Love Is A Healing Game

If I could go back in time and stop my 16-year-old self from entering a mentally abusive relationship, I wouldn’t.

Although my wounds are healing still to this day, I learned so much about myself in the process that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. I know it sounds a little fucked up, but that relationship taught me self-love and resilience. Healing from the pain of a toxic relationship can take years, even an entire lifetime, and it affected me in more ways than I ever could’ve imagined.

During the relationship, I was addicted to the constant highs and lows. The intensity of the relationship made it feel so real. The highs were so high that I didn’t think twice about how low the lows were. The highs made the constant anxiety, disrespect, and manipulation worth it. With my anxious attachment style, I didn’t know better than to give my all to a relationship, no matter how unhealthy it was. And being at such a vulnerable age, I didn’t have the tools to detect the signs of emotional abuse. I thought the abuse was what real love was. My friends told me over and over again that the boy I was dating was a crazy, manipulative asshole, but I never believed them, not once. It eventually came to the point where I had to choose between my friends or him, and I chose him.

When I moved away to college, the emotional abuse became unbearable. The long distance pushed me to my breaking point. I’d cry every night underneath my sheets so that my roommate wouldn’t hear. I’d decline offers to go out just so that I wouldn’t have to carry the anxiety of a potential argument afterward. Going out with friends was a constant cause of arguments in our relationship. He’d ridicule me for hanging out with my friends and compare himself to them. He didn’t want me to be happy without him — he’d rather me live a life of sadness when we weren’t together. He wanted the distance to consume me, to eat me alive. I was so good at hiding the abuse with my friends. I’d only express the highs and hide the lows. However, it got to the point where I was unable to hide it anymore.

I began to run out of excuses as to why I didn’t want to go out with friends. Stuck inside my head for most of each day, I was depressed and unable to help myself, and it finally started to show. I decided to swallow my pride and open up to my roommate about what I was experiencing. She was in awe of my experience because she had virtually no idea the pain I was going through.

As we talked, my roommate’s insight really opened my eyes to the reality of my abusive relationship. It seems like signs of abuse should be obvious, but when you’re in the middle of it, the lines become blurred. Abuse can warp your perception—to me, the abuse seemed like a form of love. I thought that he was saying abusive things because he loved me so much. I thought that he was controlling me because he wanted to keep me safe. I thought the nonstop communication between us was healthy, what people in relationships strive for.

When I finally was able to identify that I was in an abusive relationship, the idea of being in a worry-free, supportive relationship seemed so out of reach to me. I think it took me so long to see the abuse because I didn’t want to believe it. I’m such a hopeless romantic that I wanted things to work, no matter how toxic it was. Throughout the duration of the relationship, I pushed all of my intrusive thoughts to the side. I never wanted to speak up for myself because I feared he would view me as unattractive or I would make the situation worse. Now I know how valuable speaking your mind is in a relationship — being honest and open is powerful, and you should never have to fear speaking your truth. My roommate helped me see what’s right and wrong in a relationship. My experience in the abusive relationship has taught me to value the knowledge I’ve gained, and my current relationship, so much more. I am so grateful for all that I left behind and all that I gained along the way.

Although leaving an emotionally abusive relationship can be extremely daunting, it is imperative in order to move forward. You cannot continue to live through the unnecessary pain inflicted upon you daily. There is so much good out there waiting for you in the world. I find it helpful to look at my experience in an abusive relationship as a lesson that made me into the person I am today. Leaving was draining, but I am so much stronger because of the abuse I endured and the lessons I learned along the way.

I still feel effects of the emotional manipulation on a day-to-day basis, but I can learn from them. When I experience irrational thought patterns, I make sure to take a step back and breathe. I ask myself why I’m experiencing a particular feeling, and what I can take away from it. I’m evolving into a better person every day. I choose to recognize that my experience has allowed me to become a more sensitive, passionate, and caring person.

I plan to continue to transform my pain into motivation to better myself and deepen my love for myself.

Photos (in order of appearance) by Noelle Lucceshi, Shannon Rudd, and Amanda Baker.

Making Peace With A Bad Childhood

For me, childhood was a broken constellation of discontent. I am still trying to piece together the shapes formed by the fragments of my memory. Thoughts come to me in bursts. Every particle of the story swirls around, shifts, changes form. Nothing is stagnant.

Our earliest ideas of love come from the people who raise us. The powerful sensitivity of words, the comfort of touch, the complexity of building a home together — these are things we can only learn through human interaction. Usually, it is our parents who teach us these lessons. And sometimes, what we’re taught gives us a strange conception of love.

My parents weren’t around very much when I was growing up. My mother was finishing her PhD and my father was busy with the family company. Caregivers came and went from my life. I had babysitters, after-school programs, grandparents, etc., etc. I didn’t spend enough time with any of the adults in my life to develop deep attachments.

From the ages of five to six, I wrote notes to my mother, nearly every single day. She has them taped up on the walls of her home office now, half-hidden amidst her piles of academic papers. She didn’t mention them to me for years. When I finally rediscovered my notes half a decade after the time of their composition, my mother told me, with an innocent smile, how much they had meant to her. How they had helped her feeling connected to me even when she wasn’t home.

Part of me is grateful she kept them. More of me is hurt, bitter, confused. If she had the time to decorate, why couldn’t she have said something to me sooner?

My parents used to call me “hugby” when I was a toddler because I liked to hug people so much. This will probably come as a surprise to anyone who knows me today. I am many things, but physically affectionate is not one of them.

I feared touch for a long time. Part of it may be a cultural thing. I grew up in Japan, a country not particularly known for its fondness of physical contact. Then again, I am half-American, westernized, non-traditional. There must be other reasons for why touch feels like a foreign entity to me.

I don’t remember my hugby days. In my earliest memories, my parents and I are already in separate worlds. I fear my father for reasons that will only become clear to me years later. My mother only pays attention to me when I disappear from the room. They do not kiss me goodnight. When they hold my hand, I pull back so hard that I habitually dislocate my arm. If I was born a hugger, what happened to me after?

