The Doe’s Latest Stories

Sri Lanka is facing the worst political and economic crisis in its near history. As citizens bravely suffer on many fronts and confront corruption together, the people have come together like never before. Every day, we see a million small acts of kindness as the entire country helps each other. Gathering funds and collecting supplies is my job, but even I am helped every day.

The People of Sri Lanka Are Protesting the Increasing Economic Crisis

For the past few months, we have been facing shortages of almost all essentials, including fuel, gas and even power. As millions give up on the idea of three meals a day and families spend half their days in queues for all these essentials, suffering and pain are a common map across all faces on the roads. Amidst all of this are the people’s protests and the protest sites—entire villages built to sustain protests 24/7—across the country, calling for and successfully garnering the resignation of the president and an end to corrupt rule. Even protesting comes with many difficulties, as travel is difficult, and many who stay at the sites permanently or semi-permanently give up their livelihoods to do so. The sites operate on generous donations. I happen to live relatively close to one of the major protest sites, and my frequent visits led to many kind people reaching out to me with offers for donations. All I had to do was visit the sites and post a list of requirements on my social media; they would be reshared with blinding speed, and many people within Colombo would either send supplies or cash donations. Sri Lankans living abroad, and even donors of other nationalities, would send in cash donations, as well.The first week, two of my friends and I, who were pooling donated funds, were amazed at the amount we had managed to collect between the three of us. Even in ordinary circumstances, the sum would be a huge amount; in difficult circumstances, with sky-high inflation and the donors’ own difficulties, the same sum meant the world. And we were one group out of many.

I happen to live relatively close to one of the major protest sites, and my frequent visits led to many kind people reaching out to me with offers for donations.

Sri Lankans Are Doing Whatever They Can to Assist Each Other

If that gesture wasn’t enough to melt our hearts, the next couple of weeks made it clear how the country and its people were surviving: with a glue of kindness holding everyone together. It became commonplace for us to wander into supermarkets and clear out their beverage aisle and pharmacy, among others. Not only was this well-received, everyone knew what we were buying for. Passersby helped us carry bags; shop owners gave certain items for free; pharmacists went out of their way to dig up stocks of essential medicines. Even when we were at the cashier with three trolleys full of supplies, not a single person grumbled. While there, we observed people rush for the fresh produce sections, vegetables being scarce and curfews being imposed every other day. Despite the desperation, there was no fighting, no pushing, no jostling. There were more please’s and thank-you's than I had ever heard in a supermarket in my life. As we came outside and found ourselves a trishaw (a rare one with enough fuel to make the trip), the driver accommodated us, our multiple stops and many bags with a gentle smile. On the road, impatient honking was at a minimum. We saw people distributing snacks and drinks to people who had spent hours in the fuel and gas queues, some who could afford it by ordering Uber Eats right to the fuel queue and sharing with their fellow queue-goers. My friends told me about how they now carry more spare change in their wallets to tip their trishaw drivers. As we got off our trishaw and tipped the driver, despite having come from a 12-hour fuel queue, he insisted on waiting until we, three girls, had carried the bags to the protest tents safely. Just the week before, another of my friends had been dropped part way home after work by a trishaw running out of fuel, with apologies because the driver “felt bad about not dropping a girl all the way home when it’s getting dark.”

Sri Lanka’s people remain tall and strong, holding each other up with the strength of the compassion between us.

Mutual Compassion Is Helping Sri Lankans Persist Through Uncertainty

In the virtual world, social media is booming with protest plans, requests for aid and multiple community-based initiatives. Mutual friends going abroad post their flight dates so that those facing difficulties procuring medicine can reach out. Fundraisers are set up for the international community to aid the local communities. Even pets have not been left behind, with many messages on adopting kittens and puppies circulating. The understanding of each other’s suffering is so much so that when a local business owner tweeted about her bakery being robbed, she only said she hoped the desperate individuals who robbed the place would be able to survive longer. “At this point, I’m not even mad at whoever did this. I understand the desperation of the people in this country. Let’s all tread carefully,” her tweet read. Another instance when a person tried to run off with groceries he couldn’t afford was resolved by other shoppers around him pitching in to pay his bill. Despite all the challenges, conflicts and attempts to divide us and silence our voices, Sri Lanka’s people remain tall and strong, holding each other up with the strength of the compassion between us. Humanity’s capacity for understanding truly showcases itself amidst deep suffering.

My family and I went to see The Northman this weekend. Alexander Skarsgård stomped around the screen bare-chested and bellowing, mouth open in a great wolf howl after tearing out some poor soul’s throat with his teeth. In the audience, there was less throat-tearing and bellowing, but mouths were open, or at least visible. I live in a blue city, but we’ve mostly abandoned masks. In the moderately crowded, not very well-ventilated theater, I think I was the only one wearing a face covering. That includes my wife and daughter, who both had snacks and didn’t bother putting masks back on when they were finished with them. I sort of thought I should tell them to wear them. But then I didn’t want to be a spoilsport and have my daughter roll her eyes at me. So I didn’t. We’re fully vaccinated—my wife and I got the second booster shot the day after it was available—and case numbers aren’t that high. We are at significantly less risk of death and dismemberment than people who randomly crossed the path of Alexander Skarsgård and his bellowing. Still, cases are rising, breakthrough infections do happen, and those sometimes result in long COVID—extended clusters of symptoms that can be debilitating for months, years or a lifetime, no one really knows. Masks help prevent COVID transmission, reducing your chances of getting the disease and of spreading it. Wearing them is a little annoying, but getting long COVID is a lot worse than a little annoying. So wear masks, all of you!

Public health isn’t an individual thing.

I Don’t Always Wear Masks When I Should

“All of you” would, you’d think, include my family. If I’m going to harangue you (and you!) about wearing masks, shouldn’t I also harangue my nearest and dearest? Or, for that matter, shouldn’t I harangue myself? I wear masks almost always when I go into stores or indoor spaces, but that “almost” is sitting there staring at me with baleful masklessness. Sometimes, occasionally, I get out of the car and into the Walgreens and realize I’m not wearing a mask.And then, sometimes, occasionally, I’ve deliberately not worn a mask. At the low point of the pandemic, during summer 2021, my wife and I went to Iceland. It had low case numbers and high vaccination rates, and we thought it was our chance to travel after more than a year of sitting in the house staring at the cats. Who we love. But a year is a long time.Iceland was marvelous. But no one wore masks, anywhere, ever. After a few days, we decided when in Iceland, we would do as they do in The Northman and not wear masks while cleaving our enemies in twain. Or even while doing other things, like shopping.Anti-maskers love to point to lapses such as this to suggest that pro-maskers are hypocrites. How can you expect reluctant maskers to wear masks when even enthusiastic mask advocates don’t want to wear them in a movie theater or Walgreens or Iceland? Shouldn’t we just stop shaming other people and all take off our masks and let the virus do its worst? After all, I’ve avoided the virus so far, despite occasional failures to mask. Why shouldn’t everyone else do fine?

It’s a lot easier to wear masks if everyone else is wearing masks.

Public Health Involves Every Single One of Us

Everyone else doesn’t necessarily do fine is the thing. Shortly after we left Iceland, it experienced a major surge in case numbers. This probably had something to do with the fact that no one wears masks. Vaccination kept the severity of symptoms down, but long COVID remains a real worry. We didn’t get COVID, which was lucky. But we should have worn masks.The thing is, it’s a lot easier to wear masks if everyone else is wearing masks. In the U.S. now, we’re treating public health as an exercise in individual responsibility. If you’re worried about COVID, wear masks. If you’re not, don’t. Make the choice that’s best for you!But public health isn’t an individual thing. Like it says in the name, it’s a public problem and a public responsibility. Community actions and community expectations have a huge effect on how individuals behave. Even when that individual is, say, me. People feel like their choices are theirs; you decide when and where you go, and when and where you go with a mask. But if I reflect for a second, it’s clear that what others are doing and what’s expected of me has a major effect on what public health choices I make. When I’ve been in places with mask mandates, where everyone masks and where people gently remind you to mask when you enter—I don’t forget to mask. When mandates are lifted and fewer people wear masks, I (and my family) tend to get lazy. I mask less or may forget, even though I still think wearing a mask is safest and even though I’m still worried about getting COVID.Again, because we frame public health as an exercise in personal choice, we’ve convinced ourselves that mandates, or even recommendations, are an infringement on personal liberty and our right to inhale as much COVID virus as we want.But in a terrifying pandemic that has killed a million people in the U.S. and disabled who knows how many more, you need government and community to help you get to a place where you can do the right thing for your health and for the health of everyone else. The minor annoyance of wearing a mask is front of mind when you get into the Walgreens and realize you left the stupid mask in the car and do you really want to go back? The major annoyance of possibly contracting a deadly disease and suffering years of grinding fatigue from organ damage seems abstract and distant. You need other people to remind you that you need to protect yourself and them. The U.S. has largely abandoned mandates and communal efforts to combat COVID. We’re told that this is pandemic fatigue; people just won’t support masking anymore. But maybe it’s the other way around. When governments and communities give up on mandates and nudges, people get lazy and fatigued. We like fantasies where a singular Northman cuts a swathe of fierce pectorals through quaking enemies, his flashing steel driven by indomitable will. In real life, though, when we face adversity, we tend to crumple unless we get support. I’ll keep trying to wear a mask. But I’d do better and be healthier and safer if we hadn’t given up on helping each other make the right choices.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the term “gay,” though I’m sure it was used as an insult. I do, however, remember the first time I heard the word “lesbian.” I was in second grade, hanging out after school with a friend and an older fifth-grade girl. She was beneficently and somewhat smugly educating us in the way of schoolyard insults and told us that as a girl, she couldn’t be called “gay.” My friend slyly said, “Yes, but you can be a lesbian.” She gasped and demanded to know where he had heard that word, and there was much giggling and scuffling. That was the extent of my instruction in LGBT issues on school grounds.I’m married to a bisexual woman now, and my daughter is trans and a lesbian. She goes to an arts school in a major city, where a third to half of the student body is queer. She goes to queer punk shows and has parties at our house where there is nary a cis straight person to be seen (except me, hiding upstairs). I’m thrilled she’s growing up in a more open, less bigoted environment than I did. But I’m nervous because I know that a lot of people want to reinstate as much of the bigotry as they can. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed a bill barring teachers from talking about sexual orientation to students in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis claims that discussing sexuality is developmentally inappropriate for young children. He says he’s protecting kids.

I’m nervous because I know that a lot of people want to reinstate as much of the bigotry as they can.

My Teachers Never Discussed Anything About Queerness in School

But, as I said, when I was growing up in a heavily Catholic backwater in Pennsylvania, discussion of sexual orientation among elementary school children was quite common. It was just entirely framed by ignorance and bigotry. We didn’t know clearly who gay and lesbian people were. And that allowed us to despise them.My parents were liberal outliers in our community; I never heard homophobic slurs at home, and I don’t think I ever used them myself. But I was certainly homophobic through middle school and into high school. I’m not sure how I could have been anything else when I had so little information about queer people available to me. History classes didn’t mention that queer people were targeted during the Holocaust. Health class, taught by the football coach who looked like one of the shapeless characters from the old comic strip Herman, barely acknowledged that sex existed, much less that queer people did.We studied Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, but we weren’t told they had relationships with women. We read The Great Gatsby, but the gay subtext was never elucidated. I vaguely remember one student in English mentioning, specifically to cause trouble, that some of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written to men. The teacher got very flustered and moved the conversation along. Something similar happened when we were discussing ancient Greece. So we learned that where queer content existed, it was scandalous and had to be covered up.

Without Queer Education, Many Students Suffered From Embarrassment and Bullying

In the absence of actual information about LGBT people, history and writing, we were left with embarrassment, stigma and worse. Kids with asymmetrical haircuts were teased mercilessly—by peers but also by adults, especially coaches. No one was in any way publicly out, but of course, some kids were gender nonconforming, and everyone else let them know they were abnormal and deserved to be punished.I vividly remember one day finding out that a friend who had stereotypically gay mannerisms was dating a girl who dressed very butch. I was quietly horrified, as if I’d just learned some terrible, repulsive secret. Eventually, I got out, went to college, met actual queer people and stopped being scared of them. I’m not exactly ashamed of my younger, dumber, more bigoted self. I was a kid and didn’t have the support or information I needed to be a decent person. I do, though, blame the adults who didn’t give me that support and information at school and, to some degree, even at home. Teachers made a deliberate effort not to tell us about gay people in Athens or in the Holocaust or in The Great Gatsby. Coaches led mockery of kids who they suspected might have been queer. And my parents, pointing to the crime rate, would say, “Well, this is a nice place to grow up.” Even though if you were queer, it wouldn’t have been a nice place to grow up. It would have been terrifying, miserable and perhaps life-threatening.

Florida’s bill is meant to harm all children—turning some into targets and some into bigots.

Florida’s Bill Intends to Harm Children and Amplify Homophobia

I’m straight, and while I was bullied for other reasons, I don’t think anyone ever targeted me with homophobic slurs. But I’d still say, in retrospect, that even for kids who aren’t queer, growing up in a petri dish of bigotry is bad. Most of the discussion of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has, rightly, focused on the likely harm and trauma to queer kids, kids with queer families and queer teachers. All of these people may face sanctions if they talk about their identities or their loved ones. They are the most directly harmed. But straight kids are also affected.DeSantis’s bill is meant to isolate queer kids, and it’s meant to keep all kids in ignorance. The goal is to recreate the experience I had growing up—in which gay people were pushed into the closet, and so LGBT kids became targets of hate and a source of fear. Florida’s bill is meant to harm all children—turning some into targets and some into bigots. It’s a formula for inculcating the young into the Republican Party’s program of homophobia. As someone who was brought up in a similar ethos of prejudice, I can testify, contra DeSantis and his ghoulish fans, that that ethos was poor preparation for being a good person, a good friend, a good husband or a good father. When schools set out to teach ignorance and hate, no one benefits.

