started taking an anti-depressant and anxiety medication as needed.

I know what it’s like to be sitting in a car, paralyzed by a panic attack while trying to pull off the road. The way my vision came in and out of focus as I tried to navigate to safety while processing my fleeting breaths.

I know the familiar tightness in my throat, the way my heart would contract as my mind would rattle off all the worst case scenarios of what might have happened, only five minutes past the time when my partner was supposed to be home.

I know the way my body would hurt in ways that weren’t tied to any alignment. The kind of pain that layered on and sank into my bones. The way my mind would feel stuck in tar, and how the thought of taking a shower and putting clothes on would expel all the energy out of me.

I remember this life and the feeling of losing sight of the runway ahead. There was no more space left to keep going.

I know I can still hold space for friends or family who comment on how the world is overmedicated and that they would never want to rely on a medication for the rest of their life. Or how introducing medication into your body, is introducing a daily toxin.

I’ve heard a lot of opinions, all coming from a place of concern, but not from a place of mindful fact or a validated personal journey. It’s easy to be critical of something from afar. To question why someone would want to make the choice of medication in terms of forever.

Is my mental health condition forever? I’m not sure. But I am sure that my brain wiring is faulty at best. I’m sure of the monthly therapy sessions to help navigate my compulsive thoughts and behaviors. And I’m sure of this medication that helps to balance the tide between each current.

My forever is a question mark, much like everyone else’s, and I’m finally okay with knowing that medication is part of that journey for as long as I can see the road ahead.

Please Stop Asking Me When I’ll ‘Get off’ My Mental Health Medication was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I wonder if high school me would have been able to calculate the future. Would she have known that all those nights staying up past her curfew were a long journey into the woman she would inevitably become?

Would she still shake at her head at any imperfection, at every curve and bloat that refused to press down neatly? Tucked down, sucked in, and thin. The way she talked to herself. How devasting and overwhelming it felt at 16.

How that version of me. That timid, rounded cheek, awkwardly postured girl would find her fitting at 19 and then again at 22.

She would know nothing but know everything. How she was just waiting at the edge, to fully sink into her skin. That envelope of insecurity slowly scrubbed away with the rise of two semesters of confidence and a few wandering eyes.

How the opposite sex can completely validate and destroy you all in a glance.

If only she knew the eye of the beholder wasn’t what she needed to feel seen. To be really, truly seen. No, that would that another 5–6 years and as the smell of mid-twenties finally faded, a shiner more rounded version of her would unfold.

Even 31 can sometimes feel like 21. When your insecurities get the best of you.

Not unlike Venus rising from her shell, reborn into some eternal light only she would recognize as confidence, this adult would know more than she ever knew confined. She would slowly unwind and realize everything she learned would become unlearned.

Remember how his brother said commented you weren’t ‘good enough’ for him? Remember how that internally destroyed you at 17. And yet you stayed in it because he was cute and kind of nice, and made you feel seen in those crowded high school halls.

That comment feels like 100 years ago in this new light.

Sometimes I wish I had been kinder to myself those years. The pale skin I barely slathered with sunscreen. How I wish she saw that skin for what it could be in the years to come. The hair that was pressed and ironed for weeks to look exactly like everyone else. How those waves were their own reality, a distinct separation from the common norm.

She isn’t good enough for you, she’s below our standards. Those standards created by an insecure, uncomfortable 17-year-old boy who didn’t like the idea of his brother being in a relationship.

It will never be about you. It will always be about them and their shell of insecurity. Wish them well in their self-discovery and let them go.

She was just waiting to skin in, I remind myself. Her time was yet to be.

I read something recently that sounded so normal but was rooted in a sense of feeling abnormal for so long.

A woman referred to her partner as someone who treated her like a fully functional human. A fully functional person amidst her anxiety and all the piles of flaws she had trapped herself under.

For the first time in her adult life, she didn’t have to defend her sensitivity or the way she reacted. In short, he treated her like a person.

How simple but so loaded at the same time. The idea of someone treating us exactly as we are. To let us be without adding a definition or reasoning behind it. That’s the opposite of gaslighting someone, right?

