There would be times when people wouldn’t know what to make of me, and because of that, I wouldn’t know what to make of me either.

In the middle of my living room, Cindy Crawford taught me how to do a perfect lunge. “The key is to never let your knee go past your ankle,” she advised. Her confident super-model narration and 90s new wave background music guided me throughout The Next Challenge Workout on VHS every day after school. As an eight-year-old, I marveled at the contours chiseled along Cindy’s perfectly sculpted legs, which seemed long enough to constitute their own separate being. I focused on them as they moved faster during scissor lunges. While my girlish body wobbled and my breath quickened, her legs looked back at me and said, “Keep going, little girl! One day, you too will have legs like us!”

I had idolized Cindy Crawford ever since her 1992 Pepsi campaign. As a toddler, I was ready with one hand on my hip and my other hand holding an imaginary soda bottle whenever her commercial came on. I’d take a sip, tilt my head back, and let out a thirst-quenching ahh sound, perfectly timed with Cindy’s. She was my first impression of beauty that didn’t include blonde hair and blue eyes. Even as a young Filipina-American, I appreciated this. Her dark features may have been on white skin, but at least they mirrored something closer to my own. From that point on, I learned to admire her. I saw her and her signature beauty mark on magazine covers, movie screens, and even MTV. Sure, there were plenty of 90s Glamazons to choose from. But, thanks to her line of at-home workout videos, Cindy was the only one I saw every day. Watching her in my living room made her beauty not only inspirational but somehow attainable.

Every now and then, Cindy’s personal trainer Radu stepped into the frame to adjust her form. (Wow! Even supermodels needed a little help.) Radu Teodorescu was a no-nonsense Romanian man, who undoubtedly knew his stuff. He called out Cindy when her high knees were drooping and even corrected her lunge in order to optimize her stretch. But, he also wore white socks way above his ankle and proudly sported a receding hairline. I had no clue how this stocky forty-something-year-old man became a fashion model’s right hand in fitness, but I went with it. If the 90s (and its countless Adam Sandler movies) taught me anything, it was that average-looking men always ended up with gorgeous women.

While Cindy had Radu, I had my mother. As someone who completed the workout tape several times over, Mom not only did a perfect lunge but she also did it with ankle weights and ten-pound dumbbells in each hand. She taught me to workout with her until it became our everyday after-school routine. She’d eagerly put her hands around my waist to adjust my stance, pushing me further and further and further down so that I too could maximize the full stretch of the lunge. “Yan! Good job,” she’d say. She was proud to watch her young, cardio-blasting daughter get stronger. When she noticed my scrawny legs becoming flexible and lean, she’d exclaim with genuine praise, “’Galing! You got those legs from me.”

The amount of workout tapes covering our television stand seemed to triple ever since Mom left Dad a few years prior. I had to sort through The Firm: Total Body, 6-Minute Abs, Pilates Basics, Pilates 20-Minute Workout, Pilates Body Sculpting, and Billy Blanks Taebo before finally finding the latest Days of Our Lives episode that she had taped for me. Although I was dying to know if Bo and Hope’s love would survive the wrath of Stefano DiMero, I didn’t mind the clutter. Those workouts made Mom feel confident, which was a feeling she never had when she was married. As a young woman from the Philippines, she never went to the gym or worked out at home. Pinoy culture considered those activities as a guy thing. The divorce — and the workout tapes that came with it — changed all of that. Now, as both a thirty-something divorcée and an emergency-room nurse, she felt herself rising to a certain level of badassery. For the first time, she wasn’t just in charge of her body, she was in charge of her life. And, when she found empowerment through exercise, she immediately took her only child along for the ride. Junk food was eliminated from my school lunch, Santa Claus received a can of Slim Fast every Christmas Eve, and our pantry was stocked with brown rice. A healthy alternative that most Asians — who solemnly swear by specific brands of white rice and scrutinize every grain for density, moisture, and taste — consider as nothing but a cruel joke.

Mom hit eject on Cindy’s workout tape soon after we completed the lunges. She said the warm-up and leg series were good enough — just the right amount of cardio an eight-year-old. Arms, abs, and back exercises were for grown-ups like her. She fixed us a light merienda of pandesal with cream cheese, and we ate the post-workout snack from the breakfast counter where we could still see the living room TV. Mom watched the news, but every so often, I caught her attention with something I did wrong.

“Why are you sitting like that?” she asked with mild disgust.

I didn’t notice my seated position until she said something. I checked myself and found my leg propped up with my foot on the bar stool. Still under five-feet tall, I had short legs that inched to touch the ground and dangled off the chair whenever I sat. They weren’t long and lean like Cindy’s (and as an Asian girl whose height wouldn’t grow past five-foot-four, they never would be). Propping up my legs felt so comfortable and natural that I didn’t even notice I was doing it. I looked back at my mom and replied with a shrug, “I dunno. Why?”

“It’s so unbecoming of a lady,” she said. That phrase was used more and more as I grew up, with glaring side-eye no doubt. While Mom became more invested in exercise regimens and self-confidence, she also became more critical of body language and ladylike behavior — both hers and mine. As a divorcée, she thought of criticism as her way of preparing me for life’s unexpected circumstances and never-ending challenges. Although I knew her words were nothing more than passing comments, I couldn’t help feeling hyper-aware of my shortcomings whenever I heard them. I was saddened to think that I fell short of being a lady. After all, ladies didn’t help themselves to too much cream cheese, they didn’t pick their lip when they were anxious, they didn’t burp, they didn’t curse, they didn’t have body odor, and they certainly didn’t sit with their foot on the stool. Even if I didn’t do these things intentionally. Even if they happened without me noticing. Even if I couldn’t help it. I learned at an early age that none of that mattered. If you were a lady, what was polished would always be valued more than what was natural. And yet, I was determined to be a lady. Some perfect combination of beauty, strength, poise, and all of the things Mom wanted me to have. So, I returned to the proper position and shifted my attention to the TV while eating my lightly cream cheese’d toast.

Inside Edition was on and they were covering star athletes for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. I didn’t pay much attention to the skiers, hockey players, and bobsledding teams, but the figure skating segment caught my eye. What I saw on my screen was a living and breathing anomaly. An Asian woman named Michelle Kwan who was favored to win the gold. As if the fact that she was an eighteen-year-old wasn’t already cool enough, the reporter said she was Chinese but born and raised in the States. My mom told me tales of another Asian-American named Kristi Yamaguchi who had won first place, but those stories from six years ago felt more like folklore. I could see Michelle Kwan — she was right there on my TV screen! Like Cindy Crawford on VHS, this celebrity felt real and familiar. I looked at her and envisioned a woman who looked something like me.

When they played the footage of Michelle at the U.S. Championships in Philadelphia, I stopped chewing my bread. Her performance deserved complete silence. I knew nothing about Rachmaninoff, but I heard the sound of cascading piano keys followed by crashing percussions. The song felt beautiful and crazy all at once, but throughout it, Michelle managed to strike the perfect balance between elegance and power. Mom and I watched as she lifted and lifted and lifted one leg while the other continued to glide throughout the rink. As a native Filipina, my mother was always amazed by what white people could do on a floor made of ice. So, when she saw Michelle’s mid-air vertical split, she exclaimed, “Oh my God! And she’s Asian?” Her performance was rumored to bring one of the judges to tears, and I understood why. I was witnessing a woman of color defy the odds while making all of it look so easy.