Over a year ago, I left the country where I grew up to settle in a foreign city. And even though I love the place I’ve chosen to make my home, living here is not the Emily in Paris dream sequence you might expect. When I come up against obstacles in the process of building my life here, I have the oppressive sense that the city itself, with its tall tower blocks and gray skyline, wants me out.Those obstacles include the overly competitive housing market, where apartment listings are inundated with hundreds of replies within minutes of posting. Then, there’s the blunt, sarcastic reaction of some locals to a language-based misunderstanding—which makes it feel as though I'm one messed-up verb away from saying something completely wrong. There are vicious bureaucratic conundrums that suck you in like quicksand and trap you like thick mud, where you cannot apply for a job without a tax number, but cannot get a tax number without an apartment, but cannot get an apartment without evidence of three months of income.I explained all of these intersecting, mind-frazzling issues to my friend Louisa nearly a year ago. She was also considering moving to this city because her boyfriend Mike had been offered a job here. While I was excited that they were considering the move, I felt I had to warn them that there was more to living here than crazy club nights and Instagrammable brunches.Louisa and Mike accepted my words of wisdom gratefully but decided to make the move regardless. I was initially ecstatic with the decision. Louisa and I had been friends since university, and I was looking forward to reigniting the close bond we’d had when living together during our student days.

It was at this point that my irrational jealousy began to truly kick in.

Moving Is Easier When Someone Else Is Doing All of the Hard Parts

Mike arrived first, and seeing him in my city was a novelty. I’d spent quite a bit of time with him over the years, and we’d always got on well. I was more than happy to show him around, now that we were living in the same place. For our initial catch-up, we met at a bar, and once we’d settled in with a drink, he began telling me the details of his first couple of weeks in the city. As we talked, it became more and more evident that his experience of moving here, which I’d imagined to be as tumultuous and stressful as my own, was, in fact, anything but.Mike had been supported in his transition by a relocation agency—something I’d barely heard of before he mentioned it, but which, when he described the bureaucratic hoops they jumped through for him, sounded like an angel sent from heaven with the sole purpose of making an immigrant’s life easier. His entire life, furniture, wardrobe and even bicycle were shipped over, all expenses paid, by his new job. In contrast, I arrived here with one rucksack of my belongings and had to slowly rebuild my collections of possessions whenever my paycheck afforded it.When I first moved to the city, I lived in a tiny box of a room in a flat-share with unwelcoming locals, with a stress-inducing deadline of just one month before I had to find a new place to live. Meanwhile, Mike’s job put him up in a fully equipped room complete with its own cleaner, and he could stay there as long as he needed before he found his own place.When it comes to dealing with bureaucracy in a country and language that’s not your own, every international person in a foreign city knows that the process can be demoralizing and infuriating at best, and at worst, outright racist. But Mike never had the dubious pleasure of discovering this for himself—he simply signed a form that allowed his relocation agent to attend appointments for him and came away with a freshly stamped visa and the right to remain in the country.Fast-forward a few weeks and I was shocked to hear that Mike was moving into a flat of his own—one practically handed to him on a plate by, you guessed it, a colleague at work. Louisa came to visit to help him settle in, and it was at this point that my irrational jealousy began to truly kick in.

My Friend’s Big Move Was Putting Our Relationship in Jeopardy

Louisa is my close friend and one of the kindest, most genuine people I know. And yet, I couldn’t face seeing her so happy about her boyfriend’s new flat and her upcoming move when I had already been living here a year and had yet to move out of a nine-square-meter room in a tiny, dirty flat-share on the outskirts of the city.Because she’s a great friend, she was completely sympathetic when I attempted to express my jealousy and explain why I was avoiding spending time in the flat she was so excited about.“It must feel so unfair that I’ve got a flat and I don’t even live here yet,” she conceded. Somehow, these words stung even more. Up until that point, I hadn’t realized that Louisa considered the new place "hers" rather than just "her boyfriend’s place that she was visiting." But even though she hadn’t moved to the country yet, her name was already on the doorbell. The evidence was there in typed lettering. She was an official resident of this city, and I felt like anything but.I realized just how deep-seated my resentment at people "following" me to this city was when I received a message from another friend from my home country: “I’m applying for a Ph.D. and I might be moving around the same time as Louisa! Could I crash at your place for a weekend when I come to check out the city?” "No!" I wanted to scream. "You can’t come and crash at my place while you flirt with a romanticized idea of making your home here—not when you have no idea how hard it actually is." "I was here first," my inner voice shouted, "and I don’t want to share."

My concept of what belongs to me became warped in my desperation to cling to a city that felt like it was slipping from my grasp.

In the End, I Was Just Being Jealous

Caught up in my own feelings of jealousy, I didn’t reply to this message for two weeks. But eventually, I tuned into how irrational and selfish I was being. I sent my friend a text, apologizing for my slow reply and telling her she was of course welcome to visit.I’ve come to accept the fact that I won’t get over my jealousy easily, not when so many elements of living here feel like such difficult battles to overcome. My concept of what belongs to me became warped in my desperation to cling to a city that felt like it was slipping from my grasp. But I want to try and be a more welcoming, forgiving and understanding person, especially to those who I love. What I should have realized is, the more friends who move here, the more this city will feel like my home as well as theirs. And that, more than anything, is worth overcoming my jealousy for.

My earliest memory of having an intrusive thought was from when I was 7. I had gone to the bathroom during recess and started washing my hands, as good boys and girls do. After drying them off, I swore I saw a baby germ lingering on my left knuckle. It felt icky, like a slimy worm. I had to get it off of me. I went back to the sink and repeated the cleansing ritual three times—my lucky number. No matter how many times I repeated the cycle, my hands didn’t feel clean enough. Every time I touched a door or a desk or a pencil (three times), I was convinced I carried E. coli all over the school and everyone would get sick and die and it would be my fault. My intrusive thoughts also made me a pathological truth-teller, to an annoying extent. Every time I did something wrong, the guilt would weigh heavily on my mind. This might sound like a good trait, but it’s not always. When my second-grade teacher caught my friends and me talking in class, part of our punishment was to sign a discipline document. I didn’t sign it, but I couldn’t let it go and, two years later, I was back in front of that teacher, in tears, to confess.

I felt like a pervert.

Puberty Turned My Intrusive Thoughts Sexual

For the majority of my childhood, these were the lengths of my intrusive thoughts. Then, I discovered pornography at the ripe old age of 9. I went from looking up photos of Six Flags Magic Mountain to looking up photos of naked women. I attended a small K-8 Catholic school in Long Beach, California. When we weren’t talking about God’s love, kids in my grade were talking about penis sizes and the real meaning of the F-word. It seemed like all my classmates discovered what sex was right when I did, even if we didn’t know what to call it. My parents knew that I knew, but, in our household, we never had the birds and the bees discussion. Everything I learned about sex, I had to learn about on my own—and porn was my teacher. I learned more about human anatomy from Pornhub than I did in class. Sex ed felt like a SparkNotes review compared to what I was seeing online. I learned how to masturbate at the age of 9, and it became my number one coping mechanism for social anxiety. Whenever I was happy, sad, angry or whatever I was feeling at the moment, masturbation seemed like the right thing to do, for lack of a better phrase. When I got to middle school and started going through puberty, my intrusive thoughts came fully into fruition. I began developing sexual fantasies about not only my classmates but my educators, as well. I felt like a pervert. No matter how attractive my male teachers were, I should not have had these thoughts about them. Initially, I chalked it up to growing pains. “Every kid going through puberty has these thoughts,” I told myself. “As long as I keep them suppressed, I should be good.” But they never let up.After I reached college, my intrusive sexual thoughts only got worse. My growing pornography addiction didn’t help. I started with straight porn. It felt “manly” to watch women in porn (at least, that’s what felt “cool” to other boys my age). There was a sleepover I went to in middle school with all boys where we watched a bunch of porn when the mother hosting us went to sleep. I remember feeling drawn to it—not to the girl in the porn, but the idea that we can somehow learn from it. When I went through puberty and discovered gay porn, it became my source of pleasure. There would be days when I would spend up to 10 hours watching porn. It got so routine that it became normal. I didn’t want to be social. I would ignore texts and calls from friends. I hid away from my family. I sailed away to Lonely Island and didn't even realize it.

My Sexual Fantasies Made Me Miserable

My sexual fantasies escalated to include everyone around me: male, female, young, old, black, white, it didn’t matter. Coming to terms with my queerness was difficult. I felt like a pervert for falling for a cute, brown-haired soccer player. With my Catholic upbringing, my obsession with sex was also mixed with self-hate. Almost nothing was off-limits for me. It was like a car crash that you’re helpless to stop. I couldn’t avoid the thoughts. I would have these intrusions up to 20 times a day. Every time it happened, I felt repulsed. The fantasies weren’t even sexy; they were graphic and deviant: group sex, public play, BDSM, sexual violence. They frequently kept me up at night. A lot of them didn’t even fit my sexual interests. (I’m as vanilla as it gets.) I would describe myself as open sexually, but not explicitly so. I thought enacting these scenes might get them out of my head, so I started to venture into some in-person exploration. Almost 30 sexual partners later, I still haven’t found the “cure” I thought was be out there. What I have found is how to best save myself. In order to break down my porn-related OCD, I had to go after its roots. Scrolling through Instagram one day, I discovered an organization called Fight the New Drug, which specializes in educating people on the harm pornography does to the consumer—as well as the performers. I realized I had a problem, but discovering them made me feel less alone, considering both men and women suffer from it. What makes pornography addicting, in my opinion, is the self-exploration of it. Growing up, sex was never discussed around me. To this day, my parents and I have never discussed sex, even though I’m now a 23-year-old man. I’m not trying to shame them—I think sex was too taboo, even in the early 2000s. I’m also autistic, which makes people tend to infantilize me in a way that winds up oppressive, even if they don’t mean it that way. Open discourse around sex would probably save a lot of children from being exposed to pornography. But in my case, that was only part of the problem. I certainly have a problem. When you throw religious trauma, sexual immaturity and OCD in a batter, you wind up with the most toxic cake imaginable. I couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake. I felt like the desires that would manifest in my thoughts meant that I was those things, that this was the reality I was stuck in. I eventually learned that it couldn’t be further from the truth.

I wish I could say that I’m 100 percent clean of porn.

Educating Myself About Mental Health Has Brought Me Relief

Over the last two years, I’ve discovered OCD-related support groups through social media. Educating myself on the different types of OCD has allowed me to feel normal again. During the pandemic, I’ve learned that social media is a true gift for learning about other people’s experiences. I had been following mental health accounts for a while before discovering Instagram accounts dedicated specifically to OCD. These accounts would break down OCD and the thought process of it. There is one girl who I currently follow who is documenting her life treating her OCD in a hospital. It’s given me tools to let these intrusive thoughts sit, without being scared of them. Intrusive thoughts are like waves; you can let them crush you, or you can ride them. I wish I could say that I’m 100 percent clean of porn. Over the last year and a half, I’ve made a few different attempts at quitting, but I’ve stumbled each time. The longest I went was three months. At times, I feel like a fraud. But what keeps me going is my desire to let go of control. I found that when I’m obsessing over having control in my life, the intrusive thoughts become prevalent. Since approaching my self-healing this way, my intrusive thoughts have decreased. I’m learning how to have better relationships with men (and not see them as sex objects). I don’t want this message coming off as some random guy acting like he’s holier than everyone. I hope you, the reader, can understand that we don’t have to succumb to our environment. In order to do that, we have to trust ourselves. I didn’t believe I was worth healing, and I punished myself for years about it. Do yourself a favor: Give yourself a big hug! You’re doing just fine.

By the time President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in July, he had become very unpopular. People were tired of him. He wasn't doing anything serious to help people. When he was killed, I thought there was going to be big, big chaos, like burning things. But it’s even worse than I expected. Now there’s no president. It's like there's no government in Haiti at all. The government doesn't have power anymore. The gangs have all the power. I don't know if you read the news but Haiti has a lot—a lot of gangs. The gang problem has been out of control for a while, and it becomes worse and worse every day. To go to the South is like going to hell. It's very difficult. The area is almost empty. People fly in airplanes to the South instead of taking a bus because, at any moment, the gangs can pick them up. If a bus company wants to do business in some parts of the country, they have to make a deal with a gang. If not, they won't let them pass. It's very difficult to come from the South to Port-au-Prince because you have to pass through Martissant, and Martissant is like going to your death because the gangs can come in any time and kidnap you.

It's like there's no government in Haiti at all. The government doesn't have power anymore. The gangs have all the power.

Gangs Have More Power Than the Government

The gang stuff comes from economic problems, but it’s also political. After Jovenel was assassinated, each of the regions wanted to control their own area for the election. So all the gangs have a political person who controls them. For the past month, a gangster called Barbecue has blocked fuel trucks so they aren't able to bring gas to Port-au-Prince. They'll kidnap the driver, everyone. Right now, if the owner of a trucking company wants to bring a tank of gas to Port-au-Prince, they have to pay the gangs a lot of money. If not, they will steal the truck and steal all the gas or kidnap the driver and hold them for ransom. In just a couple of days at the beginning of November, they stole 10 gas trucks and kidnapped three or four drivers.Since it has become so difficult to bring the gas here, prices have gone up. Before this, a can of gas used to sell for 201 gourdes, or about two dollars. Now to buy a gallon of gas, it's about 1500 gourdes, or $15. People wait in line for three or four days to get gas. Sometimes, they sleep in their cars. The fuel problems have been making the other problems here even worse. It's very difficult to get potable water because there's no gas to pump it, so it has become very expensive. Sometimes, you need to walk three or four hours just to get drinking water. Food has become three or four times as expensive because there's no gas to bring it to the city. Some people can't afford to eat for one, two, three, four days. Much of Haiti gets its power from generators, so no gas means no power. That includes our hospitals, which means medical problems are getting worse and worse too.Hospitals, schools, the economy are all shutting down because the gangs won't let the gas trucks through. Last week, the banks and schools and businesses were only open for three days because there was no gas for them to work. It's like the whole country's closing down.

How Can We Feel Safe When They Couldn’t Even Protect the President?

In Port-au-Prince, anything can happen at any time. The gangs control the city. To go from where I live to Martissant, you have to go through the territories of four or five gangs. Downtown used to be a place where tourists could go and buy souvenirs and crafts. Now, none of that is there. There aren’t any tourists. No one wants to come here.At night, the streets are empty after 7 or 8 o'clock. Everyone stays in their houses. They're scared because if you go out on the streets, you can get kidnapped. At any time of the day, anything could be happening. Last week, the school in our area got shot up while the kids were in the classroom because gang members were shooting at each other. One student got sent to the hospital. Even if you're not close to the gangs, even if you stay in your own yard, there are still bullets flying.There is no security in Haiti. Even the government cannot protect its people. There are police, but they're very weak, and they haven’t been paid for a long time. It's been almost two years since this gang stuff started happening. Every time the police try to do something to get at the gangs, it's like a waste of time. Earlier this year, they made an attempt to get the gangsters out of Village de Dieu, and four cops were killed. Nothing ever happens. Nothing changes. Nothing is functional here. It's like nobody's in control, only the gangs. If they want to block a highway for three or four days, they block it, and nothing happens to them. Last month, the prime minister was heading to an event in Pont-Rouge to mark the death of our country’s founding father, Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Barbecue blocked off the area and threatened to kidnap him. The prime minister had to make a U-turn and head back.Everybody's scared. If they can kill the president at his own house, and the president is the one with the best and most security, how can the rest of us feel safe? You cannot protect yourself. You just have to live life like it is.

