By Liz Fullwood

The mice never developed the words freedom, earnest, envy.

I am a scientist. I am supposed to create change. I hear my family, my mentors raving about my work and how I will bring a better tomorrow. “Make sure you solve Alzheimer's before I'm too old,’ my aunt jests. “I can't wait to see how you revolutionize medicine,” my grandmother coos. Yet, day in and day out, I go into the lab, observe the behavior of my mice, do an analysis, and then go home; Nothing changes. This cycle repeats over and over and over again, but it's not just the 9-5 job that cages me. Culture is claustrophobic; Nothing ever satiates this tasteless haze of desire. Our motives and minds are driven by the undying hunger for achievement and the fruitless life-long pursuit of happiness. Why do we frantically accomplish but listlessly live? We are asked what we want to be, and what goals we want to reach, never considering the alternative; I don't want either. I am an orca at SeaWorld, trained to perform, to please— but even if the hoop changes, it's still the same jump at the end of the day. How long am I expected to perform the act in which I was trained? I am grateful for my privileged experience, and I am still looking for a way out of the enclosure they call the modern lifestyle.

In a way, I am jealous of the enclosure the mice in my research facility dwell in.

The lab mice have food, clean water, housing, toys, trained professionals to look after their health, and a quick and painless death. They are never aware that they could be aware, and they never dream of anything outside their containment. Their suffering is brief, and they have a higher quality of life than most humans. The world is falling apart, and all we are doing is filming it. Both the forest and the tongues of the people are on fire. Children are dying, the rich keep getting richer, and water is not deemed a human right. Currently, my transfeminine, Jewish girlfriend is struggling to find housing due to the current political climate. I work over 50 hours a week to pay for a place to sleep and to put food on the table; It is never enough. I can’t help but wonder if there is more to life than this.

Lab mice may be poked, prodded, and undergo experimentation but they are never expected to be more than what they are.

All I want is to be human. Yet, I can only actively be another cog in the capitalist machine; that is how you survive. In today's society, you can’t have achievement without sacrifice, you can’t have love without grief, and you can’t have pleasure without addiction. So where does one go when chaos is all there is outside? One folds within. My bed is a foam pit and my spirit toddles on a tightrope of dysphemism. All I want is to curl up and dissolve in the innocuous embrace of my lover. I want to exist in each breath we breathe together and be free of my own head space. My psychiatrist deems it depression and writes me a note for happy pills, but that’s not it. I've been to the pits of despair and lived my middle and high school years in a constant state of apathy. This current hopelessness has too much yearning; is this grief? I lay on the navy-blue couch in my 3rd -floor apartment and watch as traffic passes by. The sirens that used to put me on edge are now just dull background noise. I turn on my phone and scroll through Instagram. Terror, death, destruction, cute pets, and the latest pop culture gossip all held on my tiny screen. Everyone has a cause they are fighting for, an opinion that you are not supposed to disagree with. I can't help but wonder if being humane is not the practice of quiet benevolence but rather perfecting the art of scratching a phantom itch. Scientists say creatures are born performing the skill that is essential to survival: giraffes are born walking, sharks are born swimming, and humans are born crying for help.

The mice live in isolation and are never able to form their own mischief.

I have a community. There are people in my life who listen to me, who actively care for me. In this I am blessed. This world may be exhausting, and life may be a sexually transmitted disease that ultimately ends in death, but unlike the mice, I am not alone. I have been able to find people who are now close to kin. They are my motivation each and every day to get out of bed, to work the 9 to 5. I feel like blunt scissors, desperately trying to make a difference but never able to fulfill the one thing I was made to do. Yet, I am held, someone decided to give me a chance and then kept me around. So, thank you, all of you, for showing me love and compassion. Each laugh and every cuddle bring me hope for a better tomorrow. The mice will never understand the bliss of their situation, but they know to be content with their enclosure. So, though it drains me, I will do my best to be content with mine.

Author Statement

I search for understanding how to operate in today's world I found that we have domesticated ourselves.

Photo Credit: Matt Bero

By Annabelle Hatsav

As my phone fell to the ground, my body went with it. Everything went blurry and I couldn’t even understand what was coming out of my mouth. A fire lit inside my chest.

“She’s gone, I’m so sorry Annabelle.” I don’t believe it. I keep asking why, why, why? We were just texting a couple of weeks before this. We had plans, this was not meant to happen. God please tell me this isn’t true. I kept touching the gravelly pavement beneath me to ground myself, to feel that this was all real. I faced dark green bushes trying not to fall forward or draw attention to myself. This is not real, this is not happening. She is not dead, she is not dead.

I heard footsteps approaching me as my tears poured down my face like a faucet. “Are you okay? Do you need some water or anything?” A staff member asked me. “No, I’m fine, thank you.” I lied. Usually, I’m so good at pretending I’m fine, but I don’t think I could have put on a more convincing act.

One of my best friends texted me a message I never saw coming. “I heard what happened to Ava*, I’m so sorry and I’m here for you if you need anything.” I didn’t want to assume the worst. Please don’t tell me she died. Please don’t tell me she killed herself. Please don’t tell me she’s not here anymore.

Don’t jump to conclusions. “Ruby please tell me it’s not true, what did that text mean?”

“I’m so sorry Annabelle, Ava killed herself two weeks ago.”

The worst was true. My body was on fire as I started hyperventilating and sobbing in the driveway of my camp. Feel the ground, feel that you are real. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything but cry.

Questions were popping into my head as I sat there. How long was she feeling that way? Should I have reached out more? Should I have made more of an effort?

Somehow it felt like my fault. When people talk about suicide loss they often talk about survivor’s guilt. It’s not the feeling that it should have been you, it’s the feeling that you could have done more to help. That it’s your fault until proven that it's not. Every interaction I had with Ava was rushing through my head and I was feeling the survivor's guilt heavily. I told my mom about it and she didn’t know what to say. I told my brother Matan about it and he was speechless. I told my therapist, and she assured me, it was not my fault. How could I believe her? The feelings pounded through my body every time I thought about her, which was every day for weeks.

I didn’t know what to do with myself, but I knew that I couldn’t be alone. All my friends were in a meeting on the other side of the camp, which I was late for. There was no way in hell I would go to that meeting. But I headed there anyway.

I dragged my feet through the freshly cut grass passing by a gathering of staff members. Don’t look at me. I couldn’t stop the tears, I knew I would eventually get dehydrated then my body would really start shutting down. One of my campers walked past me and saw my red puffy face so she asked if I was okay. I gave the classic answer: “Yes I’m fine, don’t worry about me.” And continued on my track to find a friend, anyone really. My friend Adam was playing basketball when I saw him. I knew he would come running to support me. He wrapped his arms around me and said, “Where do you want to go?”

We headed into the woods to a dock overlooking a lake,  a beautiful place where a lot of counselors would come to think. On the way there he held me as I was shaking and couldn’t stop. We hobbled so much shit in our path. He tried to make me laugh, I did, but I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. I watched the water ripple as I talked in my shaky voice. My head started to hurt as the water left my eyes so willingly.

Ava, my friend from middle school and high school, was two years younger than me. In middle school, we did crew backstage for the plays together. I was the stage manager and she was a perfect crew member. I was her mentor, I answered all of her questions and helped her with everything. I remember feeling so valued by her. She made me realize how much I could give to others, and how much she could give. Ava called me freckle. She said it was because I had six freckles (she counted), and I loved it. When I left to go to Paris for my freshman year of high school, she was worried we wouldn’t keep in touch. She said she would miss me a lot, and I told her I would too. We kept in touch and when I came back, I was so excited to see her again, and I would always answer her questions.

