The Doe’s Latest Stories

Criticizing Facebook is an easy game, fashionable for leftist Twitterati and red-state legislators alike. Never has there been an anti-Facebook article that didn’t have an eager audience waiting to click and retweet it on the other side. It’s an equal opportunity Rorschach punching bag. Of course, it must be acknowledged that Zuckerberg and company have brought much of this upon themselves: carpetbagging the entire 2016 election in favor of Trump, openly fostering foreign influence on the platform, selling its users’ data to the highest bidder, implementing a ruthless attention-extraction architecture at all costs and sowing the ground for conspiracy and institutional distrust—all while remaining seemingly indifferent to the online abuse, teenage bullying and mental health impact it fosters. They also take what appears to be a pretty laissez-faire approach to white supremacist movements and homegrown terrorist networks.FB’s sins as a company are many, and consequently, it has become the platform everyone loves to hate. I myself was a proud, card-carrying member of that group for a long time. That is, until recently. After the 2016 election, I, like many others, was furious with Facebook. I felt Zuckerberg had betrayed the public trust and sold America out. He was all too eager to let foreign actors through our electoral front door as long as they had dollars in hand—or in this case, rubles. Judging by internal leaks and external public statements, Zuck seemed oblivious and indifferent to the impacts that his network was having on functioning democracies everywhere. But while my anger at Zuck felt righteous and deserved, I also wanted to understand what could be done about it. I felt uniquely positioned to understand the problem. I had an extensive background in postmodernism, deconstructionism and Sovietology. As an undergrad, I studied philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and evolutionary psychology. I spent time in Eastern Europe interning and working for NGOs combating Soviet influence campaigns against pro-democratic politicians and movements. And I have run a successful production company crossing psychometric data with storytelling techniques using neuroscience frameworks to maximize audience impact and content virality. Countries earmark budgets to combat and secure these types of networks so it is, as a general rule of thumb, foolish to think one person can wrap their head around the entirety of it. Understanding these platforms, and their problems, requires both an incredibly generalized foundational knowledge and intense specialization. With that in mind, I spent the last four years making this my obsession. I talked to as many experts on the subject as I could. I annoyed former and current FB employees to give me their takes. I dove deep into game-theoretical models, complexity theory and memetic transmission. I wrote papers on meme/gene coevolution and how social media platforms mirror biological ecosystems. I read all the Facebook hit pieces and disgruntled takedowns while also suffering through the puff pieces and the self-congratulatory autobiographies. And with the help of other experts, I developed the rough outskirts of what a healthier social media network could look like if implemented at scale. And at the end of that journey, I have netted out as cynically sympathetic towards Facebook. I now see that many of the criticisms levied against the tech giant are laced with the same naivete that we were—and still are—so right to skewer Zuckerberg for having in the first place. I’m not trying to defend Facebook per se, but to push back on Hollywood celebrities and public intellectuals who righteously and errantly are calling for Facebook’s dismantling. It’s an effort to highlight how complicated and dangerous of a world we now find ourselves in, with respect to social media, and how removing Facebook from the equation does little to make that world any less complicated and dangerous. In fact, it could very likely make it worse.

After the 2016 election, I, like many others, was furious with Facebook.

Tik-Tok vs. the Devil You Know

It surprises me that for all the liberal epithets levied at Facebook over the past four years, TikTok’s meteoric rise to social media rock star status by the intellectual class has been viewed as almost a quaint afterthought instead of what it really is: a national security threat.TikTok has shown us that social media monopolies are not nearly as robust and resilient as we pretend they are. To equate Facebook to Amazon and Apple is to misjudge market monopolies entirely. In the social media world, all it takes is a million teenagers egged on by a few celebrity pop stars to start a new party on a different, newer platform, and bring the lion’s share of future generations’ social exchanges with it. Any notions that assume this newer, sexier social platform will somehow behave more “ethically” are not tethered to any sort of realistic political or economic reality. We saw this play out compellingly with Google’s forays into China. They learned firsthand you either play by Beijing’s censorship rules or they will copy your tech, scale faster with a larger user base and take market share away either way. Google saw the writing on the wall and ultimately acquiesced to China, adding a bit of an Orwellian flavor to their old "don’t be evil” mantra. For as much as it is difficult to parse the intelligence and folly behind any Trump administration foreign policy directive (the “broken clock is right twice a day” doctrine), the initial intention to push back against TikTok’s gatekeepers is mostly the right one. Psychometric user data is the oil of the 21st century, with national security implications that lay far beyond the scope of what brand of jeans you like to buy online. And unlike most natural resources for which geography is the focal point for political conflict, personal data as a “precious mineral” is perpetually up for grabs in an explicitly non-geographic cyberspace. Right now it’s free for the taking by any kleptocratic or authoritarian regime with enough data scientists and engineers to pull the strings behind the scenes—no tanks and troops needed. The key point here being that it’s not what these companies and governments can do with your data today, but rather what they will be able to do with it tomorrow. And while Facebook’s ethical posture leaves much to be desired, their speech policy is largely mirrored after a U.S. constitutional interpretation of free speech. It’s still largely run by employees who don’t seem particularly eager to have history blame them for the downfall of liberal democracies. And as a company, it’s still largely beholden to American legislators, who, if they can get their act together, might be able to apply just the right kind of soft legislative pressure that brings about healthy reforms to the platform. So for as callously and flippantly as Zuckerberg has responded to justified public critique, it should be acknowledged that he is even responding at all. This is more than could be said for a TikTok or Huawei, whose data-extraction has a particular CCP flair to it. The irony then should not be lost on any of us that at the same time that Facebook has publicly committed to taking down QAnon groups, banning Holocaust deniers and outlawing anti-vaccine advertising, China is using their data-capture capabilities to round up Uighur Muslims into concentration camps and arrest Hong Kong pro-democracy dissidents for daring to speak even a single ill word against the Party. And this is the point of the "Devil You Know" game. The political distance between publicly traded companies and the government inside of the U.S. is typically defined by hostility, distance and stubborn reluctance. (See: Tim Cook planting his feet in the ground on user privacy vs. U.S. law enforcement). Conversely, in places like China and Russia, the lines drawn between business and government are superficial distinctions without a difference. When it comes to data collection, the consequences of those disparities couldn’t be starker. There is a global digital cold war being played out here, blending the lines between geopolitical soft-power games and legitimate nation-state spying. Judging by the blistering speed in which we brought TikTok into our homes, most Americans seem content to sleepwalk their way through it. We would be wise to pause then before throwing out Facebook in lieu of the shiny new thing, especially when that thing has a "Made in China" sticker on the back.

And so the first question we should be asking ourselves is what happens when you take out the cartel heads?

Social Media Giants Are Drug Cartels

Liberal democracies depend on consensus-making to function. Consensus-making that is predicated upon a shared set of starting points before compromising on idealized endpoints. Those starting points are forged out of some agreement about a set of reality approximations, or what we might call “news.” If you can’t agree that up is up and down is down and two plus two equals four, then the idea of “compromise” as a political goal becomes irrelevant.Right now, those reality approximations are constrained to three marketplaces: FB (including Instagram), Snap and Twitter, all of them acting as de facto drug cartels. They deliver a product in high demand. Each of the cartels is eager to take the rival cartel’s market share if the opportunity arises. The demand curve for their products is now fixed, the country is addicted to social media, and while we figure out how to wean ourselves off this digital drug, our attention has turned to the supply side of things. And so the first question we should be asking ourselves is what happens when you take out the cartel heads? If we use Mexico and Colombia and the war on drugs as analogs, what invariably happens is that rival gangs move in. Sectarian violence ensues. Territory battles spiral out of control. You have power vacuums where chaos and instability are the order of the day. (See also: Iraq, Libya, Egypt, ISIS, etc.) Now imagine instead of drugs being sold, it’s the stock exchange for where reality approximations are traded, the ecosystem that gives life to those starting points that liberal democracies converge upon. A fracturing of the cartel heads could very well increase the epistemic divide between dissenting parties. The ensuing power vacuum and proliferation of mini “cartels” may only increase volatility and chaos in the system instead of mitigating it. If liberal democracies depend on a sense of shared reality in order to function, it is not hyperbole to assume that a hundred different Facebooks in the system would only increase our collective political and ideological divides, not heal them. If this sounds all a bit theoretical and esoteric, try to envision a world where Call of Duty players, Manchester United soccer fans and Hello Kitty collectors all get their own separate news specially tailored for them. News aggregated not on a single platform (FB), but on individual platforms that never cross paths with each other, and whose only goal is to serve their users “news” that keeps them coming back to their portals. You do not need a political science Ph.D. to venture a guess as to where this all leads.

Facebook Isn’t Democracy (and That’s a Good Thing)

Churchill is famous for remarking, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.” At heart, this is an argument about an often overlooked feature of systems design known as path-constraints. The idea that the success of a designed system has more to do with economic forces, biological constraints and the laws of physics than the execution or application of the idea itself. Said another way: There are a lot of ways to build a rocket ship that crashes and a very limited number of ways to build one that goes to the moon. The point here is that the biggest structural problems that social media pose to liberal democracies really don’t have anything to do with the uniqueness of Facebook per se, but rather are germane to all social media platforms, everywhere. The reality is that any other platform that steps into the void following Facebook’s demise is likely to encounter the same big picture meta-problems that Facebook is already struggling with currently. Reddit and Twitter have arguably navigated these waters in a more ethical way, but the problems are no less glaring and their solutions are no more elegant.There is little doubt that had MySpace, instead of FB, risen to global dominance, we would be having similar conversations about MySpace’s platform inadequacies. Fear, outrage and sensationalism sell. All of the platforms require turnover and engagement to stay profitable. These path constraints suggest that even with the noblest of CEOs and the most ethical of corporate boards, most improvements brought about by any new “ethical” platform would only be at the margins. (Granted, these margins are still vitally important.) If we’re going to storm Facebook headquarters with pitchforks and torches in hand, it would be nice to know what is going to be built in its place and in what ways specifically it will be better than what exists already. In what ways are the new improvements invulnerable to the very same outcomes that awaited Facebook? In what ways can we be sure the new model won’t create an even more volatile and destructive set of unintended consequences on the back end?And so Facebook isn’t “democracy” in the Churchillian sense. It’s just a profit-seeking firm. Moreover, many of Facebook’s missteps are ones we are right to demand civic atonement for. But we should be especially wary of those critics proclaiming that a better platform would exist if only we could just get rid of Zuck and his evil empire. We should be skeptical of those public figures on both the left and the right who are convinced that a perfect platform architecture and policy exists. How do they know what this magical solution is? Like all empty utopian promises, they promise you that we’ll figure out the details once we get there.

From 2014 to 2018, I ran a music discovery service. At our peak, 45 curators sent hand-picked songs based on listener preferences to over 7,000 inboxes. We were the anti-algorithm. When Spotify launched "Discover Weekly" about eight months into our endeavor, I had something to prove. I was steadfast in the idea that I could scale a bunch of volunteer humans from around the world with varying tastes to curate songs for strangers, who also had a diverse range of tastes. The questions soon became: Why scale it? I worked as a content marketer for a tech startup in the heyday of content marketing. I was in my mid-20s and had fully leaned into the “anxious New Yorker with something to prove” identity. I came up with the idea for the service on a run. Fueled by said anxiety, I stayed up all night and made a Squarespace website, bought the domain and texted it to a couple of friends. They both loved it, so I tweeted it.By the time I got to work in the morning, my little website, adorned with stock photos, had received hundreds of subscriber submissions. It got shared around Twitter and found its way on a website called Product Hunt, which gave it some traction. Product Hunt was (and is) a place for people to discover and talk about new software products. I believe the vibe has changed, but at the time, it felt like a real community.

No matter how many times I was rejected, I still felt like there was something there.

I Built a Community and Let Others Help

After that, friends and strangers began reaching out to help. I was overwhelmed by their interest and kindness. I did everything at first. I spent long nights and weekends grouping people together based on the bands and songs they liked, then curating songs for them and scheduling emails. It was fun and not at all sustainable. Delegation was a foreign concept to me. It seemed like I lacked trust, but I simply wasn’t confident enough in what I was doing to explain it to someone else. I didn’t know what I was doing. My employer started to dislike this passion project of mine. My work didn’t diminish in quality and I still worked way too hard for my entry-level salary as a 1099 contractor with zero equity and little benefits. But it was clear I was far more passionate about my side project, and my boss didn’t trust that I could manage both. I finally let a friend help, and then more friends, and then strangers. Eventually, we were a global community of 45 people, who became pretty tight with each other and our subscribers. Those of us in New York met up often for drinks and shows and we had a Facebook group for everyone to converse. The part that felt most special was how many curators developed a relationship with their subscribers. They’d swap songs back and forth. Or sometimes they’d discuss a specific artist, album, concert, what have you. Some curators shared poems inspired by their daily songs in the emails; others shared historical context; some simply shared why they liked it. It was a beautiful social experiment. I wasn’t ignoring the beauty, but I was wrapped up in startup-land. I applied to startup accelerators, looked at tech-focused grants and networked (ugh) in hopes of meeting a backer. No matter how many times I was rejected, I still felt like there was something there. I could “scale this thing.”

The people who loved the service and wanted it to survive didn’t want a tote bag. They wanted to be involved.

Startup Culture Had Influenced My Fundraising Decisions

I now know that there’s a big difference between scalable and sustainable. This was something I overlooked because I was immersed in startup culture where hollow terms like “hockey stick growth” and “product-market fit” serve as rallying cries. To crowdfund, I hate to admit that I chose Kickstarter because I wanted the badge. We’d have to raise our entire goal’s amount to keep any of the money pledged, but I cared about the Kickstarter brand name. Although $14,300 was pledged by 371 folks, we didn’t reach our $25,000 goal. We captured $7,000 on an Indiegogo campaign, but after taxes and fees, it didn’t get us very far. Until writing this, I thought my failure was either in asking for too much money or not being transparent enough about our goal. I had plans to quit my job and wanted enough cash to pay a developer and to support me working on it full-time for a few months. I didn’t want to publicly admit that to myself or my employer at the time, so I focused on the tech in the campaign.Today, I can painfully see that we probably wouldn’t have raised the money even if I was transparent. The $25,000 wouldn’t have gotten us much further, and I think our audience knew that at the time. When the crowdfunding didn’t work and curators started losing steam, I tried everything: partnerships, sponsored newsletters, booking shows. I eventually let it fizzle. The people who loved the service and wanted it to survive didn’t want a tote bag. They wanted to be involved.