My husband often stands on the other side of each emotional breakdown or mental unraveling. He doesn’t lament about the mess. Or complain that this would be a whole lot easier if I just didn’t let that wheel of intrusive thoughts get in the way of my thinking. Those are the conversations I think he’s having sometimes when I dislike myself the most.

Anyone will anxiety will tell you how ridiculously silly it is and how it doesn’t make any logical sense but the twisted part is that anxiety feels like logic. And we know you know we know this. But it’s like that switch in your garage that is permanently taped over, forced to the on position. Flicking upwards indefinitely. Don’t touch written in marker for reminder.

He can read it in my eyes, the way my face scrunches like when you’re trying so hard not to cry it feels like you’re holding your breath underwater and counting how long it will last. And you would happily refuse to exhale so long as no one saw you unfold. He’s able to touch, even when he knows the warning signs. It’s peeling the tape back when you were told to just leave it be.

You can only hold your breath for two minutes underwater. That’s the amount of time your body gives you to find air. Just two minutes before your body gives up. Two minutes of a panic attack often feels like two hours. And two minutes of sadness can feel neverending.

Your partner knows even after the panic subsides, even after you’ve gotten over the bad patch, you’ll still feel the effects of it. The way your lungs would gasp for air once you made it to the top.

It’s life, our life, and this is what happens when the wires become short-circuited. He’s not complaining why the plugs don’t fit into the walls properly or shake the chords so they reboot back to a normal existence. He knows they were always a little faulty and their outages can be unpredictable.

After 12 years of not knowing how to explain it and recognizing that explanations weren’t mandatory, he accepts those emotional waves just as kindly as the shore accepts its tides.

How every panic attack, every emotional outburst feels like my jaw will slowly become unhinged and could it be humanly possible to cry for so long that your face would slowly contort that way forever? I often wonder if I should be blaming my emotions, and not my age, for the fine lines around my jaw.

Yes, to be treated exactly like a human. To have someone just let you exist and hold out a hand when you’re a little too close to the edge. Kindness could never be overrated in moments like this one. Because sometimes when you’re so far under all you want to be reminded is how totally human you are.

Thanks for Loving Me Those Two Minutes I’m Underwater was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Almost 20% of individuals with social media accounts, can’t go longer than three hours without checking their feed.

And social media anxiety disorder has become a condition similarly related to social anxiety disorder. The disruption of access to everyone, at any given moment, has created its own anxious monster. And it’s not just the desire to keep up with friends and post our own highlights, it has become the obsessive nature to constantly check in on what others are doing…and ultimately what we’re not doing.

I love celebrating the people I love. I love knowing when good things are happening to them. But somewhere between all the announcements, all the perfectly timed celebrations, I find myself caught off guard. Maybe it’s envy, or better yet curiosity. It’s probably a sideways dance of both. How some people can paint such a beautiful life, and all flaws go unnoticed?

How many of us have muted a close friend simply because they shared every aspect of their life? I have, and still do, and always will if I need to…and ultimately will feel bad about it.

My therapist calls it self-care. But I can’t help but feel like I’m silently dismissing our friendship.

Protecting my sanity and wanting to protect my friendships feel like two conflicting actions. Somewhere I hear the overused excuse of it’s really not you, it’s me. But it is me. All me. This anxiety-ridden, insecure version of myself that finds her stride only when she feels insecure or a lesser version of herself.

My anxiety is its own entity. It has its own rulebook. Social media is its playground. On a great day, I can control the exposure, on a bad day, my anxiety is pulling me deeper. Further out from shore and never knowing when my head will be completely underwater.

When did the door into a friend’s world become too close? When did we feel the need to put up a guardrail for protection? We start mentally stacking up against each other, even our closest friends, to see how the other can better curate their online identity.

Or maybe that’s just me. Tugged and pushed and prodded by that insecure tick that pushes inside.

According to Healthline, These constant “upward social comparisons” can occur multiple times a day, especially if you are part of the group that can’t go longer than three hours before signing in again.

The desire to appear you have it all. Honestly, who would want their story to say otherwise?