When she entered high school, I wanted to still be a good influence and mentor, but also her cool older friend at the same time. I tried my best and always made time for her, then I graduated.

I felt that I didn’t keep in touch enough after I graduated. I felt guilty for not texting her as much. We texted once in a while, and I always kept up with her on social media. But it wasn’t the same. A month before I left for camp, she texted me saying she was going to Wheaton College in the fall and that we should hang out. I suggested we hang out in New York before the fall because I missed her. She said she missed me too. I will always miss her.

Those texts ran through my mind for the next few weeks. I thought about how I could have asked her how she was feeling, we could have called. I should have done more, I should have asked more questions…I should have connected with her more. All the what-ifs were circling my brain and making me spin into a guilty state of mind. I had to remember, this was not my fault. How could I have known she was depressed?

I didn’t bottle it up this time, but I did keep it from my friends for a week. Being at camp and receiving this news was so conflicting because of the high-stress environment where I had to be responsible with a positive face on all the time. I couldn’t afford to mourn.

It was like I was floating above my body and observing what was going on below. The camp counselor in me wanted to keep it together so badly, but I had my moments. Thank God my co-counselor was one of my best friends and understood that I needed time for myself. But I didn’t tell my other friends until they asked me what was going on.

It was the worst, yet the best place to be to mourn. I knew I had so much love and support around me, but I just couldn’t ask for it.

I wrote in my journal after Ava died. I wrote letters to her asking her why she did it, begging her to forgive me. For what? I’m not sure. I messaged her on Instagram telling her I missed her. I spoke to her ghost trying to find some peace. I found out the funeral was recorded on YouTube, I never watched it, I’m not sure that I ever will.

Why’d you do it? I asked her over and over again in my moments of being alone. Please tell me why. Send me a sign. Anything.

Thinking about Ava made me think about how happy she was with me. She left my high school after I graduated to go to a different school. I wonder if that’s when she started having suicidal thoughts. Or maybe it happened before that. It’s so incredibly hard thinking about all the things she’s going to miss out on. Fuck my school for not doing enough. I had to direct my anger somewhere, so I chose my high school instead of myself.

I found out about the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in 10th grade and how they host walks to raise money for suicide prevention all over the country each year. I loved the idea of seeing people who had similar experiences and feeling a sense of community, rather than feeling alone. The first year I went on the walk it was beautiful, I cried the whole time around hundreds of people wearing t-shirts with family members that died on them and crying with their friend’s arm in arm. I have participated every year since, and I never plan to stop. Ava made me want to fight even more for the discussion on mental health, and how anyone can prevent suicide.

I will never be the same. I call into question my own actions to my friends. Am I being a good friend? Thinking about each time I hear the news it never gets easier. My body catches on fire each time and I gasp for air reaching for something that slipped away moments before. I remind myself each day how lucky I am to have the support I need, and how I wish Ava had the support she needed. I can’t turn back time. I can go back to the moment of me sitting on the pavement in disbelief that she was no longer on this Earth.

I will miss her every day. I will never stop fighting for suicide prevention because it’s a part of me, my story, and so many others too.

Rest In Peace, Ava.

*A pseudonym was used to protect the privacy of the family.

About the Author

Annabelle is a third-year student at Northeastern University studying English and Communication studies. She loves writing non-fiction and poetry, and in her free time she enjoys baking, reading, and spending time with her cat.

By Emily Cheng

The air in my parents’ restaurant is hot and greasy and always loud, but that is how they know it is good. I first stepped into the restaurant when I was ten and didn’t know anything. My parents were owners of a Chinese restaurant, and I didn’t even know what a wok was. They brought me in to “work” when they couldn’t find a grandparent or uncle to watch over me. I would sit by my mother and do the simplest tasks, packing white and brown rice into Chinese takeout containers. With every container I finished, she would tell me “not enough, more, more.” Then, she would take the container out of my hands, scoop triple the amount I had filled, and pack it with the rice bursting out of the paper box. She would always give more rice than I thought we could afford.

 When it was not so busy, I eyed the chefs who held large metal woks and tossed food with them like it was nothing. I would learn that these woks were the key to a real Chinese restaurant. They needed special care—constantly seasoned in oil and heat to produce wok hei, the breath of the wok. Over the shouting of my mother and chefs in the kitchen was the sound of oil sputtering and popping at the addition of washed green scallions. I had convinced myself that this was the wok breathing life into food. And in this same way, the woks’ air would season the whole kitchen—its staff, the walls of the restaurant, and the greasy floors—imbuing itself into everything. 

***

In mid-October, my father called to tell me that they have decided to sell the restaurant and have found a buyer. They’ve spoken about it a few times, but it was something so distant it didn’t seem real. “I just wanted to let you know.” So simple, unsentimental.

I didn’t have enough time to think of an answer for him, so I only began to process after he hung up. Did we have enough money to live? It was the most obvious question, and I hope they had thought this through. How much was the restaurant? But more accurately, how can you assign a price to this? Overnight, everyone had seemingly become hard and unemotional when all I could do was feel. Feel for all the stories unaccounted for.

***

My father remembers his childhood at the restaurant as the worst time in his life. It is a Chinese tradition that the oldest son is the one who will suffer the most. He was the one to care for his younger siblings and the only sibling expected to help in the restaurant, tasked to hold the family together while his parents worked in the kitchen downstairs. 

After high school, he would return to the restaurant and help my grandmother take orders at the front. My grandmother, overwhelmed with stress and responsibilities, would verbally lash out at him in front of customers and the entire kitchen staff. Good for nothing! Stupid! Worse than garbage! Words to that effect. Words my father could not believe a parent could say to their child. 

When my grandparents retired, they urged him to take it over; they saw it as the greatest gift they could pass down. And as the oldest son, my father could not refuse. Traumatized by his childhood, my father spent nearly the next 40 years working at the restaurant. He has worked through countless invoices and business statements until he physically could not handle seeing numbers anymore. He started taking medication to help him through this, but eventually it stopped helping. At his lowest point, he stood at the top of the third floor of the restaurant office and attempted.

I remember my father before this time. He would come home and play with us and smile. He was so happy to just be with us, in the moment, alive. He has never been like that since. He had survived, but some part of him had died in the restaurant many years ago.\

***

Now, he’s cleaning up the mess from the past 50 years. He has been moving out his sister’s old books and his parent’s picture frames. As much as the restaurant has hurt him, his texts to our family group chat read a bittersweet. “Today I realized Cleaning out 30 years worth of stuff is quite exhausting.” 

The second floor of the restaurant is an office that looks more like a dump. It is a collection of everything discarded, but not thrown away. My father sends us a picture he’s found of him and my grandfather in the clutter of that office. It’s him as a kid. My grandfather has on a yellow polo, one arm wrapped around my father, wearing a matching polo in white. I don’t recognize my grandfather in this picture, but they’re both smiling. And for some reason, I find myself zooming on the icee my father is holding because seeing him as a kid brings out something so sad in me that I don’t want to feel it. All I can see now are his tiny fingers gripping onto a paper cup.

***

My mother has no fears. While my father works in accounting, my mother works in the kitchen, in the fire. She comes home with cuts and blisters. I’ll ask if she’s ok, if it’s painful, if she can still go back to work. She won’t give it the slightest attention. “It’s not anything.” Her hands are not rough, but strong, necessary to push woks, withstand burns, and raise children.

She was like this even before I was born. When my mother was pregnant with my older brother, she continued to work in the restaurant. She called orders and cooked and sweated in the humid New York summer air. 