My Business Should Have Cultivated a Long-Term Community

Reflecting on this story now, a co-op model feels like a blatantly clear fit—at least an option worth exploring. We likely would have shed many of our 7,000-plus subscribers, then grown a little slower. We would have embraced our small group and made decisions accordingly. Rather than scale, we would’ve been driven by longevity, quality and maybe even fun. A cooperative business, or co-op, is owned by its members who run it jointly and share profits or other benefits. A friend who runs his personal finance company as a co-op describes their business as “operated and owned equally by the people that work here.” You’ve probably seen or shopped at a food co-op. They’re open to everyone and invested members decide what goes on the shelves, how they interact with the community and the future of the organization. I find physical co-ops like grocery stores, breweries and music venues easiest to wrap my head around, but I’ve also seen co-ops for music platforms, music writers, staffing agencies, record label groups and radio stations. Multiple designers and developers helped me on the tech side. One friend, in particular, built a beautiful system for us and spent countless hours with me at coffee shops and bars working through all of our challenges. All of the code he wrote was open-source. All because he loved the project. The writing was on the wall. Everything about this project screamed member-owned. I just didn’t see it. Longevity and community betterment wasn’t as sexy as fast profits and TechCrunch articles, I guess. Now, I can envision members at curator, listener and staff levels. I’m not entirely sure how much time people would put in, what their benefits would be and what the logistics would look like. Today, there are co-op accelerators and experts to help with those sorts of things. I can’t let myself become too regretful. I met some of my closest friends through that community and it gave me the confidence to start things. I will always wonder if adopting a co-op model could have changed things. Maybe it would have helped me let go of control and take a more democratic approach. Free from trying to fit the startup mold, maybe I could have held onto the project’s essence and let it be what it was: a small, beautiful community of music-lovers sharing art, insights and ideas.

During quarantine, the physical and emotional abuse that my father and stepmother exchanged for years finally came to a head, resulting in an arrest, a restraining order, threats of divorce and ultimately—as the cycle of abuse dictates—reconciliation. It also resulted in my decision to estrange myself from them.I already live at a great physical distance from my father, so we acted out this separation on a virtual plane, beginning with what I now refer to as the paternal breakup text. In the seemingly endless stretch of time between hitting “send” and receiving my father’s response, I found myself scrolling through my camera roll in search of a particular meme template featuring the endearingly existential troll Moomin. I reached for the Swedish cartoon not to distract myself from the emotional turmoil at hand, but to use as a sort of personal exercise in interpreting it.As a member of Generation Z, I am well acquainted with the vast array of means to overshare on the internet: sexually explicit TikTok videos, overly comfortable friends-only Instagram posts, the classic emo Tumblr blog. But as soul-rendering as a perfectly lip-synched TikTok may be, it could never carry me through the abrupt parental estrangement and expedited processing of years of emotional abuse that the novel coronavirus has put me through. Memeing, with its strikingly introspective creative process, has done just that.

Memes Have Meaning; They're Aren't Just Punchlines

The internet meme is often misunderstood as a flippant joke—funny images and quippy captions thrown together in seconds, with little thought for anything but momentary viral potential. In reality, the meme is a concentrated memory, and whether you’re recalling a universally understood reference to the human inability to remember names or a niche nod to polycule antics is irrelevant to the craft. To create a meme is to heat and compress the coal of experience until, through pressure of sheer will and wordplay, it forms a diamond. Distilling an experience into a meme can be cathartic, even therapeutic. When I started my ultra-specific sapphic meme page a year ago, I was taken aback by the amount of time each wisecrack demanded from me. I’d spend days turning one over in my mind, carefully curating the language to optimize succinctness and accessibility. By the time I’d painstakingly selected an image to accompany it and tapped the share button, I’d had a long time to think over the deeper implications of the issue in question, whether it was why I want a girl with a safety pin earring to put her fingers in my mouth or why my ex may not know she’s my ex. I often emerged from a night of memeing with a clearer understanding of the complexes underlying my freshly illustrated thoughts. But although I relished boiling down my personal issues into an image and a punchline, I was still memeing for the product, not the process. I came to cherish my meme page and the pearls of grainy introspection I squirreled away in it. So it was to my great distress that, upon moving halfway around the world a year ago, Instagram locked me out of the account. With no way to share my gems with the account’s five loyal followers, I simply stopped memeing—at least, by the most modern definition.

The internet meme is often misunderstood as a flippant joke.

Making Memes Helped Me Connect Offline

In a more traditional sense, however, I now realize that I never took a break. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the lesser-known, now-outdated definition of a meme as “an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.” By the time my brother—my relationship with whom I am still rebuilding in the aftermath of our childhood—visited me in the months after my move, I had thoroughly dissected our family culture and amassed a stockpile of elements ripe for inter-sibling exchange. We lost ourselves in hours-long walks as we examined memory after painful memory, tooling them over until they took the form of somewhat recognizable experiences.The first memes I made about my father’s abuse were choked out between laughs as my brother and I traded stories of his transgressions and riffed off of his most fantastical threats. We resurfaced from our conversations with precious booty: legible shorthand we could use to talk about our family and inside jokes to soften the blow. It brought a clarity not unlike what I had experienced while toiling over my queer memes. The punchlines were even sweeter.When my brother’s stay ended, our conversations ground to a halt under the pressure of the time difference between our two countries. But the itch to work through this trauma, so long repressed by my certainty that these were not wounds that required tending, endured. In the months that followed, I would return to pacing circles in my head, fruitlessly ruminating until my father gave me the opportunity—and, to his credit, the transparency—that I needed to pen the parental breakup text.

The first memes I made about my father’s abuse were choked out between laughs as my brother and I traded stories of his transgressions and riffed off of his most fantastical threats.

Memes Are My Therapy

As I lay hunched over my phone screen at 3 a.m., muttering to myself as I tried to clip, “When your dad punched another hole in the wall, so you hike up your diaper and do a grown man’s emotional labor” into an appropriate caption for a Russian Doll outtake, it struck me that I was making memes that I would never share. Even if I managed to jailbreak back into my sapphic meme page, these were far too intimate to post on the internet, even anonymously and for a tiny following. That didn’t stop me from churning out a personal record of seven memes that night as I rushed to detangle the whirlwind of emotions that were tearing through me. It hasn’t stopped me from adding to my collection as I continue to excavate the trust issues, conflict aversion and internalized toxic masculinity with which my father has left me.Today, these memes—which, it must be said, are far from my best work—have claimed their own ever-expanding folder on my phone. Some of those conversations with my brother have reappeared in the portfolio, translated from tear-ridden trauma jokes shared between siblings into digital artifacts that immortalize our distress and comradery. I’ve even sent him a few. He finds them uproarious. My mother, not so much.

I am an Australian-Chinese 19-year-old who went to school in Melbourne, and every summer break in December I would visit family in Guangzhou, the third-largest city in China. In the past decade, Guangzhou underwent incredible technological transformations, so much so that every year when I returned from Melbourne, I felt like a hermit coming out of my rock and being exposed to the technologies that make up the modern way of life—an embarrassing sentiment for a teenager. Instead of providing an in-depth comparison of the groundbreaking Silicon Valley-level technologies being developed, I want to shed light on the remarkable dominance of technology in daily life and the convenience it has created for ordinary individuals in China that is incomparable to any city in the U.S. China’s present represents the technological future.

The Future Looks Like WeChat

The recent injunction against Donald Trump’s WeChat ban has brought the app under scrutiny in the U.S. WeChat is a Chinese multipurpose app that allows users to message people like WhatsApp, post content like Facebook, subscribe to accounts like Twitter, make electronic payments like Apple Pay, access different services through its built-in mini-programs and even pay utility bills. Since its launch in 2011, WeChat has evolved into the default online social platform for Chinese people around the world. I first downloaded WeChat in 2012 but didn’t use it, because my stubborn 11-year-old self believed that Facebook was superior. Then I returned to Guangzhou in 2015 to discover the revolutionary WeChat Pay feature in the app, one year after everyone else. In short, it allows users to link their credit card and keep a balance local to the WeChat app, which can be used to quickly transfer money (either directly, via messaging for existing contacts or by scanning QR codes), make payments to businesses and complete transactions in other online applications. The U.S. doesn’t really have an alternative for electronic payments that matches WeChat Pay’s scale and accessibility. According to Business Insider, WeChat Pay has 900 million monthly active users, while Apple Pay, a pre-installed app on all iPhones, has a meager 127 million users globally. WeChat can be easily accessed on all types of devices, Apple or Android, so individuals and businesses alike in China fully participate in it. A 2017 Penguin Intelligence study found that 92 percent of people in China’s largest cities use WeChat Pay or AliPay (another popular payment app) as their primary payment method. Once you try it, you quickly realize why dealing with loose and dirty notes is a thing of the past there. In fact, 45 percent of WeChat Pay users no longer carry cash, which is a very common trend among my Chinese friends (although I still feel uneasy going out without my wallet). To meet this shift in payment preferences, almost all restaurants, and many stores such as hair and nail salons, have a power bank station available for customers (in recognition of how indispensable phones have become). Even street hawkers have a WeChat Pay QR code displayed next to their products. How many local stores accept Apple Pay in your city?

China’s present represents the technological future.

Life After Cash: A Short Story

I had a bizarre experience in 2017 when paying for some accessories at a small store. Everyone in the queue already had their green QR Code on their phone ready for payment, but at the time, I didn’t have a SIM card or a Wi-Fi connection to launch the app, so I planned to pay by cash. It was my turn and the cashier had the QR scanner ready. “I’ll pay by cash, thanks," I said. She looked at me rather oddly. “Our store accepts WeChat Pay, miss.” “I know.” I hand her a $50 note. She switched to a more patient tone, as though she picked up on the fact that I didn’t live in Guangzhou. “Miss, you can use WeChat Pay, it’s very easy. Just show me your QR code, or you can also scan our store’s QR code here.” “I understand, but I’ll just pay with cash today, thanks.” “We don’t charge any transaction costs with WeChat Pay.” “I know.” She finally put down the QR scanner and took the cash. I had held up the line.

Regardless of whether you find China’s current technocentric way of life revolutionary or grim, it puts the U.S.’s position in the technology race in perspective.

How WeChat Is Powering Innovation

WeChat’s tremendous scope makes it a key player in facilitating the digitalization of Chinese cities. I had a look at my WeChat Pay transaction history to track how daily routines have changed in Guangzhou.As soon as I returned in 2017, I was quickly swept into the new food delivery wave and became an avid user of Meituan Waimai, which at the time already had a 45 percent market share, according to Trustdata, and is currently the biggest player in the booming industry. Delivery drivers with a yellow Meituan Waimai uniform on yellow bikes have become part of the city landscape. The simultaneous rise of the bicycle sharing system Mobike (now Meituan Bike) across major Chinese cities created a national focus on leading a healthy lifestyle, and the extremely affordable price of RMB1.5 ($0.22 USD) per half hour makes the service much more attractive than taxis.That same year I was also amazed to watch customers in a bank complete complicated procedures such as creating a bank account using self-service kiosks, with an assistant walking over to check their ID as a final step. In 2018, I was able to order food at average and large restaurants by scanning the unique QR code stuck at the corner of each table, which allows me to access the entire menu via WeChat and pay the bill with my WeChat wallet balance. A key point to note is that by the time I caught onto a new technology, it had already become widespread and no longer the next cool trend. People didn’t visit a restaurant because ordering with their phones is novel—they did it because it was the norm. As Shenzhen becomes the first city in the world to have full 5G coverage, there is immense potential for technology to continue expanding exponentially in China, particularly in e-commerce and health. An example is the color-based health QR code launched earlier this year in response to COVID-19: Only people with a green health code can have unrestricted movement in public spaces. The digitalization of a city relies on big data and a public willingness to give up their data for daily conveniences. As an Australian-Chinese going to college in the U.S., I see that Chinese people are much less concerned with data privacy compared to the U.S. and other Western countries, where pressures for transparency and surveillance regulation is mounting. This could be where the way in which technology is integrated into daily life may diverge between the two superpowers. Although, regardless of whether you find China’s current technocentric way of life revolutionary or grim, it certainly puts the U.S.’s position in the technology race in perspective.

As a child, I would visit a physical therapist and stand, knees bent, with my back against the wall. I would stay like this for an hour, taking little breaks every five minutes. I would think about the strengthening of muscles that I couldn’t see, and an accident that I couldn’t remember. Due to how young I was when it happened, I was never given the full story from start to finish. I was given the memory as if it was a hand-me-down and had to stitch together the details myself. My family was retrieving our first set of proper baby photos; a drunk driver hit our car; my car seat didn’t do its job. I fell into a coma for a few days, suffered minor brain damage, and the development of my gross motor skills came into question. The doctors were concerned I would never walk properly because as I got older, I tip-toed like I was constantly creeping away from something.My accident was proof to my immigrant parents that we were unfortunate victims to the evil eye, so I wasn’t allowed out much. Instead, I spent a lot of time in our backyard, picking insects from the grass and minnows from the pond to study and draw. Unlike my feet, my right hand—combined with a crayon or any tool that could make a mark—could transport me anywhere. Inevitably, I trapped and drew all the creatures available in the small perimeter surrounding my house. When I grew bored, I focused my attention on capturing the people I saw on television. This was before the era of stop-and-rewind, so I woke up early in the morning and frantically drew the Sailor Moon reruns that aired an hour before school started to the best of my ability. It was figurative drawing tailor-made by and for a recluse.

She gave me a web address on a torn piece of sketchbook paper.