Therapist Adina Mahalli of Enlightened Reality, phrases these posts as a performance we tune into. “There has become an incessant need, or requirement, to present your “perfect self” on social stories to the point where it almost feels like an act.”

A relationship falling apart behind closed doors can easily be patched up with a beaming photo of the same couple on vacation oceanside. Smiles on.

A struggling financial debt can be swept cleanly under the rug with a distraction of a night out, all signs indicating nothing but disposable income.

Does it make us less of a friend to hit that mute button on those we love? If we are tired of the show and already know the sub-story. Does it make us less than to set up social media boundaries with those we love but whose online lives overwhelm us?

“The closer the friend, the higher the chance I mute them,” shares Anissa, a 25-year-old law student and NBA cheerleader from Houston, Texas.“The purpose I do this is absolutely for my mental health. I am all for sharing aspects about our life on Instagram stories however not every detail needs to be posted, and some people overshare.”

Anissa prefers to engage with her friend’s profiles or stories on her own time and doesn’t believe in being overly involved in each other’s businesses.

We’ve also overextended our safety.

Outside of trusted pin drops between close friends, we can now simultaneously post a live highlight of our night out and tag our exact location. Time-stamped for the public and your followers to see your whereabouts.

My friend and blogger Abbi explained that she is careful about what she shares when she is hiking alone, or even alone in public. “I make sure not to share my location or any photos/videos with obvious location cues until I’m back home at the end of the day.” You never can be sure who is actively tuning in to your updates and could position themselves directly in your path.

For single women, the idea of dating can mean a stranger shows up out of nowhere.

“I’m hyper-sensitive to doing ‘a little later grams,’ with my location after I’ve left a spot,” explains Holly a 41-year-old single entrepreneur. Since Holly owns her own business and social branding is part of her business, she understands the balance of mindful safety. She heavily markets herself on social for brand awareness and shares, as part of her business, what she is doing and where. But posts content after the moment, to keep her safety on high alert.

“I’m solicited with very uncomfortable messages from very creepy men on IG quite often. [And] I do have single friends who have experienced similar messages, some near harassment, for that reason I do take extreme measures to protect my whereabouts on IG.”

Being a married woman, and haven’t actively dated for over 10 years, I fail to realize how much we share casually without knowing who might be on the other side of the screen, possibly tracking along. Instagram has made revisions to safeguard stories by isolating your follower list to only “close friends” who you can hand-select as sole viewers of your story.

Private wall settings can only create so much protection when it comes to your online life.

I contributed a personal essay via HuffPost in 2017, after the story was published, and bots took over the sourcing of catchy clickbait taglines, my mother who had no idea the article published, was flashed a story headline of my article, and my photo in her online feed.

Alongside the headline were cherry-picked photos from what I believed was a mostly private Facebook account. Somehow, even with my photo protections confined to friends only viewing, the bot army was able to pull the most random photos of my husband and me. Photos I forgot existed and were hidden deep within my social media persona.

Eerie.

A difficult conversation to navigate with your mother, who was casually online and saw a top of page screenshot of her daughter’s face with the headline, “doesn’t want kids.”

I knew I was putting myself and an essay I was deeply proud of outside my comfort zone to exist for others to feel less alone in their experiences. What I didn’t count on would be the social doors that would be knocked down in the process. A system of pulling together images of me, an idea of who I was, all for catchy click through rates.

But I knew what exposure I was signing off on the minute I submitted that story. That story would no longer be mine. Much like the small stories we paint for others to view, this personal story was no longer one-sided. I was giving permission for anyone to walk in.

I guess our perfectly curated lives are never really ours to begin with.

Your social identity becomes its own creative license. We should have known this when we were given the option to enhance our looks through the choice of a dozen filters.

The real you. The sometimes blotchy and puffy-faced version of yourself isn’t a version camera-ready or good enough even for your own personal profile.

I find it odd and somewhat terrifying when parents post hundreds of photos of their newborns and toddlers. A phenomenon that didn’t exist until the last decade. And a narrative that’s only starting to raise eyebrows as to what the long term effects will be for such digital records of kids.