Even if you're not close to the gangs, even if you stay in your own yard, there are still bullets flying.

Haitians Have to Help Each Other Because No One Else Will

On top of everything else, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the south of Haiti back in August. Many people there were affected. My family's house was knocked down. I have some friends who helped me to get water, food and a tent for them. They're still living in the tent. There's been no support. Our government can't afford to help us. For three or four weeks after the earthquake, there were a lot of NGOs down there, but now all of them are gone except for Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF. People are begging for help and nothing's happened.If it wasn't for people helping others, the situation would be much worse. We collect money from our friends. After the earthquake, I bought tarps and water for people in my family’s community. People from the university collected food and clothes from their friends to buy soap and water for people in need. But now it's even harder for us to help people in the South. The prices are two, three, four times higher than before. And if you go there, you can be kidnapped at any time, killed at any time. I don't feel like there's any hope that the situation will get better. If the Americans would send troops, maybe something would happen. But with the police we have in Haiti, I don't see anything getting better.Everyone is trying to restart their life any way they can. Most people now, their dream is to leave Haiti to go to the Dominican Republic or the United States or Canada. Young people, old people—they just want to get their passport and leave. In Haiti, there is no hope now. Every day, things get worse and worse. And we can see that it's not getting better.

As far back as I can remember, music has been a part of my life. I grew up learning the business side of concerts and events and have even worked inside the industry for the last four years. In that time, I’ve gained access to a variety of music events and festivals, all with their own unique crowds. Having lived in Houston most of my life, when Astroworld—an annual music festival hosted by rapper Travis Scott—was first announced in 2018, it was a big deal. Because Scott is a Houstonian and Astroworld was paying homage to a nostalgic landmark of the city, this novel festival had the makings to be one of the biggest events of the year. Little did I know that three years later, what I thought was going to be another memorable highlight of the year would end up being the deadliest hip-hop event in history.

The First Astroworld Festival Had Some Warning Signs

Astroworld 2018 was a great experience. I paid $236 for two general admission wristbands. I like to get to my festivals early, so I arrived at noon and left at 11 p.m.The crowd was great and so was the overall vibe. At no point did I feel like I was drowning in the crowd, and most people were courteous when it came to moving around. Since Scott did his set from two stages, there were no problems with people rushing toward the front. I wasn’t aware of any injuries, though I did notice someone passed out at one point of the show (if you’ve been to a festival before, you know that someone passing out is pretty standard).The lines were long for merchandise and the other attractions, but everyone waited their turn like normal people would. I left thinking that the entire event felt very cluttered and would have gone better if it were spread across two days.

After a Year of Lockdown, I Couldn’t Wait to Attend Astroworld

With the pandemic canceling and postponing concerts, festivals and any large gatherings, I went from going to multiple events in 2019 to zero in 2020. When Astroworld was announced in 2021, I was willing to make an exception and attend a big gathering. I knew it had been long enough; plus, I was vaccinated and not as worried about being in a crowd of people. I regretted missing out on Astroworld 2019 and didn’t want to miss out again. When tickets went on sale in May, I didn’t hesitate. I bought tickets for my girlfriend and myself the second they went on sale, even without knowing the lineup, because I knew Scott would pull out all the stops for his hometown. Then, I entered a six-month waiting game for November.About a week before Astroworld, a friend of mine made a deal with someone on Travis Scott’s management team, receiving over 1,000 additional wristbands to sell on consignment. I began selling them to friends at my university, and in return, I got VIP wristbands and artist passes for the first day of the concert. I was convinced this was going to be the highlight of the year.

I’ve never been around a crowd so oblivious to their surroundings.

The Entrance Checkpoints Became the First Battleground

My girlfriend and I wanted to get to Astroworld as early as we could. After meeting up with friends and handing them their wristbands, we made it to the NRG parking lot at around noon. The entire atmosphere was setting in—cars blared with new songs released at midnight; lots of old school vehicles shined with Houston’s signature swanga rims; and everyone was ready to have a good time. As we walked toward the first checkpoint, all I noticed were the tall metal fences to prevent people from stampeding past security like in 2019.When we got to the first checkpoint to show our vaccination cards, the staff wasn’t concerned about checking our cards. There were maybe eight to ten people responsible for the thousands walking in, so they just handed us wristbands that said “healthy.” The distance between the first and second checkpoint was far. After walking across a bridge to get to the metal detectors, all I saw was a combination of Houston police mounted on horses (an inconvenient way to keep peace since it risks people getting stepped on), drug dogs and a crowd without wristbands lingering. I didn’t know at the time that security only increased after fans stormed the entrance.After getting through the checkpoints, we entered the general admission merch area, which had formed into one big line after people rushed the stands and tried to steal some items. That ended in someone getting tased and others arrested. We weren’t even officially in Astroworld and people were already starting to act out. Finally, we walked up to the giant Travis Scott head. We’d made it inside.

Security Guards Began Using Excessive Force Around Me

Even though we got there before the first concert started, thousands had already arrived. In the VIP area, you could get a haircut, sit in hammocks and get into a separate line for merch. I stood in that line for about three hours waiting for Don Toliver to perform but ended up leaving when his set began. As we made our way to the front, I saw someone clutching his head, which was gushing blood onto his jacket and pants. That’s when I decided that it wasn’t worth getting injured and watched from seats in the VIP section. Soon, I saw fans rushing from all ends, trampling over people sitting on the ground. I’ve been around all types of fans, but these had no regard for others. When Toliver’s set was over, I noticed more people heading to the medical tent. After we picked up artist passes at a nearby hotel, the entire atmosphere took a turn for the worse. Houston police had started kicking out people who were loitering without a wristband, and multiple people were placed in handcuffs. The event security was very unprofessional, hitting on girls waiting to enter. As we were standing in line to go back through the metal detectors, I saw hundreds of people rushing over the bridge toward the gate to get in. The main security guard screamed for the others to close the gate, forcing wristbanded attendees to start pushing and crushing each other to get in before the gate closed. Upon closing, the head of security told everyone to form a single-file line. Nobody did, prompting other security to grab people by the collar with considerable force. One guard almost got into a full-blown fistfight. After about five to ten minutes, they started letting people through. But as my girlfriend and I passed through, non-wristbanded fans began sneaking in again. Soon, five giant security guards ran toward us, chasing after someone running next to me, who was promptly tackled and subdued by multiple guards with excessive force. My girlfriend was terrified—she felt the force of their punches next to her face. Others ran through and got lost among the crowd. The videos of fans rushing the checkpoint that circulated the internet resembled what I saw later that night. We made our way back in for the second time.

I Saw Crowds Crushing Fans and Lifeless Bodies Crowd Surfing

Walking through the massive crowd to find backstage was almost like experiencing vertigo. There weren’t enough lights on the grounds, leaving many places dark, and I lost where I was going. People were everywhere and security was sparse and spread out. I saw people who looked dehydrated and stressed, not knowing where they were. The lines to purchase water were long, the lines for the two water stations were even longer. You could either miss one of your favorite artists or stay hydrated. As Lil Baby’s set started, we had made our way backstage, passing more medical tents, where it was difficult to decipher any event staff. Eventually, we came up to a security-lined fence where people piled on top of each other, trying to get closer to Lil Baby. Most of the people against the fence were doing whatever they could to stand their ground and not get crushed from behind them. It was a claustrophobic nightmare. If you were under 5-foot-8, you were going to be in trouble. At this point, I had no knowledge of what had been happening to people against the fence; otherwise, I would have been pulling people out.While we were watching Baby’s set, I noticed I was standing next to Sheck Wes and Kendall Jenner, who saw the same thing I did. The only difference was they were both surrounded by security and were never in danger. The event security around us was too busy listening to the set and dancing (yes, dancing) and paid little attention to the people in the crowd. After his set ended, my girlfriend and I wanted to stay away from everything outside, so we got food and waited for Travis Scott’s set.Fifteen minutes before Scott performed, it quickly turned into checkpoint chaos again. As Scott’s set progressed, and the closer we got to the stage, the crazier the fans behaved. People started moshing during his song “Mamacita,” and I witnessed multiple full-blown fights and bloody noses. Many clearly wanted out, but nobody was aware of anything to let people by. At one point, I looked over at a father and his young son (no older than 9 or 10) being pushed around by the mosh pit—it wasn’t on purpose, but nobody could prevent it. I’ve never been around a crowd so oblivious to their surroundings. At one point, I saw someone trip and fall—the concrete had holes in the ground making it easier to stumble—but nobody noticed. When Scott stopped the show due to someone passing out, I witnessed the crowd passing a lifeless body as though it were bodysurfing. The turning point was when Drake came out. The second the crowd noticed him, I was forced forward and unable to do anything about it. Luckily, I stood my ground and prevented my girlfriend from danger. As Scott made his final speech, we decided to beat the crowd and tried to get through the nice way. Of course, nobody let us pass. I resorted to forcefully pushing us through everyone until we found an open space.

I was forced forward and unable to do anything about it.

Leaving Astroworld Was a Traumatic Experience

As we made our way back to my car, security opened a back gate to let at least five ambulances out. “There’s someone in each one of those,” one guard said. He told me he saw someone die right in front of him and was still visibly shocked. What made it worse was that the victim had been alone—nobody was around when he was given CPR and put into the ambulance. He would most likely need to be identified by family. That’s when everything started getting surreal. While walking through the lot trying to contemplate the tragic news, someone turned around and asked if anyone had died. We explained what we’d been told, and his reply made me lose faith in humanity. The stranger said he’d been in the crowd and heard someone across from him yelling that he couldn’t breathe. Thinking that it was a joke, he started taking a video of himself laughing at the man struggling for air. When he showed me the video, I could see the terror in the victim’s eyes. It was a quiet rest of the walk back to my car.By the time we reached the car, I thought the whole ordeal was over. Not even close. It took over an hour to get out of the parking lot, and the second we reached the highway, it was madness. People were all over the road, running lights and taking up multiple lanes. It took every ounce of focus to make it home safely. When we got back, I checked Reddit like I normally do and was horrified to see the news that eight people had died, with hundreds injured. I felt sick to my stomach. I thought I had a good time, but could I really say that knowing people had lost their lives? I had no idea how to process anything. My girlfriend and I started reaching out to people we knew were there to make sure they were OK. Some of our friends weren’t as lucky as us to make it home unscathed. One friend ended up in a mild car accident leaving Astroworld; another ended up in a hospital the following day with a lung infection resulting from the festival; and one friend witnessed two people get trampled, resulting in her having a panic attack. Luckily, both people she saw survived the stampede. In some ways, I felt responsible—not because I had any control of the crowd but because I’d bought her tickets. She should have never been traumatized like this.

It Will Take a Long Time to Heal From This Festival

The next day, I had gotten calls from everyone who knew I attended to make sure we were mentally and physically OK. We learned the second day of the festival had been canceled, but I don’t think I would have gone regardless. It’s been a couple weeks since Astroworld and it's still in the news. I eventually stopped checking because the whole thing is depressing. I’m even taking a hiatus from listening to Travis Scott. My girlfriend and I have talked to our university’s mental health resources and are attending group therapy with other people from our school. Hopefully with time and professional help, I, my girlfriend, my friends and everyone else who was there will find a way to move forward. I plan on going to the memorial for the people who lost their lives at Astroworld to pay my respects.

“Ever since I heard the howlin’ wind, I didn’t need to go where a Bible went.” -Bon Iver One of the earliest memories of my life is my mom telling me I couldn’t have sex before I was married, which is a little like telling a baby bear to promise to never eat salmon. In fact, I distinctly recall being 7 years old and watching Magic Johnson’s press conference with my mom when he revealed to the world that he had HIV. After it was over, my mom got really quiet, turned to me and said, “Do you know why this happened? Magic Johnson had tons of unprotected sex with lots and lots of women.” I got equally as quiet and gazed my pre-pre-prepubescent eyes up at her and said, “I like Ninja Turtles…what the fuck are you talking about?” Welcome to being brought up extremely Catholic. It’s a world filled with glimpses of grace and light, usually symbolized in images of a very hot Matthew McConaughey-esque Jesus Christ, with chiseled abs, beaming blue eyes, cloaked in flowing white robes and surrounded by children and animals. He’s the kind of guy every girl would swipe right on. But these dreamy images of serenity are shrouded by a lurking darkness around every corner, a shadowy, fiery figure who is out to destroy everyone and everything about you. This icon is known as the devil, or as my mom calls him, “the evil one.” And this dude is everywhere, all the time, just waiting for you to trip up, to indulge, to sin, to debase yourself and by doing so, to expose your mere mortalness by succumbing to his evil, destructive ways. Punishment is a lifetime of eternity in hell. Fun, right?

The Reasons Why I Left the Catholic Church Starting During My Childhood

The following statement has become so common, it’s almost cliche at this point: “Well, I was raised Catholic, but I’m not anymore. Now, I consider myself spiritual, not religious.”I get why this sounds super annoying—it’s usually told by someone named Blake, who sports a manicured man bun, or a marketing director named Natalie, who’s now pursuing her yoga teaching certificate despite her very real vocal fry and says things like, “You totally should do downward dog right now.”I used to be one of those people. But after a roller-coaster ride of self-discovery and decades of adventurous (and often boring) religious and spiritual experimentation, I have come to a very different conclusion. I now tell people, “I’m not religious, I’m not spiritual. I am everything and you are everything.” And I only know this because I finally discovered nothing. Back to that little boy who was told not to have sex when he was 7. I spent the next 11 years of my life going to church every Sunday, never missing a day, and if we did, my mom made us have an “at-home Mass.” Picture a family fight but with Communion. Despite being brought up to be religious about religion, my mind started drifting away from Catholicism, so much so that, at least once a Mass, I would excuse myself to go for a walk around the church for as long as humanly possible so I didn’t have to hear the strained drones of the prehistoric Catholic hymn “Be Not Afraid.” These extended strolls turned into deep contemplative times when I mulled over the possibility that maybe church and everything I had been taught about God, Jesus, sin and humanity just wasn’t for me. And who could blame me? Any service that starts with hundreds of people obediently rising to their feet so they can beat their chests and say, “My faults, my faults, my faults,” really doesn’t sound like a sick way to spend a weekend.