The first and only time I tried to run away from home, I was seven years old. In my mind, I had it all figured out. I packed a few days’ worth of clothes, all of the money I had, a toothbrush, my DS, a flashlight, and my favorite stuffed animal (an anthropomorphic elephant wearing a plaid jumpsuit, very chic). I would pretend to go to bed 9 p.m., but then rise again at 11 p.m. to make my escape. Where would I head? A nearby tunnel — dingy but sturdy, able to protect me from the elements. I’d read a memoir about homelessness so I knew what I was about.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, counting down the minutes until I could make my way to freedom. As the clock finally struck eleven, I gently peeled off my covers and placed my feet onto the floor. I then tiptoed over to my desk and, as quietly as I could, opened one of the drawers to look for my keys.

“Hey, what are you doing?” A sleepy voice rang out in the darkness. I looked back. My half-brother had been staying in my room for the past few days. Apparently I hadn’t been quiet enough because he was now sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Nothing!” I said in a loud whisper, nearly a shout in the silence of night. I slammed my desk drawer shut and climbed into bed, cursing my unwise choice of day.

Normalcy is ill-defined. We call only what we have experienced “normal.” How many people must experience the same event for it to be considered normal?

I think I was eleven when I realized I had never said the words “I love you” to anyone. The realization came when I heard one of my friends talking to her mother on the phone. The one-sided conversation consisted mostly of uh-huhs and yes/no’s, but a set of words stood out to me.

“I love you too.” With that, my friend promptly hung up the phone. I did not even think to hide my astonishment as I asked her, “What? You just say that? Like, after the end of a call?”

“You mean ‘I love you’?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s nice, you know, to remind each other of that.” Pause. “Don’t you do that with your parents?”

“No, I don’t.” Longer pause. “Is that normal?”

My first girlfriend was much older than me, older than I care to admit now. She kissed me first (my very first kiss), liked kissing me, at times very delicately and at other times like there was nothing else. I only remember kissing back a handful of times. Not because I didn’t like her but because I had learned a while ago that sometimes pulling away gets you more than remaining close. She let me stay over when I was too scared to stay home. I always left before morning so my parents wouldn’t find out.

I was fifteen when I decided that I wanted more of a family. It took hours of convincing myself and several deep breaths, but I managed to walk myself over to the couch where my father was sitting. He was watching a video on his phone, completely oblivious to me.

“Dad,” I said. He kept looking at his phone. “Dad,” I repeated. He waited several more seconds before pausing the video at an opportune point. He looked up, seemingly confused. I understood why. This didn’t usually happen, this whole me-talking-to-him business.

I sat down next to him. “Dad, I’ve been thinking a lot lately and I — well, I don’t feel like we ever really talk. And I’d like that to change. I really would. But I don’t feel like I can.” Deep breath. “So I was wondering if you’d be willing to try therapy. So we could, you know, learn to communicate. And all that.”

My voice sounded too staggered. I bit my tongue as soon as I’d managed to spit out the words I’d planned. My father remained silent too long for my comfort. But in the end, after a sharp inhale through the nostrils, he said, “I’ll think about it.”

An immense weight evaporated off of my chest. I smiled and went to bed happy. The next day when he picked me up from school, my father told me he’d decided that I was full of shit. The words “your feelings don’t matter” were thrown around at some point.

Secrets either divide or they protect. I have yet to figure out which of these statements is correct.

My grandfather died when I was sixteen. On the plane ride to the funeral, my mother finally clarified my past. “I know your dad only says bad things about his father, but his feelings are more complicated than that. Your grandfather was abused by his stepfather so that’s the only way he knew how to act. He didn’t know how to show affection in anything other than material presents, and he didn’t know what to do with himself when he was upset. But he really did love your dad, and I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, but your dad really loved him too. It’s just hard for people like them to express how they feel.”

She said more but I don’t remember. I just kept nodding.

Senior year of high school was the first time I ever heard the words used for me. “I know it can be difficult to live in a household with an emotionally abusive parent, but I want you to remember that it’s not your fault.”

I was sitting in my school counsellor’s office. It was a bright afternoon, too bright for the atmosphere of the room. I didn’t look her in the eyes; I couldn’t. I kept my focus on a spot of sunlight on the wooden coffee table in front of me.

I had opened up to a teacher about my home troubles for the first time. It was the beginning of the school year and I was trying to juggle academics, extracurriculars, college applications, and getting a license. I had to consult my father about my future, which inevitably resulted in tension. The previous night, he had told me to leave the house. Then he apologized a few minutes later. The usual pattern.

The teacher I had spoken to suggested I go see the counsellor, so there I was. It was harder for me to speak than I expected it to be. I’m a writer. Words shouldn’t be difficult for me. And yet.

It made sense once she said it, but I had never really considered myself a victim of abuse. I had made my peace with the fact that I didn’t have the best relationship with my parents, and I had left it at that. I never liked the word “victim.” It takes a certain amount of agency away from the person it refers to — someone that does not perform an action but is performed upon. It is a powerless position, an identity bestowed by others. I never wanted to align myself with such a term.

Just a few weeks before I graduated high school, one of my teachers told me something that has stuck with me. “You’re very emotionally aware for your age, and I think that comes from having to navigate a household you shared with someone who is quite the opposite.”

That one simple sentence turned the tables on the status of my victimhood.

I think that forgiveness is an ongoing process. It’s not about looking at the past, shrugging your shoulders, and going, “Well, that’s that.” It’s an active struggle to redefine how you see your own life. I think my childhood will always be a painful memory, and nothing will ever change that. But there is a reason why I describe this period of my life as a constellation: it is an object of projection and an arguably beautiful thing, because in the end, it is the place from which my strength of character comes.

My idea of love might be more broken than most. This I admit. But I would like to think that I am also more aware of my capacity to change than most. Because I have seen myself grow in the short time that has passed after leaving home for college. Every day I find myself flinching a little less when a friend lays an affectionate hand on my shoulder. Every day I find it easier to say “I love you” to the people I care about. Every day I feel a new sense of tenderness growing in my heart.