My Friend Introduced Me to Online Art

During this time, I was struggling in school, and my time spent sheltered from the outside world made me anxious amongst my peers. My limited mobility and the details of my ongoing recovery were always disclosed to my teachers, and this made me even more self-conscious. I knew I wasn’t as fragile as the adults treated me, but because I was so young, I didn’t have the vocabulary yet to defy their judgment. Recess in my elementary school took place in the loop, a quarter-mile of thin, circulate concrete, which was used for physical education classes. I would walk laps by myself, avoiding the kids that zoomed past me and the obstacles made out of dueling jump ropes. I made sure that my weak foot hit the ground with confident steps. It was here that I bumped into a girl who told me she hated the cement track as much as I did.Ilse drew, too. I couldn’t help but notice her strange, unexplainable confidence, even though it was obvious she was as introverted as me. Ilse’s drawing practice was somehow fulfilling in a way that mine wasn’t. She talked about “friends,” but they weren’t names that I recognized as fellow students. She reassured me, however, that they were real and that I could meet them after school. Then she gave me a web address on a torn piece of sketchbook paper.That URL was my first memory of logging onto the internet with a destination in mind. I was greeted by a splash page made of postcards featuring the Sailor Scouts on vacation. With some clicking, I eventually found an imageboard that allowed users to publish drawings within the browser. I didn’t know what Flash was but downloaded it anyway; I still remember the excitement and fear of that first risky click. The drawing interface was a sophisticated version of MS Paint. I recognized the paint and brush icons and watched as I made shaky strokes appear on my screen with my mouse. It was hard for my brain to believe that I was actually drawing. When I was done, I was greeted by another prompt: Name? I had a mad crush on Dwayne Johnson, known then as the Rock. I honored him in my own way and hit submit. What I loved about the early internet was how my physical body didn’t exist there. My face and my silly walk weren’t captured in pixels or gigabytes. Instead, I entered a borderless zone undefined by my given truths. In this online community, I was known only by a name that hinted at my love for a professional wrestling star, and for how I posted artwork of zombified animals. I could have been hundreds of years old and living on Saturn. My relationship to my hands, the aspect of my body that allowed me to draw and connect to similarly-minded people with a single click, was all that mattered. I stopped worrying about how I stood.

What I loved about the early internet was how my physical body didn’t exist there.

The Internet Helped Me Appreciate Connections in All Forms

Once I adjusted to the ease of connecting with people online, I realized it didn't have to be so hard in real life. I felt less bound by how I looked or how other people perceived me. I began to tell people that I was an artist and that I was inspired by planets, their moons and their orbits. I fidgeted less and learned to seek and find comfort in the supercharged online conversations that flew, safe and uninterrupted, down my spine like electricity. I learned the art of malleability, copying and pasting, following forward links. In my collective, alternative fantasy, I adopted an empathetic language and a radical disregard for where things came from. I was only concerned with intimate connection. Eventually, the way I spoke and felt online began to translate to being offline. Even though exiting an in-person interaction was not as easy as closing a webpage, I let those real-life experiences start coming to me.These days, due to the coronavirus, I spend a lot of time in my bedroom again, dividing my schedule between Zoom, Discord and Twitter. It is harder to dream in the internet spaces that exist today, so I split my time between them and the outdoors. I’m a certified naturalist and the curiosity that made me want to understand my childhood backyard never left, contrary to my large internet presence. I enlist both in the labor of dreaming. I use an app on my phone that uses citizen science to identify native flowers. With the help of a chat room, I organize tennis matches with friends at the public park down the street. With the help of some activists I met online, I distribute iced bottles of water to the unhoused during a record-breaking heatwave. And I keep returning to this elusive quote by the notoriously isolated writer and philosopher, Emil Cioran: “Life is tolerable only by the degree of mystification we endow it with.” I ground myself, and practice my dreaming of other worlds and galaxies, and in this balancing act, I find my own version of grace.

The internet has changed a lot in the past ten years. No shit.When I first started posting online, I was maybe eight years old. I began building a GeoCities web page of parody lyrics for top pop songs; I moved onto LiveJournal in middle school, where I made a friend that I am still in touch with to this day; then I tried Flickr in high school, which taught me so much of what I know about photography; and then I created a Tumblr in college. In those early days, Tumblr felt like a plot of personal, digital land, where I could freely express myself and share things. The little community I formed ended up connecting me to the apartment in which I live, every friend I’ve ever made, and even multiple jobs across tech and social media. It felt vast and infinite. Then came post-college life, and the mass-professionalization of all these platforms. Now we have rules for what and how we can post—not to mention the consolidation of a million niche channels into a handful of dominant megaliths like Instagram and TikTok. It feels like that vast, infinite space is being crushed into nothing. These days, “community guidelines” inform us what we should post, how often and in what way. They’re meant to help us be our best selves, but they’re rarely or consistently enforced to eradicate poor behavior, and seemingly serve to rigorously homogenize output. TikTok’s infamous “For You” page, which is run by a cracked-out algorithm and considered the “holy grail” of placement for most users, takes multiple factors into consideration when suggesting videos to users, including sounds, hashtags, captions and device types. Leaked internal training documents have also revealed that the company instructed moderators to suppress videos of people who don’t fit a certain ideal (wealthy, attractive, able-bodied). This creates a kind of echo chamber effect: what these platforms highlight goes viral, creates more copycats, creates more virality. They’re always bumper-laned by encouraging product features and smiley language about the importance of “community.”

The internet has changed a lot in the past 10 years. No shit.

Online Engagement Shouldn’t Dictate Your Interests

The algorithms all effectively make generic what people make and how they look, creating a dominant visual monoculture optimized for likes. How do you take a selfie? How do you photograph your food? Beneath those questions, how do you tell a story? Today, we know to stand in front of a window or a brightly colored wall, take a photo and post it in the morning, when engagement metrics are highest. We alter the way we share our lives and our interests, which then alters our lives and our interests. And for what? The potential of “blowing up,” so that we can be attractive to advertisers as vessels for their brands? So we can post that caption that says “Thank you so much [insert company name here] for letting me participate on such an incredible campaign” and everybody knows how important you are? Remember when the internet was a place for sharing interests to connect with other people and not just a clout-accumulation machine for us to flex on our friends and strangers? I miss that.The goal in life isn’t to gain an audience (you’re not entitled to an audience nor should you need an audience for your interests). I’ve worked in social media for five years, in generic creative and editorial roles, and witnessed too much of what's online. I’ve also seen a lot of frustration from colleagues about why their social engagement is low, and then seemingly giving up on their passions because they don’t elicit likes. That seems bad. Just because nobody likes your piano-playing videos doesn’t mean you should simply stop playing the piano. Nor does it mean you should pander to what you think people want to see from you. Do whatever freak shit on the piano that you want to! I know this isn’t always the case. Recently, a friend showed me the YouTube channel of a user named madcatlady, who uploads freaky animated videos multiple times a week. They average around 300 views per video, and she’s demonetized her channel. I don’t think that in order to be a “true” artist you work for free, but I found it refreshing (and honestly, reinvigorating in my faith in the internet) to find somebody making and sharing videos—regardless of the views or the money—simply for the pleasure it brings.

Bring back the way we used the old internet.

Don’t Let Your Brand Change Who You Are

Before you say it, I’m not somebody who needs to “take a break” from social media. It doesn’t impact my mental health, I don’t feel jealous and I don’t get FOMO. I just think everything is so fucking corny now. Remix culture runs both ways—sometimes it takes fun stuff and makes it more fun and weirder. Put advertising in the mix, though, and it just ruins it. Look at everyone's favorite cranberry-juice-drinking, Fleetwood-Mac-listening, longboard-riding video, which has now basically (and smartly) been turned into a gigantic ad campaign for both TikTok and Ocean Spray. No shade intended toward its star @420doggface208, who is getting some money and exposure. I’m glad about that. But what does it say about the state of our online selves?Anything we do is advertising now, whether we like it or not. These platforms have streamlined the presentation of ourselves and created such specific boxes to check that anything we say, share or do inherently becomes “our brand.” The internet promised us frivolity, anonymity and infinite malleability, but hungry advertisers have frozen us in amber. Our profiles feel permanent, without room for growth or exploration—it feels like they own us instead of us owning them. Want to experiment with what you post? Just make a new account, so that you don’t “mess up” the original one, which has a makeup sponsor. Who cares if you used to be into eye shadow and now you’re into baking? This is the least important shit on earth but people agonize over it. Why the fuck are you on a posting schedule? You’re a normal person. We are allowing these companies to corner us into one iteration of ourselves so that we may one day help fuel the spending they depend on to survive. I wish for us to share with passion, to free ourselves from self-imposed (but really algorithmically and corporately imposed) rules, and to be fucking boundless humans with ever-changing and never-ending creativity. Bring back the way we used the old internet.

Never in my life had I imagined becoming a published writer or pursuing a journalism career. As a reticent and timid South Asian teenager, grappling with gender identity issues and constantly being bullied, I was always anxious and hid in the shadows. As the world raced past me, I felt like a misfit without any tangible reason to exist.This constant self-loathing, which included a botched childhood surgery and subsequent tormenting by fellow classmates over my appearance, took a turn for the worse. I decided to quit my academics and study from home.I did not realize I was depressed. I was just fraught with stress and nowhere to go, a fact compounded by my crippling social anxiety. That’s when my icon bar on Facebook turned red. An older white woman—almost my grandmother’s age—requested my friendship in the virtual world. These were the simpler times back in 2012, when social media was about sifting through a flurry of status updates, adding new friends and boasting about “likes” on profile pictures. At first glance, I was skeptical. Why would anyone add me? Especially an older white woman from the United States? Was this a scam? But what did I really have to lose? Nothing.Scrolling through Jane Doe’s account, I stared at profile pictures containing a blonde woman flanked on the sides by an older man with glassy eyes. There was nothing remarkable about the two of them. Swiping through their older (and sometimes dimly-cropped) pictures, I could envision her life—her kids, grandkids, dogs and an American farm.

Anne Frank Taught Me How Powerful Writing Can Be

Weeks passed. I walked back into my dull life and pretended to merge into the shadows. If I stayed quiet, would anyone notice? Jane started forwarding random literary recommendations and I was a bit apprehensive. Eventually, we spoke, and she turned out to be an extremely caring, genuine and supportive mentor. The more I stayed inactive, the more she would comment on my Facebook statuses and encourage me to develop my flair for writing. Eventually, I threw caution to the wind and expressed how I really felt—despondent and confused, hoping to assert myself.At this juncture, Jane introduced me to the tragic and poignant world of Anne Frank, and her acclaimed diary. She advised me to read it carefully—or rather, to live every page. For the next three months, I pored over Anne’s diary, learning about her journey living in an extremely chaotic and cramped attic as the world turned extremely morbid, dangerous and hostile toward Jews. I cried for Anne and her family’s helplessness; I smiled at her childish complaints; and I learned so much about life, resilience and kindness.One line that Frank wrote in her diary stirred something deep within me, igniting the passion to write. “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news,” she wrote. “The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!”As the season changed to winter, Jane would often text me about her everyday life in Michigan, sending pictures of her house or the banal details about her grandchildren. Within these conversations, she would also encourage me and offer active support to open up, let the world in and share my story.

Jane Doe Made Me Realize Everyone Has a Story to Tell

On a humid afternoon, I was bullied by a classmate on stage in the presence of 60 other students. The student mocked my reclusiveness, physical appearance and social status as a way to demean me. To say I was crushed would be an understatement. Looking back on the incident now evokes in me a pity for my tormentor. It must have taken a considerable amount of self-hatred within him to hate someone for their differences. I cried, and then cried some more.I confided in Jane about the incident and she introduced me to her world. Her husband was an Army veteran. He was schizophrenic and struggled to remember his kids or even Jane. His current status was something that led her to make friends elsewhere. As Jane saw him remember and forget her—or, at times, just walk out of the house—her heart sank. Yet she held onto the belief that we all had a story to tell, a life to live—either in India, the United States or Africa. We matter wherever we are, however we look.That’s when I began my journaling journey, writing extensive analysis of every book and current news events, and sourcing books to add to my knowledge. I had created a safe space, an oyster for myself, encouraged and supported by a stranger over the internet.

To Find Your Dream Career, You Have to Be Open-Minded

One day, I asked Jane if she would be comfortable if I wrote a story about her husband, his schizophrenia and the perils and struggles of establishing a relationship with his grandkids. I didn’t hear back from Jane for a few days but when she did return my message, she was ecstatic. She explained her apprehensiveness about letting the world see her vulnerabilities, but eventually thought it was a story worth telling. Her voice mattered, too.While crafting her story into a 5,000-word essay, I spoke to her at length about life, family and the joy of banal things. It was cathartic, and I found a grandmother in 68-year-old Jane. The story was real, pure and an act of unrelenting kindness. Upon completion, I submitted the story for a writer’s competition, and my stomach turned in knots with panic and excitement. All these years of bullying and fear had been turned upside down and I was excited to show the world that I did not need to fit in. None of us need to.An email popped a few days later: “Your story has been selected in the top ten and will be published in a book. Congratulations.”“Thank you, Jane,” I wrote back to the messenger on the white-and-blue screen. “This would be impossible without you.”Jane's husband, David, was worsening, so our communications thinned to a trickle and I began my ascent towards a social life with confidence, in pursuit of finding a space for myself within this world. A space that was uniquely me. When the green-and-black book cover arrived with my name on it, it stamped in me a confidence that I can never forget. Never.This was the first time Jane took my number, called me and thanked me profusely. The voice on the other end sounded so feeble but endearing. She had read a copy of the book shipped by the publisher and could not believe her eyes. A Facebook friend request had changed two lives for the better—a writer was born and Jane's story had printed proof of existence.Later on, she relayed how her family had embraced the book and shared it with everyone in their circles. Jane was celebrated as the “grandmother who makes innocent teenagers write books about her.”

This may sound cliché, but sometimes, magic does happen.

I Never Thought I’d Have the Confidence to Pursue My Dream Profession

This act of kindness by Jane—sharing her story, encouraging a 19-year-old stranger to write, read and find one’s own voice over the internet—is a story about the power of human connection that can transcend race, geography, religion. It can upend lives. This may sound cliché, but sometimes, magic does happen.Unlike the current 2020 maelstrom that has perpetuated hate, bigotry and violence, we as a society need to step backward to the nascent era of social media and course-correct our trajectory. Replace hate with kindness. Replace trolling with empathy. Replace doxxing with community care and protection. We need to build back and build it better.So, what happened to me and Jane? I am a journalist now. I ask questions and seek answers about poverty, social inequalities and democracy. This job needs confidence, resourcefulness and the ability to have a sense of empathy. I stayed in touch with Jane intermittently before her account went inactive beginning in 2017. I’ve never heard from her since, and sometimes I worry.Whatever the case, this is a narrative I wholeheartedly cherish and recall every time someone complains about the pitfalls of social media in the current climate of demagoguery and hatred. I hope my story evokes in the readers a sense of empathy for those around them. Thank you, Jane, for being a force to be reckoned with.