I went off to college carrying a few suitcases and years of programmed Catholic luggage stuffed with shame, guilt, kindness, sexual trauma, doubt and some joy.

Yet, I Still Carried My Catholic Faith With Me to College

I went off to college carrying a few suitcases and years of programmed Catholic luggage stuffed with shame, guilt, kindness, sexual trauma, doubt and some joy. Most importantly, I was alone for the first time, and it was here that I had the revelation that I could actually decide what kind of spirituality was right for me. Purely out of reflex, I dabbled in the local Catholic scene at the University of Iowa, and if that doesn’t sound sexy as fuck, I don’t know what does. But before I could get too far into that bustling community, something very important happened. For the first time in my life, I got a girlfriend—a real one.

My First Dating Experience Pushed Me to No Longer Be Catholic

I met Laura in my freshman rhetoric class, and we were immediately inseparable. She was completely stunning and adorable and perfect, and once you see a real woman naked for the first time, Jesus no longer seems that significant for some reason. Laura and I had the ideal college relationship, but there was only one problem: She wanted to have sex, and I was still a Catholic robot who thought intercourse would directly lead to casually burning in hell.This phenomenon is not uncommon for Catholics, which is why you hear so many stories of Catholics pretending to stick to the Lord’s teachings by only engaging in butt stuff, which is a little like saying you don’t do drugs, only heroin. My hesitancy to have sex started as a small hiccup and slowly morphed into the demise of our entire relationship. And it was around this time that I became very lost. Not only had I lost the real first love of my life, but I also put my spirituality on the back burner because, you know…a naked woman. I experienced a rock-bottom depression, didn’t eat, lightly entertained suicidal thoughts and contemplated taking antidepressants. But it was here that I discovered a quality in myself that I never knew I had, one I’m still extremely proud of. I decided to search and to dig without stopping until I found the satisfying and profound answers to life’s biggest questions. And of lesser importance, I got off my ass.

Once you see a real woman naked for the first time, Jesus no longer seems that significant for some reason.

I Tried Other Forms of Christianity to Find What I Cared About

I worked out, joined the Model U.N. and the University of Iowa Democrats and I volunteered at Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Ronald McDonald House. I also worked for our student newspaper, The Daily Iowan, and at our student radio station, KRUI. I saw counselors and priests for my depression and anxiety, and I could feel the choking grip of sadness slowly loosening its hold. I had no idea where I was spiritually, but I felt like I was taking back some control. I moved to New York City for an internship with Rolling Stone magazine and started participating in all different sects of Christianity, from Unitarian and Presbyterian parishes to all-Black churches to places where they “healed” you on stage by extending their hands over you and asking the devil to leave. It turns out, the devil stuck around for a while because I was too hungover to ask him to leave. I eventually settled on a Christian church in Park Slope, Brooklyn, called Church! I chose that one because of the sweet punctuation and the fact that its members played basketball every Sunday night. But after a few years of attending their Sunday services, I felt like a stifled version of myself again. I kept getting stuck on Christianity’s bottom-line fact that salvation only came through Jesus Christ, and that only through him could true happiness be found. But what about me? Do I just suck outside of him?

Leaving Christianity Behind, I Began Finding Spirituality in Other Ways

I again drifted off and dove back into the spiritual abyss, knowing that there had to be something more. Only this time, when I jumped in, I landed on something that felt like home. A friend of mine told me about a book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and as cliche as that book might be to the New Thought movement, it was, and still is, a game changer to millions for a reason. The idea that you can create your own reality with your thoughts, feelings and actions smashed down the walls of limitation I always felt with Christianity. I was hooked and couldn’t get enough. I read Abraham-Hicks, Deepak Chopra and my favorite, Wayne Dyer, who quietly stated on stage, often with no shoes on, that “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” I started meditating regularly, and I noticed that every time I didn’t, I became an anxious maniac who acted like I subsisted on a diet of coffee laced with cocaine. I discovered gratitude, the real kind, not just the passive sentiment you say when someone hands you a present. And I learned that the more I loved everything and everyone, the more everything got better.

I Found Myself By Connecting

My life went from seeing everything in the static binary—black and white, good and evil—to experiencing everything in technicolor. It was like I was given a pair of 3D glasses and could finally see all the good things that were always there but now popped out at me. Most importantly, I discovered that everything can be holy: every chair, every smile, every setback, every doubt, every kiss, every breakup and every love. And you don’t have to sit in the confines of church walls to experience it. I now live my life magically like this, feeling connected to every part of it. And very much like the great Van Morrison often sings, “No guru, no method, no teacher, just you and I and nature in the garden wet with rain.”

“Is 4 o’clock too early to open a bottle of wine?” I stare at my husband as if waiting for approval. I know my body needs something. Not food. Not water. Something to make me disappear, someplace to go. I don't wait for an answer; I uncork the wine and pour myself a massive glass.Since my sister, K., was murdered, I numb myself, become small, become as close as I can to nothing at all. I want to sink inside the soil, mix with her bones, her arms, her strong hands that couldn’t defend herself, wrap my body around her body. I want to place my palm upon her beating heart. Except it isn’t beating because he fucking killed her.

She looks natural, except for the blood that has dried and hardened on the right side of her head.

How It Happened

It’s Wednesday, May 26. My sister’s husband of 25 years waits until she gets home from work to shoot her, to make her voiceless. Before that, he says his goodbyes to his mother and brother, changes the insurance policies, eats lunch at a local cafe and washes a load of clothes, which are still spinning in the dryer when we find her sprawled out on the tiled floor. She doesn’t see him coming behind her. He pulls the trigger three times to the back of her head. He’s a coward like that, sneaking and stalking in the shadows like a roach. I’m mowing the lawn, listening to an audiobook of Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth on my headset when he kills her. I’m at the part where the boys in the castle throw rocks at helpless cats just because they can. Cornish hens with red potatoes are baking in the oven. The weather in Duluth is unseasonably warm and blue and happy. I’m wearing a Lady Gaga T-shirt and ripped black shorts, the same tattered clothes I end up wearing to the hospital that night. A friend calls at 5:15 p.m. “Have you heard the news? The cops are surrounding K.’s house. I think he did something to her.” The next thing I know, I’m inside a pale-colored room that smells of disinfectant, my sister’s Tabu perfume and something hideously sour. K. is attached to a ventilator. Swirling tubes snake from her nose. Her hair had just been highlighted in caramels and blondes, and streaks of black mascara are dripping under her bottom lashes. She looks natural, except for the blood that has dried and hardened on the right side of her head. Once I catch my breath, I kick the bedpost over and over until the top of my tennis shoe cracks. I circle the room, pleading to a silent God, “Let her wake up. Wake up. Please wake up.” Her eyes remain shut like a porcelain doll.Two guards stand on each side of the doorway like bar bouncers, a procedure they must follow after someone is murdered. They place M., her killer, in another hospital, which is also procedure. All of these safety precautions set in motion after my sister is already dead.Five days after the murder, I stand at the church podium and say, “My sister is gone, and I don’t know where to go from here.” The silence hurts my entire body. It is loud, and ironically what killed her in the first place. It’s the same silence the elders exhibited when she was excommunicated from the place she worshiped for not attending marriage counseling. The same silence that destroys so many women who are not believed, heard or seen in a patriarchal society. After reading several of K.'s journals, I’m startled by her pleas for help, “He pushed me. He’s a pig. He has no morals. I wish he’d go to Iraq and die. I didn’t deserve this. Help me.” Reading the words, oh my God, the things she never told me. I see more silence.

Nothing is normal about your sister being murdered by the man you eat Sunday dinners with after church service for decades.

I Tried to Drink Away My Pain

After the memorial service, I don’t stay for cakes, cookies or tater tot hotdish. I need a bottle of red wine or two to dull myself, reduce myself. No, this isn’t my new normal. I hate when people say that. It’s my new abnormal. Nothing is normal about your sister being murdered by the man you eat Sunday dinners with after church service for decades.I stop at the liquor store in West Duluth on the way home and place six bottles of Cupcake red wine on the counter. The young man ringing me up jokes, “I see we’re having a party, huh?” I can’t make eye contact with him because I know if I do, I’ll choke him with the strap of my Coach bag and howl like an animal caught in a snare.I open a bottle when I arrive home. It helps me escape until the next day and the day after that. When I awaken with a throbbing headache, I’m swallowed up again by my sister’s murder, the shooting, the holes in her head, the organs being removed to be arranged inside another body and I worry about whether I have enough wine to last me through the day, the night, the rest of my life. It never ends. The drinking started as soon as K. was pronounced dead. I picked up wine on the way home from the hospital and proceeded to drink the entire bottle that night. Besides killing myself, which I have actually considered, I can’t figure out another way to relieve the ache of not having my sister on Earth. So I drink from beautiful flutes I purchase from T.J.Maxx for their elegant and ladylike shape. A real alcoholic drinks from a jelly glass or directly from the bottle, right? I drink to forget. I drink until the universe disappears. I’m drowning in sorrow, but I’m still rational enough to know alcohol won’t cure the irrational part of me that wants to die too. The part that wants to place rocks inside my pockets and walk directly into Lake Superior.

Grief Has Become My Greatest Teacher

I’ve been writing this story for 10 years from different angles, while gulping cabernets, merlots, pinot noirs and Chiantis. The story keeps changing. In the beginning, I sat in the dark with a bottle of wine at my side, clicking unpolished nails against plastic keys. In the beginning, a therapist, who I called Dr. Stinkin’ Thinkin’, asked, “If I could give you a pill to make you forget, would you take it?I screamed, “Yes! Can I have one now?”Today is another day, another year. Now I want to feel everything, resist nothing. My sister’s story matters, and I want to remember the details. A glass of wine or two is okay, but I’m more interested in staying sober than deadening myself into nothingness. I tried to become dead while I was still living, but this was just another kind of cage that kept me from moving forward. This yearning gets me up in the morning, gives my pain direction, motivates me to support other women trapped inside their own snares. Although I’ve never been a cutter, I imagine this is what it feels like. The pain makes me remember I’m alive, makes me know my blood is still flowing red and warm and with purpose. And to be honest, I need the pain. I want the pain because forgetting my sister is more unbearable than remembering.Grief doesn’t end. It bites with its sharp, insidious teeth at unexpected moments, although it's no longer my enemy. Instead, it’s become the greatest master class I never signed up for. I’ve come to realize that God lives, but the devil is real, too. He may be sitting at your kitchen table this very moment. Mostly, though, I’ve come to recognize that, unless I embrace this profound loss and walk directly through the flames, I might still be getting plastered every day at 4 o’clock.Instead, I’ve decided to walk out of the darkness and into the light.

Ten years ago, my closest childhood friend was given a life sentence for murder. For that decade, I’ve been trying to come to terms with that.Kyle came from what the judge would later describe as “a good family.” His parents were still together, and both had respectable, well-paying jobs. Kyle was their only child. They lived in a big house out of town, and as teenagers, that’s where Kyle and I would hang out after school.Kyle was one of my smartest friends, but he was a rebel too. Like me back then. In summer, we explored old, abandoned factories together. We used to light firecrackers out in the desert, and, in later years, crude homemade bombs that we cooked up with farm chemicals in his barn. We were always trying to make a bigger explosion than the one before.By our late teens, we were getting into drinking and drugs as well. One night, completely smashed, we spent hours rearranging traffic cones and diversion signs to create an impossible maze around town. We were planning to stay up all night to watch the havoc when the commuter rush began, but the cops caught us in the act. They eventually let us off but only after making us put everything back where it came from. Other nights, we'd just sit in Kyle’s room, drop LSD and watch Quentin Tarantino movies.Kyle and I shared a self-destructive streak, and one time, we dared each other to down whole pints of vodka. It was an experiment in excess—part challenge, part bonding pact. We linked arms, locked eyes, then raised our glasses. The worst part of downing a pint of vodka is when you have to take your first breath. You gasp, and it bubbles up through the liquid in front of your face, and you realize you’re not even a quarter of the way through yet. It’s not like a shot, where the drink’s already in you before you know what’s happening. Drinking a pint of vodka takes patience. It doesn’t want to go down. It’s chewy, and your gullet tries to protest, but Kyle was still going, and so I kept going, too, arms linked, gagging and gulping, until eventually both those glasses were drained.That night, Kyle and I ended up in separate bathrooms, heads down our respective toilets and then sleeping curled around the pot on vomit-smeared linoleum. Later that week, Kyle’s father cornered my mom in the supermarket. He said I was a bad influence and told her, “Keep your no-good son away from Kyle. My boy’s got great things ahead of him.”

I Struggled to Understand How My Friend Could Be Locked up Forever

I got the call almost 10 years later at something like 2 a.m. The screen said Tina, a name I hadn’t seen for a while. We’d been in a relationship years before and then Tina was with Kyle for a time, but we all stayed friends throughout. I guess she became just another thread that connected me and Kyle. When I answered, I immediately knew it was trouble. Tina was a mess, hysterical at first, but I told her to calm down, and she explained: “Kyle killed someone. Holy fuck, he actually killed some guy.”The story wasn’t in the press yet, but Kyle had called Tina before getting picked up by the cops…and she didn’t know who else to share it with but me. The story I heard—the story that he told Tina—was more or less the same as what his lawyer would say in court: that Kyle invited some guy up to his apartment for drinks that night, but the visitor suddenly attacked him, and Kyle found himself fighting for his life. The only thing within reach was a baseball bat, so Kyle grabbed it and struck his attacker repeatedly in self-defense. He never meant to kill him.The prosecution would tell a different story, though. They suggested Kyle had lured his visitor in, then assaulted him without warning—dealing roughly 20 heavy blows to the victim’s head and neck before hiding the body in a cupboard for a week. During that time, Kyle had apparently begun making plans to bury the corpse out in the desert. Character witnesses came forward to describe the victim as a popular, wholesome kid, a grade-A student who was loved by all he met. Meanwhile, Kyle already had a record for drug possession and other petty criminal misdemeanors. It didn’t look good.I spent the next days and weeks in a daze trying to process it all. When the newspapers got wind of it, I started to see my old friend’s name in the headlines. They called him a brutal killer, a monster, and the judge said something similar, too, when the case eventually wrapped up and Kyle was sentenced to life in prison.But you don’t know him, I kept thinking. I believed the self-defense story 100 percent. I figured Kyle must have been pretty messed up on drugs when it happened and that afterward, stuck in his apartment with a dead body, he’d just freaked out. Kyle wasn’t really a tough guy—he was a rebellious middle-class kid who liked to look tough in front of his friends. When it came to dealing with a dead body, I assumed his only frame of reference was exactly the same as mine: all those Tarantino movies we used to watch. So I figured his drugged-up brain had just switched into Hollywood mode as a way to cope with the shock. He started planning how to bury the body in the desert because that’s what guys in the movies do.Kyle had really fucked up this time. But giving him life for it just seemed impossibly cruel.