Leading up to the 1998 Winter Olympics, Michelle Kwan became the subject of magazines I flipped through and even homework I turned in. My fourth-grade class had a “Current Events” assignment due each week, so all of the kids could learn to appreciate the news. While my classmates wondered what their next weekly topic would be, I immediately got my glue stick and People Magazine cutouts ready. I stuck an image of Michelle Kwan onto a sheet of loose-leaf paper with an oddly detailed write-up of her ice-skating achievements. I had never done that for Cindy Crawford. It wasn’t that I stopped working out with her or even idolizing her, but Michelle spoke to me in a way Cindy couldn’t. I had never witnessed America embrace an Asian woman to this degree. They didn’t love her any less for having jet-black hair, a flattened nose, or a height of five-foot-two. She didn’t even need the long, lean legs of a supermodel. She was able to utilize both her natural features and polished techniques into the perfect combination of grace and power. She became my new architype for what it meant to be a lady. Because, when I saw this country accept her, I was hopeful it could accept me too.

When Mom and I gathered around our television, we watched the same Winter Olympic program everyone else did. We watched Michelle Kwan perfectly execute her routine, and we watched Tara Lipinski perfectly execute an even better routine. The February 20th performance became one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history, and yes, it broke my heart as a young Asian girl. Even before the judges announced their scores, I had already visualized Michelle Kwan standing on the highest podium with the gold medal draped over her chest for all to see. This short Asian-American woman with dark features would be named the best in the world, and an audience of white spectators would get up from their seats to cheer for her. I wanted that for Michelle, and selfishly, I wanted it for myself too. I wanted her win to validate my worth.

Then, in the midst of my disappointment, my broken adolescent heart was immediately repaired by the second-place winner herself. After Michelle bowed her head to receive the silver medal, she wore a wide smile as she lifted her face to the crowd. She stood proudly on the second-place podium where she waved to the crowd and to viewers like myself. She reassured us that she was alright. And if she was alright, then we’d be alright. “Now that’s a lady,” my mom said. While Tara Lipinski soon faded from the spotlight, Michelle gave us eight more years on the ice. She continued competing until she became the most decorated American skater of all time. Michelle taught me many things, but resilience was her greatest lesson.

Soon after Olympic fever died down, I had a playdate at my friend Cherylynn’s home. When I wasn’t doing after-school workouts with Mom and Cindy, I was usually hanging out with Cherylynn and her three younger siblings. All of us would make up games and play pretend, but in the late 90s, there were only five types of people you could pretend to be: Ginger, Baby, Posh, Scary, and Sporty. Spice-Girls mania made it perfectly acceptable for kids around the world to pick up imaginary microphones and speak in bad British accents. As a girl who talked her mom into vocal lessons only to practice “2 Become 1” on repeat, I was an avid fan. Especially when it came to Sporty Spice. Melanie C sang the best solos, had abs, and did backflips. Between my experience with Cindy Crawford workout tapes and my admiration of all-American athlete Michelle Kwan, I knew I was the right fit for the role.

“I’m Sporty! I’m Sporty,” I told the group.

One of Cherylynn’s sisters corrected me, “You can’t be Sporty.” Marissa already had her sneakers on and was halfway done putting her hair up in a ponytail. “I’m Sporty! You’re Scary Spice,” she said.

We ran into this issue before. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be Scary. After all, Mel B had a ton of killer solos. I just hated the fact that I always had to be Scary. Anisa was the youngest of the siblings, so she was Baby Spice. As the oldest sibling, Cherylynn let her middle sister Marissa take her pick from Ginger, Posh, or Sporty in an effort to keep the peace. She then picked up one of the remaining Spices. This scenario should have left me with at least two options. Unless her brother Georgie felt like playing with us, in which case he was automatically Sporty since he was a boy. But, it never mattered who picked what. I always had the same role in their home. As a brown girl in a group of white siblings, I was their Scary Spice.

“But I can be Sporty,” I argued, “Michelle Kwan is Asian like me, and she’s sporty!”

“You don’t even look like her,” Marissa insisted.

Even Cherylynn agreed. “It’s true,” she said quietly, begging me to give up the issue. It wasn’t the kind of girl power I expected, but my friend’s timid response was strong enough to make me back down. I knew four against one was a losing battle (and, in a few months, Ginger Spice would know exactly how I felt). I picked up my imaginary microphone and got ready for Mel B’s part in “Spice Up Your Life”.

In the car ride home, I vented to my mom about reprising my role as Scary Spice. “Anak, it’s okay,” she reassured me. She tried approaching my dilemma with a carefree attitude,“C’mon, cheer up. Don’t be so sensitive.” That was one of her favorite words she used to describe me. Mom called me sensitive whenever she felt like I was reading into something, taking criticism personally, or dwelling on an issue for longer than a child my age should. She didn’t like seeing me hurt, so she believed the best way to remedy my sensitive nature was to call it out and snap me out of it. She wanted to make me stronger, my attitude tougher, my skin thicker. However, her words only made me more aware of my flaw. I knew I was sensitive, but I had yet to develop the divorcée-level of confidence she had. As a native Filipina, my mom also couldn’t quite understand the true root of my adolescent angst. In the Philippines, she looked up to celebrities and grew up with people who looked something like her. As a Filipina-American, I was born into a country where I was different. I tried my hardest to find a familiar face in a workout tape, on a television screen, or even in school, only for every attempt to miss the mark.

There would be times when people wouldn’t know what to make of me, and because of that, I wouldn’t know what to make of me either. I certainly wasn’t white like Cindy Crawford, but I wasn’t exactly Asian like Michelle Kwan. I was this dark little foreign thing, so it was a lot easier to label me as Scary. Being Filipina would mean a life filled with nuance. Certain distinctions that were difficult for people, and even myself, to comprehend. Although in time I’d become the strong, resilient girl who so many women molded me to be, as a child, it was difficult to not be sensitive. Especially when it seemed like everything about me — every natural feature that I had no control over — felt so unbecoming of a lady.

A Woman Like Me was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I didn’t have to plan my sister Alyssa’s bachelorette party, but I did have to attend. My reluctance had nothing to do with Alyssa or her marriage, but everything to do with the fact that I’m 38, married, a mom, and generally past the age of finding pot and penises exciting.

I’ve never been much of a partier to begin with, and now, with my 40th birthday in view, a hangover was just about the last thing I wanted to deal with. As I packed up my romper dress and wedges — the closest thing to sexy I could find in my closet — I found myself fantasizing about a Handmaid’s Tale binge session under my faux-fur Pottery Barn blanket.

Five of us gathered to celebrate Alyssa’s last hurrah — four ladies in their early 30s, and I, their matriarch. Our first stop: King Spa & Sauna, a voluminous spa and bathhouse located in a suburban Chicago strip mall.

The idea is that when you arrive, first you wash au naturel in the spa’s single-sex “wet area,” full of showers, cold plunge pools, and herbal hot tubs, where even swimsuits are not permitted. As we gazed through the glass at the no-fucks-given moms soaking away in bliss — their love handles and saggy boobs just free to be — the younger ladies in our party demurred, giggling; there was no way they were going in there.

Me? I wanted to do it. So bad. Sit in a Jacuzzi naked as a newborn, completely free of judgement? Hell yes! After four decades of life, seven failed fertility treatments, a pregnancy, and a vaginal birth, not one ounce of me is precious about my body. Every doctor, nurse, intern, and their cousin has been up in my hooha, and the reward is that I have absolutely no shame about stripping down in front of a bunch of other equally lumpy and battle-scarred women.

But I’m nothing if not a team player, so I stayed with the group, still dwelling a bit on the drooping, relaxed ladies taking their bare-skinned “me time” in the hot tubs. Those were my people, or at least, the direction I was headed. I had clocked in to my late 30s, hovering between the security of maturity and the stubborn desire for elusive things like Another Baby and a Hot Body.

My sweet, youthful companions, with their functioning ovaries, smooth skin, and promising futures, could not relate, God bless them.