I wrestle with the stars each and every day. If they are the ones that spell out my destiny, then I will use every force in my power to move them towards a better future. Luckily for me, nothing in the universe ever stays the same.

Photos by Kaela Smith.

Why You Can’t Get Over Your Ex, According To Science

Ava Answers is a column exploring the science of sex by Ava Mainieri, a PhD student studying women’s health at Harvard University.

We all know that crazy ex-girlfriend. She’s the one used as a punchline at a party because she sent a string of twenty unanswered texts. She’s the one who showed up at his house, a mess of tears, and forced him to rehash the whole breakup. She’s one who proclaims on all social media platforms how happy she is and then two days later calls him to re-profess her love. I don’t need more examples to demonstrate that we live in a society that affirms “bitches be cray.”

If you have ever found yourself obsessing over a breakup, take note: scientists have evidence that your ex-boyfriend can remain part of you long after you toss his toothbrush from your bathroom. This is not some love metaphor, but a biological fact.

During pregnancy, cells from the embryo push their way through the placenta and travel to the mother’s uterus, breast, and brain. As the majority of pregnancies are silent and spontaneous miscarriages, women may have multiple men taking residence in their bodies. Don’t beat yourself up for obsessing over your ex long after the breakup — he’s literally in your brain.

Most women don’t even originally know they’re pregnant. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists speculates that approximately 60% of miscarriages occur within the first three months of pregnancy, and that the majority of women don’t even know it is happening. They might experience a single missed period or a heavier than usual blood flow. These embryos overwhelmingly have an abnormal amount of chromosomes (the instruction manual needed to form a baby) — a problem that happens just by chance, not because of anything the mother did. But even within those first few weeks, tiny parts from the growing ball of cells (a fetus) can escape the uterus and spread through the mother’s body. Scientists call the phenomenon fetal microchimerism, after the Greek mythological animal made up of the head of a goat, body of a lion, and tail of a snake.

These tiny invaders don’t just passively enter the mother’s body. A recent experiment found that fetal cells can be identified in a woman’s body as early four to five weeks into pregnancy. Then, the majority actively migrates to the uterus, breasts, and brain. Though many disappear after a few years, some can stick around in the body up to 27 years after pregnancy. A 2012 study dissected brains of around 60 deceased older women and found Y chromosomes (meaning they came from a male pregnancy) in 63% of them. However, these cells were rare — only making up around 1 in every 1000 cells. But fetal cells that had trekked to the brain, developed into healthy brain tissue and the few that traveled to the heart also became heart tissue.

But it is still unclear if these cells act as a mother’s tiny helper. Fetal cells have been documented to migrate to damaged organs in a woman where they transform into other tissue cells; hinting that their goal may be to mend and repair. Some of these cells are stem cells, which can turn into many types of different tissues. They have been found in wounds, like caesarian scars and thyroid tumors, which hint at their active assistance in healing. Despite that, other researchers argue these foreign bodies are causing more harm than good. They may contribute to autoimmune disorders and inflammatory responses like Graves’ disease and Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Fetal cells may be the culprit to blame in part for higher rates of autoimmunity in women. For example, we have three times higher rates of rheumatoid arthritis than men.

From an evolutionary perspective, it is in the interest of the father to try and manipulate the mother. Because the embryo contains genetic material from both parents, the fetal cells that sneak into the mother’s body get half of their instructions from their father. Each baby’s chance of surviving is directly tied to the amount of resources like blood, sugar, and milk it takes from its mother. Because the man does not know if this will be his only child with a woman, he wants his offspring to receive as much nutrition as possible. Therfore, it’s possible fetal cells could be manipulating their mother to drive up blood flow, milk production, and attention.

Work in my own lab raises the possibility of an even more alluring prospect: fetal cells in the brain may be influencing a woman’s emotions and behavior. Because they are primarily found in the hippocampus of a woman’s brain, we speculate that they might not only influence bonding between a mother and her child, but possibly between a woman and her mate. You shouldn’t really fault yourself for monitoring your ex’s activity on Instagram — it could be his genetic material behind your obsession.

Whether or not the greater scientific community agrees with this hypothesis is moot. What is important is that scientists are finally giving heartbreak and women’s health the attention it deserves. As late as the 1980s, whenever someone did not want to deal with a woman’s emotions or was generally alarmed with her behavior, she was taken to a doctor and diagnosed with hysteria. This “syndrome” acted as a sweeping label for all who felt enraged, depressed, too aroused, not aroused enough, and a slew of other ailments thought to be caused by just being a woman. The word hysteria comes from the Greek ‘hystera’ which means uterus, so the condition of hysteria literally meant the misfortune of being a woman.

The peril with feeling crazy is that it discredits us — when we are in an argument, vying for a promotion, or protesting a Supreme Court Justice nomination. It causes us to explain away our emotions instead of scrutinizing them. In scenarios where our voice needs to be heard, it can put the blame on us rather than someone else’s arguable behavior.

Not only is pathologizing women’s emotions demeaning, but it is also scientifically incorrect.

Second photo by Antonia Adomako.

To The Toxic Men I Have Loved Before

Dear toxic men I have loved before,

It’s not me. It’s you.

I look back and wonder: Why couldn’t I go?

It’s hard to admit that I didn’t want to, but more so that I could never bring myself to do it — to leave you. I valued you far above myself; you were my metric, my tool for self-worth. I stayed and waited. I waited for you to get it, to understand, to finally apologize. I waited for a change. Everyone knew it wouldn’t come, including you and me, and yet I kept hoping. I stayed in the hopes that my beautiful fantasy of you, the one that I had worked so hard to construct, would not prove to be in vain. Doesn’t all that love have to go somewhere?

From the beginning, your small mistakes and lack of consideration went mostly unaddressed. I didn’t want to seem crazy, I didn’t want to seem psycho. As I forced myself to play the Cool Girl™, my expectations of you plummeted while the fantasy grew. What could I do? Boys will be boys.