For one order, it required lobster which they had not prepared that day. My mother, big-bellied but still strong, walked downstairs to the restaurant’s inventory to start preparing the ingredients. On the way, a coworker bumped into her, and she fell one flight of stairs down to the bottom. My mother was rushed to the hospital by my father who had already started grieving. When she was told she and the baby were fine, she had taken that day off, then returned to the restaurant the day after.         

She kept working all the way to August, until the moment before her water broke.

***

My mother has spoken with the Chinese man buying our restaurant and his lawyer. She’s been managing stipulations, lawyers, contracts, and all the things that she does not understand. And she feels herself getting older and smaller, fading into a shadow of her past self.

“You are in such a good place. To have perfect American English.” I can type these words, understand the nuances of English words, and find beauty in the language. But when she tries to negotiate with the lawyer, she gets pulled aside and her English is called “childish”—like she is playing games by changing her mind, but it is only that she is unable to explain her thoughts in American words. She tells me this is what happens when you are bad at English. 

For so long, I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin, but even with Sunday Chinese school, textbooks, and living in a Mandarin-speaking family, my fluency is still that of an elementary school student. Sometimes, I think about all the stories my mom wants to tell me but can’t. All the words that she knows in her perfect Chinese, the three dialects—Mandarin, Cantonese, and Fuzhounese—she’s fluent in. 

I know she is not a shadow of who she was. She is only waiting in the shadows, holding onto the words she knows. She is biding her time, planning her moves, and learning her options in an American world. And when she’s ready, she’ll strike. 

***

I am angry at myself for wanting to hold onto the restaurant. For even feeling sentimental towards leaving it behind. It has been the source of my parents’ despair for decades. I should really be celebrating, cheering, and jumping at the idea of it never being in our lives again. Leave it somewhere far, far away. For too long it has been a mass, growing and growing, becoming unbearable and draining my parents. Cut out a pound of the flesh that feeds on the pain of good people. Cut out this tumor.

But as much as it has hurt, it has supported three generations of my family. It is my grandparents’ true first-born, and my parents’ entire lives. As I’m going back home to see the restaurant for the last time, I am going to indulge in the gluttony, filling myself with the pain, hurt, love, death, and ends of my moments being there. It’s like I’m gripping onto a broken wok, seeing all of its scratches and imperfections, and trying to learn to let it go. I know using it will break it—the shards recutting the wounds of my family. 

So once more. Before I go, I’ll oil it one last time, give it heat, give it breath, give back all it has given to us. In return, we’ll slowly learn to move on and learn to feel the way it has breathed into our family new life.

About the Author

Emily is a student, writer, and her own personal chef, honed from her experiences at her parents’ restaurant. In her free time, she is an avid puzzler and admirer of her dog, Truffle.

By Ashley Brown

Held down. I remember light and I remember terror. My heart races. Stabbing searing pain three times. Three permanent tattoos across my hips. “To make sure we line you up for radiation correctly every time.” I stare at the ceiling, following the circle of light that changes colors. Changes colors just like my skin, now thin, brown, and brittle. On the ceiling, there is a circle that is a rainbow. Real rainbows are circles anyways. They burn the cancer from my body, just my skin is in the way. Every Friday, I sit in the car on the drive and then they burn me. Until my skin breaks and until I move through the degrees, end on third-degree burns. I wake up in the night and scream. A resident sees the burns and they change colors too, now a pale white. “We need to burn all of the cancer. We must continue.” They give me drugs now to numb me so that they can burn me. I drift away on morphine. They burn me and I burn.

I wore my first sports bra when I was six: it held my catheter, the tube stemming from my chest, in place. “This will prevent it from getting tugged by anything.” I dream of my sisters playing with me again and suddenly they grab the tube and pull. They pull and I unravel. I unravel, a spool of yarn untethered with each tug as my organs are pulled outside of my body. I still dream it.

I am at a sleepover and we want to watch a movie. I am 9 but the movie is rated PG-13. I ask to call my mom to get her permission. My friend laughs at me, but I don’t understand. There are rules. Don’t scratch your burns. Don’t play with your catheter. Rules are important. Knowing rules and following them mean I get rewarded. “If someone gives you anything but Tylenol, what do you tell them?” “I can’t have that. It is an NSAID, those are too hard on my kidneys.” I am very smart, very responsible for following rules. I hide my tears as we begin to watch the movie.

I am the new kid in a small school where everyone has known each other since kindergarten. They ask if I am in the wrong classroom. I look too young to be in 5th grade. At my new ice-skating rink, there is the group of big girls and the group of little girls. I am seen as too young, too bad of a skater, to be invited with the rest of the little girls. Besides, to get close to them, I would need to do synchro with them. You are not allowed to wear gloves for synchro and my circulation is too bad. My hands will turn translucent and then blue again. In every group number at our yearly Nutcracker, I am too young for someone to start a conversation with, too introverted to reach out myself. I am content with my own company at least. It does not matter that I actually am older than them. In high school, I get louder though. I beat others to the punchline. “I know, I look like a child. Maybe when I graduate high school, I will look 14! But hey, that’s cancer for you.” When I first get my driver’s license, I drop off my sister at rock climbing and go to pick up Taco Bell for her. At the drive through, the cashier sees me pull up and begins to laugh. “Are you old enough to be driving without an adult in the passenger seat?” I ascent wearily. She laughs more and tells her friend to come over here and see the youngest looking 16-year-old that he will ever see. I turn red.   

For the first five years after treatment, that is when cancer is most likely to recur. My body was a ticking time bomb. Every abnormal pain is the beginning of terror. Does this stomachache mean I have cancer in my stomach? Every year, I get strep throat and the lymph nodes around my throat swell into imaginary tumors. Any moment, my body could betray me, leave me without treatment options. “We can’t give you chemo again. There is a maximum dosage and you already received it.” I am told the next best thing we can do is find it early though, if it does recur. So, they hold me down again. They do CT scans, MRIs. All donut-shaped tubes, but at least these machines don’t burn me. They pronate my legs so that my toes touch and heels sit apart and then they tape me still. My heart pounds, tells me to run so that they can’t hurt me again. I focus on what I read about how kidneys work while they scan me. The doctors are always more comfortable when I want to learn more. It is something to talk about, something other than the silence, the small talk. I pass the five-year mark. Then they focus on the long-term effects of the cancer, of the chemo. They check my heart. Social workers ask how I am doing in school. I tell them I want to be a pediatric oncologist, or later a cancer researcher. They tell me what a good thing it is. I see them relax. I am saying the right things, I am telling the good story, the right one, the one they want to hear.

Am I healthy? Am I sick? I am healthy enough to the sight that any physical failing must be a moral one. I am healed, but I hurt. My kidneys grew with me during puberty, scarred and disfigured as they are, so I will not need another kidney until I grow old. Regular menstrual cycles, no matter how physically painful, mean that I am fertile, at least for now. But why would I want my own kids anyways? With my biology, I offer a 50% chance of damnation. My heart passes my yearly screening exams though and my liver continues unscathed. “You are doing so well.” They tell me that every year I go to my annual Long-Term Cancer Survivor Clinic appointments. How can I disappoint them? The doctors and nurses and social workers did so much to make my treatment manageable. To distract me from the horrors of it.

But that is not fair to me. 

Just because I have good grades, just because I am involved in extracurriculars, just because I have a long-term relationship does not mean that I am healed. It does not mean that my cancer basically never happened, just an unfortunate start.