As we clustered into the locker room, we dressed in our “uniforms” — giant Pepto-pink T-shirts and cotton Bermuda shorts with elastic waistbands, supplied by the spa. The girls snickered at the ensemble, and I laughed along, secretly reveling in the uniforms’ prioritization of function over fashion.

The spa had nine sauna rooms, each with a different theme and supposed mineral healing property. They all surrounded a large central hall, where guests sat in fancy scrollwork chairs checking their phones, working on laptops, reading, napping, or cheering on a sporting event as it played on a TV screen. As the summer sun shone outside, everyone in this odd, windowless establishment was going about their day in the peculiar pink uniform (gray for men), as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

We started in the Gold Room, which was shaped like an Egyptian pyramid. As we laid on the heated floor, I looked around at the walls, which the spa claimed were 24 karat gold that would heal my ailments and improve my circulation. I was instantly skeptical — it looked like someone had just been really thorough with a can of gold spray paint. But I closed my eyes and tried to conjure a bit of zen.

Next was the Charcoal Room. Same deal. Lay on the hot floor and try to believe that the walls — painted black to look like charred wood — were actual charcoals absorbing my toxins. The Oxygen Room was sprinkled with plants; in the Infrared Room, a red lightbulb hovered a few inches over each face. The other girls tried the rooms with a mixture of irony and sincere enjoyment, losing interest after a few minutes and exiting to read magazines and chat in the central hall.

Systematically, we visited all the various rooms, which involved a lot of lying on the floor, being hot, and trying to steer my thoughts to productive places. As per usual, my mind drifted to my infertility, and I considered for the millionth time if my husband and I should take our chances on yet another expensive round of IVF, or throw in the towel for good. Given my ever-advancing maternal age, the latter seemed like the more sensible path, especially since we did manage to produce one perfect, healthy science baby. One and done, amirite? Quit while you’re ahead. But she was a big part of the reason I wanted to keep going — what additional amazing child might we be able to generate if we kept soldiering on?

While I know many people continue growing their families well into their 40s, it seemed obscene for us to keep at it. Between my rotten eggs and my husband’s two-headed sperm, our odds for success were precariously low. And, quite frankly, I felt old. Still, I had pulled it off once, and in doing so, had forever surrendered my childless life of avid exercising, late nights out, and crop-top-wearing. With my freedom gone, I might as well double-down on the family-building efforts. But on the other hand …

My thoughts kept going in circles until eventually, in the hottest chamber of all, I experienced a sort of catharsis. As my body heat rose higher and higher and I could barely stand it anymore, I cried, tears slipping quietly down my sweaty face. Where the hell was I? Here in this weird spa, with my sister by my side, I felt a weightless sense that there were no wrong answers. Whatever path I chose, everything would be Okay. Life, with all of its twists and turns, is so unpredictable, ridiculous, and beautiful.

When it was time to pay and go, I realized I had left my driver’s license in my daughter’s diaper bag and had driven 79 miles to Chicago without it. I began to fret about not being able to get into the bars later, but it turns out I needn’t have worried; not one bouncer asked me for ID that night.

We checked into a hipster hotel in Wicker Park and got ready for our night out. The other girls sipped Zima sardonically and/or smoked pot, but I was laser-focused on wielding a curling iron and an assemblage of cosmetics to magically look 10 years younger.

Our next stop was a Mexican place, where I quickly slurped down two margaritas in order to not feel old, tired, and self-conscious. One of the ladies in our party calmly and proudly began to share about her open marriage, a topic that instantly captured the interest and imaginations of the group. I tried for a moment to picture a polyamorous relationship in the midst of bath time, daycare, and jaunts to the fertility clinic, and it was so absurd that I quickly refocused on the bowl of queso fundido in the middle of the table. And besides, who wants to be out in the world trying to seduce other random people when you could be curled up watching Westworld together before falling asleep breathing in each other’s familiar smells? I’m good, thanks.

From there we headed to a speakeasy-style bar, and I swiftly downed some sort of fancy rum concoction in order to stave off a vague creeping thought about the music being far too loud. We took a group photo, and our waiter commented that my leg looked sexy, a compliment that would carry my confidence for the next five years.

Our next and final destination was a crowded karaoke bar. A glass of champagne seemed like just the thing to prolong the desensitizing buzz I was maintaining, and the bride-to-be put in a request for “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. When her turn at the mic came up, she brought down the house. People went berserk, and I put my phone in selfie mode to film us belting the lyrics. When the line, “Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?!” came, we screamed it out like rebellious junior highers. I posted the moment to my Instagram story with reckless abandon.

At 3 a.m., we arrived back to the hotel room. While my younger sisters went downstairs to smoke, I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and flossed.

After climbing under the blessed covers and beginning to drift off, my maternal nature kicked in one last time, and I pictured all the creepos that would approach my pretty, young, drunk sisters on the streets of Chicago in the wee hours of the night. As my eyes began to close, I blearily composed a simple text message to them: Please come back and head to bed. :) ❤

In the morning, after confirming that my sisters had in fact returned to the hotel room, my first thought was the Instagram story of me screaming “fuck.” I quickly logged in and deleted it.

The rest of the group slowly began coming to and getting ready to leave. As I dressed, a sense of relief washed over me that it was over, I’d had fun, and I had held my own with this fresh-faced crew, closing down the bar with the best of them. Hard decisions lay ahead for me, but, I had begun to see, that’s life at any age.

The following day, I reunited with my family and slept in later than I had in three years. Back in the familiar comfort of my house, my husband never looked more appealing, my daughter never seemed like more of a gift, and my PB blanket never felt so good.

A Bachelorette Odyssey on the Doorstep of 40 was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s this old timey village in our town, where you can rent an antique car, take a carriage ride, or tour a soy mill and see how soy was…milled, back in the day. The staff speaks in Old English dialect and wears long dresses and bonnets, suspenders and broad hats. Around Halloween, they have a head-less horseman riding around scaring the bajeezus out of kids and they sell pumpkin donuts and spiked apple cider. In the winter, there are carolers, actual chestnuts actually roasting, and spiked eggnog. It’s a lovely place to wander around shnockered in all seasons. Summertime is fun because the staff hand-tills vegetables and tends to livestock.

This summer, my husband and I took our two kids to this village for a visit. It was a beautiful day, with a breeze wafting the smell of horse shit across the tiny plains. We said hello to the sheep and spotted a few early pumpkins poking their heads out of the sincere little patch.

We are vegan, and land just this side of patchouli stink on the hippie spectrum, and my husband longs to one day be a self-sustaining family. He observes with great interest how the village grows their heirloom vegetables without the use of modern conveniences like Trader Joe’s. I skeptically nod along with his theories on green beans and wonder about things like off-grid tampons and deodorant.

Walking between the glass blowing barn and the pottery barn (not THE Pottery Barn, just a barn full of pots), I noticed a large black and white spotted turkey in the yard of one of the old houses. It was enormous, with really unique plumage. He was busy hunting for bugs or corn on the ground, but when my kids and I warbled at him, he looked up, making beady eye contact with us. “Oh, hello!” he seemed to say. Or, probably, “Good morrow to ye fine folk!”

My son asked about the red appendage hanging off the turkey’s face. I thought it was a ‘gizzard,’ but my wanna-be farmer husband informed me that, no, it’s actually called a ‘snood.” I thought he was making up words again, but the internets agreed with him. It seems that the thin red thing dangling off the tip of his beak is the ‘snood,’ and the scrotum-looking tissue pile bouncing under the beak against the neck is the ‘wattle.’ Of interest, according to modernfarmer.com, apparently snoods come in various lengths, and “for reasons that remain unclear, snood length appears to be an indicator of robust genes in turkeys.”