These signals soon turned into the first time you broke my heart. The second and third and fourth times were more of me breaking my own, unable to accept the truth of how you treated me. At some point it became normal. I started to think that these cycles and uncertainty were merely a byproduct of love or, at least, passion.

The hardest thing to accept was that I believed in a myth of you, not who you actually were. Time and time again you shattered my fantasy of you, time and time again I kept believing. Four years of an emotional roller coaster didn’t seem so bad because I was never taught that love should be a balance; an exchange or compromise based on the needs of two people. I was coming of age surrounded by reports of date-rape on college campuses. I shared the same adolescent development period as mandatory consent programming. The reality I saw not only within our relationship, but also in the world was far from the kind of love I had dreamed of. What I had believed in was Prince Charming — what I found was coerced sex on football bleachers and unsolicited dick pics. Where was the romance in that? I was sold a fantasy, but I got a fallacy.

I heard it all. Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Where do we draw the line between flirtatious teasing and emotional manipulation?

It was these small details that helped to set the bar so low. Careless mistakes: always being late, flaking, forgetting — I get it. You missed my prom photos, didn’t bother to show up on time, or spend the night with me at all. You didn’t realize Valentine’s Day would imply a gift, or even a card. And I brushed it all off. What could I do? Boys will be boys. I let a few initial months of good behavior — basic decency, rather — excuse a downward spiral of gaslighting, hypocrisy, and, later, cold apathy. I would tell you how I felt and you would tell me I was being pushy, holding onto the past, guilt-tripping you. Why was it so hard to believe that I was simply telling you how you made me feel, that the things I shared with you were simply the consequences of your actions? Did how I feel really hold that little importance to you, or did you just habitually obfuscate your own blame?

Worst of all, if I left, I would have had to admit that I didn’t need you.

I couldn’t admit this because I didn’t believe it, and you loved it. You loved being needed — my savior, my hero, my landing pad. You thrived on always being the one to cut me down and build me back up. My pain, your toy, something you may never understand. These are our standards: Boys who tease you like you. He’s being mean because he has a crush on you. Boys will be boys. He’s never laid a hand on me. He’d never hit me. At least he’s never cheated. Why didn’t I go? The list goes on.

My first introduction to love revolved around a rationalizing of partnership as something healthy so long as there was an absence of bruises. A relationship that didn’t start with sending nudes on Snapchat seemed above average. Like those things could suffice. As long as it never got physical, as long as you weren’t predatory, you could be my Prince Charming.

Yet, you rarely, if ever, apologized for the emotional scars. You justified, rationalized, and explained — but so few “sorry”s. And, of course, the emotional abuse wasn’t abuse to you, it was logic. My reactions were some kind of variable to plug into your calculations of how to treat me. I adored you and you knew it. I knew it. I waited and waited for the feeling to leave, but it stayed, only fading, painfully slowly. It still oscillates between a strange feeling of indebtedness and a tragic sense of missing you, missing what I know I shouldn’t.

Now, I can see the absence of your empathy. I gave and gave and gave, showed you what I needed. I bent over backwards to try to love you in your language, when you never bothered to learn mine.

Now, I talk to friends and people around me who find themselves continuously loving the people that break them. I’ve begun to realize it’s much bigger than me or you. The way we are raised designates categories: those who will dominate and those who will compromise, those who will strategize and those who will empathize. I learned to equate someone, especially a man, gifting me attention or basic respect, to true love. But what about true partnership? Not just love or fantasy, but a partnership. As in a teammate, someone who is willing to have tough conversations, compromise, and collaborate.

I and so many others have had to pull ourselves out of broken, unhealthy love simply to say: I cannot stay. You are not my hero. I do not need you, and you do not deserve me. What hurts most is knowing that it will take so much emotional reflection, time, and help to actually believe that. It’s one thing to leave, it’s another to believe in my own worth. That’s the hardest part.

For the last time,

Photos by Alexia Garza Gomez.

Millennial Heartbreak

What did our parents do?

Being a twenty-something in a digital age where information is widespread and communication is instant, this is a question I repeatedly find myself asking.

With the global explosion of smartphones and digitized, well — everything, it’s no surprise that our social lives have followed a similar norm of impulsivity, convenience, and temptation to document for the sake of a favorable image.

Social media platforms have become branches upon which users can extend themselves into a world that expands beyond immediate proximity. Every experience, friendship, and relationship is documented so that not only those involved can experience it, but one can share their experiences with their digital circle.

I bring up this question of “What did our parents do?” most often in the context of heartbreak.

Heartbreak comes in many forms and none of it feels good. Whether it be a dramatic split or a peaceful departure, heartbreak is something that attacks every aspect of our egos and rattles what our lives looked before. Although breakups and broken hearts are nothing new, this disturbance of ego presents a problematic clash for our digital selves.

A breakup is something that used to be a painful moment in time. But now it’s something to be reminded of, edited, and readjusted for the public. By using platforms that publicly share personal interests and activities, we subject ourselves not only to the initial pain of a breakup, but to the small kicks to the heart that follow us thereafter.

There’s the moment you realize your ex unfollowed you on Instagram. Kick.

The moment you see that they like and/or follow a new, attractive person. Huge kick.

The moment you feared the most, when they post a photo with someone — not you —to show the world that they have moved on. Not only does this kick you in the heart, it can cause a total relapse that digs up and un-stitches whatever progress you’ve made with the initial wound, one that’s said to only heal with time.

So that is the problem: time.

As millennials we participate in not just one, but two relative time zones. We subject ourselves to a type of pain that was not nearly as accessible or even imaginable to our parents. Think of it this way — you’re here, in real time. You take a break from real time to scroll through Instagram. You see something upsetting and you are no longer in real time, but in a time that has backtracked. Suddenly you are lost in a different space, one that makes you feel like you’ve regressed more than you’ve progressed. Before you know it, you’ve lost minutes, maybe, if whatever you saw was triggering enough, you lose your whole day.