Cancer is not my origin story either. In the pursuit of telling a good, satisfying, palpable story, I did not get the freedom to explore multiple visions of my own future. There was one path and it stretched on for years, a funnel into the perfect ending to my cancer story. Instead of exploring my interests, I obsessed over cancer and was lauded for my work ethic. No one thought to suggest that this might be a coping mechanism to understand my trauma. Even when I disliked every job related to cancer that I tried. I liked cancer most when I was learning about it, analyzing it at a higher level and connecting it to myself. But how could I tell people I did not see myself in a cancer career anymore? Because I only ever was interested in understanding it to understand myself? Because of trauma? But I am healed, that is the way this story is supposed to go. It is not like I do not have the talent. In fact, I would be wasting it if I do not stay in science or in medicine. It does not matter that I grew a distaste for so many other parts of it. Deviations are unimaginable.

But it is imaginable. Kids with cancer can grow up. It is not our duty to make others comfortable with that idea. I do not owe anyone a tidy ending. My ability to heal from my cancer was delayed, not hastened by the story of the long-term cancer survivor. I am not healed! I am tired of pretending that I am. But I will make up for the lost time, now that I can understand that I still bear wounds from my trauma, now that I understand that my story and my trauma did not end when I “beat” cancer. I am freeing myself from the shackles of other’s expectations. I feel the catharsis that I never found in the last 15 years of my life. I can begin to reintegrate cancer into my life story, but finally on my own terms.

About the Author

Ashley Brown is a senior at Northeastern University with a double major in Biochemistry and Health Humanities with a minor in history. She is currently applying to master’s in history programs where she plans to study historical cases of health inequities.

By Alexandria Raspanti

Women learn from a young age that their bodies are not inherently theirs. I was not an exception. I grew to understand that I live in a system where autonomy is earned. I was born to be sexualized, my breasts grew to grab, my clothes made to take off, body made to be used. I had a concrete understanding at age 13 that sex was a pivotal part of being desired as a woman. I sat in my bedroom watching the show The Girls Next Door and pushing my boobs up in the mirror. I daydreamed about looking like one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends. Tiny waist, pouty lips, bouncy hair, and big boobs. I thought that life would be easy for girls that look like that.

I met Aaron when I was 14. After one month of dating, grade 9 began. He decided that we were ready to have sex. I agreed that that weekend we would. We lay in bed and I knew that all I needed to do was get through this and wait for it to be over. It would not last forever. However, when the time came, the nerves interfered. I did not have sex that night, but he did. He left my house, went to a party, and had sex with another girl. I could never make that mistake again. I learned that my reservations make me replaceable. I was grateful to Aaron for not forcing me to have sex with him and finding someone else instead. I felt bad for wasting his time.

At the age of 15, I was in a turbulent relationship with an addict. I never experimented with drugs, but I was an expert on them. Day by day I cared for him, I stayed up at night checking his pulse, dipping his feet in cold water, wiping blood off of his face. I thought that mothering him would make him less inclined to hurt me. I don’t remember many of these events anymore, but my friends remember my recountings of them. By the time he left for good, I was 18 and he was gone, along with my childhood. He broke up with me when he was done with me. Psychopaths follow a specific routine in their romantic relationships: seduce, love bomb, bond, trauma bond, entrap, use up, and discard. Loving someone who could care less if you were breathing is an incredibly embarrassing and degrading experience. I wish I could say this is where everything changed, but it didn’t, not for a few years.

Older men have always found a liking for me, although it dramatically declined when I turned 18 and the thrill of an underage girl didn’t exist for them anymore. I was 19 and working at a hair salon, and I asked my boss if we could talk about my schedule. He said he would pick me up at 7 p.m. to talk about it over dinner. When I searched up the restaurant and saw the four dollar signs, I figured I should wear a skirt. “I love that you wore a skirt for me,” he said while I got into his car. He didn’t speak to me about my schedule that night. He told me about his ex-wife, his kids, and the nanny he cheated on his wife with. He told me that I was young and had never experienced a real man. When he dropped me off, he said “You’re not even going to invite me in? How rude.” Worried about my job, I responded, “Oh, would you like to come in?” We were in the elevator as I texted my roommate, “We’re coming up, be in the kitchen so I’m not alone with him,” and she responded, “Lexi, I just left the house.” We went into my living room where he climbed on top of me and started kissing me. He was 43 years old. I can’t even try to describe the feeling I had in my throat as I felt his tongue in my mouth. After a few minutes, I said that I had to wake up early tomorrow and that he should go. Reluctantly, he left. The next day at work he called me into his office saying he had my new schedule, and I walked into a pitch-black room. He said, “I just wanted to get some time with you.” I quit a few days later.

Eventually, I stumbled across a YouTube video on relationships with psychopaths. My eyes were glued to the screen, clinging to every word as she flawlessly described my first love. My breaths becoming heavier as she explained the hows and the whys. The questions I had asked repeatedly in my head for years. She talked about how they choose their victims, and patterns in their mannerisms. I truly UNDERSTOOD for the first time that it was not my fault. In that moment, I felt my soul clinging to my body for the first time, its hands grasping at the insides of my skin, holding me with pinching fingers in a silent promise to never let go. It was in that moment that I let go of my responsibility to men and took on a new responsibility. Myself. 

I found a lot of my power through learning. I came into college majoring in psychology with an interest in behavioral neuroscience as well as a minor in women, gender, and sexuality studies. I hoped to one day focus on the neurological underpinnings of psychopathy. My mission was to uncover irrefutable proof that abusive behaviors are unrelated to the victims themselves. Unfortunately, awareness alone cannot shield you from the harm inflicted upon you; it merely has the power to shape your responses.

I no longer fear people. I am not scared because everything that I would be scared of has already happened to me. There is a certain comfort in the aftermath of abuse – a comfort that stems from knowing that there is nothing you can’t get through. Abuse doesn't simply vanish; it lingers, leaving its mark. I deal with obsessive guilt, replaying daily scenarios in my mind, and endlessly questioning what I could have done differently to the point where I could barely leave my home out of fear that I would make a mistake. Yes, lessons were learned and at one point I would have said I was grateful for my experiences, but now, I do not. I believe that the growth I've achieved could have been attained on my own, without the help of my abusers. I now stand, not as a product of my abusers' influence, but as a testament to my own strength and resilience.

About the Author

Alexandria is a fifth-year psychology student at Northeastern University with minors in English and women, gender, and sexuality studies. After college, she aspires to go to law school and seeks to use writing as a powerful tool for advocacy and change.

By Ella

The luminous natural light shining into my all-white shower illuminates a heavenly gaze onto my bleeding, blistered body. I wouldn’t consider myself particularly religious, but today I'm certain there's a divine presence holding me upright as I feebly fight for stability. Today my open wounds leave a sea of crimson dancing down the drain, my neck frozen straight to combat the blaring whiplash. 

Today I believe in God.

Earlier, a pouring shower of glass had left me concussed and upside down. It was a tranquil roller-coaster ride, a seemingly peaceful experience as my body ascended and accepted the force. Constantly burdened by an intrusive inner monologue, I was surprisingly soothed by the sharp dissociation. It was a near-death car crash, but somehow one of the most relaxing experiences of my life.   

My life had been spared by a 1999 tow truck housing an unbelievably rare interior design that ultimately guarded my life. The sight of the truck alone was enough to send people at the scene into hysterics. I gather when a car looks like that, you are supposed to die. The eccentric EMT called it a miracle. God called it a favor. I call it my most bittersweet memory. 

Vacantly wiping the blood away, I am surreally empty as I shower. This is new for me, the chronic overthinker staring into the distance with sullen eyes. I hyper-fixate on the ceiling as I shower, void of meaning. Without any medication in my system, my dazed reflection acts as the most potent narcotic.