The only thing within reach was a baseball bat, so Kyle grabbed it and struck his attacker repeatedly in self-defense. He never meant to kill him.

Kyle Had a History of Committing Dangerous Shenanigans

I will say this for Kyle—he threw an awesome house party back in the day. When his parents went away, we’d gather at the big house on the edge of town and turn the music all the way up. They were messy nights. This one time, it was already morning and I was ready to pass out somewhere when Kyle asked if I wanted to come for a drive in his dad’s Mercedes. “No fucking way,” I slurred as I slipped into a drunken sleep. When I woke up, I’d heard how Kyle and two others had gone out and lost control of the car on a corner in the road and flipped it upside down into an alfalfa field. They all clambered out just fine, but the Mercedes was wrecked.At one of those parties, someone snuck into Kyle’s parents’ bedroom looking for a place to sleep, have sex, do coke, whatever. But they came back out holding a framed portrait, a little ornate thing they had found on Kyle’s mom’s bedside cabinet. It was a photo of Kyle as a toddler, dressed in a white lace gown, with rosy cheeks and long blond hair. This child looked perfect, pure, like something between one of Michelangelo's cherubs or a sacrificial victim. Their golden boy. We all had a good chuckle, but we put the picture back before Kyle knew we’d seen it.Gradually, the crowd at those parties changed over the years. Kyle was mixing in new circles, hanging out with older, tougher guys, some serious dealers, too, and from one party to the next, the mood changed until I started to feel like a stranger in that house. At some point, I just stopped going to those parties. By our 20s, Kyle and I were growing apart and into different people and ultimately ended up living in different cities. When I did occasionally see him, dressed in a hoodie and hanging out with his new crew, I’d always think back to that cherubic photo of him beside his mom’s bed.

I’ve Had Nightmares About Killing Someone

A few times, I’ve dreamt I was there in Kyle’s place. I’m pinned to the floor by this stranger. I picture him huge, as an angry behemoth twice my size, bloodshot eyes and fists big enough to crush my skull. He has me by the throat, and I realize this is it, that these could be my final moments of life. I can’t get out from under him, and my arms flail about the floor, jerking desperately like a fish on dry sand, until my fingers brush the edge of something solid. I grab it, hard, then swing up to connect a heavy bat into the side of my attacker’s head. He reels from the blow, but he keeps on squeezing at my throat. I hit him again and again. He slumps. His grip loosens. I tip him off me and wriggle free. Maybe he lunges, grabs at me, and I hit him one more time around the head with this wooden club.I can imagine all of that. I can play it out in my head, just like the defense lawyer told it at the trial. But here’s the thing that still bothers me now. What I can’t imagine, in any version of this fantasy simulation, is then standing over the body and swinging that baseball bat down towards the stranger’s head another 16 times until that head is not a face anymore, just pulp. I simply can’t summon that kind of rage. Not even in my nightmares.

Kyle had really fucked up this time. But giving him life for it just seemed impossibly cruel.

I Hope That My Former Best Friend Can Find Peace

The last time I saw Kyle was in a dive bar in our hometown, maybe just a year before the incident. When I walked in, he was sitting in the back, alone, waiting for someone. I was there to meet someone, too, but I imagine we had quite different nights ahead of us.We shared a beer while we waited. It was friendly, familiar and we laughed. But there was never a moment when either of us suggested getting our friends together. We both knew, without words, that we were driving in different lanes, heading in different directions. That last beer we shared felt like stolen time.After the trial, the victim’s parents spoke to the press. Through tears, they said they hoped that Kyle found peace someday and found a way to heal whatever it was that led him to beat their son to death. I wish that for him, too.

“If Trump wins, I’m moving to Canada,” is something every good American progressive said in the months leading up to the 2016 election. However, very few actually did this. My husband and I were two of them. The environment in the South, where I was born and raised, had become so politically charged. While we had become part of a tight community and formed several close friendships in our more progressive town, a land flowing with delicious pimento cheese and barbecue, we were fed up with hearing and seeing so much support for Trump, fewer gun laws and a border wall. But we weren’t expecting Trump to win at all. In fact, we set up a small party in our apartment to celebrate as we watched the election results come in. By midnight, I went to bed with a sinking feeling in my stomach. How could this be happening? I felt like I was living in a bad dream.Needless to say, we looked up the process for immigrating to Canada, and it was not as complicated as you’d think. We’d visited a few times and liked what we saw. Within a few months, we had our papers, and my husband had a job offer, so in mid-2018, we left everything behind in my home state and moved to British Columbia. The move was extremely difficult, but I remained hopeful that I’d find friends soon and build a life similar to the one I was leaving behind in a place where they had things figured out much better. Boy, was I naive.

Within the first two weeks, my husband’s car was robbed.

Canada Isn't the Progressive Paradise We Expected

We left the comfy 800-square-foot apartment we were renting for $850 and moved to a 540-square-foot apartment in a similarly-sized city for almost twice the price. Within the first two weeks, my husband’s car was robbed inside our private parking garage. He called the local police to report it, and they told him they couldn’t come that day because they were understaffed but could come the next day if he called again. Looking back, this was definitely a red flag. Theft seems to be the crime of choice here. Just a few weeks ago, I was in the mall when someone swiped a stack of Lululemon clothes and made a run for it. None of the store employees even flinched, as if this happens every day. It’s also not uncommon here for people to get randomly attacked by a mentally ill person. What’s worse is that it is illegal to carry anything that could be used as a weapon to defend yourself, including pepper spray.In the U.S., I’d never seen drug deals or injections happening in plain sight. Here, it’s visible everywhere you look. A few weeks after my move, I came upon something on the sidewalk that stopped me in my tracks. Someone had stabbed a needle into a piece of dog poop. This, too, felt like a sign.Recently, I had my first experience interacting with the Canadian universal healthcare system. Unfortunately, there’s a huge doctor shortage in BC. Very few people manage to get a family doctor, and when one retires, there is often not another one to replace them. So, the only options are to visit a walk-in clinic or go to the emergency room. I had a very sore throat, and not wanting to take up a space at the ER with a non-emergency, I called a couple of clinics and was told there was no way to get in during the day and that I’d have to arrive before opening time and line up. So the next day, I got up early and lined up 30 minutes before the clinic opened. The lady behind me said, “I really hope I get in this time! I came early twice this weekend, and they wouldn’t take me.” I started to get nervous about whether I’d get in too. When they opened at 8 a.m., the nurse came out and counted us (there were about nine people) and then told us we were the only ones that would get in. Whew! I felt relieved. The nurse then put up a sign that read, “Zero Openings, Full Capacity.” The lady behind me was so excited that she would finally get to see a doctor. I couldn’t help but think to myself how wrong and backward this all felt for a first-world country. I’ve since encountered numerous stories in a local Facebook group about people not being able to get access to the health care they need. Many of these people need urgent care, but there is little sympathy in an overloaded system.

Canadian Culture Is Built on Hypocrisy

One of the biggest things I learned within the first few months of our move is that it is incredibly difficult to make friends in our province. We tried Meetup.com, went to local events, and participated in different classes and lessons. Out of ten people that invited us to their homes, only one of them actually followed through on it. I’ve even gotten some Canadians to admit to me that they make invitations as a form of being polite but have no intention of following up on them. What? This is not what I was used to back in the South, where even people you’ve recently met invite you over to their home for supper. Here, it’s extremely difficult to make a connection that goes deeper than the surface. As an immigrant, I realized the only way to emotionally survive is to seek out foreign friends. People here are polite for sure, but they are not open and welcoming like I was used to. When I first arrived in BC, I was immediately struck with how “in your face” the Indigenous symbols and cultural references are. I was quite impressed with this because, in the U.S., Native Americans are rarely acknowledged. A couple of months after my arrival, I attended a local community event. They started the event with a territorial acknowledgment, which is standard practice in Canada. “We would like to thank the Coast Salish peoples on whose unceded, traditional territory we are gathering together.” “Wow,” I thought. “They are actually acknowledging that the land we’re on is stolen and we’re privileged to be here.” As an American, this was a completely new concept for me. I was moved.Over time, I heard the term “residential schools” come up occasionally. I began to understand that they were a bad thing, but I had no idea the extent of the horror they really were. Nobody really talked about specifics. Only when the graves of hundreds of children were discovered at residential school grounds in mid-2021 did I come to realize the extent of the crimes the Canadian government had committed against Indigenous children. I was mad. Why was this not common knowledge? Why weren’t people talking about this before? Why wasn’t the government looking for these children they knew never came home from the residential schools? I found out that the government had previously ordered a very thorough investigation of residential schools, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission wrote very long, extensive reports on the topic just a few years before these discoveries. But what has really been done since that? I’ve now come to realize that the incorporation of all these symbols and acknowledgments is actually a very elaborate facade, a way for the Canadian government to “apologize” and admit they did bad things to the Indigenous peoples in the past while continuing to ignore the extreme injustices against Indigenous peoples that exist to this day. This attitude is the embodiment of Canadian culture. It’s baked into how everyone relates to each other. The only way they know how to communicate is politely—so careful to not offend anyone. To say whatever they need to, even if they don’t mean it in the slightest, in order to maintain that facade. For example, using the word “Indian” is strongly looked down upon, while systemic racism against Indigenous students in the educational system has been ignored for years. It doesn’t make any logical sense; only in that we must do what we must do in order to appear good without actually being good.

In the U.S., I’d never seen drug deals or injections happening in plain sight. Here, it’s visible everywhere you look.

The U.S. Has Its Problems, but at Least We Don’t Hide Them

There have definitely been some moments where I’ve been grateful to be here. Specifically, during the pandemic. Because we’re more isolated, our COVID case counts have remained relatively low, and I’ve felt very safe. But when the vaccine started to roll out in the U.S., Canadians were left waiting and waiting. When most of my friends in the U.S. had been fully vaccinated by April, I was still waiting to get my first dose. We weren’t eligible to get it until the end of May, and then we were told we’d be contacted for our second dose in three months. Three months?! We knew this was not what the vaccine manufacturers recommended. The government was playing it down and also told us it was OK to mix vaccines. So, we hightailed it out of there at the end of June to snatch our second dose in the States before returning to Canada to ride out whatever wave may come next. I promise I’m not trying to trash Canada. I simply want to expose it for what it is. The U.S. is far from perfect—that’s why we left in the first place—but its faults are pretty well-known around the world. We don’t hide them. On the other hand, Canada pretends to be perfect, and it flaunts that facade—a chilly, multicultural paradise with a sleek universal health care system and a sensible prime minister, overflowing with happy, friendly people who say “Sorry!” and “Eh” a lot. At least that’s how I saw it. But not anymore.

Many times I wished for a do-over, to be able to change an action, a situation. To forget. I never thought it would happen, and now I feel stuck in a life I don’t know how to fix, and I can’t tell if it will survive, just like (some of us) have survived COVID. I woke up to a life that didn’t feel like mine. A strange room filled with pictures of me next to a man I had just met—a different bed, a different house. I got up and walked through a hallway following the sound of cups and someone yawning—the man I had seen in the pictures. It all felt like an out-of-body experience, trying to connect the dots as if it was a virtual reality game and I had to find the answer without any clues. My son. I have a six-year-old. Where was he? All I knew is I had driven back home from Houston from a wonderful getaway weekend with the man in those pictures, our second date. His eyes finally met mine when I noticed him sitting down at the table drinking coffee. Clearly, there was something going on and I didn’t know about it. I started feeling dizzy; my head was spinning. As I headed back to the bedroom, he followed. I sat down on the bed, and the words came out of my mouth: “Where am I?” My reality was different to what I was living. I woke up thinking it was February 23, 2020. Well, hello February 16, 2021.

I woke up to a life that didn’t feel like mine.

My Vision Issues Were Due to a Brain Cyst

A full year of memories lost. I had fallen in love with this man, a pandemic that we still live through had started, and yet I had missed it all. Face mask mandates, the shortage of cleaning supplies, people losing their jobs, businesses closing left and right, curfews, virtual learning, people dying. I was considered an essential employee and was one of the lucky people that not only kept her job but got promoted. I resided in McAllen, Texas, then got a new position in Nashville. And COVID had shut down Music City. My son was now seven years old, and he loved this man that shared his life with us now, who had jumped into a relationship a year ago and started a new journey in a new state. As I listened to and watched photos and videos of which I had no recollection, I noticed a ring on my finger. Did I get married? All this new information felt like I had been connected to a file on the matrix and was on the constant upload for knowledge. I needed answers.Back in 2016, my cardiologist and neurologist both wanted me to get a new full checkup. I had been inexplicably losing my sight for a couple of minutes while I drove, while I was in the shower, while I watched TV. I thought it was related to my early diagnosis of neurocardiogenic syncope ten years before, when I was a 16-year-old, extremely stressed about going to a university in a different state while my parents were sharing the news that they were getting a divorce. Now both specialists felt my vision problems were not related to my heart at all, and they were right. This was related to my brain, something that was considered of no harm, no danger and had been growing for God knows how long.

I Couldn’t Remember I Was Engaged to Someone

When I learned my first MRI had unveiled an arachnoid cyst, I was confused.Is it a tumor? Does it need to be removed? Does it hurt? No. It’s actually the most common type of brain cyst. Some are congenital, and others develop through a head injury or trauma. They don’t need to be removed unless they keep growing or your doctor believes it safer to be removed. They can cause terrible migraines, and their location and conditions may press on optic nerves, causing temporary loss of sight. They can also make you dizzy and nauseous out of nowhere. Mine was feeding off my stress, and it was well fed. Back then, knowing emotions controlled the speed and growth of my cyst, antidepressants and mood regulators were prescribed left and right to keep going to work on a daily basis. Nothing felt real. It was as if I was on auto-pilot and I couldn’t actually savor and cherish life. I decided it was better trying to go all natural: yoga, swimming, meditation, living the zen life. It had all been working out; there was no more passing out, no more throwing up uncontrollably or losing my sight. Until now, when Tennessee was my new home and COVID had taken the world and the people we loved. I was engaged to a man I remembered going out on a second date with and now lived with. He was the most supportive person ever, taking care of me, calling my parents to follow a “protocol” to something he hadn’t been exposed to before, setting up appointments for me to get new MRIs and blood work, taking conference calls with my team of doctors that were a country away. He drove us to Alabama, to a place where they could have the results by the end of that day and be shared for a new diagnosis. And there it was—the cyst had grown. Now “2 cm transverse x 2.2 cm AP x 3.0 cm cephalocaudal,” reported to be inflamed and associated with headaches, nausea, vomiting, tremors, seizures and wait for it: memory loss. What had happened? What changed my zen way of living to the point I had lost a full year? Stress.