And here’s another problem: the only thing that makes it better is proving to everyone else that time wasn’t actually spent obsessing over what they posted.

So you, in turn, post a story to show that you’re out, having a good time. Or post a photo to show you got a new outfit, met a new friend. And this makes us feel better only momentarily as we feel validated in our willfulness to “move on” and “have fun,” but doesn’t acknowledge the root of the very unique sadness that comes from looking at photos or content that is painful to our hearts.

We need more love, not “likes.” This different time zone that exists within social media is not a satisfying alternative to real time, and often takes time away from actually thinking or feeling and gives to posting and showing.

The overwhelming sadness and loss that accompanies a broken heart is something as old as humans themselves. Evidenced from Homer to Tolstoy to every pair of eyes sunk in a phone, heartbreak is an inexplicable feeling that continues to be both profound and unbearable. It is an inevitable aspect of what it means to love someone who is only part of your story, not all of it.

So, what did our parents do?

Not this. They felt the same things, but they experienced sadness in real time and didn’t split it with this virtual time zone. There is something powerful in embracing a certain kind of melancholy head on, with full force, rather than numb it with temporary fixes.

Your ex unfollowed you? That doesn’t mean they will forget you.

They posted a picture with their new significant other? That doesn’t mean you were nothing.

With so many different mediums to check in on those who have left our lives, it can be difficult to keep our heads clear of self-doubt and false valuing of every relationship. It goes without saying that this new layer of heartbreak is somewhat unavoidable as our social lives continue to be even more intertwined with technology. I’m the first to say that I have fully appreciated and engaged in the ways social media has allowed me to share, connect, and reflect. I recognize both the beneficial and harmful assets of living in two time zones, but what I mostly realized is the importance of putting my real time and my real self first — not my Instagram self. I have vowed to listen to my heart and what I need in every moment before being quick to show the world that I’m doing #great.

I vow to tend to my heart with care and consideration to what it needs before falling deeper into a time zone that not only doesn’t exist, but doesn’t love back.

First two photos by Maria del Carmen and the following two by Jairo Granados.

I Don’t Forgive You And I Don’t Have To

I have dated enough toxic men to know that I am sick of being forgiving.

Forgiveness within a relationship is not a necessity, despite what we have been led to believe. It’s hard to know what emotional abuse looks like, but you know what it feels like. There is a pattern of sweeping emotional abuse under the rug because there aren’t the same bruises you can show as when someone throws you around. But abuse isn’t quantifiable and sometimes healing takes a lifetime.

After my second round in a budding romance that quickly turned sour, I was paralyzed by what that meant about myself. I wondered why it was so difficult to love me. I eventually realized I wasn’t undeserving of love; my partner was undeserving of me. Your partner isn’t allowed to project pain onto you because they are hurting. There are some who do and some of us put up with anything in the name of unconditional love — and I am absolutely guilty as charged. Now I have a strictly enforced policy of kicking toxic people out of my life for good.

* * *

You are not allowed to body-shame me as some sick grasp for control in our relationship.

My partner would constantly compare every inch of my body to other women. My eyes, my ass, my lips, and the excessive softness of my belly were all subject to falling just short of his fantasy of what I should look like for him. Years later, I am still recovering from the injuries to my body image, something that might never heal to what it once was, but that is okay. What isn’t okay is a pattern of violent slut-shaming and body-shaming that is a product of someone else’s own sexual insecurities. The way in which my body was fragmented and scrutinized discouraged me from feeling like I had any possession of my own body. Not only is it harmful in the micro-romantic settings of your partnerships, but it also a perpetuated competition against other women, insisting that you exist within an hierarchy of arbitrary desirability. But I do not want to live within those confines and if your partners are adamant in assuming control over your body, I promise you that their version of love is one you can thrive without.

You are not allowed to define me by my sexual experiences or impose your unfortunate sense of purity onto me.

Looking back, it seems like the most obvious display of subtle misogyny from my partner was how threatened he felt by my sexual experiences and his lack thereof. The interactions that made me feel liberated disgusted him. I’ve been called “nasty” and “gross” and a plethora of other unsavory and juvenile insults. His disgust transparently exhibited the truth of his fears, fear that I knew more about my own body than he ever would about his. But it is not my problem or my duty to absolve men of their tendency to exemplify just how fragile their masculinity is.

You are not allowed to use me as an emotional punching bag, let alone lay your hands on my body as an exercise of your falsely imagined dominance.

As complicated as relationships are, everyone has their threshold. All I think about after my partners have hit me, kicked me in my stomach, and tortured me mercilessly is how much better I am than them. They will never know what it’s like to love themselves. After years of healing, my most ingenious approach has been to realize that they do not deserve my forgiveness. I do not have to make amends with anyone but myself and it is completely valid for me to come to terms with the fact that there are experiences I’m not required to get over, and there are individuals who do not deserve anything but a big, wet, and juicy “fuck you” forever.

* * *

You are allowed to be enraged that your partners have hurt you, you are allowed to hold your partners accountable. You are allowed redefine what it means to heal.

Photos by Alisha Hofkens.

When Your Parents Don’t Love Each Other

The following may be triggering to those affected by domestic violence.

When my mother was my age, she was engaged to my father.

At 18 years old, she was set to marry a man twenty years her senior. Arranged marriages in the Indian community are a commodity, brought upon by circumstance — or necessity. Before getting married, my father sent sweet introductory letters to my mother, which changed after they flew to Los Angeles together from Fiji. This was the closest my parents would ever get to loving each other. All of a sudden, my mother was stripped of the right to talk to her family and go outside. He was afraid she would cheat on him or find someone else. She was oftentimes locked in a tiny, suffocating apartment, homesick with no one to turn to.

My mother was subject to his berating tantrums and his intense physicality, which often culminated in visits from police officers. By the time I was five, I had cultivated an indifference towards the hurtful occurrences in my home. Violence had become so normalized in my household, that I couldn’t even imagine home without it. The first time I saw my mother struck by him, I meekly stood there. To this day, I still do the same.