It's bewildering how fast life ebbs and flows. Just a month earlier, the suffocatingly humid air of Miami smelled like success and teen spirit. Up until a few days before, my mother had ardently refused to let me go, exclaiming how ridiculous and unsafe it was. We were 17. I agreed, even then. But I craved it, longing for the exhilaration of me and my friends dancing in the sun and acting older than we actually were. It all seemed so grand.

Suddenly, my friends were discussing reservations at trendy restaurants without a mention of going anywhere other than Miami. That must be why my mother caved on her own accord, quietly pulling up the airfare for that weekend while weakly uttering “I don’t want you to miss out”. Quickly, all my savings were down the drain, and I was packing my yellow polka-dot bikini in a small, battered carry-on.

On our first night there, we shuffled back to our hotel rooms eager to prolong the night. We energetically jumped on the massive white bed in our way-too-short dresses. My head hit the ceiling, and I rolled around laughing as background music roared on. It felt like a scene from an unrealistic teen drama, and I joyfully thanked my lucky stars I had made it. 

After everyone went back to their room, I got in bed eager to doze off. It was close to 2 AM, and I stared vacantly into the darkness to calm my body. My inner monologue flowed relentlessly, only exciting my nerves to stay up. There was a creeping void inside my stomach that only seemed to grow as it got later and later. My strange uneasiness was only fueled as I began to fixate on time, physically feeling as if I was going to run out of seconds. Or out of air, as my chest tightened and the butterflies in my stomach sharpened their wings. I felt viciously hot as every manual breath stung my diaphragm. The heaviness weighing on me forced me to take large gulps, choking to find whatever air was left in my lungs. Laying immobile, I silently prayed for my well-being. 

My breath finally came back after what felt like hours, and I looked at the time. It was 4:37 AM. I then laid awake all night in an anxious, stomach-severing, pit of nerves. Finally, when the sun rose, I got out of bed nonchalantly to put on sunscreen and my yellow polka-dot bikini. I had just had my first panic attack (and certainly not my last) in a beautiful hotel room overlooking the beach. Yawning profusely from my lack of sleep, I didn’t tell anyone about my nightmare of a night. I assured myself nothing was wrong while consciously sequestering any sentiments of anxiety. Miami was picture-perfect, and I tried to be as well. 

Later that month, my body felt uneasy during the most celebratory of times. When I blew out my candles on my 18th birthday cake, my dad reminded me to “make a wish!” Every year I wished for the happiness and health of me and my loved ones, taking a moment to relish the warmth of those around me. But this year, my mood regressed sourly as I thought about the ways happiness and especially health can regress. An intrusive chain of thoughts urged me to think about growing older and the possibility of death waiting mercilessly around the corner. 

As I eat my chocolate cake, that familiar pit-like sensation returns to my stomach. I try to push it to the deepest parts of my being, wondering if it's inherently selfish to ruin your own happiness. 

It was in these moments that I always seemed to think of God the most, specifically when I needed something. I was the equivalent of that friend who only comes around when she has a bad breakup, forgetting about you when there's a new swooning love interest. I now think I was rather human, which doesn’t equate to a “get out of jail free card” but is certainly worth something.  

A month later, my parents prayed when I was in the hospital. I wonder if the people on the street had also prayed when they saw the utter collapse of the 1999 pickup truck. Even if they were selfless in their desires, they still wanted something. It's rather ironic. When my cuts sting in the shower, I do not feel the sentiment of needing anything. I grasp desperately for emotion or even words, without tangibly holding anything. 

And there it is. A subtle juxtaposition to all that I have ever known; a dissonance in the looming anxiety that had gradually piled up. Like a weatherman, I had lived life constantly dreading the storm, overanalyzing every mere drizzle of rain. But now it had rained and poured, and I was burnt out from caring at all. 

My minimal stability is jolted by a robust tap on the shower curtain. In my drowsy state, I cannot comprehend why my kitten is staring into my shower with bright blue eyes. My cat enhances my sense of disbelief, perching herself on the shower ledge and focusing her gaze on me. 

All of a sudden, I can't look away from the disturbing pool of blood juxtaposing the beautiful white marble shower. I realize the severity of the situation, the bitter truth separating before and after. I realize I'm in the after, because my body is gashed and there's broken glass everywhere. 

Upon seeing my kitten in the shower there's a silent catharsis. The shower covers the sounds as I begin to cry, naked and exposed. As cold tears pour, I mourn all the moments I shed away in worry. As if accepting my survival could take back all my previous doubts, I feel somber clarity. The anxiety reaching its peak throughout the last few months suddenly halts, seeming trivial now in the scope of things. 

I ask myself what it was all for, the stream of constant anxiety that has progressively plagued me. Now the coin had flipped, and my worst anxieties had come true. What now? Will my fear of everything rise like the tide, or will it flow back and retreat? 

 I’m not sure who I am with a constant rain cloud hanging over me. Maybe I'm lucky enough to have things worth missing, desires worth yearning for. I suddenly noticed my cat’s brown fur was soaked from the shower’s stream. She stays put, a strange phenomenon for felines who are typically hydrophobic. Somehow this validates that there's a plan for me, more life left ahead.

I think about God and all those times I anxiously craved something beyond minor. It's funny now as I delicately extract glass shards out of my hair. I wonder how many people prayed in the hospital at the same time as my parents. I wonder if those prayers were more genuine, more emotionally volatile than the ones in church.  

I implore myself to be better than I have been as the cold water sinks deeper into my open cuts. I reminisce on everything I'm grateful for, everything that has continuously gone right when I worried it wouldn't. At this very moment, I don’t feel like I need anything, for I am overcome by gratitude. I simply put my face under the cold tap to reinvigorate my feeling of being alive.   

Then, I put my hands together because this seems like a good time to pray. 

 About the Author

Ella is a third-year student at Northeastern University, studying psychology and behavioral neuroscience. In her free time, she is a part of numerous research groups on campus and loves creative writing and fictional storytelling.

Photo credit: Joy Stamp

by Milena Kozlowska

One of my earliest memories is awash in the bright fluorescent lights of a preschool classroom, surrounded by bold blocky colors and the smell of Elmer's glue. I sat with my legs crissed-crossed on the colorful squares of the carpet, in the center of a cluster of other students. From her chair in the front of the classroom, my teacher asked me a question.

The details have long since faded from my mind. All I remember is the heat of the other kids' eyes on my neck as I stared ahead, unable to answer. Instead, I shrugged. The teacher prodded me for an answer; the kids around me tittered. Fear cemented my silence. I shrugged again. Frozen, I couldn't speak. Instead, I chewed on my lip, peeling all the skin off.

I never spoke. My teachers grew frustrated with me. I would whisper in the ear of my best friend Talia during recess, but otherwise I stayed silent.

Talia tried to persuade me to talk to her other friends. You can whisper to them too, she said. I shook my head and stared down at the woodchips, hiding behind a curtain of long blonde hair. I could speak to my parents and siblings at home because they already knew me. But around everyone else, my throat closed up. My voice fled.

Silence sheltered me. I built walls around my inner world like a fortress. As if I could escape by making myself as small and still and silent as possible.

In kindergarten, all the kids sat in a circle and the teachers led us in song and dance. I never opened my mouth or moved my hands, just watched the other kids.

After class, I went to the bathroom at my house and climbed up onto the sink. There were multiple mirrors, so I could see dozens of versions of myself spreading beyond me, one after another after another after another. Surrounded by reflections, I went through all the moves we'd learned in class, sang the songs under my breath. All versions of me sang and danced along.