This turkey was stacked, which probably explained why he approached us with such confidence.

A gate allowed us inside the yard, and once there, our turkey friend came right up to us. I’ve successfully raised some panicky, skittish children, just like myself, so they cowered behind my legs. It’s possible that my saying, “We should run, right? Shouldn’t we run?” may have influenced their flight tendency.

My husband, always cool as an organic cucumber, stood quietly while the bird got close. He even put out his fool hand as if to pet it. “They’re nice, see, kids? See? No need to be afraid. If the turkey was feeling threatened, his snood would be standing up. He’s totally chill. Look at how he- OW!”

That’s when the turkey took a huge bite out of my vegan husband’s thigh meat.

The turkey and my husband squared off as the kids and I bolted up the stone stairs into the kitchen of the old house, surprising a room full of sweaty tourists and several employees baking pies from scratch in an old timey oven. It was at least 1,000 degrees in there and smelled of cinnamon and learning. My plan to try to blend in, like there wasn’t a man-turkey battle happening right outside, was destroyed by my son, who blurted, “My dad got bit by a turkey!”

When the room turned to look at us in silent slow-motion, we could hear my husband’s voice outside. “Back off, you stupid bird!”

One of the bonnet-ed women dropped her rolling pin and ran out the door.

“Sir, please do NOT kick our turkey!”

“He won’t let me pass!”

“Sir, he is an endangered turkey species! SIR!!”

To which the man that I love, this non-meat eating, tea-drinking, pacifist, said, about the artisanal, craft turkey, “I’m just moving him with my leg.”

The kids and I tried to pretend everything was normal in the house. We just wanted to learn about how to make an apple pie with hand-churned butter, OK? Finally, my husband sheepishly joined us in the kitchen, and we were all able to sneak out the backdoor. Only when we were back safely on the main street did we look back into the yard. There was no sign of the birdpetrator. We wondered if he had been taken to poultry prison.

We enjoyed the rest of our day at the village. As we made our way toward the exit that evening, a kindly staff lady in a rocking chair waved to us and asked us if we’d had a nice day, to which my snitch of a son said, “Yeah, except my dad got bit by a turkey.”

She stopped rocking and stood up with surprising speed for an elderly lady in a hoopskirt, “You’re the one who got bit by the turkey? Security has been looking everywhere for you! Just a minute. Stay right there…”

We didn’t.

It was pretty clear by the tone of her voice and the urgent way she was patting herself down for a walkie-talkie that the village po-po were not considering us the victims in this turkey encounter. We skipped away, like everything was normal, this is fine, we’re fine, we’ll just be heading out now. Is that rain? We should go.

It’s a good thing we’ll be in costume the next time we come for the Halloween festival. We’re definitely on an endangered farm animal most-wanted list now.

At least they didn’t cook and eat the turkey in retribution. Thigh for a thigh, or whatnot. I mean, that tom was a dick, but we didn’t want him dead. We’re animal lovers, after all. Well, ‘love’ may be a strong word in this case, but you get the idea.

The Day a Turkey Ate My Vegan Husband was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You’re supposed to be open with your therapist, right?

Hmm. There’s an episode on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where Larry David advises not to tell your therapist the truth. Like the entire truth, as if you’re sworn in court with your hand on the good book. My friend Blake passed this little piece of tv wisdom to me, though, a little too late. I was already confined to the psychiatric ward at Weill Cornell Hospital wearing three different shades of sedated blue from head to gripping toe socks — all under fluorescent lights that felt at once blinding and deafening.

I never felt more dead. Talk therapy in different pockets of my life set off various light bulbs. Most of it was a good experience, but I really felt I didn’t need to be here right now. I had a life full of activities, work and people waiting on me to get back to. Having already learned a quick lesson, I chose not to verbalize that, worrying it would work doubly against me. I could imagine the doctor’s notes: How could someone so high-functioning and secretive be let out back in the city wild?

I was guilted into this trap. On a Monday afternoon, the night after a multi-layered bad breakup I like to call “The Big Bang,” I decided to see my therapist ahead of my regularly scheduled appointment. I thought I was being the smart, follow-the-rules girl, revealing I had thought I wished I were hit by a bus, half-seriously. Don’t we all use metaphors like these? I’m reminded of the scene in Twelve Angry Men, when one of the jurors shouts “I’m going to kill you!” Anyways, my therapist interpreted this as sidewalk suicide, and made me call Blake during the session so that we could all apparently be held accountable to head straight from her office into the hospital for further monitoring. To pause. For my safety, of course. For my sanity? Good luck. What I thought might be a quiet overnight stay with cafeteria applesauce turned into more than a week of nurses checking my whereabouts every fifteen minutes plus hoards of doctors and students probing and watching me like a monkey at a zoo. They claimed the more I could talk about my “suicidality,” the better. I felt like a case study observing myself outside of myself, wide-eyed among the schizophrenics, other manic-depressives and actually, new friends I made.

I started to turn into jello. But my survival instinct came alive and hardened. While I was in there, I decided to own up to my moment, even if I was still in disbelief. I participated in activities, had friends visit and spoke more thoroughly about the breakup, which in retrospect, was just a catalyst for how I felt empty and responded emotionally. At the hospital, the group of therapists finally nodded in agreement about my discharge. Hallelujah! I could have salads with avocado by choice again! I could breathe fresh air!

A day after my triumphant release, I tried to shake off the fog as I reoriented myself. I was at the gym when my therapist called to check in on me. She had not regularly kept in touch while at the hospital (cue abandonment stress). She said she could understand if I was upset by the situation and she’d be around to talk. No thank you, I said. I already moved on. I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. In my opinion, she had panicked from what seemed worse on paper, even if it was good for me in the end (but also set me back financially).

Not all therapy and therapists are created equal. She had been recommended by a friend, and I never really liked her (still love the friend), but I had stuck with it, even if she never really seemed to give the best advice or do a ton of shifting for me. In chatting with others, there are worse therapists — the ones who use the time to over-share their own stories, give too much of their opinion (not scientifically drawn background) on intimacy, or some who add you on LinkedIn and even speak against you in front of a judge. For me, therapy has been very life stage-specific and personality-driven. I had never really entrusted my this specific professional to listen or dole advice with context. In this situation, I wasn’t empowered by sharing my truth.

Looking back, the truth is, I was still depressed and depleted the time following the hospital stay. It took recovery time, but I’m finally feeling better near the one-year mark. I recently told my new therapist my thoughts on all of this, and we’re keeping an eye on things. She remarked that I should be able to be honest, and I acknowledged it must be hard to see when something is serious and something needs careful observation. I’m just glad I’m okay now, and I can talk about it openly. I want to live my life.

Why Larry David Was Right About Therapy was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

White men can get a bad rap. From my perspective as a black woman, things can seem to come so easily for them: money, access, power, constitutional rights, reproductive freedom, criminal justice, I could go on but you get the picture. However, things aren’t always easy for Chads. They feel pain, heartache and challenge too. There are even times I watch a tv show or movie and feel sympathy, compassion and, dare I say, CRY at the plight of a white man! Here are 7 times a white man onscreen made this black woman cry. [Full disclosure: my partner is a white man so, he’s probably been weakening my black female emotional defenses over the past 7 years we’ve been together BUT 5 of these I saw before I even met him so they’re legit.]

1.Leaf Phoenix (Garry)- Parenthood

If you’re in the mood to watch a white family implode, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, delivers like this classic. Diane Wiest & Martha Plimpton absolutely kill it in this movie. But, the character whose story I am truly invested in is the shy awkward son, Garry, played by a young Joaquin Phoenix (fun fact: at the time of this movie, Joaquin was going by the name Leaf Phoenix).