I love my father with all my heart, which hurts to say, but I have an internalized fear of him that I will never be able to shake off. The look he gets in his eyes when he raises his voice and edges closer to raising his hand at me or my mother makes me flinch every time. It’s the reason why I jolt whenever someone tries to high-five me or why I am so stiff when they lean in for a hug.

The sorrow in my mother’s eyes, the accumulation of bruises, and her hushed sobs into her pillow eventually translated into deep periods of depression and bouts of anxiety. My father undeniably became my mother’s trigger and later became mine. We found ourselves finding solace in our prescription drugs; Xanax and Ativan became crutches. Whether it was deliberately spending hours at a time at a park to avoid him, or making sure the house was spotless, there was no denying the treatment that was to come.

I’ve tried to attribute my father’s behaviors to the undermining of women perpetuated by various Bollywood films and Hindu customs. Despite having a myriad of goddesses, who portray femininity as divine, women are seen as the dregs of Indian society. Is the learned, general lack of respect for women the cause of his violence? Or is it his upbringing he never mentions? Pinpointing the root of this is hard to determine, but I realized that the patterns that entail abuse are essentially the same. The systematic dehumanization that comes with it starts slowly, beginning with controlling the person’s every move as a “protective” pretense, keeping tabs on the person, not allowing them to see certain people or do certain things, which cripples them so they’re essentially bound and limited. My mother wishes she could have left my father, but divorces in the Indian community were frowned upon then, and doing so would’ve tarnish her family’s reputation by labeling my mother as a failed housewife. She also had my little sister and me. She didn’t have the heart to leave us with him, knowing that he’d make it so she would never see us again if she did leave.

My mother can’t hold a job because of her mental illnesses, and my father uses it as a means of blackmail. He uses it to show her she has no financial security without him. What’s important to realize is that abusers diminish the meaning of individuality and independence in the process….

Surpassing abusers means recognizing the signs early on and distancing yourself.

All photos by Jess Farran.

She Sold Sex To Raise Money For A Flight to Prague

The interviewee’s name has been changed for safety purposes.

This past year, Anaïs traveled around Europe during her study abroad experience in France. Along the way, she met a boy in Prague with whom she instantly connected. Throughout her study abroad experience, Anaïs realized she needed money to get by, as being a nanny and tutoring were not supplying her with a livable wage. After she met a boy during her spring break trip to Prague, she realized not only was she desperate for money but she was desperate to make enough of it for a flight to see him.

While searching through Craigslist for available jobs in France, Anaïs came across what she called the “freaky deaky” side of Craigslist.

She came across the fetish posts, the “seeking young girls” ads, and everything along the lines of what might make some people uncomfortable. But Anaïs was intrigued. She wanted to learn more. According to Anaïs, she never had the intentions of selling her body for sex, but when she began contacting the men out of pure curiosity, everything became a reality. This is when she realized she could use her sexuality to her advantage.

I interviewed Anaïs about her experience as a temporary sex worker in a foreign country.

How did you meet this love interest?

A: We met at the park and exchanged names — not Instagram handles or phone numbers, just names. We hugged, talked, and even just sat in silence from, like 2 a.m. to 5 a.m., and I became consumed in him. He never left my mind for the next few weeks, so I came to [a] realization after this entire encounter that changed the way I felt about my current relationships.

How did you go about finding men to pay you for sexual performance?

I replied to the emails asking what the rates were, looking into what space they took place in, and I asked all the details before going into anything. I was strict and straightforward, I wanted to scare them off and act like I knew what I was doing, even though I had no idea. I told them we had to meet in a public space and told them my roommate would be in the area to watch — which was a lie, she wasn’t there. I just wanted to help their fantasies come true only to the extent of my own comfort.

Why do you think this intrigued you? Finding men online searching for someone to fulfill their fetishes?

It didn’t freak me out, it allured me. It made me interested because I always felt rather comfortable and pretty autonomous and free with my body. Weird things like stuff with toes, massaging, anything with money offers influenced me to move further. I cancelled out the ones that were scams, but a lot of them were real. I wanted to see what I felt comfortable with and what I didn’t. I wanted to explore that realm, and what better way to do it then while abroad in Europe?

Tell me about your first client.

We met at a cafe and he explained to me that he had a family but he comes to Paris four days a week for business. He was in his mid-forties, he had a fantasy and wanted to fulfill it for a long time. His fantasy was to simply be with a young girl, just to be a sugar daddy. It turned him on to pay a young girl for sex.

How did you feel after all of it happened?

It was very… factual… a that happened type of thought. Not exciting or unexciting, interesting or uninteresting, wasn’t boring nor was it fun. It just happened. And, um, so then in the morning, he left for work and I slept in. He left 120 euros on the table for me, and that was my first time getting paid for sex. I sat on the chair and smoked, and I was like hmm… yep, that happened. I just reflected on myself. One of the most interesting parts about it all was that I have never felt such non-existent shame. I felt no shame. No guilt at all. No regret. Nothing.

How was this different than just casual sex with maybe someone your age or someone who isn’t paying you?

With my casual sex relationships, the bar was so low because I had sex with these guys despite the fact that they did not drive me crazy. They were not interesting to talk to and the sex wasn’t even that good. Out of the 10 people I casually slept with, I would only sleep with 2 [again]. All of those [bad] qualities… but I still allowed them to have sex with me.

I was having sex for myself, right? But I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I didn’t like them as a person, and they didn’t please me sexually. I say I was doing it for myself, but I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I got nothing in return — not pleasure, not good conversation. It took me awhile of [having casual sex] to realize it was not what I wanted to do. What made this sexual experience so different was that I was not doing it for pleasure or fun, I was doing it for money. It was a job, not for fun. There was a desired outcome, which was money. My goal was getting money and I fulfilled it.

Did sex work change your perception of casual sex?

Girls do it all the time for free [casual sex], but are they getting pleasure out of it? Is it really worth it — what you’re getting out of it compared to what you’re giving? When you put a dollar sign next to it, it’s a different playing field. It’s no longer about your pleasure or time, it’s a clear goal. It’s just a job and it’s so simple.