I had bottled it all inside of me, and now I was paying the price.

My Amnesia Is Hard to Understand, but I’m Making the Best of It

Little did I know, life with this man had broken me apart, and I had been trying to stitch myself back together for a while. Work was a pain, my new boss had a problem working with women, and my brain was aching for a break. I had bottled it all inside of me, and now I was paying the price.Amnesia. My partner had gone all Google on me trying to find answers. Are the memories ever coming back? Is this going to happen again? What is the best thing to do in these cases? My doctors said it was all possible. I tried looking at things to trigger memories of my life before February with no luck. I gave up.It has been hard to understand everything around me in this new world. Wearing a face mask in public is definitely a new experience I’m still trying to get used to. For now, I am back on my medication, therapy and a healthy lifestyle, hoping things will slowly come back but convincing myself they will within time. I can’t cling to the loss. I've decided on making the best of my now—on what’s to come.

I was sitting squarely across from the large digital signboards at Mumbai International Airport, a nervous mess. It was February 2021, and the pandemic was raging worldwide. Amidst this unyielding crisis, I was shifting base from India to the United States, the world’s most powerful nation, which had also faced the worst brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. But my home country, which was predicted to have a worse landfall of cases, had missed it by a decent margin. The irony of the situation was not lost on anyone, from epidemiologists to statisticians to journalists like myself.I could still see the last vestiges of my parents' reflections outside the airport windows, and it made my heart sink a bit deeper. This new world seemed vastly different from the old one, masked and faceless, full of extreme uncertainties, while I left my loved ones behind.

I Upended My Life in the Middle of a Pandemic

I was leaving behind a steady journalism career reporting on Asia’s third-largest economy, multiple fellowships and a news startup to attend grad school amid a pandemic. Taking the plunge and moving to Boston to study diplomacy in my maiden visit to the U.S. was anxiety-inducing already, and the pandemic made the entire journey much worse.I felt deeply conflicted about my decision. I was leaving behind a decent journalism career and moving to the United States, which had recently seen a deeply polarized election, an attack on the Capitol and an out-of-control pandemic that was barely seeing signs of receding. I was also leaving my folks behind despite predictions of a brutal second COVID wave hitting India. But there was a long-awaited dream waiting in the wings, and pandemic or no pandemic, I was encouraged to fulfill it. As a gender nonbinary individual with remnants of childhood surgery marring their self-expression, this opportunity meant the world to me. It meant being able to live life openly and freely, away from the prying judgmental eyes of the regressive Indian society. I meant asserting my own duality and gender identity after over two decades of my life being a chaotic, confused mess. And in my heart, I just knew it was time to set sail and leave.After landing in the U.S., I was ecstatic but cautious. After months of soaring cases and saddening casualties, the world’s most powerful country seemed to be following protocols. From airports to supermarkets, there were masks and sanitizers everywhere. I was tested twice a week on campus and accessed public spaces sparingly.Adjusting to my new home was challenging for a first-generation immigrant student but equally exciting. Everything seemed to be packaged in epic proportions, from gallon-sized milk bottles to the enormous food portions at restaurants to the bevy of American flags everywhere. I attended a podcast recording session in a Black-owned hair salon where the hosts dissected race relations and Joe Biden’s popularity. I made friends with random people who loved my red socks and assumed that I was a Red Sox fan. Life in Boston was strangely calming and slow. Everyone had seen and faced the horrible brunt of the pandemic and was just emerging from what could be termed a COVID-19-induced stasis. Over the spring, vaccinations picked up pace across the U.S., and things seemed much more optimistic. Maybe because the pandemic had taken so much from us, it felt cathartic to experience life in the smallest of ways.It also felt cathartic to be living openly, the way I wanted to. From asserting my gender identity and pronouns to adapting to local dating norms, life felt new and fun. I was transported back to the feeling of being a teenager, with all the associated anxieties and perils of acceptance and rejection.

This new world seemed vastly different from the old one, masked and faceless, full of extreme uncertainties.

I Felt Optimistic About America’s COVID Response—Until I Moved Here

But while things seemed to be in an upward swing for the U.S. under Biden’s presidency, India was in the throes of a second wave under right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership. By April, Indian social media swirled into a cesspool of emergency messages, images of burning pyres and pleas for oxygen tanks. Indian students like me living around the world were crushed with a sense of deja vu and survivor's guilt. We felt helpless. We tried our best to organize funds or aid in arranging for resources, but the mammoth scale of urgency was too intense.At night, I stayed up crying and helplessly wondering if things would ever go back to normal or if my family would come out on the other side of this unscathed. It was the same helplessness my American friends had shared with me just a year ago.I had already lived through India’s first COVID wave, when the country went into a sudden lockdown that left millions of migrant workers stranded, some of them who struggled, or even died, trying to make it back to their villages. As a journalist, I had reported on the pandemic, at times crying while taking notes about people and their lived experiences.The first wave in India was nothing compared to the mass hospitalizations and skyrocketing cases the U.S. witnessed in 2020. Now I was on the other side of the world and seeing a repeat of U.S carnage in India’s second wave, despite the presence of vaccines. Modi had bungled the vaccine response, similar to how Donald Trump had bungled the mask mandates. Both the right-wing leaders failed repeatedly on the COVID-19 front while personally trying to assuage their public image with gimmicks.The COVID-19 pandemic has altered our lives in ways we can still hardly comprehend, as the story continues to play out in real-time. Imagine a nation of 1.3 billion people struggling to breathe while health care systems collectively collapse. From migrant workers in Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, to frontline healthcare workers and the elderly, the cost of this wave is inhumanely tragic. In 2020, India narrowly escaped all predictive models that claimed it would face a humanitarian disaster exacerbated by the virus. But by March 2021, the country’s luck seemed to have run out.I have been traveling across the U.S., and I’ve seen the caseload for the Delta variant rising, especially in Texas and Florida. There are over 90 million unvaccinated Americans, widespread opposition to mask mandates and a desperate hope that the pandemic will wane naturally and gradually over a period of time.I am worried.

Without a swift and smart response, the U.S. might repeat the same mistake India and Brazil did, and the cost could be heartbreaking.

Can the U.S. and India Learn From Each Other?

India's laxity in the face of the pandemic has cost it millions of lives. My home country was mired in a cesspool of agony and helplessness because of a lack of preparedness both on the political and personal front. We made diplomatic mistakes and tried leveraging vaccines as a tool of diplomacy—an ill-wrought gesture that has gone terribly awry.My adopted homeland, on the other hand, managed to vaccinate people rapidly, at times even offering people money to get vaccinated, but failed to evenly distribute excess vaccines worldwide. The gains that have been rapidly made in the last few months—the freedom to travel, operate businesses or even simply spend time with family—can be overturned if we don't act quickly.The new variant is spreading rapidly, and the only antidote is to increase the rates of vaccination while adopting mask mandates in high-risk geographical areas. Without a swift and smart response, the U.S. might repeat the same mistake India and Brazil did, and the cost could be heartbreaking.My hope is that we are smarter this time around and that both my homelands—the one of my birth and the other one I have chosen—manage to evade the catastrophe and save millions of lives. It is the righteous and capable (humane) thing to do.

Desi weddings have never been understated events. Just a look at the bride’s wedding dress, which is usually nothing short of an art piece, and the events themselves are no less elaborate. In Pakistan, where my family is from, they traditionally start with the mayun (before which brides and grooms were discouraged from seeing each other) before spilling across multiple days and nights, bursting with extravagant decorations, heavily embroidered clothes and more food than you can imagine. Weddings are a time where friends and family from all over the world make the effort to come together, which means large guest lists for every event and lots of singing and dancing.

I’ve been to multiple weddings over the last few years that have left the bride, groom and their close families exhausted and sometimes even physically ill from the effort of pulling off such stressful events.

How Social Media Fuels Modern Pakistani Weddings

What used to be just a celebration of the happy couple has now turned into a performance hell-bent on being the next Big Fat Desi Wedding. Each wedding needs to one-up the previous one in terms of event planners, photographers, choreographers and exclusive dress designers, who join hands to put together an elaborately choreographed effort—figuratively and often literally—to blow away not only the guests in attendance but an unseen audience on social media. The last few weddings I’ve attended can be summed up as, “Lights! Camera! Dance!”The most elaborate event—yes, there are multiple—of the ceremony is the Mehndi night. Traditionally, it’s an event celebrating the tradition of applying henna to the bride. A traditional Mehndi often includes a celebration of the couple where they are fed sweets, given gifts and anointed with henna as a tradition while friends and family dance and sing. Now it’s become nothing short of a Bollywood-inspired performance night, where both the bride’s and groom’s sides compete for who has the best and most well-prepared dance routines that keep the celebrations going well into the early hours of the morning.

I Don’t Want an Extravagant and Expensive Pakistani Wedding

I’m getting married in a few months, and as I get deeper and deeper into the planning, there’s one thing I know for sure: I want the exact opposite of the next Big Fat Desi Wedding. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that everyone around me sees no other option but a vast, elaborate, overly exorbitant affair. I’m beginning to wonder, if I do things differently, will my family and friends accept me? I’ve been to multiple weddings over the last few years that have left the bride, groom and their close families exhausted and sometimes even physically ill from the effort of pulling off such stressful events. I remember the days when I was younger when dance practices meant all sorts of cousins and aunts and uncles getting together to mess around, make some jokes and come up with goofy dances. Now it's defined more by both the choreographer and bride yelling in an effort to make sure everyone is absolutely perfect. Desi weddings now seem to cater to the desires of everyone but the bride and groom. There’s an interaction I overheard recently at a wedding that I can’t get out of my head. Two women were talking about the clothes they were wearing. One of them, referring to a third woman who wasn’t there at the time, said, “Her outfit is for 10 lakh rupees, and mine is for only 2 lakh. How can I compete?” It’s a conversation that has continued to make me uncomfortable no matter how many times I’ve replayed it in my head. The obsession with showing off who’s wearing the most amount of money is an unfortunately common occurrence, and I believe a lot of it stems from how interlinked these performative wedding celebrations have become with social media. From the dress the bride wears to her makeup artist and the photographer that covers the event, everything needs to be splashed out on social media pages. Of course, the obsession with displaying your life on social media isn’t limited to Desi weddings. With social media and its influencers dominating many of our experiences and how we see them, Instagram weddings aren’t limited to a particular culture. But this somehow becomes more concentrated in Desi communities because of the importance weddings hold, particularly for women because of the importance society awards their marital status.

I Want a Low-Key, Social Media-Free Wedding

There’s a new pressure now to make your wedding bigger, better and shinier than the one before (because everyone’s already seen the previous one a million times over), which is why I want to keep my wedding low-key and make it an event I can enjoy without the effort of looking Instagram perfect. But when I tell my friends and family that I don’t want multiple elaborate events, that I want to keep the guest list intimate or that I’m very particular about posts on social media not being shared on any public pages, I get weird looks. At one point, my sister said she wanted to have a bigger function and hire a famous singer. When I said I want a smaller, cozier affair, she gave me a disgusted look and said quite rudely, "You’re so boring. In the grand scheme of things, these dialogues hardly matter. I’ve become quite used to living with drastically different opinions than the people around me. But in this context, they serve as a reminder that most people simply cannot fathom the idea that my wedding should be for me, not them. I’ve been told by family members on multiple occasions that I’m being selfish for not succumbing to their demands for how my wedding should look. Sometimes when I’m getting all these comments from the people closest to me, it’s difficult to see how I can turn what I want into a reality because it seems like nobody gets it. My saving grace has been my mother, who has made it clear that my wants should be prioritized. But in a tidal wave of social media posts, videos and comments about who looked the best at what wedding, it seems voices that are different are quickly drowned out

I want the exact opposite of the next Big Fat Desi Wedding.

I’m Keeping My Wedding off Social Media and Focusing on the Experience Rather Than Acceptance

I don’t plan on succumbing to any of these demands. I want the focus of my wedding to be sharing this experience with the people I love, the ones who are genuinely happy for me, and nothing else. But it’s proving to be a difficult battle, as each decision is met with weird glances and comments. Truth is, even I wonder what people will say at the wedding itself—but I’ve decided to stop caring. I’m going to stop worrying about society’s acceptance and enjoy my big day for myself.

I moved to London to study fashion when I was 18 years old. I ate nothing and spent whatever little money I had on cigarettes, coke, clothes and shoes. I slept little and passed out in clubs. While all these would have made me a hot mess in nearly any other situation, by the standards of the fashion industry and art university, I was simply living the life. I was it–getting photographed by street-style photographers, cutting queues and being embraced by the fashion party scene. I had so many pairs of shoes that the floor of my dorm room was barely visible. I looked good.

We Lived—and Suffered—for the Glamour

And looking good was the one thing that mattered. That I was battling an eating disorder or so poor I had to steal a single chocolate from a box left on the floor of my building just to function didn’t seem like that big of an issue. It didn’t stop one of my friends from loudly declaring that if he had to be a girl, he’d want to be me. It didn’t stop me from really thinking that I had the best life, even as I was cutting classes due to being physically unable to get out of bed or repeatedly smashing a club’s toilet to pieces with my heels because my friends and I stupidly dropped a bag of “something” (we weren’t sure what, but we still took it) behind it.Our lives were a whirlwind of clothes, drugs and glitter, and as the bright young future of the fashion industry, we burnt brighter and faster than anyone else. Getting the flu after a game of spin the bottle with a bunch of models in the middle of a club was a badge of honor. Looking back, our complete disregard for our own health and safety was worrying. We stumbled around London on sky-high heels and obsessively compared our BMIs. Years later, one of my best friends casually mentioned she “suspected” I had an eating disorder. She didn’t say anything at the time—“You looked so good!” After a couple of years of this, I had “made it”—that is, I was attending fashion weeks. I still had no money, and I was still a student, but I knew anyone who was anyone and had upgraded my fashion closet to designer.Then, at the grand old age of 24, I gave up. Surviving on fantastic fashion and smoky air wasn’t sustainable, but it took going into business with someone who was more messed up than I was to finally break me. I started a fashion magazine with a girl who spent days on end in bed, got into a random van because it was going to a “party” and brought a drug dealer to spend the night in our flat. It took all of this for me to look at my “partner” and snap—this wasn’t what I wanted.