Remember when our personal baby photos were kept in between plastic dividers, saved in drawers stretched out between our parents and grandparent’s homes? Now, we keep a digital record collection of our kids in the social media vortex. Where anyone can get a look. Don’t be fooled by those privacy filters, there is only so much online that is actually yours once it's released.

As a bot proved, some of my oldest photos resurfaced once an article of mine was shared on a national platform. Should I be surprised the privacy wall was never actually built for user intent?

When these kids grow up, will they do a google search to find years of infancy collected and stored within the walls of Google’s search engine?

We’ve made our lives so accessible and while we consciously know what we are silently signing off after each post to story, we keep the performance rolling.

I do it too.

I like the shiny highlights that make my skin look flawless and prove I have an existence that for at least 24 hours, is exciting and possibly envious. A collection of curated snapshots that showcase small moments full of life, friends, and versions of ourselves we are so wanting others to know about.

We can’t seem to turn off the noise between being truly present and the desire for others to want more. I sit somewhere in the middle. Closer to the edge of the water, where I decide how deep to immerse myself this time.

Balancing an act between muting and unmuting people when I find myself overwhelmed, or find myself diving headfirst into the social pool of attention. Rushing to the surface so I can capture all the looks and screen time. The eyes I so desperately want myself to be seen for. That fleeting rush of what my social identity proves, or disproves. For a blind audience to applaud silently in my mind.

Because really it’s not about you, it’s more so about me.

It’s my own twisted mental roller coaster that consciously turns off app notifications, chooses what stories I want to see, and delicately dances around when to enter each platform. The same rollercoaster that tunes back in, uploads, swipes a filter on, and adds to story.

And this mental breaststroke doesn’t lap around once, it goes around in circles, sometimes taking me deep under the surface without enough energy to push myself upwards.

Demystifying the Curated Life We Create on Social Media was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I wonder what it was like for our parents growing up in a world not driven by technology.

How every interaction must have felt meaningful yet overwhelming. And ultimately so untimely.

There was no guarantee of a second chat, or the safety net of a missed text to follow up after the first encounter.

It was only a phone number to be shared. Those precious numbers to link it all back.

A few scribbles on a piece of paper. No digital record. Just some handwriting and a loose piece of emotional currency, that could easily be swept into the wind. How fragile it must have all felt.

A link between two people searching for payphones and landlines to connect the uncertain dots of what’s next. Did they patiently wait in lines within the halls dormitories, or wander down a busy city street in search of that holy portal? That drive home must have been passionate, fueled by the thrill of getting to their phone, so they could pick it up and make the call.

I wonder what it was like not having to see into everyone’s life.

How easy it was to lose touch with those you drifted apart from. What was it like to not login into a device and see a rolling collection of everything they had and a reminder of what once was?

How did they measure the past? Did they create stories of exes who no longer lived in the same city? A phone line no longer connected between two closed doors. How easy it must have been to let go of the past. Assume they were lost to the void with no ability to find out, even in that moment of wanting back.

Our parents must have invested so much energy in showing up on time. Plotting to make sure they knew where they were going. That first, third and thirtieth date all planned so far in advance. Everything mattered in those moments.

There were no last-minute updates. No room for error.

There were no middle conversations to get through the days between. No quick notes to ask how it was going, or if they wanted to hang out the last minute. There were no heartfelt paragraphs, confessing and professing what vows a shot or two of tequila had told them to share during the midnight hours.

No, the confessions, the heartful energy of wanting more had to be timed. It had to be present, or it would be lost until the next encounter. The beauty of the planning made it all so thrilling. So much more at stake should something not go accordingly.

I wonder what it was like to never wonder what could have been as you aimlessly scroll through a timeline of memories. A living score of your past, open for the world to swallow whole.

Imagine standing in line at a phone booth, swirling quarters in the palm of your hand as you patiently wait. Your heart thumping in anticipatory excitement. Rehearsing and rewriting the narrative in your mind a million times over. The click of the phone back on its dock, as the stranger in front of you hangs up.

Your turn to open the door. To listen to your own breath in the muffled silence of the receiver. Waiting for the dial tone to ring you back into the present and finally confirm what’s next.

I Wonder What Love Looked Like Before this Digital Landscape was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.