Growing up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks had its share of struggles, but there were unexpected blessings too. Having little, and expecting little, gave room for large and small acts of kindness. Some may call the good things that have come my way in life a result of my manifesting my desires or using the law of attraction. I simply call them answered prayers.When I was young, you might have not seen my life as blessed. I lived on a street full of crime and children who were rarely checked on. The floor of our home gave you splinters if you walked on it barefoot. The backyard was a small-scale garbage dump. My father was an abusive alcoholic who rarely kept a job. I lived in fearful anticipation of the day we’d be evicted. I lived off of canned chili and rice, when we had food at all.

God Answers Prayers, but You Have to Ask for His Help

The prayer was my mother’s. She walked into the kitchen and looked at the empty shelves and prayed because she didn’t know how she would feed us that night. Twenty minutes later, a woman from our church showed up at our door, having had a premonition that we needed help. She was the church’s Relief Society president, which meant she presided over the welfare of the women in our congregation. She told my mother that she felt that we needed help and could use an order of food and hygiene products from the church’s storehouse. Within the next couple of days, my mother could get a month’s worth of food. In the meantime, the woman handed her a $20 bill and encouraged her to buy what was most pressing.That winter, a slightly built woman with hair that matched the snow showed up at my door. She held two boxes of oranges that looked to weigh a little more than she did. When I answered, she asked for my parents, but I told her they weren’t home. She thought for a moment and then set down the boxes inside the door. She asked me very seriously to make sure my parents got the oranges. I promised her that they would. I thought her concern over the oranges was strange. Then I noticed the folded green paper tucked inside the top box. This unassuming old woman who looked to have little material resources of her own had put $200 inside, a fortune for us at the time. I never saw her again, but I will never forget her.After seeing these answered prayers, I grew up with a strengthened faith and fortified hope in God and the goodness of people. Some people regarded me as the happiest person that they knew.

I have found that faith is not a comfortable principle.

The Lord Has Been There for Me Countless Times

About a decade later, when I was a senior in high school, I was walking home from church the day after prom, wearing my turquoise prom dress. I had acquired this treasured gown through hard work and small prayers answered. Though prom had been wonderful and wearing my gown made me feel elegant and beautiful, my mind was on much less glamorous thoughts. The deadline for the deposit to keep my college housing was fast approaching. I had no money left and knew that I couldn’t ask my parents for help. As I walked deep in thought, a man from my congregation greeted me and began walking beside me. He was on the board of admissions of a regarded university, and therefore was often asked for advice about college. I told him of my crisis, and on the spot, he had offered to pay the deposit. Without him, I truly do not know what I would have done.When I was 21, I felt called to a voluntary service mission for my church. It meant I would put my life on hold for 18 months and go to wherever the church leadership told me. I ended up at a mission that covered all of northern Nevada. My first winter, I was desperately in need of winter boots and a coat. The church was paying for my mission, along with all of the savings I had and a bit from my parents. I lived off a monthly allowance from the church that couldn’t cover my winter clothing needs. I prayed constantly for guidance, and walked many miles each day in the snow with numb feet.My companion and I were only able to shop on the one day a week we were given for weekly preparation. Once, on a different day of the week, we went to a JCPenney to meet someone. I saw a beautiful coat on an incredibly deep discount. I wanted it so badly. I didn’t know what to do, and not wanting to break the rules, I decided to pray silently to myself right there in the store. Seconds later, a store employee came up to us and asked if there was anything she could do to help. I asked her if she could hold the coat for me, and she said she would hold it as long as she could.The next day, she called and asked us to meet her at the women’s clothing department. When we met her, she was beaming. She asked us to follow her to the parking lot. Confused, we followed. We arrived at a rusty old camper van and the woman excitedly swung open the door. I was startled at first, then quickly overcome with surprise. The woman was holding the coat I had wanted, along with one for my companion. She refused to let us pay her, and confessed that she saw me praying and knew that she had to help.Soon after, a woman at church who I had never spoken to before approached me and asked if I needed any winter clothing. I told her of my need for boots and she took us shopping the next day. I have wide calves, which meant my options were limited and expensive. This was of no concern to her. She bought me $200 boots and refused any payment in return.

He May Not Answer Right Away, but God Hears Our Prayers

The last answered prayer I have to share happened overseas, in Cornwall, England. I was in a program where you exchange volunteer work for room and board. The people I’d been working for told me I wasn’t working to their expectations, and the environment became negative and tense. I had one day left with them, and was desperate to stay anywhere else. Since it was Sunday, I took a taxi to church. Too proud to beg, I prayed instead. Without my history of miracles and answered prayers, I would have been a nervous wreck, stranded without hope of help. Knowing that God had always taken care of me, I believed that somebody would help. I sat through all three hours of church, and though people were kind, no one inquired about my situation. As I stood up to call a taxi and leave, a woman named Allison asked if I wanted to have dinner with her and her family. Though not the rescue I had hoped for, I was grateful. On our drive to her home, she asked the right questions and learned of my circumstances. Having a spare bedroom, she quickly offered me a place to stay and even drove me to collect my things. This added a couple of hours of driving, but she said she was happy to help.

Faith Has Given Me the Strength to Help Others Too

I have found that faith is not a comfortable principle. Trusting in what you cannot see, control or predict is scary. Skeptics may even call it risky. This is true to some extent. I do believe that some common sense is required. I knew someone who put sand in their gas tank and prayed for God to turn it to gas.There are some rewards that come with not having all of your needs provided for. Being in desperate circumstances left room for God to show his hand in my life, and for me to develop a sense of gratitude. With all of these answered prayers, I’ve done my best to pay it forward whenever possible. A big part of that is following promptings from the Spirit. Sometimes I do things I feel prompted to do with no apparent reason or reward. Being an answer to someone else’s prayer sometimes makes no sense. I felt prompted to invite a girl struggling with a chronic eating disorder from my church to eat dinner with me, which seemed like the last thing I should do. I came to find out that dinner was the hardest time for her. She told me that having someone with her was what she desperately needed. Rather than worrying about where these impulses come from, I would rather follow a prompting, knowing that there was a possibility it could lead to an answered prayer. Whether you call it manifesting, the law of attraction, or an answer to prayer, goodness is out there, and I have been blessed because of it.

My adolescent intellectual enlightenment came from reading the "Four Horsemen" of aughts New Atheism: Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. Their books—combined with the reemergence of the American evangelical right and its power to twice elect a president who proudly said that his Christian God told him to start the war in Iraq—infuriated this 16-year-old liberal New Yorker. I remember thinking, very clearly, that religion, theism and faith, in general, were destroying our country. Fifteen years later, with a president who’s a far greater existential threat to the world than George W. Bush ever was, I can't help but think that my younger self and most of my peers—atheists who want their government to function according to logic and reason deemed antithetical to capital "F" faith—had it all wrong. Personally, I still hover somewhere between agnostic and “spiritual,” but at this moment, as the sociopolitical fabric of America tears at the seams, I believe what this country needs most is God. To be clear, when I say “God” I’m not referring to any specific religion’s popular conception of a higher power. I’m referring to faith in virtually any form of Alan Lightman’s shorthand definition: “A Being not restricted by the laws that govern matter and energy in the physical universe…outside matter and energy.” My personal faith is probably closer to what Alan Watts used to lecture about, or the spiritual vision that pulled Tolstoy out of his decade of midlife suicidal ideation, or what Thomas Merton discovered on his Seven Storey Mountain. Put as simply as I can: We are walking, talking bags of “matter and energy,” opposable-thumbed collections of atoms and molecules that have just so happened to be arranged in a pattern that allows for the miracle of self-aware consciousness. God created us, but is, by definition, that which we are not. We are flesh; God is spirit. We are here; God is there. I am embarrassed to admit it, but in my atheistic days, I didn’t vote. This wasn’t a thoughtful decision, wasn’t a considered abstention from the political process, but more of a product of being a young person with zero sense of duty. I simply did not recognize myself as part of a system in any sense of that word. It wasn’t until my late twenties when I opened up to the concept of God, to the unknown and the unknowable, that I began to experience myself as a small piece of something greater, something infinitely complex. And once this sense of cosmic position shifted, I became engaged in politics for the first time in my life.

And it is love, not fear, that has made us great.

America’s Crisis Isn’t Political—It’s Spiritual

So, why do we need a belief in something outside matter and energy, outside of ourselves, in our politics and government? While Marianne Williamson should definitely not be president (and some quotes of hers actually make me think she’s just another daytime TV charlatan), there’s a reason why she had some success on the political stage. She framed our national crisis as a macro-spiritual one. Her most salient perspective is that: “We don’t just need a progressive politics or a conservative politics; we need a more deeply human politics. We need a politics of love. Love is the angel of our better nature, just as fear is the demon of the lower self. And it is love, not fear, that has made us great. When politics is used for loveless purposes, love and love alone can override it. It was love that abolished slavery, it was love that gave women suffrage, it was love that established civil rights, and it is love that we need now.” (Worth noting: these three benchmark victories for American freedom were the result of love, and decades of grunt work, from organized church groups.)Williamson’s “love” is really just a secular synonym for God anyway, and God is really just an umbrella term I’m liberally using for a collective faith that might spark what this country so desperately needs: an epic collective humbling, a great national softening, a universal realization of our inherent oneness. This might make it sound like I am against the separation of church and state, or that I’m arguing for some kind of hippie version of religious nationalism, or that I’m endorsing some traditions over others, but all I’m really saying is that America has lost its soul. The good news is there’s a pretty tried and true way of getting it back.

God could really use a little help with His PR.I get it. Thousands of wars fought in the name of religion, oppression of women in most faith practices, justification of slavery and intolerance of gays. And then there’s the [lowers voice to a whisper] sexual abuse that was covered up by the Catholic Church for decades. While the aforementioned issues deserve to be called out and condemned, they do detract from all the good that religion brings to people. For me, faith brings some semblance of solace to my life and guides my moral compass in this cold, cold—and recently dark and uncertain—world. I grew up in a strict, religious household. Church was mandatory and there were no “sick days.” Even to this day, about ninety-percent of the conversations I have with my parents, over the phone, concern my faith and whether or not my soul is destined for internal damnation. When it’s not an apocalypse—and sometimes begrudgingly—I try to go to mass for all holy days of obligation.I wasn’t always a proud Catholic. There was a time—don’t tell my parents—I abandoned the Church. That was college. Because come on: hungover Sundays are very real. I’m sure God understood. Eventually, I made peace with my faith and now I lean more into spirituality, especially living in New York City. Still, it should come as no surprise Christianity continues to decline at a rapid pace in the United States. Along with a better publicist, God could really use better allies.

Christians are not a monolith.

Trump’s “Christian” Faith Is a Con

It was only a few months ago that President Donald Trump instructed federal officers to use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear a crowd of peaceful protestors just so he could awkwardly hold up a Bible outside of St. John’s Church, which sits across from the White House. But what was even more bizarre than the actual photo op—and obviously a desperate ploy to win over evangelical support for reelection—was the exchange the commander-in-chief had with a reporter. “Is that your Bible?” a reporter asked.“It’s a Bible,” the president replied.Well, Captain Obvious, we could all see that it was, indeed, a Bible. We could also see right through this stunt. Well, except for the many evangelicals who couldn’t—or wouldn’t. Galatians 6:7 says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” and yet the president—who in 2016 miscited Second Corinthians by calling it “Two Corinthians,” seems to be reaping the benefits of riling up his religious base each time he expresses his unwavering love for the Good Book. Trump toted his childhood Bible throughout his 2016 campaign like an elementary school child doing show-and-tell across the South, Midwest and cities with large pockets of evangelicals. Each time he proclaimed, “I brought my Bible,” the crowd erupted in cheers. He’s also repeated the line about the Bible being his favorite book. (His second favorite is his very own, Trump: The Art of the Deal.) He’s occasionally played God as well. In 2018, he signed the Bible of a 10-year-old girl in Alabama while he was visiting the state after it was hit by a tornado.

Trump toted his childhood Bible throughout his 2016 campaign like an elementary school child doing show-and-tell.

Trump’s Been Playing Christians as Fools

But since the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to most campaign events, Trump is finding new ways to attract those eight out of ten white Christians who say they’ll still vote for him. Recently, he frantically ranted in Ohio that if elected, Joe Biden would “hurt the Bible” and “hurt God”—if that such thing was even possible—and this should be a clear sign to any real believer that Trump's faith is fraudulent. But it shouldn’t have taken this long to come to grips with how he manipulates faith for political gain. Christians are not a monolith. We practice differently across different denominations, but I would expect that a man who loves pretending to wear his faith on his sleeve, who claims he has an unwavering love for the word of God, to at least be able to articulate his favorite verse. In a 2015 interview with Bloomberg, Trump explained why he wouldn’t (read: couldn’t). “Because to me that’s very personal,” the president said. “You know, when I talk about the Bible it’s very personal, so I don’t want to get into verses. The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.”When asked if he’s a bigger fan of the Old Testament or the New Testament, Trump responded, “Probably equal. I think it’s just incredible, the whole Bible is incredible.”What’s more incredible—a 2016 interview with WHAM 1180 radio host Bob Lonsberry, Trump finally revealed his favorite Bible verse. “Is there a favorite Bible verse or Bible story that has informed your thinking or your character through life?” Lonsberry asked. “Well, I think many,” said the president. “I mean, when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That’s not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what’s happening to our country, I mean, when you see what’s going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our money, they’re taking the health of our country. And we have to be firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you.”That scripture comes from Exodus 21:23-25 but if the president had a real understanding of the Bible, as he claims, he’d know that in Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus, the Big Man himself, condemns the practice of personal retaliation:

• You have heard that it was said, "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

American Christians Need to Wake Up and Vote Trump Out

It’s time for Christians to get real about Trump’s faith, or lack thereof. Through his own words, through his own actions, through his own deeds, he’s given a clear indicator that his evangelical base is only good for votes. He has no interest in walking the walk. For a man wielding attacks like “sleepy Joe,” “nasty woman” and “phony Kamala,” one might question if his love for the Bible taught him that it was appropriate to disparage even his enemies. It’s the same Bible he carries while cameras are rolling that tells us, “those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” (James 1:26).Joe Biden often speaks about restoring the “soul of America.” I’d be more content with finding a soul for Donald Trump. Trump’s racism, sexism, misogyny, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia and transphobia—just to name a few of his prejudices—have been well-publicized, and while some Christians may struggle with accepting a few marginalized (say, LGBTQ+) groups because of a few loosely interpreted Bible verses, I think it’s clear that Trump’s message, unlike Christ’s, is not one of love.The Bible itself warns against false prophets. Romans 16:18 reads, “For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” It’s my sincere hope the evangelicals aren’t naive this election cycle, and won’t be used as pawns again.