Getting the flu after a game of spin the bottle with a bunch of models in the middle of a club was a badge of honor.

My Professional Life Was Nonstop Abuse

The fashion “industry” isn’t so much an industry as a flame that attracted us with its tales of fabulous parties, fabulous people and incredibly fast lives and then burned us up. We didn’t get paid and we were bullied constantly, made to prove ourselves over and over and always found wanting. Wearing the same shorts twice was cause for sneering comments. During Paris Fashion Week, I had to run around to find deodorant because someone told me I smelled. Having to ask models in a showroom if they could spare some perfume was a low point. “Oh, you look good…today.” Over and over, I brushed it off. Over and over, I pretended it was funny. After all, by that time, I was getting paid—if not well, at least enough to buy cigarettes and a couple of gin and tonics. Doing bits and bobs here and there, PR work and assisting in a showroom wasn’t glamorous, but it was still fashion. My bosses would invite me to parties, pass me poppers and then ignore me for the rest of the night. Then they’d call me months later to ask if I knew where some clothes that had gone missing had gotten to. “It’s OK if you took them, but we need them back.” I didn’t steal those clothes. I also never heard from them again. An editor who continuously compared me to his girlfriend would happily tell me that I did everything wrong, even when I used my contacts to get him into a show. “You should eat something,” he told me, quickly followed by, “Oh dear, the cheese, really?” and a little laugh that still keeps me up at night. The days I wore flats, I was told to wear heels, and the days I wore heels, I was told to walk faster. “You shouldn’t wear heels if you can't walk in them.”

Within the creative industries, fashion wins—at being the worst paid, the most shallow, the most divisive and destructive.

I Miss Fashion, but I’m Never Going Back

And yet, I loved it. I loved my heels, I loved the parties, the shows and yes, I even loved the bitchiness and the bickering. The fashion world celebrates its bright young things, destroys them and builds a shrine to them for the next crop to worship. It teaches us all that this is what we should aspire to: dying young and fashionably. The frenetic pace we lived at made the industry go round. But as much as we thought we were in and as much as we wanted to belong, we somehow never really got our big break. We didn’t keep in touch. Everyone went their separate ways, and whilst we all somehow still have ties to the industry, none of us ever connect. The fashion industry isn’t the only industry that mistreats its young talent this way. As a journalist, I transferred my skills to the music industry and it was much of the same: no pay (or getting paid in “perks”), smoky, boozy, insanely unhealthy. This is the cost of creativity, apparently. But at least you could eat and my mental health didn’t suffer as much. No one was criticizing me at every turn, nobody gave me “compliments” that made me want to dive headlong into the Thames or puke my guts all over the floor. If anything, other industries could teach fashion a thing or two: You don’t have to lose your craziness and creativity, your fast pace and party-throwing to be decent. You can ask somebody, “Are you OK?”—and mean it—and still be at the top of your game. You can rise without pulling everyone else down. Within the creative industries, fashion wins—at being the worst paid, the most shallow, the most divisive and destructive. It also wins at being the most interesting, the most fast-paced and the most fabulous. It might be a turd wrapped in glitter, but it’s still sparkly. It’s an unhealthy, schizophrenic environment that hooks you like crack and spits you out the minute you start questioning it. I still love it. I sometimes even think I might miss it. I don’t miss the eating disorder. I don’t miss the constant put-downs. I miss the sense of belonging, the incredible parties, the great clothes and the knowledge that there is always something to dress up for, even if it’s just popping down to the off-license (you never know who might be watching). As I write this in the most boring and unfashionable clothes you can imagine (working from home in the middle of a pandemic doesn’t really call for couture), I feel a pang of longing for the fashion industry but not because I ever want to go back to it. I miss it because I realize this was such a big part of my life. Fashion made me who I am today and I will forever be grateful. I fell into journalism by accident, and it’s fashion that I have to thank for my current career. But make no mistake: I’m glad it’s behind me.

I’m one of the double-vaccinated breakthrough cases that are becoming less and less rare as the Delta variant rips through the U.S. I wanted to share my experience because I’ve had little luck finding first-person accounts from those with breakthrough infections, and I’d like to serve as a warning for those who may have relaxed into the false sense of security as I did. I got the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in March 2021 and the second dose just shy of one month later in April. Prior to being vaccinated, I was extraordinarily vigilant about masking and quarantining to the point of neurosis. I had not eaten or gathered with friends in any indoor setting since the first lockdown and felt such an immense weight lifted off of my shoulders. I was more than hesitant to accept that we could now roam free and maskless, but all official sources said it was safe to do so—especially the governor of my home state, Ron DeSantis, who now still refuses to acknowledge the efficacy of masking. I’m kicking myself for the naive optimism of believing that we were getting a fairy-tale resolution and had put this COVID business to rest, but I did proceed with a pre-COVID kind of lifestyle, unmasked and all. Even though Florida is the renewed hotspot for the virus, I didn’t believe I had a breakthrough infection since the majority of news sources were saying how rare they were—three days ago, I read it was only .04 percent; now, most say a more vague “less than one percent.”

I’m kicking myself for the naive optimism of believing that we were getting a fairy-tale resolution.

A Timeline of My Symptoms

I can’t say exactly where or when I was infected, but I suspect it was at a large indoor club in Orlando, Florida, turning up to DJ Diesel, aka Shaquille O’Neal, who was spinning some crazy dubstep on July 23. I’d had a few drinks that evening, so I didn't think too much about the dull headache and fatigue I woke up with the next day. By late Sunday evening, the fatigue and headache had not subsided, and I began to suspect I may be coming down with a little something. Out of an abundance of caution, I went and got a COVID test on July 25. That test came back negative, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. However, on July 26, a more serious sinus infection seemed to take hold. My headache grew in intensity. I developed a dry cough and felt pretty ill overall. I suspected I had a fever but didn’t have a reliable thermometer to confirm. Given the earlier negative COVID test, I thought that I was just fighting off a viral sinus infection. From the 26th to the 31st, I quarantined in my bedroom and let the worst of the infection pass. During the worst of it, I got extremely congested and had a bad, dry cough as my main symptoms. I would liken it to a bad cold or light flu. On the 30th, I was feeling significantly better, despite still having this dull headache, and believed I’d be fine in no time, but then curiously on the 31st, I woke up with absolutely no sense of smell. I went around the house smelling things like my deodorant, toothpaste, coffee, onions—there’s no way to describe how freaky it felt to not detect anything at all. I could still taste food, albeit a bit duller than before, but this was when the alarm bells started to ring. It could be COVID.

I wish our medical system could deny care to those who willingly shirked these basic solutions.

Without the Vaccine, This Could Have Been Worse

I scheduled another COVID test for Monday, August 2, which was the soonest I could get a PCR test, and continued to isolate. My sinus infection and flu-like symptoms have continued to subside, but I did start to have strange fever dreams and new waves of unexplained chills. I finally received confirmation late in the evening of August 3 that I was positive for COVID. My sense of smell has already started to return, though it’s still dull, and I feel mostly fine except for this ever-present, dull headache and a cough that has turned a bit more productive. The most maddening part is this long-lasting headache. I believe wholeheartedly that without the vaccine, my infection would have been much worse. I am very frustrated that I allowed myself to relax into such a false sense of security as the alarm bells were blaring across Florida, but I am also grateful that I haven’t experienced any real respiratory issues. My concerns now are centered on the vague information available about how long I need to be isolated, how long I will be contagious and the level of precaution I must take so that I don’t accidentally infect my friends or family. Per the CDC, I’m supposed to spend the next ten days in isolation, and then get another test. But the CDC instruction is constantly evolving, and we’ve seen it fall very short of the mark more than a few times during the last two years. I do also fear the long-term, unknown consequences of this virus. Will I have some heart or lung condition emerge 10 to 20 years from now? Will I find myself disabled or worse?For those still politicizing this virus and refusing to take the absolutely simplest of precautions, I have no sympathy if you end up on a ventilator. It’s just not that hard to wear a mask and get a couple of shots in the arm. In fact, I wish our medical system could deny care to those who willingly shirked these basic solutions. After doing everything I was supposed to do and still catching the virus, I’ve lost all patience for the borderline brain-dead Facebook, anti-vax Karen moms and Ken dads of this nation. You want to speak to a manager? You’ll be speaking to the big manager upstairs soon enough if you don’t get your ass vaxxed.

My career as a journalist for the past two years has been an ongoing journey filled with a tremendous amount of anticipation and dread. It was something that I always said that I wanted to do as a child and into my teens. However, along the way, this dream of mine became muddled and blurry with instant gratification during my university years. After several years of twiddling around with it, I pursued being a writer. I messaged a British magazine on Instagram after seeing them do an editorial on a former beauty queen that I followed. Out of curiosity, I placed an inquiry, not thinking about any significance it might have on me. After weeks of no response, they finally replied with every writer's dream letter: "Please submit more of your works. We'll forward you over to our editor-in-chief." I finally had a meeting with the leader of this upcoming fashion magazine, which, for its merit, had a high-end demographic that, as a budding young writer, was something to be tremendously excited about. And just like that, after one Zoom call, I became a published writer. I started to fulfill my Carrie Bradshaw dreams of writing for a fashion magazine as a contributor. It was a start. Ultimately, I wanted to propel myself to the highest pedestal: editor-in-chief.

That's where it all started to go downhill.

My Job Gave Me a Nice Title but Not Much Else

Much like every other beginner, I didn't start this as a paid gig. At first, I was writing lifestyle articles on travel and culture and thinking about pitches for the next couple of days. Then, one day, I was called up to cover an upcoming Hollywood starlet, and I was nervous. But as soon as I learned that it was a fabulous piece, according to my peers, I gained confidence and began a set routine that would work to enhance my credibility as a prolific writer. Since then, my writing has flourished. I’ve been able to pen words and put together phrases that would meet my self-deprecating standards. My boss would take care of my financial needs from time to time, and it was his way of showing that he did genuinely care about me. It was always unexpected and tagged with, “Thank you for all the things that you do,” whenever he sent me a decent amount through PayPal. Back then, I didn’t think much of how I should have saved that money, especially since I had the cushioned life of a socialite who still had some semblance of father’s financial support backing up my everyday expenses. Working for this magazine helped me thrive in a lot of ways. For one, it set me on the path of my childhood dream—I was finally saying the ultimate pick-up line for networking: “I’m a journalist.” It made me sound tremendously important here in the Philippines because the publishing industry has never been fair to its pool of talent, and if there were opportunities around, they were of mediocre quality at best. But there I was, interviewing people that no one in the Philippines would have ever thought about. The individuals I spoke with through Zoom, texts and emails were high-ranking celebrities in Hollywood, affluent socialites and influencers that are making waves internationally. It felt like I went through the Teen Vogue internship without having to go through the rigorous initiation and bureaucracy of Condé Nast. Additionally, it came with the flashy title of lifestyle editor. But then a lull seeped in, and it happened when the pandemic was at its most devastating. In the middle of 2020, after releasing our summer edition, which was delayed until September, there was no more work from the magazine, and I didn't hear about any of the editorials or pieces that were meant to be published.At that moment, I thought if nothing was going to happen, I might as well keep looking for other writing opportunities. It was then that I ended up finding more freelance writing gigs and bugging a series of magazine editors about whether I could submit or contribute to their platforms. Soon, I immersed myself into being a writer, stepping out of my comfort zone, writing about things that often didn’t hold my interest. But I was getting paid. That was the critical part. After all, how could I bankroll my expenses?

My Boss Gave Me the Reins of the Magazine and Then Took Them Back

Then, out of nowhere, my boss randomly messaged me. "Hello, my favorite. I have news," he wrote in his usual off-the-cuff way. He wanted me to take the lead when it came to the magazine's direction, which made me so giddy that I nearly spilled my gin and tonic. “Holy moly, this is insanely amazing," I thought. It felt perfect, but that's where it all started to go downhill. I was excited and filled to the brim with energy. I wanted to do a great job at this, to prove that I was worth it. So there I was, penning down potential ideas on what could be done to rehabilitate the magazine’s structure and its marketing strategies. I began rounding up my disillusioned co-editors. All of them had stated that they felt tremendously bland towards pushing out free content without considering compensation and payment for their skills. Others voiced out that my boss’s work ethic was something that I should watch out for. But I didn’t pay attention to them—what was important for me was to get them on board. Instead, I motivated them. "Listen to me, dears, I'll talk to the big man all about your concerns and get us going somewhere." But after a week and a half of work, which revolved around me trying to set things up and getting to know the team while creating my first-ever digital cover, the boss squashed that glimmering shell of hope I had over a text message: “Due to new reasons, I've decided to go with this new girl, who is closer to me. Your job will be the one that you love the most—the writing one.”That's when I broke down in tears. I felt used, completely devalued, and it hit me: He barely gave me a shot. I wasn’t appropriately compensated, and until now, the only contract I had was a verbal one, even though they always say, "The contract is with the lawyers; you'll get it soon."

I’m at a crossroads between loyalty and doing what’s best for me.