The scene where Garry calls his father to ask if he can move in with him is gut-wrenching. Every single time I watch it I hold my breath hoping it will end differently and it never does. It’s soul crushing. Almost makes you forget that his grown-up adult self would make $21,698 per year more than me, on average, for the same job.

2. John Krasinski (Jim)/Rainn Wilson (Dwight) — The Office Season 4 Episode 4

This one is a “two-for,” as in two white men for the price of one episode, made me cry. By way of background, Dwight is in love with Angela and Jim is in love with Pam. In this episode, Angela agrees to go on a date with another dude right in front of Dwight. Dwight runs out and Jim goes into the hallway to console him. Jim tells Dwight that before he and Pam got together Pam was with another dude. Jim talks about how he couldn’t eat or sleep, that this period was the worst time in his life. Then he says: “And it is something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and that includes you.” I’m tearing up RIGHT NOW just typing this because it’s beautiful AF watching white dudes support each other in something not involving a hate crime especially since black people are the most targeted group for white dudes to commit hate crimes against. Suggestion: support each other in healing your broken hearts instead — just an idea.

3. Casey Affleck (Lee) -Manchester by the Sea

This entire movie had me totally destroyed. I watched this at home and, real talk, at one point I had to turn it off and cry deep sobs for like 15 straight minutes into my man’s chest while he held me because the pain that Affleck’s character experiences is so palpable I could not hold it in any longer. It was horrible. I just. I can’t. Casey’s character feels responsible for the death of his kids. And he pretty much is, on an accidental level and he REFUSES to forgive himself. Now, not every white dude who’s done something horrible needs to be forgiven. I’ve yet to forgive Dr. James Marion Sims, the “Father of Modern Gynecology,” who performed vaginal surgeries on black female slaves without their consent and without anesthesia, but because Casey’s character shows remorse and didn’t profit off of his actions — and also because he’s not a sadistic freak like Sims, I think he should forgive himself.

4. Seth Rogen (Kyle) — 50/50

Rogan plays the best friend to a guy diagnosed with cancer and in pretty much every scene he comes off as selfish. In the tear-jerker scene, Rogan’s friend accuses him of only wanting to use his cancer to get girls. Later that night, his friend goes into Rogan’s bathroom and finds the book “Facing Cancer Together” in Rogan’s bathroom. The book is about the best ways to support a friend with cancer and passages are underlined and dog-eared and it’s obvious Rogan has all along been studying how to be a good friend and really cares about the dude. Gets me every time. Speaking of cancer, black women are 41 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. Also, 25% of medical residents in a 2016 study thought black people’s skin was thicker than white people’s, it isn’t. Black people aren’t “magic.” Not even Oprah. Beyonce is magic though. But, she’s the only one.

5. Richard Gere (Foley) — Officer & A Gentleman

Richard Gere’s character is kind of a jerk in this movie, he pushes people away and tries to go through life not caring about anyone. But of course, he does end up caring about people and there are a few moments where I cry, but the moment I really love is when Louis Gossett Jr. gets fed up with Gere’s antics and says he’s kicking him out of the military for good. And then Gere’s character, in an unexpected show of vulnerability, says he can’t leave because he has nowhere else to go and he has nothing else. Pitiful, as my mother would say, just pitiful. I really felt for him. I was like holy shit, this guy doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Don’t make him leave. Don’t kick him out. Then I remembered, black people in the military are two and a half times more likely than whites in the military to face a court-martial and Gere is white so he’s gonna be fine. And I was right. Gere’s character did not get in trouble, he was fine.

6. Andrew Lincoln (Mark) — Love Actually

This guy’s storyline is that of every person who has ever loved someone who didn’t love them back and suffers in unrequited misery. Andrew’s character is in love with his best friend’s wife. We don’t find out he loves her until the pivotal scene where she finds the wedding tape that Andrew’s character made from her wedding to his friend. In the tape, the only person he has recorded on it is her (it sounds creepy but it’s actually not when you watch it). As the audience, we are all rocked by this because he’s been hostile to her in every scene. He tells her he’s mean to her because it’s easier for him, he says it’s self-protection and oh man, haven’t we all been there? Then the soundtrack starts and he walks out of the apartment. Then the follow-up scene where he shows up at her door and tells her that he will love her always but he’s moving on and hopes to find someone else — turns me into a weeping mess every time. Unrequited love is an SOB. You know who else is an SOB? That darn Dr. Sims — still not over it. Also, the doctor who removed the uterus of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer without her consent. Hamer’s uterus was unrequited because that hospital had a policy of forced sterilization of black women. Unrequited uteri is also heartbreaking.

7. David Schwimmer (Ross) — Friends Season 2 Episode 14

I grew up watching this NYC based sitcom and this episode is WITHOUT QUESTION my favorite. In the episode before this one, Rachel dumped Ross for some b.s. reason and nothing Ross did would make her take him back. In this episode, the friends watch an old tape from their high school days and it’s a tape of the day Rachel was going to prom. In the present day of the show, Ross and Rachel are both adults but Ross has been IN LOVE with Rachel since they were in high school, something Rachel never knew but is totally obvious to everyone else. The tape is shot in Ross’ parent house, Rachel was there because she was best friends with Ross’ sister who was also going to prom. Rachel’s date hadn’t arrived and it was getting later and later, so it looked as though Rachel’s date was going to stand her up. Ross, at the suggestion of his dad, decided that he’d put on a tux to go to the prom with her.

His plan was to surprise Rachel by walking down the stairs in the tux. As Ross is making his way down the stairs, he stops and gives himself a little pep talk (so sweet) then continues to walk down and just as he’s about to get to the ground floor, Rachel zooms past him out the door with her late date who showed up while Ross was upstairs changing into the tux. The look on Ross’ face as she leaves with the other guy is heartbreaking, never has disappointment been more beautifully and painfully captured. It always makes me cry.

Almost makes you forget that gentrification is responsible for most black people being pushed out of NYC, you forget because all the Friends were white and rarely interacted with black people. Seriously, this sitcom could’ve been set in Zurich for all the black people in it.

So that’s it. The 7 roles that remind me that even though it’s tempting to look at white dudes as invulnerable, they’re actually human, just like me. Well, just like me but with more money, power, access, constitutional rights, reproductive freedom etc etc. Other than that, just like me.

Get Andrea’s FREE Interracial Dating Guide!

Seven Times A White Man Onscreen Made A Black Woman Cry was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. I was homeschooled, spent several years living on a commune in Oregon, and dressed super weird. When my mom and I moved away to rejoin modern society, it became clear that public school was a bit much for me. The other children made fun of my Milhouse Van Houten glasses and how I adopted my grandfather’s Quebecois-farmer-chic style.

Instead, I went to a private school that was probably the opposite of what you’re imagining if you’re imagining anything even close to Gossip Girl. There were 4 kids in my grade, we learned…nothing, and we danced barefoot around a Maypole each spring.

Despite the uncool setting, my friend Queenie was very cool. We spoke to each other in Kip from Napoleon Dynamite voices and parodied Blink 182 lyrics and I wanted her to like me so badly but she always seemed more or less indifferent, but that was just a mark of how cool she was.

One fateful night, we were at her house, eating rich people food like devilled eggs and chocolate cake and watching Bam Margera do something horrible to his parents when her dad walked into the room and invited me on their weekend snowboarding trip. My heart leapt.

Queenie went snowboarding all the time. I pictured her with her long, shiny, black hair flowing behind her as she stripped past slower boarders, down a terrifying cliff, maybe with a tiny, non-threatening avalanche in her wake. I tried to picture myself doing the same, and as the least athletic, least physically coordinated 13-year-old girl on the planet, it was surprisingly easy to delude myself into thinking that, yes, I could totally snowboard.