What else did you do, maybe besides intercourse, while doing this work in Europe?

One other guy was a one-time thing. After giving him the lowdown about meeting in public and stuff I got his fantasy out of him. He made me comfortable and showed me the local police station by his apartment. His fantasy was to just be a watcher. His fantasy was to just look and not be able to touch — that is what got him going. I was in his apartment for an hour walking around, undressing myself. He was very polite, and he was not allowed to touch me. I made 50 euros, and he walked me to the metro after.

You mentioned confidence to me, when discussing this experience, how did sex work improve or possibly damage your confidence, if it did at all?

It was such a new experience and it was interesting because I got to learn about myself. What types of settings did my confidence come out? I could tell when I was shy in situations and when I was confident. When I left their place, I felt confident. It was a fun experience. I never got shy, my confidence came out. It was fun to test it out, you never know how you’ll react until you’re in the situation.

Did you have to put on a “game face” before going into it? Were you your authentic self or more so an actress in these situations?

Yeah, I definitely felt like I was acting. With the one guy that I slept with regularly, because I was not attracted to him — not sexually, not physically — I completely stripped the situation of everything besides seeing it as a job. I was not overly comfortable, but I was not uncomfortable. Before I met with him, I would play loud music and smoke a cigarette, and I called that “getting into actress mode.”

I felt like I was acting, it was like I got to play a certain part. This isn’t my everyday life, I got to play this part with him. I was not necessarily enjoying the sex, any of the times, I just wanted it to be over. I over exaggerated it, and as long as I was comfortable, I was fine.

How did you feel when you finally made enough money to book a train ticket to Prague, to reunite with your love interest?

I had my drawer that I put the money in, and when I got enough money for the plane ticket, I just looked at it like, There it fucking is, there is my plane ticket money.

Would you ever tell him [the love interest] about how you made up enough money to see him?

I think about telling him, I wonder how he would react if I told him that I did this to see him. If we got married, 20 years from now, I would totally tell him.

You said it’s been about five months since you’ve seen him, do you want to see him again? Would you ever sell sex again to do it?

Now that I know that we do have a certain connection, it just interests me to pursue it. So I would like to see him again, and he would love to come to America, because it’s so different. I’d love to show it to him. He elicited this part of me that, um, just makes me hopeful. In a lot of my past relationships I felt worn out, depleted, stripped down — not that they meant to but it’s just how the relationship went.

He does the total opposite, he makes me feel like I have qualities that I don’t even feel like I have. He just makes me hopeful about a bunch of things. The fact that him and I could fall in love — I don’t know — be together. [Makes me feel] just, like excited, interested, and hopeful. I can honestly say that the adjective “hopeful” has never [applied to] my past relationships, I could have never used it in those. But it’s one that fits here. So I want to be aware of that and I don’t want to forget that it was special. I don’t want to think that special things are special when I am tired and worn out, how cynical and sad to not give special things their special credit. It’s so beautiful when things are special.

So about the sex work, would you do it again to see him?

I think that I would sell sex again if all the conditions were met, and I felt comfortable. I think that I would just because I know that I can, and I would be open to another experience. However, I wouldn’t want to do it too much. I wouldn’t want to have a strict relationship that happened all the time based on that, because I do think sex can be very special and it’s fragile.

I, right now, can bend it and make it about a job and about money but it’s really fragile because if you bend it too much then it’ll break. I don’t want to use sex only and attach such a heavy sole meaning of money to it that [I] start to not be able to put the other [romantic] qualities to it. That petrifies me.

How do you feel now, months and months later?

I don’t bring it up casually because it’s my private life, but I don’t feel ashamed to say [I participated in sex work] if I’m talking to a girlfriend about it. I would never want my parents to find out, but I don’t feel ashamed about that part of me. I felt this power here, because I did not have power before. It makes sense, in all of the casual sex I had before and relationships I had before, I did not feel right. In here, I controlled everything. How much I made, what time we met, I got to pick how I acted. It’s so much easier when you attach it to this other persona. It’s like, Wow, I can create all of this.

Were you ever paranoid or scared of anything bad happening to you? I know you are French and fluent in the language, but as an American girl in another country, weren’t you frightened to do any of this?

I think that I was naive because I told myself, “Okay, if I make it clear that we meet in a public place, I’ll be safe.” I get paranoid over the dumbest things, but I never got paranoid over this when it totally could’ve gone wrong.

Would you ever do this in your hometown [in the Midwestern USA]?

I think it might’ve been the fact that I was in France that I did it. It had this weird facade, fake idea of a blanket of comfort and safety that was imaginary. It was a different country, it was so easy to act like I don’t rationally do. I don’t know if I would do it where I live now, I’d have to go looking for it. And if it came to me I wouldn’t trust it, so the perfect balance happened in France.

All photos by Luo Yang.

Does Erasing Cyber Reality Erase Our Actual Reality?

I had come to expect many things through the year of my breakup. I expected to cry deeply and often, to blacklist certain songs, and to send flurries of problematic “I miss you” texts to my ex. I’m a Leo sun with a Scorpio moon — sue me.

I expected certain milestones to hurt, like the first time I saw him move on to somebody new or when a birthday passed and we didn’t spend it together. What I never expected was the intense pang of sadness I felt when I saw my ex had deleted photos of me from his Instagram feed. A strange ache reverberated through my body for days.

It seems pretty insane to type out, but the pain of this realization was sharp in a way I couldn’t liken to any other feeling I’d felt over the course of my heartbreak. First, he deleted a photo he had posted of me just a few months before we broke up. The moment I saw this was one of the first times I felt sure about our new future: it wasn’t going to magically work out when we saw each other again. Naturally, I cried for two days.

Several months later, after we’d met up again, I scrolled through his feed and saw that he had deleted another picture of me, a rather ambiguous one where he’d shot me from afar, standing in front of a building in Gothenburg where we were visiting briefly. Why delete this picture? What about it was so compelling, so telling of our relationship, that he had to delete it? The act of deleting felt so aggressive, somehow — so obnoxiously purposeful.