Working for a Fashion Magazine Tests Your Willpower and Loyalty

Sadly enough, this is a common occurrence in the magazine industry. If you remember The Devil Wears Prada, this industry is terribly brutal and competitive. Fashion magazines are all about imagery, and to be perfectly frank, there are so many drawbacks. You get a carrot dangled right in front of you, and it gets taken away when they wish. In my case, it was the guy who initially gave me my first shot. Working for what I initially thought was a well-oiled machine turned out to be a sitting duck run by a creative who couldn’t immerse himself in projects that he invested in. There was always a form of stagnation with him, repeated sentiments regarding the direction of the magazine. “Yes, I will be hiring a new sales team this month so we can get revenue with the magazine,” he’d say. It’s been the same thing, over and over, for a year now. You can call it masochistic, but I had hope that maybe it would have turned around at some point, that he wasn’t exploiting me, that he was really going to start fully compensating me for my work. But that’s not the case with this editor and magazine. There was never a feeling of inclusivity in this work environment.Unfortunately, this is the reality of being a journalist and a freelancer working at a fashion magazine. It's hard and grueling work that’s tested by the amount of willpower and motivation you have daily, especially when it comes to dealing with horrible editors. Although he isn’t a Miranda Priestley or a domineering Anna Wintour, the fact is, my boss has been exploitative, unwilling to provide a basic salary. Combine that with my current reality, one that deals with rejection and days of staring at a blank page, mixing Virginia Woolf’s and Ernest Hemingway's methods and it’s erratic at best. Of course, it doesn't help being undervalued with 200 sterling a month, especially when your employer tells you through text that “business is business,” despite how special you are and despite the amount of talent you may have. So, you have a choice. You either fight back and build up the courage to actually do the wonderful things you are meant to do by building your path, or you let a twisted man run your life like you’re nothing but a puppet under his manipulative thrall. Currently, I’m at a crossroads between loyalty and doing what’s best for me. I’m trying to fulfill my lifelong dream, but I’m not the sort to let anyone disrupt it. Ultimately, it’s come down to two things: stopping the madness and moving forward with or without the magazine.

Two months ago, I packed up my belongings, moved out of my family home in London and traveled to Bath to start anew. I had never been to Bath. I had just finished studying, was yet to secure a job and knew all but one friend there. But in spite of it all, something told me it was time to seek adventure elsewhere. I would usually describe myself as risk-averse. I can be extremely cautious, a stickler for planning and terrified of regretting any decision. But after months of lockdown, countless postponed plans and the daily reminder that life is all too precious, I felt like it was time for an adventure. And what an adventure it has been. From Spikeball to surfing, everything has been a new experience. It’s a far cry from the mundane and predictable days of lockdown where the most exciting thing I’d do in a week was pick up Indian takeout from the local curry house. Since having moved here, I’ve met so many amazing people, tried countless new activities and visited more places on the U.K.’s South West Coast than I ever imagined I would. I’m certainly enjoying the payoff of the gamble now, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t doubt my decision to begin with.

And what an adventure it has been.

I Struggled to Find Work Right Away

When I arrived in Bath, I was out of work and needed to pay bills for the first time since university, so the pressure to find a job was on. The more rejections I received, the more the fear crept in, and I started thinking I’d just made the stupidest decision of my life. On one of my first days in the city, I decided to apply for some temporary work as a dog walker. “There’s income I can be sure of,” I thought. So I headed up to the local high street with two handwritten advertisements offering my services as a local dog walker. Two hours later, having asked countless business owners to kindly display my ad, I returned home carrying the same two flyers. Even the owner of the local ice cream van turned me away. His eyes betrayed the most pity. I arrived home somewhat surprised but mostly humbled. It was an important lesson that I needed to learn: You cannot control everything in life, and you’re much happier when you don’t even try.

I started thinking I’d just made the stupidest decision of my life.

Matthew McConaughey's Book Helped Me Stick With My Choices

Around that time, I was listening to the audiobook of Matthew McConaughey’s newly released autobiography, Greenlights. It’s a fantastic listen in which McConaughey documents his life’s trials and tribulations, noting the various twists and turns he experienced over the course of his career. He gives a compelling account of his “living hell” at 18, when he spent a year in rural Australia with a peculiar host family. It was far from the glamorous year in Sydney that he had hoped for—he spent much of his time alone away from the controlling and overbearing Dooley family with whom he lived. But in spite of the challenges, McConaughey remembers the months of “torture” as some of the most character-building days of his life. In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he explained, "All those crutches I had back home…I didn't have any of them…I was forced to find my own identity and measure what I believed in and what I didn't believe in, in the world on my own.” Describing the experience in his book, McConaughey states, “Sometimes which choice you make is not as important as making a choice and committing to it.” Hearing these words was somewhat of a revelation to me. It made complete sense. I realized that I was only wasting my time regretting my decisions.

My Determination Landed Me a Job and New Outlook

It was then that I decided if I was going to make this move, I was going to do it properly. I was going to make it the best decision I’d ever made. So I started work laying down the foundations of a life by throwing myself into different hobbies, getting involved in volunteer groups, introducing myself to my neighbors and joining activity clubs. As the saying goes, the more you put in, the more you get out, and it certainly didn’t take long. I can happily say that I have finally found full-time work after more “your application has been unsuccessful on this occasion” emails than I can remember. I didn’t even apply to this position, but it landed in my lap. After weeks of frantically applying for jobs, it was further encouragement that life works itself out whether we try to make it happen or not. As we approach the summer months, I’m excited to explore all that Bath has to offer and see where the adventures take me. But I have an ice cream van driver and Matthew McConaughey to thank for helping me realize that life is the adventure, and it’s our job to embrace it.

On my 19th birthday, I opened the door to my apartment to three of my closest friends singing “Happy Birthday” for all my neighbors to hear. They came in with hugs, smiles and love, as well as a massive box that they put in my hands. It was a handmade lantern, strung with fairy lights and a selection of pictures of our group of four, plus our extended circle of friends. It was one of the best gifts I’d ever received. It spoke of painstaking effort and a friendship that was valued—I had truly never felt so loved. With their help, I hung it up near my desk. This was in May 2015. By August of that year, we were no longer friends. Six years later, those three girls who once meant so much to me are no longer part of my life in any way. But even today, the lantern still hangs at the exact spot where they hung it for me. The loss of their friendship was one of the biggest blows of my early adulthood. It was abrupt and irreversible, no matter how much I tried to reconcile with them. They no longer wanted anything to do with me, and that pain lives within me. However, when I look at the lantern —now dusty and rusted—what I feel is not pain. It’s not sadness, either. Instead, I am taken back instead to my 19th birthday and the way I glowed in happiness as they sang to me.

I decided to store away this precious final piece of our friendship in a safe spot.

Gifts Help Me to Remember the Good Times

There is another birthday, much earlier in my life, that I also remember. My best friend at the time and I had fought. I was hurt and I didn’t invite her to my birthday party. The following day when I went to school, she handed me a box. It was a watch, nestled in an ornate jewel box—the gift she’d bought for me in anticipation of the party she didn’t get invited to. Inside the box there was also a handwritten letter, clearly written before our fight, thanking me for our friendship. She spoke about how great the past year of our friendship has been, how she loved me and how she’d always be there for me. The day she handed me the gift was the day she stopped talking to me. I came home, read and re-read the letter several times, and broke down in regret over the rash decision I’d made. Ultimately, I was the reason for the loss of this friendship. I decided to store away this precious final piece of our friendship in a safe spot. Over a decade later, she and I are definitely not friends, but we’ve spoken, catching up as casual acquaintances with no ill will. Her letter still rests inside a compartment in my dressing table. It’s been moved around from its hiding spot as I’ve changed furniture, but it’s still untouched by time and the entire separate lives we’d lived since that day at school. When I think of the letter, I am transported to the melodramatic fallouts of my 14-year-old self. The world-changing hurt I’d felt then and the painful fight that ended our friendship have been transformed by age and experience into a fond memory.

I think of nostalgia as bittersweet at its best and painful at its worst.

My Old Friends' Gifts Are Time Capsules of Love

Not all memories are as amusing. In another corner of my room, another keepsake rests. A wind chime with a silly smiley face that I never got around to hanging sits in the nook of my bed’s headrest. It’s from another birthday, the one that came after feeling thoroughly loved on my 19th. My 20th birthday was lonelier. I was sadder. I came home after a birthday lunch with my family to see my oldest friend, whom I’d known since I was 11, sitting in my bedroom, smiling mischievously. She had told me she was too busy to spend my birthday with me, but she’d lied. She had gotten her dad to postpone a trip she was meant to take, just so she could surprise me. Her presence lit me up, and when she handed me the gift—a porcelain wind chime with “I love you” emblazoned on one side and “I’m sorry” on the other—I laughed, and my day was instantly better. She and I gradually drifted apart. The year after my birthday surprise, I went abroad and she threw herself into her studies, as well as a new relationship. As our priorities and interests changed, our friendship—which by that point had hit its ten-year mark—simply fizzled. But even today, the wind chime rests where she put it, turned to the side with “I love you” on it. I look at it and remember that she did.I think of nostalgia as bittersweet at its best and painful at its worst. But to me, these trinkets are a small piece of a bond I shared with someone who was once precious to me. Although knowing that they are no longer in my life may hurt, these gifts are a reminder that I was once loved by someone just as much as I loved them. Even if that connection is lost to time, painful separations or “what ifs,” these gifts, which may seem on the surface like painful souvenirs from broken bonds, are really a time capsule of a moment where everything was perfect. When I think of these items given to me as symbols of love, loyalty and friendship, I am transported back in time to those birthdays past, where I see the people lost to me smiling, their love for me frozen in time and carefully placed into the solid presence of these keepsakes, never to be lost, always treasured, no matter how many years pass by.

Take a number, sit down and wait. When your number is finally called, you’re greeted with disdain and any request you make is treated like an inconvenience. They know you need them, and they don’t need you; they certainly aren’t there to serve you, but you’re at their mercy. Is this a description of a trip to the DMV or to your local building department? The same building department that is not only funded through your permit fees but also the one that is responsible for enforcing the building code and ensuring the safety of the buildings we occupy daily?As a structural engineer, I have designed hundreds of buildings, creating construction documents for permits and construction. So I may have had more encounters with building departments than most, but I find this to be my experience at most building departments. Now, as a forensic structural engineer, I investigate building failures to determine the causation and duration of the failures, and unfortunately, as you are about to find out about the Surfside condominium collapse, they are always rooted in negligence or incompetence of some kind.

I want to know what risks I am taking when entering a building since it is now apparent it may cost you your life, as it has for many in South Florida.

Water Leads to Rusting and Severe Damage

On June 24, 2021, the Champlain Towers South building, a 12-story beachfront condominium with an underground parking garage, located in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. At the time of posting, 60 have died and 80 remain missing while rescue efforts are—after heroically searching through unpredictable piles of rubble crumbling under every step—coming to an end. This collapse is not typical in a developed nation and can be attributed to many factors, including subpar construction detailing and poor building maintenance, along with an incompetent condo association and a negligent building official.Water flows downhill, steel rusts and concrete cracks. Some things in life are fact and, in this tragic and avoidable accident, all applied. In the State of Florida, with the high water table, basements are not a common occurrence. But if you ever had to find parking in Miami, you will put a garage anywhere you can, even underground at a beachfront condo. With an underground parking garage and second-floor pool, the need for waterproofing the structure is imperative. For some time prior to the collapse, there were reported pool leaks and standing water in the underground garage at the Champlain Towers South building. The building was constructed with reinforced concrete, a heterogeneous combination of steel and concrete, which can last a long time under one condition: Proper maintenance of the structure is performed. When the concrete cracks, as it inevitably does, it then exposes the rebar to the outside elements of water and salt. Continuous exposure to these various elements ultimately corrodes the steel and it expands as it rusts. During the expansion of the rusting steel, it pushes on the brittle concrete, which ultimately breaks off in a phenomenon called spalling. Spalling not only increases the exposure of the rebar to the elements but also reduces the area of concrete available to support the structure above. With enough spalling, the structural integrity of a reinforced concrete member is compromised and it will fail. With proper maintenance, the effects can be slowed or mitigated to ensure a safe structure lasts long into the future. But proper maintenance requires at least a basic understanding of the needs of a concrete structure—an understanding a resident-led condo association may not have.

Public Buildings Need to Be More Transparent About Inspections

The Champlain Towers South building was constructed in 1981, and as such, it was due for its 40-year recertification this year, a process that focuses on the structural integrity and electrical safety of the building. While elevators require an annual inspection, the building it services, and ultimately is supported by, only requires an inspection after 40 years and every 10 years thereafter. It is also important to note that U.S. government buildings, state buildings and schools are exempt from this recertification. Something to consider when deciding to file a permit online or go into the office directly: it may be safer to do so from home. Portland, Oregon, for example, has many old buildings made of unreinforced masonry, construction that performs extremely poorly during seismic events. As such, the city is pushing to require these buildings to be retrofitted to better perform in seismic events and require owners to hang a plaque explaining the dangers inside. I believe buildings, especially public buildings, should be more transparent about when they’ve last been inspected for structural integrity and, more importantly, the dangers that have been discovered during previous inspections that have not yet been repaired. You may see a large "C" in the window from the health department if cockroaches are roaming in the back, but what kind of warning do we get if the foundation is failing? I want to know what risks I am taking when entering a building since it is now apparent it may cost you your life, as it has for many in South Florida.

We must demand higher-caliber public servants in building departments.

Building Officials Must Be Held Accountable

In 2018, the Champlain Towers South condo association hired an engineering firm to perform a structural evaluation of the building. During this evaluation, it was found that there was “major structural damage” to the concrete slab and failure to make repairs would cause the “concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.” The condo association provided the report to the Surfside building official, Ross Prieto, and invited him to attend the next association meeting where he, according to meeting minutes, reviewed the engineering report and stated, “the building is in very good shape.”This is a building official directly contradicting a licensed professional engineer—and not contradicting the engineer to be more conservative and safer, but just the opposite: taking on more risk and alleging that a 12-story building with significant cracking and spalling in the basement foundation was “in very good shape.”Why would a building official ever do that? Is it incompetence, negligence or just a complete lack of accountability? Prieto had filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and then again in 2012, telling the court he had accumulated $1.7 million in debt. His previous employment also reports that he was frequently late or missing from work. In 2013, the city of Surfside decided that was their guy to be the building official. But why not? They have nothing to lose. The town ordinance directly states in regards to liability, “The building official…or employee charged with the enforcement of this code…is hereby relieved from personal liability for any damage accruing to persons or property as a result of any act or by reason of an act or omission in the discharge of official duties.” Or in layman’s terms, they have no accountability for their actions during official duties. As engineers, we are taking on liability for every email we write, calculation we run and report we stamp. One of the biggest costs of running an engineering company is the professional liability insurance due to the high risk of work and the responsibility to society to design safe structures. I am OK with that responsibility and the faith put into me as an engineer; it keeps me up late reviewing work or studying material so that I can ensure that I am putting out safe and efficient products. But that liability needs to be applied to all parties in the process—not just engineers and contractors but also building officials. We must demand higher-caliber public servants in our building departments. They are not just pushing paper; they are ensuring that the buildings in our neighborhood are safe to use. Long before the wind blows and the ground shakes, engineers, contractors and inspectors are protecting the public. Appreciate them, but also hold them to be accountable for their actions. Our lives depend on it.