I accepted his invitation immediately, and when he asked if I had ever been snowboarding before, I lied with bravado, “oh, tons of times.”

When we arrived at Blue Mountain Ski Resort that weekend, Queenie and I changed into our snow pants. Queenie was tall and slender, and I couldn’t help but notice that she looked a lot more like a human being in her snow pants than I did. I looked down at my short, chubby legs. My huge snow pants made my distinctly pear-shaped frame look like a dropped ice-cream cone, melting over the pavement on a summer’s day. Still, I pretended to feel right at home in my winter sports attire.

They walked and I waddled into the rental shop, where the attendant asked me questions that may as well have been in another language. When I stared at him with a drawn-out “uhhhhhhhh”, Queenie’s dad gave me a gentle shove from behind, and they reached some kind of conclusion about my “bindings”. I was still convinced that my pro-snowboarder cover was not blown.

One by one we were fitted with boots, bindings, and boards, and then we made our way out to the park. Queenie led us to a hill called The Burner, which was marked ‘most difficult’. Hell-bent on maintaining my lie, I followed her. We boarded the lift, and I soon found myself strapping into my shining, slippery snowboard on top of a hill so steep I would hesitate to go sledding down it.

We started down the hill at the same time, only I immediately peed a little and, terrified, fell to my butt, scooting sideways until I was rested against a pole of the chairlift. Queenie became a super cool dot, gliding to and fro as she disappeared down the hill. I waited until she had passed by me a second time, and then a third, before I tried again.

I stood up, hugging the chairlift post, and let myself slide down a few feet.

Nope.

I sat down again, heart pounding, pretty sure that my carefully constructed fiction was crumbling down around me. Surely they would find out that I had not, in fact, been snowboarding “tons of times.” Queenie skidded to a stop on her fourth or fifth pass and asked if I was ok. “Oh, totally” I laughed, and she slid on.

I sat there for a long time. Once in a while, people would stop and ask if I was alright, if I needed help getting down, if I had hurt myself.

“No, no,” I would assure them, waving them on, “I’m just taking a break.”

Hours passed. I tried a few more times to stand up and glide down the hill, never admitting to myself or any concerned passers-by that I simply did not know how to snowboard.

Eventually, Queenie’s dad came marching up the hill to where I sat, leaned back on my hands, watching the sun start to set. He wanted to pay for me to take the hour-long starter lessons on the Baby Bunny Hill. I didn’t need it, I insisted! Why didn’t anyone believe me! I was just worn out from all the snowboarding I had been doing!

“Come on.” He said, giving me a look that told me the jig was up. I resigned. He knew I had never snowboarded in my life. He knew I wasn’t as cool as Queenie. Everyone did. He unstrapped me from my snowboard and held my hand as we traipsed down the hill on foot, my snowboard rested on his shoulder.

I reluctantly, shamefully, joined the beginner’s class. I couldn’t help but notice that I was by far the oldest and biggest student on the Baby Bunny Hill. That remains to be the only time in my life that I’ve been taller than my peers, so I had that going for me, which was nice.

They taught us to stay standing up on our boards as we moved at a glacial pace along a moving sidewalk kind of contraption. They taught us to fall down, to carve, to stop. Finally, they taught us to go down the hill. The Baby Bunny Hill was much kinder and about the size of the mound of dirt where my old cat was buried, but I did it!

That night I took a hot shower and realized that I was frozen solid from my butt cheeks to my toes and I thought ‘maybe snowboarding isn’t that cool’. I didn’t know it yet, but I was definitely on to something.

The next day after breakfast, they made their way to the hills, and I, assuring them I would go to my baby bunny lessons, hid out in the lobby drinking free hot chocolate all day. And the next day we returned our snowboards, boots, and bindings, got in the car, and headed home. Queenie and her family had, I’m quite sure, decided not to mention my lies and failures and ridiculousness (in front of me). I appreciated it.

I was never invited on one of their weekend trips again. I appreciated that, too.

Queenie and I reverted to watching movies, memorizing our favorite set pieces, and practicing our Napoleon Dynamite dance. These were things I could handle.

But, our friendship was never the same after that weekend on the slopes. As we grew apart I vaguely remember being called a liar, not denying it, and flushing bright red as I thought back to those hours on the hillside.

I tried snowboarding again later in my life, and it went marginally better. I learned to slide down a hill without stopping, paralyzed. The desperation to be cool kept me trying, but from a kid who didn’t even like sledding to an adult who hates moving her body around, I never really took to it.

I’m not sure if I learned not to lie that day as my ass got wetter and wetter and colder and colder and I still refused to admit defeat. What I definitely did learn is that my specialities lied in memorizing movie lines and identifying television tropes and rewriting song lyrics. And no, none of those things would ever make me cool, but at least my butt would be forever warm and dry.

“Oh, Sure, I Snowboard” was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seven hours, five cans of oxygen, and nothing but a Pikachu onesie keeping me warm, we were almost at the top of Mt. Fuji.

I was working in Japan for three months, and climbing this mountain was at the very top of my bucket list. And with everything else in my life turning into an unstable series of “maybes?” I needed to check something off.

My boyfriend at the time went with me. Not because we were in a great place in our relationship and wanted to do one of those “happy couple” adventures, but because I was leaving in a few days and there was still so much I needed to say.

We’d been in a long-distance relationship for three years when I was offered the internship in Tokyo. At the time, I was studying in Miami while he worked full time in Japan, so I accepted, planning to go there and tell him it was over.

Turns out, it’s really hard to break up with someone you’re living in a foreign country with, across the world from your friends and family.

So I didn’t.

Instead I spent three months crying on a high-tech Japanese toilet, trying to make sense of my life in the most bizarre country I’d ever been to.

In that eight-hour overnight climb, we looked over a ledge to see a plane flying below us. We saw clouds pooling beneath our feet. We saw a clear night sky that we didn’t even have to look up for. Instead the stars surrounded us, up down or straight ahead, it didn’t matter where you looked. Shooting stars felt as if they were flying at us as I clung to the edge of a foreign rock, afraid to fall into the nothingness around me. If you told me we’d accidentally climbed to the moon, I would’ve believed it.

We walked in silence through this curious place. Words bubbled to the surface every now and again, but all the things I left unsaid were the things I needed to say most.

This isn’t working.

I have feelings for someone else.

I don’t think I want it enough to make this work.

I don’t love you anymore.

I kept making up reasons not to say them. Lame excuses like, “it’s not the right time,” or “I’m too tired to fight right now.” But I had been tired for months. Mostly, I was afraid I’d let him talk me out of it again.

It happened once before, on a teary call one night when I said it was over. I wanted out of the glitchy Skype calls, the 12-hour time differences, the scheduling conflicts, and the confused looks I got when I told people I was dating a man who lived on the other side of the planet.

But instead of giving in like I thought he would, he cried and asked for a second chance. And I was too surprised or scared or sad to say no. So I didn’t.

In general, I like to keep a safe distance from most people, but when I do stumble into a casual conversation I tend to have a problem saying “no”. I’ve been sold into personal training classes I couldn’t afford, signed up for a Civil War reenactment club, and bought a dog bone because the cashier told me it was on sale. The problem wasn’t the dog bone — it was that I didn’t have a dog.

But my patchy vernacular has also made me miss out on new opportunities, simply because I was too afraid to let go of the old ones.

I was standing on the ledge of this relationship, and I so wanted to take the leap and pick up the pieces later. But instead I was frozen in place, too afraid to either get off the edge or jump.

So instead, I kept climbing.

As we approached the summit, our climb was pacing out as planned. It was almost sunrise and we were about a half hour from the top. We picked up our stride, fully aware that this beautiful nightmare was coming to an end. Our blistered feet, over-exhaustion and altitude sickness would soon be dealt with.