Only in that white-tiled world, with its expansive mirrors stretching infinitely on, could I speak. In the classroom, I could only watch. Silence paralyzed me. Like a princess trapped in a tower, I couldn’t break down the walls of my own fortress. Even when I longed to.

Teachers thought I had a developmental disorder, at first. Then I was diagnosed with selective mutism. My mom took me to see a speech therapist, a woman who sat next to me on the floor with stacks of colorful pictures. As my trust in her slowly grew, I started being able to whisper answers to her questions.

Eventually, I'd been in speech therapy for long enough that I could answer direct questions if prompted. Teachers were no longer frustrated. They liked that I was quiet, polite. I didn't raise my voice or interrupt others or goof off like other kids. I kept my head down and my mouth closed and was praised for it. Meanwhile, I chewed up my lips til they were sore, scratched at my scalp till it bled, clenched my jaw till it ached. Bit my nails down to stubs, then dug them through skin already red and raw with eczema.

On worksheets, I wrote in tiny handwriting, the letters as small as I could make them. As if I was trying to make myself as small as possible, disappear between the pages.

Silence stifled me. I felt like I could scream, and no one would hear behind the walls.

By high school, I was speaking: shy, but no longer clinically so. At my waitressing job, cooks snapped at me for calling out orders too quietly. Whenever he saw me trying to get a cook's attention, one of my coworkers would give me a look of sympathy and ask my order, before shouting it to the kitchen himself. "Thanks," I'd say with an abashed smile.

"Why do you talk like that?" one of the cooks asked me once, in his thick accent. "You always whisper." I'd ordered food for one of the residents, and he was piling the mushy vegetables onto a plate.

"This is just my voice," I said as he handed me the plate.

"No, it isn't."

I laughed nervously and left to serve the food. Heat flared somewhere in the back of my throat. I'm not whispering. This is my voice.

What if it wasn't? What if my real voice was still stuck somewhere I couldn't reach it? What if I'd buried it somewhere in the wood chips of my preschool playground and it was gone forever?

Still, I liked some things about being quiet. I liked that people told me things they wouldn't tell others, that people called me a good listener, that most of my life was hidden, that I could keep a little mystery, a little distance. Silence protected me, both as my weapon and my refuge. Behind its walls, I could observe others without being seen, or known.

But when I started college, I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to leave the mute girl behind, somewhere on the outskirts of a school playground with her knees drawn to her chest. I tried to outgrow her, outrun her, in a new place where no one would start off already knowing me as the quiet girl. I joined rugby, a sport where I had to shout at the top of my lungs. I raised my hand in classes. I placed myself in social situations as often as possible, surrounded myself with people. I shaved my head so that I couldn't hide behind my hair anymore, even if I tried.

And yet. And yet. People still kept asking me to repeat myself, became frustrated with my voice. I'm sorry, I said, over and over again. I know I'm a little soft-spoken. No matter how often I tried to raise my voice, that never seemed to change.

Silence found me, again and again and again. I tried to knock down the stone walls that wrapped around my vocal cords, but I could only ever break away parts of them. The rest crumbled into rocks in my throat: I could speak, but it was never easy. It loosened its hold in me, but I could never escape it completely.

And yet. At one time, silence kept me safe. In some ways, it still does. It has been with me so long, I don’t know who I’d be without it.

It’s a part of me— for better or worse.

Milena is a third-year student at Northeastern University majoring in behavioral neuroscience. In her free time, she enjoys painting, reading, writing, and playing rugby.

I am 16 years old, desperately clinging on to the last few weeks of summer before my junior year of high school. The days are long and sticky with humidity, and I mostly spend them sequestered in my room, lulled into midday naps by the hum of air conditioning. In the past few years, I’ve sunk deep into the comforts of my room, only emerging to run and catch the bus each morning. There I am alone, and maybe that’s preferable to being with you.

I don’t go out with you and your friends anymore. Not to eat ice cream from the shop in town or sit in someone’s basement and drink. Each time you do see me you urge me to come out sometime. You say I would be less depressed if I did. I want so badly for you to be right. 

My phone lights up, and I flinch when I see your name. When I was younger (much younger), the sight might have been a welcome one, but not anymore. By this point I know what you are capable of. This night’s incident would not be the first, nor the last. 

You want to meet for dinner. I stare blankly at the time. It’s 10:00 pm. I ate hours ago, and I tell you so, but you just got off work and you’re hungry. I type out a resounding no thanks, see you when school starts, but I hesitate. Maybe you’re right. Maybe if I go out I’ll be happier. I’m so desperate to lessen the heavy weight that sits on my chest each day that it outweighs the trepidation I feel towards you. So I tell you I’m not hungry, but I’ll keep you company. You say we can go to the pizza place around the corner. 

I scurry out of my house, meeting you halfway up the street. I don’t want you coming to my house, even just to stand on the porch. Something about your presence on my doorstep would feel like a stain, a contamination. I don’t want my parents seeing you either. Irrationally, I worry they could look in your eyes and see what you’ve done. 

As we begin to walk you tell me you have no money. That strikes me as strange, seeing as you’re the one who wanted dinner. But I say nothing. My ability to question, to protest, has mysteriously evaporated. As we near the pizza place, I see the windows are dark, the chairs placed upside down on the tables. They’re closed, and they have been for a while. That seems odd, too, seeing as you must have walked by on your way to meet me. You barely even spare it a glance, walking straight past. You suggest we go to the park. My legs betray the dread that’s made a home in my body and I follow dutifully. That's what we’re supposed to do, right? Be compliant? But the tiny grains of unease prick at the nape of my neck, urging me to turn around. I suppose those were my instincts, which I excel at ignoring. So I agree, because that’s what I’m good at. 

Our town is dark and deserted, so I shouldn’t be surprised when the park is too. The sole inhabitant is a man crouched low on a bench, fumbling with a cigarette. He asks you for a light but you have none, so you apologize as we descend into the playground. I haven’t been here since I was a little kid. It’s different now. They’ve updated the equipment, the plastic slides bright and shiny, even in the darkness. You take off your apron and fold it neatly on a swing. You’ve been washing dishes all day. You start to tell me a story as I stand there, my feet shuffling in the wood chips. 

You were texting your friend at work all day talking about how horny you were. How all you wanted was a blowjob. He said he could hook you up with someone but you said no. I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to this, but a cool girl wouldn’t bat an eye at this kind of talk, so I say nothing, the ghostly light of the street lamps illuminating your face. You keep peeking at me, gauging my expression. This feels like a test so I try to look as nonchalant as possible. I don’t think it works, and you look away again. Then you’re fumbling with your belt, and the metal of the buckle is like wind chimes but also fills me with dread. You apologize, that same genuinely sorry tone you used when you didn’t have a lighter for that man, but you just have to take a piss. I stare anywhere but at you as you piss against some poor tree. Then I go and sit at the top of the slide, wondering why you would do that. Now I know you wanted an excuse to take your dick out. 

You clamber up the slide to sit near me, our legs touching. I feel a sense of real revulsion. And then I see you didn’t put it away, and that image burns into my brain like hot metal on flesh. You’re still talking because that’s what you know how to do best, and the seal on my mouth breaks open, the words tumbling out like water: my dad wants me home i need to go home he’s texting me i have to leave i’m sorry—

But you’re calm, like you expected this resistance, and you insist that we have plenty of time. There’s enough time (for what?) before I have to leave. You lay across my lap, and my back reflexively presses against the bars until it’s painful. I’m a statue made of stone and you are the bird shit that covers it. You tell me to guide my hand towards it but I don’t want to and I don’t know how to and even if I wanted to say that I couldn’t anyway. A list of excuses tumbles out of my mouth and you deflect each one deftly like a star athlete. My heart is pounding so hard I feel like you must be able to hear it, you’re so close to me. I stare down at you, trying to focus on your face instead of everything else, and childishly, I wonder if you will kiss me. Not because I want you to, but because some part of me wants to be the object of someone’s boyhood crush. I wanted a single rose because a dozen was too expensive and cheap chocolates from the grocery store and a tacky heart shaped necklace from the mall. This is not how high school relationships are supposed to happen. I don’t even like you in that way, but you seem to want me and I wish someone would but not like this. 