How can the group of people who experienced what the West considers the largest genocide of our time have so much hatred for so many?Please don’t think for a moment that I’m an anti-Semite.I’m full-blooded Jewish on both sides of my family, dating back centuries, and I attended a Hebrew day school as a child. I’m not self-hating, either. In fact, I’m perfectly happy to be a member of the global Jewish community. Granted, I find the religious doctrine misogynistic and far-fetched, but I feel that way about all the other major faith-based systems too. I don’t hold old books full of tall tales against any modern-day human. There are many facets of Jewish culture that I adore, such as respecting your ancestors, giving thanks for life’s gifts and expressing love through food.There’s something else that I hold against a faction of my community, though, and it’s much more egregious than anything in the Old Testament. I’ve repeatedly encountered American Jewish people espousing prejudices against others, each prejudice consisting of a specific set of racist stereotypes about a marginalized population. Privilege naturally grows along with income, and in my experience, I’ve noticed that this phenomenon is the strongest amongst the most economically elite Jews.

Yes, Jews Can Be Racist Too

Racism within the white American Jewish population isn’t a new concept. Jewish people of mixed race have spoken out about it. Multiracial Jews even have their own network to increase awareness of ethnically diverse members of the community. However, it’s a topic that is rarely discussed in America, where the tendency is to err on the side of sensitivity towards Jews.Since we’re a marginalized population ourselves—one that has suffered enormous, inexplicable and inexcusable violence that continues to live on in the current neo-Nazi movement—it’s assumed that we aren’t likely to be terribly racist. Logically, shouldn’t a collection of people who’ve been subjected to mass capture, torture, imprisonment and death because of their identity have the strongest understanding of the tangible harm that racism causes?Sadly, my experience in Jewish-American life mostly falls on the other side of that coin. I’ve heard the same stereotypes repeated proudly, without care or concern for whom they are hurting, by family members and friends alike. I’ve had plenty of discussions with people who have also bore witness to them. The prejudices we hear are alarmingly consistent throughout the country, from a friend’s mom in Florida to a grandma in New England to an acquaintance in California: Mexican people are lazy. Indian people are cheap. Chinese people are cheaters. Japanese people only value work, not personal lives. Muslims are terrorists.Among all the negative stereotypes, one frequently mentioned positive stereotype stands out: Black people are wonderful. The sentiment presents itself in situations where normally you wouldn’t expect someone to point out a person’s race. “I went to the store and the Black cashier was so nice,” or, “I was waiting in line and the Black man behind me gave me a great tip about keeping the parsley in my cart fresh longer.”I’ve had so many conversations with Jewish people where I had to explain that broad, sweeping generalizations about entire populations of people are damaging regardless of whether the generalizations are “positive” or “negative.” Every time, I was met with disbelief and dismissal.The coldness with which this racism is expressed is also consistent. It’s always stated in an alarmingly matter-of-fact manner: casual and conversational. I used to date someone from Central America, and both my family and a childhood friend’s family spoke disparagingly about Mexicans in front of her. I was shocked that they’d have that nerve, but when I spoke up the response in each situation was exactly the same: “It’s fine, she’s not Mexican!” No matter how much I explained that, by being from a country (next to Mexico), my partner had every right to be deeply and personally offended by their racist remarks. They continued the conversation as if I hadn’t said a thing.I also attempted, to no avail, to explain that I was offended by their comments as well, because racism is harmful to all people, not only those not in the marginalized group it’s directed at.

It is only by laying to rest the deep-seated belief that God loves Jewish people best that we can reduce this rampant and strangely socially acceptable cultural racism.

We Aren’t the Chosen People, and We Need to Stop Acting Like We Are

You’d think that being called out as racist would be eye-opening to members of the Jewish community, that it might conjure up images of the horrors of World War II and inspire an about-face of self-reflection. In my experience, this has never been the case. Rather, I’ve heard many Jews proudly acknowledge their racism. Their usual explanation? We are the chosen people.Believing that a higher power has personally selected you and your loved ones as special with their almighty and etheric pointer finger is problematic at best, violently harmful at worst. It sets you above and apart from those around you, and in the process disables your empathy. While the idea of being the chosen people may have helped Jewish people band together to traverse difficult moments in history, it serves no purpose in the current world. Any one group holding the belief that they are better than other types of people causes irreparable damage—something Jews should know all too well.It is only by laying to rest the deep-seated belief that God loves Jewish people best that we can reduce this rampant and strangely socially acceptable cultural racism. And it’s only by learning and caring more about issues of class and privilege that wealthy Jewish people can begin to understand how the stereotypes they espouse serve to perpetuate class divisions, and make other people vulnerable to the same horrors our own people have suffered.Because I have never made any progress by voicing my alarm and discomfort at this racism, I’ve wound up distancing myself from Jewish friends. Given how important family feels to me, though, I can’t just let the subject go. I bang my head against the wall trotting out the same conversations, year after year, hoping that somehow I might convince them to come around. If a candle can stay lit for eight nights, and a woman can turn into a pillar of salt, getting my mom to change her opinions about people of other races might be possible, too.

Whenever someone asks about my hijab, which happens a lot, I always tell them I chose to wear it at the age of 12. It was definitely a choice, one I have made countless times over the years. I chose it when I decided to cover my head. I chose it again when I realized it was something more internal than external, and then again when I moved away for university and it suddenly became a much more politicized act than it ever had been before. My religion has always been a key part of my identity. It was something I was born into, but as I’ve grown and questioned and learned, I have more fully leaned into it. I suppose it seems funny then, that I’m so vocal in questioning what most people’s idea of religion is. But I believe that when something’s important to you, you do it justice—or at least you try to do so. As a young Pakistani Muslim girl, I was brought up with the mindset that appearances are everything. That still rings true in a lot of ways, just not in the ones I was taught. Girls are meant to be quiet and shy, accepting and flexible. I was anything but. So when I felt alone and lost, it was God I turned to in my confusion. There were times as a young girl when the sheer pressure of finding my place in a society I didn’t understand would bring me to tears. But there was another problem too. All those boxes they kept trying to put me in, and all those identities I felt I was being pushed into, I was constantly told that it all had to do with my religion. I was trying to conform to an idea of being a woman that I could never quite make sense of, and somehow it had to do with my identity as a Muslim.

I Had Questions About Being a Woman in Islam but the Answers Weren’t There

South Asian society, and particularly Pakistani society, has an interesting perception of how culture and religion should be mixed together. It seems to come from this idea that, because we were created solely as a Muslim country, we should make being Muslim the sole reasoning for everything we do. At the same time, we’ve found it impossible to let go of years of patriarchal culture and hierarchies that have been passed down for generations. Because of this, I grew up surrounded by a system that exalted men. As I searched for answers, I was unable to find them via the authorities. Islamic scholarship, at least the branch I was introduced to, is a male-dominated field. I could find endless details about the houris that would be granted to men in Jannah, but no answers to questions as simple as why the mosque next to my house would only open their women’s section during Ramadan. There was much written about the rights of a husband but I couldn’t find any about the wife’s. I knew that all the questions I was asking had answers, I just never had access to them, because to give brown Muslim women access to this information would be to empower them. My journey in understanding my own religious identity has been full of revelations that showed me I had a lot more to question than I initially thought. It was only a few years ago that I found out women praying in mosques is actually quite common around the world. This journey has been further complicated by the fact that I couldn’t always find the line between patriarchal structures and my personal religious beliefs. Even now, I still don’t believe I’ve got it all figured out. But one thing I’ve realized is that I can’t let someone else tell me what my religion should mean to me.

We’re Overdue for a Change in the Status of Muslim Women

Women have been pushed out of the South Asian Muslim narrative for far too long. Even the mere idea of a Muslim woman being a feminist is seen as a contradiction. The belief that Islam requires women to be subservient is far too common, to the point where even women have accepted and internalized it. But we need to start differentiating between our religious identities and the patriarchal roles that are thrust upon us. I’ve always seen myself as an outsider in a lot of ways—too “modern” for some, too “religious” for others. I never fit into the boxes that society likes confining women into. It’s definitely not a system that’s limited to Muslim communities alone. These boxes are present across the world, and whether it's religion, tradition or simply power that drives them, those on top always find an excuse to maintain the hierarchy. But the personal impact of adding religion to the mix makes it a lot harder to pull the two apart. It was only when I began to journey into the Quran myself that I began to find answers. I’m still an outsider to many, but at least I’m sure about one thing: I will no longer accept someone using the part of my identity I hold most dear against me. Education leads to empowerment and that rings true here as well. The narrative around Islamic scholarship needs to change. It’s high time we stop letting other people tell us what Islam says about us and start finding out ourselves.

When I moved by myself to London, I thought I was running toward a new life. In a way, I definitely was—but I was also running away from my old life. I had been going through a very rough patch with health, love, financial and work challenges. More specifically, over the last year, I’d had a couple of emergency surgeries that led to significant debt, went through a difficult breakup and, on top of that, I got fired from my job. When, against all odds, I got offered a new job in an amazing city, far away from home, I didn’t think about it much and accepted. At that moment, I was only looking forward, imagining what I would gain: a new career, new friends, new romantic prospects and trips around Europe. I was definitely not thinking about all that I would lose: being present for a family member’s passing, the death of my dog, the birth of my nieces, weddings and the more routine things of daily life, like Sunday family lunches. I really like the new life I have been able to build for myself here in London. But somehow, this decision to move made the time-space continuum break and I am now two people living two parallel lives.

When I go back home, I feel like a tourist.

My Personality Changes When I Visit My Family and Old Friends

I go back home quite often, and when I’m there, it feels like I never left. I speak in my first language, eat what I grew up eating, go to the parks I went to every afternoon for a walk. I sleep in my old bedroom (which my mother has kept exactly the same), and suddenly, I feel like my London life or self doesn’t exist. Then, slowly, I start to notice the cracks in the surface that remind me that I do have another life. I realize my friends have changed gradually, and it makes me feel like I don’t know them that well anymore. I start to miss my London independence and lifestyle. I talk about things that my family has no idea about because they have not yet come to visit me. Whenever I meet someone new in London, I have the chance to choose what sections of me they can access and get to know. I select what parts of my history they can learn about because they weren’t there to witness it. This feels empowering, as I get to cherry-pick and tell my own story, designing who I want them to think I am. But it’s also sad because they will never fully know the real (or whole) me. Some things get lost in translation; they won’t understand my culture; they don’t know any of my friends or family or imagine the things that I considered normal back home. I also noticed that my personality changes when I’m in London because without making a conscious effort, I adapt to my surroundings. I am less loud, more “proper,” less confident because I feel like a guest here and need to behave. Back home, I talk faster and I laugh more because I am with friends I’ve known for what feels like forever. We can collectively get nostalgic when we remember our school times, and we relate to and complain about the current problems of the country. I can go to a stand-up comedy show and truly understand it. In London, I have tried, but I don’t get half of the jokes because I lack context.

I start to notice the cracks in the surface that remind me that I do have another life.

I’ve Grown Homesick, but I Know I Won’t Be Fully Happy at Home

London has given me the freedom to explore new things I never imagined: eating food that I can’t find back home, taking rowing classes on the Thames, participating in creative writing classes, meeting people from every corner of the world and figuring out who I really am without any limitations or pressures. I love the city so much. But as time passes, I do feel more and more homesick. When I’m with new groups of people, I become extremely shy because I often can’t contribute to the ongoing conversations and feel like an outsider. I wonder what my family is eating, what music my friends will be dancing to this weekend and feel guilty that my mother worries and misses me. I think about going back because I miss everyone and I miss small-town life. I miss the kind of nature that doesn’t exist here in the U.K. But I know that professionally, I will feel frustrated, as there are fewer opportunities back home. I think about how I will become bored quickly because there aren’t many entertainment options either. I know I will miss London because it has become such an important, intangible character in my life. And so when I’m here, I spend a lot of mental energy thinking about home and a part of me is always a bit sad. When I go back home, I feel like a tourist. It’s helped me learn to live two parallel lives, both with amazing things that never feel fully complete.

I've been a volunteer at a harm reduction group in New York City for about four years now. I do a bunch of different stuff. Usually, when I'm there, I'm running the syringe exchange. One day a week, I go out to distribute syringes, test kits and pipes, as well as food and clothing, hygiene supplies and so forth. We also do Narcan training, including ones where we set up at shows and events. One of the cool things we're going to do soon is to actually do in-person drug testing to let you know you really do have cocaine or ketamine and not something else, like fentanyl. That's something New York desperately needs and that they’ve had in certain parts of Europe for years.There are a lot of people out on the street. They might be coming out of prison. Maybe they never really did dope before but they started in prison a little bit, and then they get out and they have a habit. But they don't really want that to be their life or have this habit define them. A lot of times, somebody comes out of prison, or they're temporarily unhoused, and there will be a six-month period that they'll be using and on the street and they don't have access to supplies. And in that six months, a lot of bad stuff can happen. They could contract something from sharing needles. They could have a wound become infected; they could lose a limb. That six months of someone being down and out—or two years, or however long it is—shouldn't define the entire rest of their lives. They shouldn’t end up with an easily preventable disease or a wound that would be easy to keep clean if they just had basic access to fresh water. That shouldn’t be the end for them. So by providing very simple supplies like this to people, it gives them a chance to not just reduce the harm that they might do themselves or that the environment does to them—it also buys people time. If they want to get clean, you can reduce the risk so that they just have a better shot. But it also doesn't matter if people get clean or not. If they don't, they should at least be able to have safe access to supplies and not have to consume things in the most miserable way possible. I'm not judgmental. I don't give a fuck. What people use or how they use it has nothing to do with me. At least here, you should feel comfortable. The people who come here, when they leave, they have to go through the rest of their lives where things aren’t so comfortable.

The people who come here, when they leave, they have to go through the rest of their lives where things aren’t so comfortable.