As for everything else — I had no idea.

When my sister and I were younger, we used to sneak downstairs after our parents fell asleep. Then we’d stay up all night and let romantic comedies from the 90’s feed us lies.

They all lie about the same thing — that even if you have nothing figured out, a Matthew McConaughey-type character will appear out of nowhere, and everything will fall into place when you realize he was the one all along. In those movies, the female protagonist simply has to board a plane somewhere, and suddenly the “nice guy” will magically arrive at her gate without ever passing through TSA.

But what about the women who are too afraid to board their next flight? Is there any hope for them? After all, three years later and I was still here, climbing a mountain with a man I no longer loved.

There weren’t many people around for most of our climb, but as we edged closer to the top, the campsites became more and more crowded. People were popping up out of nowhere, like most people in Japan do. As if to say, oh, you’re walking this way? I’ll follow you and we can go wait in line somewhere together, yay! One minute you’re walking down an empty street in Ebisu, the next you’re getting politely elbowed by hoards of people staring at their phones. They take no notice of you, so you politely elbow them back.

This was pretty much what happened on Mt. Fuji. One minute we’re on a deserted mountain surrounded by stars, the next we’re standing in line behind a hundred other climbers, waiting to summit the mountain.

We ended up seeing the sunrise in that line, just a couple meters from the top. As the sunset rose from the horizon, hundreds of us simultaneously whipped out our smartphones, oohing and awing as we took thousands of the exact same photos and posted them on Instagram. And yes, for some reason all of our data started working in that line.

I suppose this was just true to Japan, a culturally relevant way to end a monumental climb, and my time in this strange country. I remember thinking I would forever remember this as the time I stood on a cliff overlooking the most beautiful sunrise I’d ever seen, surrounded by people who were all there for the exact same reason. For a split second, I didn’t feel so alone.

Then someone in front of us farted.

This wasn’t a regular fart. Nor was it a small, forgettable bottom burp. This was a monumental, lingering emission of gas that lasted for an indescribably long period of time.

We tried to dismiss it at first, waiting for it to pass. But it didn’t. Maybe the guy was machine gunning it. Maybe he’d just been holding it in for eight straight hours, waiting for the perfect moment to release. Either way we were standing on top of a mountain with nothing but sky, and the smell was only getting worse.

“Oh, are you kidding me?” My boyfriend yelled, covering his nose. “Did someone really just fart?”

I started laughing so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or the altitude making me light-headed, or maybe I really needed to laugh at something.

Looking back at it now, it was completely absurd. The line and the bubbling words and the sadness and the series of passing moments I was too afraid to grab onto. And then the fart.

So I laughed, and waited for the moment to pass.

Eventually, it did. We went back to our lives, and our final hour came long after we descended this mountain. I was back at school, and he was sitting at the Ikea desk we built together in his apartment. I finally took the leap, telling him it was over for good and that I had feelings for someone else. I watched him get angry as he told me I should’ve said this in Tokyo. I agreed, then apologized, knowing it would never be enough. After we hung up, I wondered if I’d ever see him again. The answer was probably not. Still is.

Two years later, I’d see a post from a mutual friend congratulating him on his marriage. I’d look through his engagement photos and see how happy he looked. For a minute I was falling again, trying to accept that someone who knew everything about me — the goofy, the chin-acne, the smart, the sad — was gone for good.

Then I’d pick up the pieces and board a flight to New York. There was no Matthew McConaughey-type running after me at the gate. Instead there was a new opportunity — a full-time job that I said yes to — waiting for me on the other side. And that was more than enough.

But before all that came, we stood at the top of Mt. Fuji together. Neither of us said a word as we held our breath, inching closer and closer to where we wanted to be.

Just a little longer.

Farts on Mt. Fuji and All the Things I Should’ve Said to Break Up with my Boyfriend was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I knew nothing at age 22, apart from how to write a check, drive, and possibly make a good grilled cheese sandwich. While working at my first job after college as a teller in a bank in the Watergate complex I was benignly stalked by the man would eventually become my husband. My future husband’s twice, thrice, and yes, even four times a day habit of cashing five and ten dollar checks was only slightly creepy, but certainly annoying. Apparently my beauty and charm made me “his” teller and he would politely step aside and wait until only I was available to cash his checks.

Check cashing turned into dating. He asked me to go to a dinner party which at the time seemed like fun. At this point I should mention that he was 13 years older than I was and despite being 22 I looked about, maybe 15.

The thirteen year old age difference came into play as soon as I met the other dinner party guests. They were all old, in their 30’s and 40’s and talking politics. Politics! I grew up in Washington, DC and hadn’t a clue about politics. I had a basic understanding of that whole president, two houses of congress, supreme court fabric but I knew less than nothing about local politics.

I was young and stupid and back then terrified someone might find that out so I often bloviated and exaggerated in an effort to appear smarter and more sophisticated. The political talk extended past cocktails and into the dining room. I was seated next to a genuinely smart and oh, so sophisticated woman, whose name I have forgotten.

She leaned towards me and said,”So, what do think about Marion Berry, (the long and many termed and now deceased Washington, DC mayor known for his numerous escapades and scandals)?

Not wanting to confess I had not a clue who this person was I replied,”Marion Berry, SHE will make a good mayor.”

The sophisticated woman chose to spend the rest of dinner talking to the person on her left.

-Accidental Feminist in Washington, DC

Once I got very very ill at work and couldn’t stop throwing up, and I worked a 45-minute drive away from my house, so I couldn’t get in a Lyft or anything and go home because I legit couldn’t stop throwing up and knew that a Lyft driver wouldn’t let me into their car. So instead I sat on the concrete floor of the single-stall bathroom at work (no sink) throwing up for 2 hours, then it started coming out the other end, and it was uncontrollable. While I was throwing up I also soiled my pants and my phone was at 20% and I just figured I would die sitting on the cold concrete floor of my office bathroom not wearing pants covered in poop. I had to call one of my friends and ask her to, “please bring me a box of wet wipes, multiple garbage bags, and a new pair of pants, and walk me 4 blocks to the hospital.” To this day, I don’t think anyone in my office knows these details, but I don’t work there anymore.

-Professionally Pooped in New York

When I was 18 I was dating a guy a year younger with really strict parents. He wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend, so I’d never met his family, and he would call me after his parents went to sleep and I would sneak into his basement to fool around. One night we were mid-act when we heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He told me to hide, but I panicked and instead of hiding in the house, I ducked out the backdoor. But there was one problem: in my panic, I’d left my car keys and sandals in the basement, so I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. I crouched down under the basement door window and watched as his mom discovered him with his pants down and well, certain appendages at full-mast. He tried to play it off like it was a solo-act, but his mom noticed my keys and flip flops and started searching around the basement for me. I thought about just running home barefoot, but I lived a good two miles away and I wasn’t sure how I’d explain to my parents why and how I came home without the car. But I didn’t have time to decide because suddenly his mom opened the backdoor to me: still crouching barefoot trying to hide under the window. I stood up as straight as I could and not sure what to do, I extended my hand to shake and introduced myself to her. She handed me my keys and flip flops and told me to get the eff out. The guy and I broke up after that.

-Barefoot in the Backyard

I work as a flight attendant. One day, I’m sitting down enjoying my food when I thought a bag of ice I have to this lady earlier broke and the water was dripping down the floor (she was standing earlier in between the two bathrooms in the back) I open the curtain to give the lady a new bag of ice. I open the curtain to see this lady squatting on the floor peeing. I saw her vagina and everything. I go MAAM!!! What are you doing!!! And she goes nothing! As she stands up and pulls her pants up. Plot twist. She was wearing khakis so she was still peeing and her pants were getting darker with the pee. I go you were peeing on the floor and still peeing currently!!!!