I make a final plea, I need to leave, and you press your full body weight into my lap, murmuring, you can’t leave if I do this. Fruitlessly, I try to stand up, but your weight impedes me completely. I can’t get up, as much as I try, struggling with the effort. I resign myself to my fate, the task ahead of me that you’ve assigned, but I’m paralyzed. I stare back blankly as you look up at me, expectation clear in your eyes. Finally you sigh, annoyed, buckling your pants back up and standing. I scramble up, murmuring apologies (for what?) and jumping back down into the wood chips, my knees smarting in pain at the rough landing. You say you’ll walk me home because it’s late, which I find ironic, because who do I need to be protected from but you? 

Of course, I acquiesce, and we walk together, the silence heavy. My mind is blank. I just want to be alone again. Alone can be lonely but it doesn’t hurt me like you do. You pluck a leaf from a nearby plant, your fingers punching holes in its veiny surface like two eyes. As we reach my street you hand it to me wordlessly, telling me you’ll see me at school in a few weeks. You walk away, hands shoved deep in your pockets, and the fluorescent glow of the streetlamps makes the world look like a movie set at nighttime turned artificially into day.

I twist the leaf in my hands and walk the rest of the way home alone. My parents are sitting in the living room like always. I walk straight up the stairs silently, taking out my diary and sitting on my bed. I don’t remember what I wrote, but afterwards I took that leaf and pasted it into the pages. I wonder if it’s brown and crumbling now, or if the scotch tape has kept it intact, green and smooth, chlorophyll staining the pages and the tips of my fingers. 

Lily is a fourth-year student at Northeastern University studying Biology and English. Her writing has been published in Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine, Queen City Writers, and The Foundationalist. She hopes to pursue medical school after college and continue writing as much as she can.

By Kaitlin Kerr

I’ve always been close with my little sister. Growing up, we were in the same dance classes and shared the same bedroom. We even ended up going to the same college.

We were never bothered by the sameness, the closeness. We enjoyed each other’s company. Much to the dismay of our mother, after driving through three states to a family party, we’d ignore the sea of uncles and grandmothers and cousins. Always ending up hiding in a far-off corner. With a bounty of stolen cookies from the dessert platters. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, muddling our special party dresses. Giggling together.

Despite the fact she’s exactly three inches taller than me (but it’s okay, I wear four-inch platforms), I’ve always understood what it meant to be the big sister, to be looked up to. I understood my role as a companion, a confidant, and a role model.

Knowing she was there, watching me, made me better.

I refused to talk negatively about my body, knowing we share the same figure.

I refused to make myself quiet, knowing we share the same roaring laugh.

I refused to bite my tongue, knowing we share the same wit.

Soulmates are the people in our lives that we have an unexplainable affinity for. We love them, as if our beings were meant to unite. Honestly, I don’t know if I believe in soulmates. Truth be told, when it comes to love, I’m a “Miranda”-level cynic. But isn’t it a nice idea?

That two souls can intertwine.

Were meant to intertwine? 

The summer I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (garnished with Acute Anxiety Attacks), I wasn’t exactly a big sister. I wasn’t exactly a person. It was after my first year away at college and got bad once I moved back home.

By then, we weren't sharing a room anymore.

I cried almost every day. Sometimes I’d hide it, silently reclusive in my bed.  Sometimes I’d burst in the middle of dinner. Sometimes it was in the car. Most of the time it was without reason.

I spent most of that summer in a black hole.

Our dad thought I should try some drugs to help calm me down. Our mom thought I was too young for Xanax.

I was nineteen years old. My eyes permanently tinged red and patched blue. She was sixteen years old. And somehow, she knew what I needed.

I remember one particularly bad evening. I was comatose with my eyes open, swaddled in sheets soaked in the stench of a showerless week. Sometimes the safest thing to do when you’re like that is just lay down and teach yourself how to breathe.

She came into my room with the night breeze, carrying an offering of sweet peach tea. Her long golden auburn hair still dripping from the shower. Seeping and staining her white cotton pajamas.

Then instead of tenderly sitting at the foot of my bed like she was visiting a hospice patient, the way my mother did, my little sister belly-flopped herself on top of me, the way I used to when we were kids and I was up before her on Christmas morning.

She never asked why I was upset. She never asked me not to be. She met me where I was, and made sure I wasn’t alone.  

I was almost too numb to care back then.

Almost. 

I still knew what it meant to be looked up to. I was supposed to be her companion, her confidant, her role model. What kind of role was I modeling if I couldn't get out of bed?

I could’ve told her that I was seeing a therapist. That I was taking bright orange and green pills. She probably wouldn’t have cared. Hell, she’d probably be happy that I was getting help. But I am not immune to pride. She still saw me as her big sister. Her confidant. Her companion. Her role model.

I couldn’t show her the world inside my mind.

My earliest memory is picking up my little sister from the hospital. I was only three at the time. I’m not sure if this is a real memory, or if I’ve fabricated it through secondhand stories and dreams. I remember the ride in my aunt’s minivan. Listening to the radio instead of my mom’s familiar show tunes CDs. The grey plastic leather of the seats. The not-my-mom’s car smell. The layer of my cousin’s Cheerio crumbs encrusted into every crack and crevice.

I felt the same kind of nervous excitement I imagine dancers feel before they go onstage. The kind of apprehension and subtle fear, anticipation and joy.

My mother had read to me I’d Rather Have an Iguana every night for the past month. It’s a cute little picture book about a sassy stubborn older sister who is simply not happy about having a younger sibling, but despite the little girl’s best efforts, her parents decide to go through with it anyway. Although I did not share the protagonist’s proclivity for reptiles, I never resented the idea of sharing my life with another person.

Perhaps I am exceedingly lucky, or perhaps this happens with all siblings, but I feel as though I’ve shared my life with her. Not in milestones or rites of passages, per se. In the way we share the same figure, laugh, and wit; we share the same character, morality, worldview.

I remember walking into the yellow where my mother lay, glowing in the warm autumn sun. The glint of the gold wire on her old glasses. The exhausted and ecstatic energy. I remember my mother in a voice like honey telling me that she missed me.

I remember my father holding a bundle of cream blankets. Him telling me that she might look like my baby dolls back home, but my little sister was not a toy.

I remember reaching out for the bundle. Holding her for the first time, supported by the hands of my anxious father. I remember being surprised by how warm she was. Feeling her body expand with each breath. Knowing she was small and fragile and precious.

I remember loving her.

Soulmates are the people in our lives that we have an unexplainable affinity for. We inexplicably love them, as if our beings were meant to unite.

I continued to live past that summer.

And the summer after that.

Recently, my little sister confessed that she was thinking of therapy herself.  In stumbling phrases, I attempted to describe how she helped me. How she’d somehow known I needed to be sat next to, brought offerings of sweet tea. How I’d wished that I had been more open about what was happening inside my mind. In her own stumbling reply, she explained that she’d never have asked for help if I hadn’t gone first.

 I understand now that I was never in danger of losing a soulmate.