Addiction Is Hard—and Our Medical System Isn’t Cut Out to Handle It

Dope is one of the hardest things I can think of for humans to deal with. When opium was discovered, people thought it was a test from God, this wonderful thing that allows us to do crazy surgeries, but it's also such a vicious drug. It feels like it was literally put on the planet to test us. And so it's incredibly hard to get off of or deal with your life. That takes time, and it’s not as simple as people think it is. People think that you can go to your insurance company and they’ll take care of it. But usually, the most that they'll pay for is maybe six weeks in rehab, and that's just not enough time for people to kick these habits. And they see overdoses as an event, like a car accident or something that you just deal with and move on. But that’s not how car accidents work. You might be dealing with injuries your entire life from one. Overdoses are the same way. Our health system isn’t set up to provide the kind of care that addiction and its effects require. They’re the ones who literally fucking dumped OxyContin on everybody and made so much fucking money doing it. It's such a joke. It's infuriating. But now a lot of the country understands that. So harm reduction is a way to add to a whole holistic plan for people to live better and deal with these types of things.Some people, when they hear about harm reduction, they’re like, “Holy shit, that really makes sense.” And then some people just can't make sense of it. Even most people in my family don't know that I do this work, or if they do, they don't really understand it, even though there have been many people in my family who have died of overdoses or are still using. It’s a mental block. They'll just be like, “Wait, did you say you give out crack pipes? Wouldn't that make people do it more?” It's a very deep-seated thing. But that’s not how it works, and there's a lot of data to back that up. Harm reduction helps a lot of other people besides the person using drugs. Especially with syringe exchanges. People complain that the city is out of control, that there are syringes everywhere. And I’m like, “That's because you fucking made the city take away the bins that we had to collect syringes—where you think they're gonna go?” There are solutions to this, but people don't want to look at the one box. "I don't want children in the neighborhood looking at syringes and shit. They're dangerous!"

The problem is the war on drugs and the state.

Everything You Think You Know About Crack Is Wrong

Crack is interesting because people just think it's the scariest, craziest thing in the world, like people murder people on it or something—but it's not. It’s a boogeyman drug, but it's super common. Tons of people do it. And we've been dealing with it since the ’80s. The main problem with crack pipes is that hepatitis C is really easy to transmit with them. We also give out these things like crack condoms so users don’t burn themselves smoking it, which can also transmit infections. If you smoke crack, you’re going to find a way to do it. You might as well be able to do it cleanly. I had the idea with our old coordinator at the harm reduction center to start giving out crack pipes and meth pipes. I put together a fundraiser for that, and we bought the first ones and started to give them out. That went really well. The health department actually heard about it, and they were like, “That's great, we want to fund it.” We were like, “Holy shit, we're actually going to get funding for this and at a high level.” But before I even got to really process it, everybody on social media started saying, “Biden’s giving out crack pipes,” and the funding never came through. It was frustrating. People think ideas like this are crazy because that’s what they see on Law & Order. They can't even begin to process how good that is for people and how good a small change like that can change people's minds about everything. If you can get the federal government to give you money to take care of people who are considered the lowest common denominator, that's a great opportunity to change people's minds about how we treat each other in general. But if the federal government doesn't fund that shit, we'll keep doing it no matter what. That's one of the reasons I like harm reduction so much because we take care of each other in all these ways. If just a little bit more of the population did stuff like this, it would make a huge difference. The more community you have, the safer shit is in general, all the way across the board. And that’s how you make a better world. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I realized there's a pattern with all the people I grew up with, where the way we would rebel against what we were surrounded by was to get really fucked up. You weren't supposed to drink or smoke or do drugs, so everyone there who didn’t fit into that mold just got really fucked up. I lost people to drugs growing up: my family, a lot of friends. My first reaction to it was that I was just really mad. I hated some of these dealers that I knew. There were times when I was like, “I’m straight up going to murder this motherfucker for giving shit to people I knew.” Then, it clicked, and I was just like, “Holy shit, this is exactly what the people in control want: If you don't fall into line with them, then you kill yourself with fucking drugs.”Then I moved to the Pacific Northwest and came across syringe exchanges. I'd heard about it when I was a kid—through the punk community—but I’d never really connected with it. I decided I'm not really mad at any of these dealers or anybody. It is what it is. The problem is the war on drugs and the state.

Harm Reduction Helps Everyone

The one way I can actually fight that is to do harm reduction and do it well, and keep these people alive because that's what the people in power really don’t want to see. The worst thing for them is for these people to be kept alive. I wish we could have done more of this shit earlier. I often think about all the people we lost from the late ’60s through the ’90s, how different our cities could be because so many really cool, creative, smart and radical people were wiped out, whether it's from street violence or drugs or AIDS. It’s a radical act, just keeping people alive so that they can be here to fight. I want people to be sober if they want to be and to be happy and healthy but not because of morality. I just want them to be happy and be a problem for the state. We need more than just harm reduction. We need safer injection sites and a safe drug supply. But also, so much money needs to be put into the way pain is treated because, right now, it’s fucked. There needs to be a full staff of people working with a patient and a whole program for it so that someone isn't just pushed in and out of pill mills. There should be follow-ups and inpatient and outpatient care so people don’t even get into street drugs in the first place. It’s really hard to imagine because, in order for that to change, you need to get rid of insurance companies and restructure the entire medical system. Give me a big enough check and I'll do that.

My mother and I create a diagonal line across Manhattan. She works on the Upper West Side; I’m on the Lower East. We are the custodians of two different theaters, looking after the city’s creative class in their pursuit of culture. Uptown, my mom is a matron for a hallowed institution of music, song and dance. You may be able to guess it. Downtown, I work in the box office of an art-house cinema. Most days, we cater to empty seats. Airborne viruses, streaming services and the hypnotic doomscroll have made our jobs nearly obsolete. We wait on standby for the stray customer. At night, we swap stories. These days, theaters stay alive by doubling as event spaces. Premieres are their bread and butter. This is when the funniest things happen, like the time my mom recognized Liv Tyler but couldn’t quite place her, so she asked her what she did. Actress or model? Being a 65-year-old woman, standing 4 feet 11 inches with a loose grip on the English language, makes it easy for her to get away with rudeness. Or the time I had diarrhea in the single-stall bathroom at a private screening moments before I directed Anna Wintour to use it. This is what's funny about living in New York: You live close by to everything you see in magazines and on TV. But also so far away.

Many of cinema’s greatest achievements depict the poor and disenfranchised, largely catering to an educated, affluent audience.

Waiting on Celebrities Isn’t Always Glamorous

Of all the customers we tend to, celebrities are among the nicest. Their place in the hierarchy depends on the poor; they need our adoration. Like the time Zoe Saldaña gave my mom a kiss on the cheek for helping her with a dress malfunction in the bathroom. Or the time Maggie Gyllenhaal winked at me as I passed her a microphone at a Q&A. When rich civilians step out to see a movie, it’s also to display their wealth. The trust fund kids of today have dropped the “poor hipster” act of the past. Being rich is cool again. Oh, but who am I to make these statements about money? I’ve never had enough of it to know anything about it. One time, my mother found a gold ring in her bathroom and brought it home for me. I pawned it for groceries.Sometimes, I’m jealous. I wish I could own this person’s Rick Owens boots or that girl’s Prada wallet. I am not immune. What’s humiliating is that I would probably flaunt my wealth, too, if I had any. So if I can’t own beautiful things then I’ll look at beautiful things. A movie ticket is cheaper than a plane ticket. This is what drew me to movies first and, later, the box office. When you work there, movies are free. You can go anywhere you like, privately or with a companion. Even if you’re alone, there are other hearts beating along with you. I like facilitating this for others. The printing of tickets, the smell of popcorn, the sweep between the aisles as the credits roll. This makes it worthwhile. Until it doesn’t. Until you have to spend an hour’s pay on lunch. Until my mother’s tendinitis makes her feet swell from standing all day. Many of cinema’s greatest achievements depict the poor and disenfranchised, largely catering to an educated, affluent audience. The suffering of many becomes entertainment for the very few. It is called Art.Is empathy in movies a way to wash away class guilt? Maybe. Cinema is a medium that depends on compassion. It also depends on your looking away from the exploitation that seems to be inherent in filmmaking: The overworked and underpaid production assistant. The actor reenacting their trauma. The audience member who pays to watch. The box office employees with empty stomachs. The matrons who aren’t allowed to sit down.

One should only be sad when good things end.

Our Jobs May Not Be Fair, but Movies Still Are

Since starting this story, I’ve been fired for reasons that don’t fit into this essay. But if you Google "labor across theaters in New York," I think you’ll be able to guess why. I’m angry. I wasn’t the only one who was fired and definitely not the poorest. Although my bank account regularly floats below a hundred dollars, I have my mother. She tells me not to be sad. One should only be sad when good things end. She asks me to watch a movie with her to cheer me up. I find a torrent of Parallel Mothers, starring Penélope Cruz and directed by Pedro Almodóvar. While we’re watching, my mom tells me she was working the night it premiered and that she met Penélope in the bathroom. She told Penélope about the love we share for her films. Our favorite is Volver. Penélope squeezed my mother’s arm and said, “Hold on to each other.”

In December 2019, a matter of weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, a lot was going on in the world of politics in the United Kingdom. December 12 of that year saw a massive general election where Boris Johnson of the Conservative Party went up against Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party. The election resulted in the Conservatives receiving a landslide majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 47 seats—in turn, this meant they won 43.6 percent of the vote, the highest percentage of any party since 1979.As a working-class woman in her mid-20s, some of my friends weren’t impressed when they found out that I had voted Conservative. I come from a single-parent household and was a child who benefited from free school meals throughout my education—which means that voting Conservative was and still is seen as a crime by the people of similar backgrounds to my own. Not only are people unimpressed when they find out about me voting Tory in 2019, but when they realize I did so because I supported Brexit and voted leave in 2016, their opinion of me plummets even more. Although I regret voting Conservative when I did, this isn’t to say that I regret voting for Brexit or disagree with every single thing that the right-wing party in the U.K. stands for. I voted Tory back in 2019 because I believed this party to be the only one that could finalize Brexit and put a stop to the never-ending leave versus remain discourse.A select number of people know my political secret, and I feel great shame in talking about my then-political stance—but hear me out because I’ve got my reasons.

When they realize I did so because I supported Brexit and voted leave in 2016, their opinion of me plummets even more.

I Was Excited to Get Involved With Politics and Make My Voice Heard

When the EU referendum happened in 2016, I was finally of voting age. I was completely overjoyed because this meant that I got my right to exercise my own personal vote—something that the suffragettes fought for women to have in the early 20th century. I can remember being totally engrossed during the run-up to the referendum. I’d watch countless debates, read dozens of articles, weigh up the pros and cons of both leaving the European Union and remaining, and I truly wanted to use my vote for the better. After much deliberation and deep thinking, I knew in my heart of hearts that voting leave was the only outcome I truly believed in. My nan would always preach about our country being self-sufficient when I was younger. This combined with the fact that leaving would allow us to make our own laws without the approval of the EU, all while the country could save paying a hefty membership fee, made it a total no-brainer. Putting a cross in the box for leaving the EU was a liberating moment for me, as was the night that followed, when I stayed up until the early hours to see the joyous outcome that meant the United Kingdom would be embarking on Brexit. I was happy that we could control the influx of immigrants and overjoyed that we could make our own rules without approval. Weeks later, everything was thrown into jeopardy when Theresa May moved into Downing Street after David Cameron resigned. She didn’t want Brexit, but she said she would get it done—but could she? Then, in 2019, an opportunity arose for a new prime minister to take the reins, and when I saw that Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Andrea Leadsom were in the running, I was excited about politics once more. Boris Johnson ended up winning the leadership election, and then it was time for the country to decide: Who was going to lead the U.K. out of the EU and into 2020? Boris Johnson went head-to-head with Jeremy Corbyn, with much of my generation opting and supporting the latter because of his socialist approach, cuts to university fees and relatable persona that resonated with so many young people. But I was drawn in and totally blinded by Brexit, which meant that voting for Corbyn seemed like I’d be cheating on Brexit, which is why I backed Boris for the duration of his campaign. I was excited to finally get Brexit done and looking forward to Britain getting stronger as it stood on its own once more. After all, it was the people before my generation and those of my grandparents’ age who voted for the U.K. to stay in the EU all the way back in 1975, which made me even more passionate about getting Brexit out of the way. I was a huge fan of my local MP when I supported the Conservative Party in 2019—she did so many great things for my local area—and I knew I would be voting Tory from the get-go. I hung a big blue poster in my window and was beyond excited to vote when the election took place on December 12. I kept out of the political discourse on social media. I could not bring myself to join in and simply did so by putting out subtle remarks like, “I don’t care what you vote, just make sure you do,” because at the end of the day, I didn’t care what anybody voted for, and I still don’t. We all have a right to vote, and I believe it should be entirely up to that person—and I also believe they should be 100 percent free from judgment too. Voting for the Conservatives was joyous for me back then and even more so when they won and Boris Johnson was fast-tracked into 10 Downing Street. I knew he would get Brexit done, and at the time, he seemed like a no-nonsense guy and somebody who could fully unite the country after the divisive EU referendum years prior. I took the plunge and became a member of the Conservative Party. I was excited to get fully involved in any way I could and was willing to fully embrace the Conservative Party; I was excited to go canvassing or help out when needed, attend events and socials. But the month that my membership card arrived also marked the month that my trust in the Tories began to waver.

Before the pandemic hit the U.K., I was fooled into thinking that Boris and his party actually cared for the working class.

I’m Disappointed in What the Conservative Party Has Done During the Pandemic

Since March 2020, the Conservative Party has done so many completely unforgivable things that have caused me to feel deep shame and regret for having voted for them and having joined their party, from their lavish cheese and wine parties during the height of the pandemic to easing restrictions far too soon and stopping free lateral flow tests. They mucked up the visa scheme for the Ukrainian people fleeing their war-torn country and have been completely against working-class people—something they promised me they weren't. They gave people on benefits an extra £20 per week during the height of the pandemic but then ripped this from them just as the cost of living reached new heights. And during the pandemic, they didn’t care about school children and the free school meals they might have been entitled to and gave pitiful food packages that contained the likes of a loaf of bread, three yogurts, a tin of baked beans, a tin of tuna, two potatoes, some fruit and some cheese to last a child an entire week of meals. The only way change came about was when footballer Marcus Rashford campaigned for it. Before the pandemic hit the U.K., I was fooled into thinking that Boris and his party actually cared for the working class—all because of the way they shone light on Brexit and made it sound like it was for the working class. But really, they couldn’t care less.If I were to come out of the Conservative closet, so to speak, I would be hated by the majority of my generation. As a working-class, disadvantaged, young woman, the Conservative Party supposedly stands against everything I should stand for. But, although I regret voting for them in 2019, this doesn’t mean I am a socialist or a born-again left wing.I do feel so much shame for having voted Conservative in 2019, though, and if I could take it back, I would in a heartbeat. I wish I’d never parted with money to join their party and receive a stupid plastic membership card. And I wish I hadn’t played a part in making disadvantaged families even more so. While I regret voting Tory in 2019, I don’t however regret voting for Brexit. And although I do regret voting for Boris, I wouldn’t have voted for Jeremy Corbyn—not in a million years. But it’s just a shame that Boris Johnson and his clan had to muck up what could have been a prosperous country by now.