Her seat was all the way up front so she passed four bathrooms to come to the back and pee on the floor. It was so gross.

Also, the other day this dude comes into the galley (plane kitchen) and can’t wait to for the bathroom so he whips his dick out (multiple people saw it) and peed into a carrier on the floor with linens in it.

Both times the police met the plane and I’m not sure what they got charged with. Apparently there is a pee problem with people on the plane now a days.

-Urine-soaked on United

I started dating this guy and for some reason we decided even though we’d only been dating about a month, it would be a good idea to go on a three day camping and hiking trip together. We were living in the UK at the time, and so we borrowed a tent and just kind of hiked through this national park and pitched it where ever. It actually ended up being a great trip, despite the odds being stacked against a third date that is three days walking through sheep fields and it was looking like things would work out.

The last day, we were waiting for a bus to take us back to our town: about a 45 minute ride. But the bus wasn’t coming for an hour so we sat at a pub and had some beers. Too many, apparently, because about five minutes into the bus ride I realized I really, really had to pee. We still had 40 minutes ahead of us. I tried to hold it, but the bumpy bus ride wasn’t helping. After about twenty minutes it was too much: I had to make a decision: either pee my pants on public transportation in front of a guy I had just started dating or ask the driver to stop the bus in the middle of nowhere as risk this new guy thinking I needed adult diapers to get through a 45 minute bus ride. I looked at the guy and was like, “I’m so sorry, I have to get off.” and ran to the front of the bus and asked the driver to stop. The driver was told me, “If you get off here, I can’t wait for you and there’s no more buses coming today.” It was at least five miles to town. I didn’t have time to think logically, my bladder was about to burst so I just said, “YES JUST LET US OFF HERE.” The confused bus driver opened the door and dropped me and my now very confused and annoyed not-even-a-boyfriend off on the side of a rural road.

I peed in a bush and we started walking. I felt like a total idiot and I could tell he was really mad but didn’t want to say anything. We passed a pub so I asked if I could buy him a drink. At the bar, he told the bartender what happened, and the bartender offered to drive us the rest of the way home! We accepted and this random guy took us back in his car. I figured potentially getting kidnapped was probably better than having this guy mad at me, which is how you know it’s true love. It probably saved our relationship, because we ended up getting married! Me and the bartender, I mean. Just kidding.

-Bursting Bladder on the Bus

The Ack! Attack: Embarrassing Stories from Adults for July 2018 was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, I was at Target with my son when he mentioned he could use some new underwear. We headed to the underwear section and quickly I realized we were about to embark on an awkward conversation. We would have to discuss if he wants boxers or briefs and why I, his mom, would suggest the combo option, boxer briefs. It was there I realized I was a mom in the middle! Telling him why his testicles would be happier and healthier in a pair of boxer briefs and the importance of making sure your junk is dried before putting on your newly purchased boxer briefs to avoid humidity and jock itch is something a mom in the middle has to do. The thing is, I’m not actually prepared to be a mom in the middle.

My kids are in those tween and teen years and gone are the days of babies, toddlers, oohs, ahhs, cute and cuddly. Being a mom in this phase changes drastically. However, it seems this new phase of motherhood is something I am going to be doing on my own. Finding information about this season of life seems to be thin to say the least. Get on the internet and you will find lots of information about your baby, your toddler and even your child through third grade. What to know how to have a conversation about testicles and how they fit into boxer briefs? Good luck!

We assume young moms need the support and then somewhere along the journey get real quiet to all the moms in the middle. It was great to know ahead of time that when diapering a baby boy, to cover his penis so you don’t get pee in your eye, but now I need tips on telling him how to deal with his penis. For real, because when my son came into the family room one afternoon and asked what an erection was and I had to sit and explain it to him while we avoided eye contact and instead stared at a logo of Netflix on the television. It took all my muster not to panic, sound terrified, or run screaming from the room. It would have been nice to have been forewarned about that conversation.

Moms in the middle need just as much support but it’s an uncomfortable phase for everyone so the information stops getting to us. I’m not finished raising my children. We have a lot of years together and it doesn’t seem to be getting easier. In fact, I might dare say it’s getting harder. I’ve seen clickbait articles on “5 tricks to stop your toddler meltdown” but I don’t see “5 tricks to help your teen’s existential crisis”. His crisis is legit and he’s sucking me in. According to him, the world is the worst. Someone help ME before I only dress in black, quote Nietzsche and discuss popular YouTube gamers.

We’ve reached the age where the boys can watch themselves for a few hours while I have a meeting and manage a comedy theater. They can also bathe themselves and go potty like big boys. However, it’s not as if my kids turn 12 and then voila, parenting accomplished. Moms with tweens and teens are just as tired, frazzled, and much in need of support (no really, please send help, I don’t want to talk about sex positions with anyone let alone my child). I’m no longer being asked “why” or told “no” from a toddler but instead being asked, “is it normal that all this hair is growing under my arms and down my pants”? I want to know if it’s okay that my son has stretch marks because he is growing so fast and any advice on how to vet his friends is much appreciated. Thing is, I don’t find that information out on social media or the internet. I see links on activities you can do with your toddler at the playground but not on how to help your 14 years old navigate his playground… you know what I mean!

As a mom, I will always worry about my children. Even when they are grown. What’s worse is that as a mom to kids who are no longer small, cute, and cuddly, I am becoming invisible. Go to a bookstore or a mall and just watch. people are always stopping and making small talk with the moms with the kids in the strollers. They hold doors open for them, and the moms can talk to the other moms because they have a common starting point. When I go to the mall with three tween and teen boys in tow, no one holds doors open, no one stops me and says, great job at getting them to this point of their lives. Instead, we are avoided. To be fair, I’m 5’2 and surrounded by boys taller than me by several inches so I’m sure we look more like a team assembled to hack the mall’s internet security instead of a mom who desperately needs new pants for her kids because they all look as if they are wearing khaki capris. It would be nice though to hear “great job mom!” from a stranger every now and then.

And mom friends? Well, those have become non-existent. When the kids were young, I could find a cool mom who had a cool kid and we could feel connected. These days, if my kids don’t like the other kids, it doesn’t matter how cool the mom is, that relationship is unsustainable. That means, I need to have friends that are just for me but that requires me to go find friends but guess what? I’m still just as, if not more, busy that I was when I was raising a toddler.

Sustaining friendships is the last thing I want to do but if I don’t do it, then hello loneliness. My kids are too old for companies, blogs, and social media to pay attention to them and apparently that goes for me too. While every now and again I will see things on why being over 40 is amazing, most of what I’m bombarded with is things to absolutely NOT to wear, drink, eat, do, or breathe after 40.

I do a lot outside of just being a mom. I write, run a comedy theater, travel, and teach. Yet it feels like my voice is becoming less relevant as time marches forward. When I’m in of need support the most, it’s not available. I know I’m not the only mom in the middle. Moms in the middle deserve more than silence and crickets. Just because I am a mom in the middle doesn’t mean I’m going to go silently into irrelevance. I will be loud, proud, and terrified and hope that other moms in the middle do the same.

So here we are perusing all the underwear options in our local Target. Me rambling about humidity and how mold can grow in dark and humid places. Trying to make it more of a science lesson than a discussion about his testicles staying calm, cool, and collected in a certain type of underwear. Finally, I just say, “Let’s get the boxer briefs” and my son shrugging his shoulders responds, “whatever, as long as they are black”. Just like that, we’ve made a decision and I’m fairly certain this is how most of my conversations are going to go now that I’m a mom in the middle!

Mom in the Middle was originally published in The Dot on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.