I hadn’t deleted my photos of him. I still haven’t. Does that mean I’m holding on to something that I can’t let go? I don’t think so.

I think social media provides us with this peculiar way of storytelling, and perhaps it’s narcissistic, but the story is our own. I want to one day be able to look back at those odd little squares and read their stories of a time when I was 19 and 20 and 21 and in love for the first time. They hold deep connections to a memory, but they don’t necessarily signal a longing for a person. At least not for me.

Something about the mourning of deleted pictures feels like a parody of our times. It’s impossible to imagine this scenario outside of a modern, digital context. In a time when online and offline lives are rich enough to be distinguished from each other, the act of removing little pieces of evidence from this online space feels particularly jarring. A deleted photo translates into something much deeper in meaning, to the deletion of proof of our existence together.

I’d always tried to hold myself to the doctrine that one day, after the hurt had softened, I’d be able to look back on photos and relive the memories with gratitude. That I’d be able to see the soft things, the beautiful and happy things, not only the sad. Photos are potent in that way, and I hoped (and still do) to feel neither removed from this person nor bound to him. I hoped to just feel grateful, and it hurt me to think that he didn’t feel the same. That he wanted to cut me out of his memory — even if just on social media.

Recently, my ex posted some pictures of him and his new girlfriend. I didn’t feel sad when I saw them. Maybe I felt a bit vexed, seeing that he’d moved on so quickly (Leo sun, Scorpio moon, remember?), but those photos ultimately meant nothing to me. I’d made it through the worst of my heartbreak and I was alive. I was okay. Seeing him with someone new didn’t hurt me like I once thought it would. And it certainly didn’t hurt as much as his deletion of our cyber reality together — proof that we once existed in the same physical reality together as well.

First photo by Leo Chang and the remainder by Karen Rosetzsky.

I’m Not Broken

The following may be triggering to those who’ve been affected by abuse.

“I know exactly how to give you a panic attack,” he said nonchalantly as I began to hyperventilate.

My head shot up as I handed his phone to him, vision blurred from the mascara streaming down my face. My head was throbbing uncontrollably from sobbing so much. That night, I found out he was cheating on me with the same girl he had before, and, in a frenzied rage, I took his phone to find the messages they had been sending each other. Every sweet nothing he had uttered to me lost all meaning as I scrolled through a plethora of overused lines. The person in front of me once wanted to be my forever, now he wanted nothing to do with me.

Even though I could feel my heart breaking, I still wanted him. I needed him. He had been there through some of the darkest moments of my life, and I was certain my life without him would be a bleak existence. Maybe I could give him another chance. He was my everything. No matter how many times he hung up the phone while I was having a panic attack or told me my depression was an inconvenience, he was still there for me eventually and that’s real love… right?

Instead, I spent the better half of that year trying to pick myself up and move on with my life. I had lost all interest in anything that could make me remotely happy: everything was tainted. The song that once sweetly reminded me of him was stripped of its sentiment, replaced with a harrowing sense of numbness. The beach we frequented was now a cesspool of heart-wrenching memories. Now and then I’d torture myself by scrolling through pictures of us, recounting our relationships timeline. I knew we weren’t the same. I knew he had changed. I blamed myself and my mental health for driving him away. But I was certain, with every fiber of my being, that he would come back to me.

After months of crying my eyes out until exhaustion put me to sleep, I suddenly stopped thinking about him. Instead, I would wake up, look at my phone, and not desperately hope his name popped up on my screen. I felt a new sense of purpose. I wasn’t the same girl who had sobbed loudly enough to muffle the sound of passing cars on that fateful Friday night. I believed that part of my life had been erased and I was starting over.

Five months later, I was in the corner of my current boyfriend’s apartment curled up in fetal position, unable to cease my uncontrollable sobs. My mind had decided it was time to unleash the traumatic memories of my two-year relationship. Flashbacks played in my head like a scary movie you can’t stop watching no matter how terrified you are. I remembered his verbal, emotional, and mental abuse. I remembered how much he talked down to me and how worthless I felt. I felt a variety of mixed emotions, including pain, guilt, and shame. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that I let it go on for so long. I wanted to take a shower to scrub off the layer of disgust that consumed my body.

Here I was, finally happy with someone that truly and wholeheartedly cared about me — so why did this have to happen now?

That’s the thing about trauma, it stores itself in the back of your brain so you can endure the pain, giving no warning before re-entering your consciousness. My ex knew exactly what he was doing. He made me his puppet, toyed with my emotions, made me a lovestruck mess, then callously cut my strings.

Abusive individuals figure out a person’s weakness or what makes them vulnerable and then use it to their advantage. They’re extremely power-hungry, indulging in controlling the person they’re with. I know firsthand that being with an abusive person can significantly deteriorate your mental health. Your significant other should never be the reason that you’re depressed, that you’re coaxed into a panic attack, or that you feel somehow subhuman. It might take you some time to finally see that person for what they truly are, and that doesn’t make you naive and it most certainly does not make you weak. It’s easier said than done, but it’s up to you to keep that person out of your life. You and your mental health should always come first.

It may have taken over a year, but I’ve finally learned how to take the power back. And by that I mean, I’ve managed to accept that part of my life and not let it define me. You have so much life left; one toxic person shouldn’t be the reason you don’t get to truly live it.

Granted, getting to this point wasn’t easy. I still have days where I’m triggered by certain places, words, feelings, and things that send me back into that warped sense of thinking. I become depressed, riddled with regret. He recently tried to follow me again on Instagram and although I felt a brief moment of paralyzing fear, I made the decision to block him.

Toxic people don’t deserve a place in your life. Take solace in knowing that you never have to fix yourself. You don’t have to put the “pieces back together” — you were never broken. No one, regardless of who they are, has the power to do that. All of you is still there, it always will be, you just have to see it again.

All photos by Chad Moore.