I needed to suppress my shudder. It looked like a worm was wiggling under the patient’s forehead, and the last thing someone wants to see after having facial surgery is a grimace. After removing the tube, only a trickle of blood came out, as was supposed to happen. Throughout it all, I was screaming on the inside, but I kept on a professional face.For over eight years, I was a registered nurse. I was surrounded by extreme emotions and demanding people, with workers and family members all trying to do what they thought was right for their patients. Nurses are often the face of the hospital system, doing things for you at your most vulnerable. But that doesn’t mean they get treated fairly. I’ve been somebody’s wall to scream at. I’ve been groped, hit, spat on and verbally abused. All because I needed to pay my rent and wanted to do a job I loved. The running theme of the bad experiences? Being told, “It’s just part of the job.”

I’ve been groped, hit, spat on and verbally abused. All because I needed to pay my rent and wanted to do a job I loved.

Angry Old-School Doctors Were the Norm in My Hospital

I’d just graduated with my nursing degree, moved out of my home and was finally “adulting.” I was excited and terrified; mistakes could accidentally kill someone. I just had to follow my training, learn from those that had more experience and follow the law. Sounds easy, right?After nursing for three weeks, I’d gotten used to getting up at 5 a.m. and getting home at midnight. In all honesty, I still found it hard to poop in a toilet that wasn’t my own. Holding in a fart for eight hours is painful, and you can only go to the toilet when another person is covering your beds. So yeah, it’s a hurdle.One day, there was an order for a “pre-med on call” from the anesthetist. The phone rang, and I prepared to put it on the loudspeaker if it was for medication orders. This was one of the first times I’d answered the work phone, so here I was, pretending to be calm and professional. I answered the phone and heard, “Where the fuck is my patient? Answer me, you idiot! Or has a fucking mute answered the phone?” I was stunned. I had no idea who this was. I put the phone on the loudspeaker, and the nurses around me weren’t surprised once they heard the voice. One nurse said, “Hello, Dr. Blah, this is Super-Nurse. The medication chart states pre-med on call.” Blah interrupted, “Oh great, another fucking liar. Give the pre-meds to all of them; do your fucking job.” Super-Nurse asked him to repeat it to maintain legal compliance, but Blah just hung up. Super-Nurse told me this was normal, that patients loved Blah, but Blah just yelled, swore, demanded or threw equipment at his staff. Only certain people could work with Blah. On the way to the lift with the patient, the doors to the elevator opened and out came Blah, looking like a rage-filled Papa Smurf—red-faced, fists clenched, stamping feet, yelling about the incompetence and stupidity of nurses. Dr. Anesthetist just stood there and agreed, afraid to admit to their mistake of omission. Super-Nurse looked at me, shrugged. “It’s just part of the job,” she said.Blah was an old-school doctor about to retire, and Dr. Anesthetist was too scared to admit that they had written the orders, but is that an excuse? Blah was not an anomaly, and the silence from Dr. Anesthetist spoke volumes about the hospital’s hierarchy.

One Patient's Sick Behavior Pushed Me Over the Edge

It was a windy night shift in the emergency department, and the moon was full. For some, that’s all I’d have to say, and they’d instantly understand. The department was packed and loud, thanks to beeping machines and people crying and moaning. The police escorted in The Patient, who yelled, “You’re all fucking cunts! Eat me, you stupid fuckwit!” and other classics because of drug-induced issues. Other patients’ heart monitors were going off; blood pressure was rising; and patients’ families were mourning in a treatment room. The Patient was physically and medically sedated throughout the night, and still, they bore their teeth, screamed profanity and tried to yank themselves out of the restraints.It was 4 a.m. I’d been working since 9 p.m., and The Patient needed to be cleaned. An orderly helped me, as all other staff was busy, but I needed to loosen the restraints. The Patient seemed to have finally calmed; the medication had settled in; and the in-charge nurse thought it was safe. So we loosened the restraints, and The Patient punched me in the chest. The pain was immediate, and the bruise blossomed later, but I kept changing the sheets because nobody deserves to sit in their own excrement.I moved to their feet, and they kicked me hard in my hip, but I kept going. The orderly saw me grimace and asked if I was OK. Then, The Patient cleared their throat to gather snot and spat on my shirt. “I was aiming at your face, ya cunt!” they shouted at me. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and as I saw the green glob of mucus slide down my shirt, I was done. The next thing I knew, I was walking and could hear a muffled buzzing in my ears. I took my shirt off (I had a singlet underneath), suddenly hot, and struggled to get my breath. My heart was beating hard and fast. I’d never abandoned work before, but I was done. As I got outside, another nurse blocked my path, asking me if I was OK, and all I could do was slowly shake my head. Eventually, I started to calm down in the 30-minute break I should have had hours ago and decided to finish the shift. I saw the scratches on the arms of another nurse when I got back from the same patient. The morning shift told us, “It’s just part of the job.”

The Patient cleared their throat to gather snot and spat on my shirt.

I Did My Best to Navigate My Responsibilities and My Patients’ Concerns

One time, I received a complaint that I didn’t pour a patient’s water for them because I was attending to a bleeding patient instead—you know, triage. The patient (let’s call them H2O) had a procedure on their toe, and their significant other blocked my path to demand I pour H2O a glass of water. (Instead of this conscious, grown adult with fully functioning arms pouring water, I apparently needed to do it.) “You’ll need to pour it for them or they could pour it themselves,” I said. “I’m going to another patient right now.” Later, I was approached by the in-charge nurse, who said I’d been “mistreating” H2O. I explained my version of events—my truth—but that made no difference. “Just part of the job.” The bleeding patient had to go back to surgery, but that was of no importance compared to filling a cup for an adult.There have been many other indignities and hard-to-swallow moments. Like the time a 6-foot-4, 551-pound man stood over me and threatened to “slap my stupid fucking face” if I didn’t get them another fan for their room at 3 a.m. on a Sunday. I’m about 5-foot-1, and the multiple fans already in their room had become tripping hazards. “Well, that’s why we hired an agency nurse,” the in-charge nurse said. “My staff is getting stressed looking after him. Deal with it.” At least they were honest.Then, there was the time I took a body down to the morgue, and as I was signing it in, I noticed two infant names on the entry above. That night, I cried on the train on the way home and learned tears were a common occurrence. I remember an enrolled nurse crying because I was making a bed and they were overwhelmed by the idea of somebody “above” them helping. Their tears epitomized hospital culture, the power divide that encourages horizontal violence.

I Had to Quit Once I Stopped Caring

I decided to stop nursing when I caught myself about to put the wrong medication dose into a medicine cup. I could see the pathway that error could take, the potential injury, the changes to lifestyle, the legal and moral repercussions, and I just didn’t care. I knew one mistake could have devastating effects—not just to the patient but to their families, the employer and myself. And still, I just couldn’t care. I realized the nausea I felt every day before going to work was linked. I just couldn’t cope anymore. After all the verbal, physical and emotional abuse, the hospital staff culture and the shift work, the thing that made me quit was that I could no longer care enough to do it safely.I doubt nursing has changed much. When I saw people clapping for nurses during the early stages of COVID-19, I thought, “How long before those claps become slaps? How long before the cheers become abuse?” And then: “I bet the nurses would swap those claps for better conditions.” The physical and verbal abuse, the mental strain and exhaustion—it shouldn’t be accepted. It shouldn’t be “just part of the job.”

I met James in December of 2020. There was an instant attraction. He wasn't like any guy I had dated or been interested in before. I could tell right away that he was The One.James told me the night we met that he was an addict—or a former addict, he claimed. Ironically, he told me this as we were doing lines of coke in my room, although heroin was his drug of choice. I didn't know anything about drug addiction, so I assumed it was normal behavior, that he might have a problem with one drug but could handle himself when it came to others. He glamorized his addiction. He seemed almost proud of it, talking about how heroin addicts were “the cool kids.” They were the most hardcore of all, he said. Nothing compares to shooting up so much you blow out your veins, forcing you to start shooting the ones in your foot. He romanticized the idea of spending every day getting high, partying sunup to sundown. Instead of spotting a problem right away, I thought this made him incredibly interesting. Plus, he said he could handle drugs and alcohol now, so why should I worry?

And with that, I made the worst decision of my life.

Our Relationship Got Intense Very Quickly

The night he asked me to be his girlfriend, I was hesitant, not because of the "former" drug addiction but because I felt we hadn’t spent enough time getting to know each other. But from the get-go, he made elaborate promises that convinced me to say yes. Things moved very quickly in our relationship. We fell in love in a drastically short amount of time, but I meant it when I told him I loved him, and I knew he did too. Looking back, I see that he was love bombing me, making promises about the future that seemed like a fairy tale. "I'm going to take care of you, if you let me," he would say. "I'm going to work so you never have to." I was on cloud nine. I told my family and friends the things he said, and they were so happy for me, at least at first.Four months into dating, we moved in together. I thought it was the best idea because we essentially lived together anyway since he was always at my apartment, and I was ready to take the next step. We decided he would cover rent and I would handle groceries and bills.And with that, I made the worst decision of my life. I lived on a month-to-month lease. Roommates were always coming and going, so the easiest way to deal with security deposits was to pay the person moving out. Because James was taking both of my roommates' spots, he owed each of them $600. He didn't have the money at the moment, so his dad was going to pay for it—or so he said. “My dad is sending the money this Sunday, so let them know they’ll have the money then,” he told me.Sunday turned into Monday, which turned into Friday. "The money is coming," he said over and over. My former roommates grew understandably impatient as I explained the situation.After two weeks, I took matters into my own hands and paid them myself. I knew James was never going to pay them (and toward the end of the relationship, he even told me so). He promised he’d pay me back, but of course, the money never came. But I trusted that this was only temporary. He’d take care of me like he said he would—right?

He Constantly Made Excuses About Money

He "lost his credit card," so I paid for everything. I bought groceries, dinners, even gas for his car. There was always an excuse why he couldn't pay me back: His PayPal wasn’t working or his Venmo had been hacked. I wanted to take care of him, just like he said he was going to take care of me. When I wanted to redecorate the apartment, I asked if he could cover our shopping trip since I was already paying for everything else. "OK, but I only have $80 in cash," he said. I walked around the store, seeing things I wanted, but I felt guilty that he didn't have much money, so I left the store empty-handed.That night, I had a friend over. He and I were watching a movie when James put on his coat and headed for the front door. When I asked where he was going, he told me, “Our dealer’s house.” Knowing each coke bag was $150 and knowing he claimed to only have $80 earlier that day, I asked him where the money had come from. He said he “found it in his jeans.” I knew that was bullshit, but I didn’t feel like arguing, so I let him leave.Even though I was angry, I still railed some lines when he got back. We even had people over to celebrate a friend’s birthday. An hour later, when we were all fucked up, I caught him trying to ingest our cat's medicine, amitriptyline, which gives you a euphoric high. When I found him, he brushed it off as a joke. It wasn’t funny at all.Two months in, I started getting texts from my landlord, wondering why he hadn’t received our rent check. When I approached James about it, he said he would talk to our landlord and straighten things out. But my suspicions were right. He wasn’t paying at all.After several more texts from my landlord, I made James drive us to my landlord’s apartment to deliver the check personally, like he said he had in previous months. When we pulled up to the house, I realized we had entered the wrong address into Google Maps. When we pulled up to the actual address, I noticed how different that house was from the other. My landlord lived in a two-story house with tan siding. The house we first visited was a brick ranch. “If you’ve been here before, how could you not remember what it looks like?” I snapped. “Are you stupid or are you a liar?” “It was a month ago!” he snapped back. “I don’t remember what everyone’s house looks like!” “I know you didn’t drop off the check,” I said. "Tell me the truth."Of course, he pouted and said how hurt he was that I didn’t believe him. After two months of lying about paying rent, I received a letter saying we were being evicted. In the five years I’d been living in that apartment, I had never had issues with my landlord. I thought James would eventually take care of things, and I wanted to protect him. I brushed off the fact that I was losing my home of five years.That should have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. But James managed to make our eviction seem like a positive thing. We were getting to move someplace new! We could live in a better place that didn’t cost as much! My sister begged me not to sign a new lease, but, of course, I did. Maybe, I thought, being in a less expensive apartment would change things.

An hour later, when we were all fucked up, I caught him trying to ingest our cat's medicine, amitriptyline, which gives you a euphoric high.

James’s Mother Told Me Things About His Past That I Didn’t Know Before

James said he had a job, but I don’t think he did. I think he sat in a parking lot for eight hours a day to make me think he was at work. How could he have absolutely no money if he was working full-time? Instead of saving money to pay for rent himself, he said he’d get the money from his dad. That was his idea of taking care of me: relying on his parents, who had already given him so much.For 10 years, his mother had bailed him out. She continued to love him, even after he pawned her wedding ring, even when they sold their house because he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from them, even when he committed credit card fraud and took everything she had.I can't blame his mother for his mistakes, but I do blame her for enabling him. When you continuously bail someone out, they know they can get away with it, which he knew. Regardless of my opinion, she and I became very close, but I could tell she was worried about me, knowing James's past and what he was capable of. One day, when we were alone together, she told me things I had no idea about: how he pawned his dad's tools while we were together, how he had her social security number and took advantage of that. "He's not going to do that to me, is he?" I asked through tears."I know he loves me, but he doesn't care about me," she continued. "But he cares about you, and I'm praying he doesn't make the same mistakes and ruin the amazing thing you have. You're so good for him. I really think he's going to change for you."You want to believe an addict is going to change, that you're the one who makes the difference. But you're not. As much as you want to believe you're the top priority, they will always choose drugs over you.

I Had Proof That He Stole From Me—but He Denied It

The last straw was the night I caught him stealing from me. We had been drinking at our friend's bar all day (so much for sobriety), and he was trashed. He called our dealer to grab a bag, which I thought was weird since he made it very clear he didn't have any money. I knew in the back of my mind what was going to happen, and I didn't stop it. He wouldn't do that to me, right? He wouldn't steal from someone who cared about and loved him so much…right?I left my phone at the bar when I went to the restroom and, when I came back to my seat, I saw I had an email saying I sent him $100.“Are you fucking kidding me?” I screamed. “You just took money from me!” “No I didn’t,” he replied. “I sent you the money.” “I’m looking at the email!” I yelled. “Do you think I’m that stupid? Are you really gonna sit here and tell me I’m making this up?” I got up and left. He followed me in complete silence, then took a different path back to the apartment. When I finally got home, his car was gone. So not only was he running away from the situation, he was also driving drunk.I went to sleep, not caring about where he was. I didn’t even care if he came back. The next morning, I found him in the guest room. We didn’t speak all day. I needed time to figure out exactly what I was going to say.Later that night, I was finally ready to talk. After I finished speaking (which I did calmly, even though I wanted to scream and cry), he responded just like I thought he would.“You're not talking to me; you're talking at me,” he said. “You stole from me and lied about it to my face. And I'm giving you the chance to talk, but you don’t want to say anything, so what am I supposed to do?” I snapped.He continued yelling at me and playing the victim. “I can’t do anything right,” he said. That was his favorite line.After failing to get him to take responsibility, we went to sleep. The next morning, he had a completely different attitude. He told me he was getting sober again. But, of course, he couldn’t do anything without guilt tripping me."I don't want you to think I'm boring and leave me," he said, knowing I wasn't going to."I don't love you because you party with me," I told him, even though I was dying at the thought of spending the foreseeable future sober. But I was willing to support him with his sobriety, even if that meant giving up drinking and drugs myself.Soon into his "new lifestyle," I noticed he would doze off during conversations. My best friend's father was an addict, so she pointed it out when I made a joke about him always falling asleep. But we’re always together, I thought, so when could he be using? I caught him lying about where he was when he told me he was on his way home from “work.” When I checked his location, which I forced him to share after the rent check incident, he was in the part of the city known for drugs—a place he had frequented before we met.Twenty minutes later, he walked through the door."Why did you tell me you were in fucking Chinatown?" I asked through tears. Of course, he had his excuse prepared. "Honey, there are no drugs in Chinatown," he laughed. "I was going down there to get us some boba tea."There was nothing in his hand. He didn't bring back a smoothie; he didn't bring back anything. I said nothing. I knew he would never tell me the truth, so what was the point of listening to another excuse?

As much as you want to believe you're the top priority, they will always choose drugs over you.

Now That We’ve Broken Up, I Hope I Can Learn to Forgive Myself

I broke up with him the night he picked me up from the airport after a weekend with my family. I didn’t even want to come back to the life I now lived. It meant supporting both of us, knowing he was never going to fulfill all those promises he made what seemed like so long ago. I couldn’t hide in Ohio forever (plus, I had my cats to take care of).After six months of forgiving someone who didn’t deserve my forgiveness, I told myself I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep picking up the pieces and protecting his reputation. I finally allowed myself to see him for what he was, the person I had been trying to pretend he wasn't for the last six months: someone who would always choose drugs over me. As he was packing his things, he begged me to stay with him, but after giving him a million chances, I couldn't let myself give him any more. I still can't forgive myself for what I put myself and my family through, but I hope one day, I will. Now I’m living the life I had been waiting so long for. I have an amazing boyfriend who takes care of me and never expects anything back. He’s everything I wanted and more. When he makes a promise, I don’t have to hold my breath, wondering if he will.

“But you want to go to college, right?” I asked my daughter.“Well…” she said. Somewhere, my ancestors quietly exploded in indignation. Ghostly fingers may have wagged. Ghostly harrumphs may have been harrumphed. Not all Jewish families are obsessed with education in a stereotypical Jewish manner, but mine certainly was. My maternal grandfather took advantage of the GI bill to study engineering and law and became a very successful patent attorney. My father’s family sent him to lots and lots of school, so he ended up with a history Ph.D. My generation was also expected to do lots of schooling and do it well. I was valedictorian of my high school class. My brother was “only” third in his year but went on to get a Ph.D. of his own, while I was a relatively disappointing grad school dropout (I got a master’s). My cousin is the one person in our immediate family not to finish college; she’s a successful television and film producer, and my parents haven’t really ever forgiven her.Education; we were good at it. The ancestral ashes set up a ragged cheer at our accomplishments before going back to study for whatever degrees you can get when you’re dead.

Somewhere, my ancestors quietly exploded in indignation.

School Is Not the Slightest Bit Stimulating for My Daughter

At first, our daughter seemed to be well on her way to similar academic overachievement and ghostly accolades. She started reading in line with developmental milestones and didn’t stop. She blew through YA and science-fiction novels, declared Moby Dick her favorite book in middle school and, by high school, had moved on to light reading like Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies and Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions. She was so far ahead of her class in school that she barely needed to pay attention to get As and Bs. She told her AP Government teacher he was an ignorant stooge whenever he called on her. So he stopped calling on her.You probably noticed that, somewhere in that paragraph, the educational march of progress went subtly awry.Our daughter is thoroughly bored in school. So bored that being in school fills her with despair and misery. So bored that, in fact, she occasionally has literal panic attacks because she feels like her life is passing her by and that the teachers and administration are deliberately wasting her time. So bored that it’s almost impossible to get her up in the morning without the dire threat of her father coming downstairs and briefly existing in her room. (This is, apparently, a humiliation barely to be born.) That makes it sound like we’ve been fighting our daughter to get her to school. And certainly, there’s an impulse to do that. All those ancestors in general, and my parents in particular, have been telling me my whole life that school is the vital path to life success and virtue. You go to school; you do well in school; you go to more school and do well there; and then you come out with success and happiness. That’s how life is supposed to work. As a parent, therefore, your primary job is to get the kid in the classroom.

I Prioritize My Daughter's Mental Health Over Her Schooling

School is certainly important. Among other things, there are legal consequences if your child doesn’t show up. But your child’s mental and physical health is important, too. The isolation, fear and anxiety during the pandemic have made that clear, if we hadn’t been aware of it already.Remote learning was a nightmare. Zoom classes badly exacerbated our daughter’s anxiety and dysphoria. This year, we kept our daughter home during the worst of the Omicron spike because we wanted to prevent her from getting sick, even though the government and school administration didn’t seem to care. And when she says she is so depressed she can’t face going into school, I tend to let her sleep in. I’d rather have a happy, healthy kid who isn’t at school than a miserable, anxious, depressed one sitting in class not learning anything useful about the U.S. government. We’re not fighting with our daughter to get her to school so much as we’re all trying to figure out a way to stagger over the finish line to graduation with as little damage to her mental health as possible. If that means missing a few days or coming in late or leaving early—well, you do what you have to.

We’re not fighting with our daughter to get her to school so much as we’re all trying to figure out a way to stagger over the finish line to graduation.

My Daughter's Education Was an Impediment to Her Learning

“What you have to” may include not sending her to college if she doesn’t want to go to college. She’s a talented actor and playwright and has applied to a bunch of theater schools. But at this point, she’s so burned out and sick of the classroom that she’s not exactly looking forward to it. She’s got a number of opportunities lined up, so she’s going to take a gap year and see where her career goes.When you do the normal, expected thing in line with your ancestor’s expectations, it’s nerve-racking to watch your child seriously contemplate going full artsy-fartsy. You think about all the opportunities she may miss out on without a college degree. Will she be able to get a job? What happens if, at some point, she wants to teach theater and doesn’t have the credentials? What happens if the theater career doesn’t work out?But there are also options she’ll miss out on if she goes to school. And spending another four years in a classroom learning the ins and outs of misery doesn’t sound great either. Education should be a means to do what you want to do with your life, not a barrier to doing it. I know my grandfather would disapprove. I know my parents will be horrified (my wife laughed somewhat hysterically at what they’d say if our daughter tells them she’s not going to college). But not everyone wants to be a patent attorney. And what’s the point of learning and learning and learning if you never learn how to be happy?I’m proud my daughter knows what she wants to do and what she doesn’t and isn’t afraid to tell us which is which. I just wish that having gotten what she has to get out of high school, she could stop. But that’s not how it works. A few more months to go before she’s free to defy the ancestors and their spectral grumbling and starts to live. And learn, too.

According to the charity Cancer Research UK, there’s an average of 13,300 cases of kidney cancer each year here. Of these, the death rate is around 48 percent, which means that when diagnosed as early as possible and caught before it spreads, this insidious, malignant, silent and ruthless killer is survivable. But 50/50 odds only seem generous until it comes to facing one’s own mortality. Then it becomes, “Fuck me, I could die here!” My initial reaction to my cancer diagnosis was shock. Later on, a kind of anger-meets-fear kicked in. But it wasn’t the cancer that got my goat up.

My fear—and the point of recounting this battle with cancer—is that the NHS has already been eviscerated.

Kidney Cancer Caught Me by Surprise

The story starts when I was called to an appointment at the local hospital’s urology department after a scan of my thorax for a separate health issue. The news was delivered to me by a cheery medic from the urology department. “Mr. Gun, the findings on the last scans taken indicate a malignant mass in your right kidney. In all likelihood you have renal cancer.” My response was a stunned but calm silence. The first utterance I managed was, “Ah…I wasn’t expecting that, but what’s the score then?” In a still quite annoyingly chipper voice, she said. “Let me go and have a quick chat with my boss,” the consultant who up to this point I had never laid eyes on. The medic was back in five minutes to inform me that if I had my right kidney removed, I would probably be fine, as long as the other one is up to the job. In a rush, I was given a leaflet, a booklet, introduced to a “specialist” nurse, given her card and told to call for any support I might need. I sat and waited for well over an hour beyond the appointed time, and once the news had been delivered to me, I really did feel bundled out of the department. Over the next couple of weeks, I left multiple messages with the nurse and never heard from or saw her again. I was advised to seek support from a separate nursing group that specializes in supporting folks with cancer. They sent me the same leaflet I’d been given during my initial appointment. I had never experienced such poor interactions or service delivery in any previous interactions with an NHS hospital—never.I accept that in the UK we are in a unique situation: Most of us have been born into a system where healthcare is part of the social contract between state and citizen. The NHS welcomes us into the world and sees us off at the end of life. My fear—and the point of recounting this battle with cancer—is that the NHS has already been eviscerated. By the time it’s sold off it will just be a corpse. The UK is about 5,000 doctors short of what the General Medical Council recommends, and 20,000 short of nurses. Compounding the staff shortages with increasingly pointless paperwork, and we see the start of a perfect storm.

I Gave Up on the NHS and Sought Private Care

I spent hours on the phone, mostly on hold, trying to get further information about my diagnosis and how treatment needed to proceed. Remember, I was told at my first appointment that I would need my right kidney removed. My anxiety turned to anger and then morphed into fear. Months went by and there was no consistent communication with any of the parties involved.Communication was poor between both my GP doctor and the hospital departments. It is supposed to work like this: I get referred to the hospital for a scan, the appropriate department analyses the scan, then the results are forwarded to my GP to add to my lifelong medical file and, if the system is firing on all cylinders, the patient, receives a copy of what was sent from the hospital to my GP. The hospital-based consultant makes his diagnosis and then books me in for whatever procedure or treatment is deemed necessary. If this actually happened, my god, things would be so much easier for all concerned. As fear started to get more of a grip and I started being asked questions by my daughter that I simply could not answer, I decided to look into getting a private second opinion and having the surgery also done privately.You could be forgiven for thinking that an already stretched NHS would help facilitate this decision, but sadly, that was not the case. It took several months of even more phone calls, emails, letters and finally the intervention of my MP to get hold of my own medical records so that the private doctor could take a look and consider his opinion.I feel almost ashamed to say that I fought to access private treatment, but that seems to be the insane situation many are now finding themselves in in the UK. Unfortunately, this should not come as any surprise. The plans to degrade and then sell off the NHS are well documented. Jeremy Hunt, Iain Duncan Smith and others have written extensively of the need to open up the NHS to competition. However, for anyone who would like to understand a little more about why I found my personal experience so deleterious, and how it resonates with a long term ambition of neoliberal politicians in the UK and beyond, take a peek at the well-titled “How to Dismantle the NHS in 10 Easy Steps” by doctor and neuroscientist Youseff El-Ginghy. It is an excellent work that distills all the arguments for what amounts to a crime against the British population.

Free healthcare at the point of access is the jewel in the crown of British democracy.

Free Healthcare Is Our Birthright

Free healthcare at the point of access is the jewel in the crown of British democracy and, as many have argued, including the eminent economist Yanis Varoufakis, a vital component in the economic functioning of the UK. As I confess, I found myself needing to buy some of my treatment from a private service simply because my local NHS hospital has reached a crisis point, the likes of which neither staff nor patients I discussed this with have seen. Of course, the COVID epidemic hasn’t helped matters, but when billions were spent on a track and trace system that never worked and hundreds of millions were misspent on PPE that proved useless, the argument that the NHS is too expensive is rather threadbare. This is one issue that the British public really do need to pay attention to—not my kidney, but the prognosis for the NHS.My feelings for the NHS remain solidly supportive and I’m grateful that it was an NHS hospital that found the tumor that may well have terminated my time here on earth. I went private and did get an excellent level of care—the surgery went well but on discharge from the private clinic I was, in a sense, on my own again. The aftercare, staple-pulling and follow-up treatments have all been courtesy of the NHS. There’s nothing like an existential threat to grab my attention, and in successfully dealing with that threat I have come to value—treasure, even—the National Health Service in a way I never fully appreciated before. If time and tide allow, I will be getting involved in any and all protests that seek to secure what to many Brits is something akin to a birthright. I’ve worked in the NHS, my mum was a nurse, my grandma was a matron and my grandfather was a surgeon. The NHS was never designed to replicate any business model, it was designed to ensure that all UK citizens were able to access healthcare. Class and socioeconomic status were irrelevant. Much like the Constitution of the U.S. is a desirable and defining expression of what it is to be an American citizen, so the NHS, to me and many others, is a desirable expression of our nationhood. Neoliberal promise of trickle-down economics have not panned out, and as my kidney is now off for testing in an NHS lab for any further signs of risk, I can honestly say while I feel grateful to the surgical team that saved my life, I’m left with a sense of regret—regret that the NHS has now been so starved of staff and resources that I felt no choice other than to pay privately. First world problems for sure, but across the board, health outcomes in the UK are heading south.