It took time and therapy and tears, but I’ve been demoted from Major to Dysthymic depression. Slowly, I became able to acknowledge and speak about the world inside my mind. It’s a little scary at first, but hopefully with enough jokes sprinkled in, you’ll understand too. I explain how the orange and green pills make me feel. How to find a good therapist. How to use your support system. How to ask for help.

To be a confidant, you must share your own secrets.

To be a companion, you must open your own soul.

To be a role model, you must share your own tears.

Accept offerings of blankets and tea.

Let your soul intertwine.

Let your heart burst.

Kaitlin is a senior at Northeastern University studying English, with a minor in Writing and a concentration in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her poetry has been published in Spectrum Literary Arts magazine, and her opinions have been published in Tastemakers music magazine. When she’s not writing, Kaitlin enjoys tormenting her kitten, hunting for vintage clothes, and the occasional video game.  

By Gillian

I was never a great swimmer. My body would tire and my muscles would ache. I’d thrash and squirm and gulp saltiness. I’ll never forget the feeling of inhaling water, the burning that sweeps through the lungs and the stinging during the slow recovery.

It was like that. The After. An inescapable breathlessness. A heaving and gasping and gulping, grasping for anything to hold onto. The in and out that skip and hasten. The airways close and the throat is no longer a tunnel but a labyrinth, constricting tighter and tighter. There’s choking for air, but the ocean is inside of you, swarming, swaying, swelling, spilling over the top.

 And the cannon fire to underscore it all. A stampede of thuds clamoring in the chest, a great crescendo echoing up to the ears, drumming to a spiraling tempo… thud, thud, thud-thud, thudthudthudthud. Like a fist pounding on a door, banging, clanging, threatening to rip it open. A ringing thunder to drown it all out…

I try not to think too much about The Before. The mythical time when you’re blissfully unaware of the ticking time bomb waiting to explode, waiting to punch the irreparable hole in your chest. The time when you took everything for granted, overlooked the one person who’d love you unconditionally. Before you’d ever known true loss, before every single ounce of pain paled in comparison to the insurmountable agony you’d feel. The time before the world shut down and you found yourself standing in a hospital room wrapped in layers of plastic, reaching out to a pale arm that was far too cold and unrecognizable… 

I’m lost in The After.

There’s disbelief. Denial, backtracking, shock. Each new question is an unsolvable riddle. How? How could this happen? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We had plans. We had tickets to that show. She was supposed to come visit me that semester. We were going to do so much when this was all over. We were supposed to be together forever. I meant to say something before… Did I get to it? Everything was fine a week ago. And we were just talking about—what’s going to happen from now on? I didn’t get any sleep last night because of my darkly wandering mind, so maybe I willed it into existence. Did she know how late I stayed up, or could she hear the TV from the living room I kept on all night?

There’s remembering. Some things are crystal clear, like steppingstones through time, while others are fogged over, like warm breath clouding a looking glass. Those flashes of memory that come with or without invitation, possessing the mind to another time, another place, another reality. Sometimes you remember things like they were yesterday, that dumb joke that made you belly laugh, those long drives down backroads just to get out of the house, the warmth that filled the apartment when the oven was on. And other times, you don’t know if you just imagined them. You’re stuck in this purgatory of re-memory.

There’s reminding. Those cruel tricks of the mind. Like phantom pain in lost limbs every time you try to walk on one foot. Like tracing the hole of a missing tooth with your tongue and being surprised each time. The constant forgetting and reminding and shock cycles in an endless loop. Reminding yourself what was lost. Turning your head to speak to a ghost. Fighting the urge to think of their name, tell them your daily grievances like you’d always do. Reliving the gut-wrenching bombshell every single time until you don’t really remember what’s missing, just the colossal, gaping hole left behind.

There’s regretting. The “what ifs” and “should haves” bounce around your mind until they pound like angry fists against your skull. It comes back in little spurts and pours down in shameful raindrops that soak your brain. Your worst moments play back in a beautifully miserable compilation, and you’re struck withs the excruciating fact that you knew better but didn’t do anything.

There’s fuming. You curse the world and everyone in it. Toss around blame like it’s a kickball on a playground. Ride the spinning carnival wheel of anger and guilt and shame. Screw those who have what I don’t and all the people it should’ve been. Screw this stupid country and all the people whose fault this is. I hate everyone and everything and all the things I used to love—I hate them, or they’re gone, too.

There’s reeling. There is no Before. There’s just this. Only trudging through murky waters and the fogginess of those nighttime hallucinations that seem all too real. Every now and then there’s a rumbling in the stomach, but it numbs if you wait long enough. I imagined my body to be a cavernous gorge, the wind rumbling through the rocky cliffs, clashing into grumbling rocks with heated breaths. I wondered if I’d sink down into the bed, if the blankets would consume me, smother the wind within me, bury me under if I waited long enough.

There’s lying. And hiding. You lie to yourself and everyone you know. Lie to strangers on the Internet that it’ll get better. Paint those pretty smiles on plastic cheeks and get good marks because that’s all they really care about. Go through the motions, you’ve done this before. Make a good show, you’ve always loved theatrics. Tell them a lovely little story and brush it all off. Oh, what a great actress you are!

There’s un-remembering. Memory is the curse of the living. You shut out everything that happened and everything that’s happening. Shut out who you were and who you are. Blank out all the faces that haunt your memories and drown out all the voices you once knew until they’re just background noise. Let yourself sink into that dark void because it’s more bearable than anything that came before.

There’s failing. I sit in her seat but I can’t fill her shoes, every step I take, I’m bound to lose. I can’t help these people with the heavy eyes who just want something to do. All their kindness towards me is because of her. I was never the socialite, I’m horrible company, too. I can’t light up a room, that was always her. So don’t dare ask me to make that dish for Thanksgiving because I don’t know the recipe, she’s the one who always made it and I’m not her replacement.

 There’s forgetting. The ironic panic that fills your chest as you forage through your mind for lost treasures. Where did that pink cat knickknack that sat on the television mantle come from? It was from a vacation she went on, but was it Puerto Rico or Mexico? And what was in that stroganoff recipe, I know it had cream of mushroom soup, but did she include broth? She never measured anything, and I never wrote it down, and I tried to make it but it just wasn’t the same. And did we ever watch that movie together, what did she think? What did she say? What was the name of that friend she mentioned? There’s no one to ask…

There’s seeing. That newfound vision you can’t shake. Grief is like a pair of glasses you can’t take off; you see the world differently, even though nothing’s changed. The earth turns and seasons change but you’re stuck seeing everything for all its ugliness. Seeing all the ghosts that lurk in the darkness. And the newfound blindness that accompanies it. That darkness that invades your mind when you think of the fabled future. I used to have that picture—the one people have when they close their eyes and cast themselves into a far-off land and see themselves older, hopeful, wiser. When they imagine what’s to come and pour their hearts into making that beautiful dream a reality. I don’t have that anymore. I’m losing grip on it. I can’t see myself. Or her. It’s all gone.

There’s accepting. The surrender as you swallow this new reality. It’ll always be like this. I’ll always be like this. There’s no going back and no Before. Just this. I’m not the same person I used to be. I don’t really remember them anymore. They’re a stranger. A distant memory, like an illusory figure in a far-off dreamland. I’m resolved to this. To pain. To emptiness. To numbness. To nothingness. To moving on. To forgetting and starting over. I’m tethered to the sickly motion of time as it hurls me forward, stumbling into some great unknown. I don’t want the same things I used to. My dreams are smaller now and I think I can be okay with that. I have to be.

Sometime in the inescapable Now. There’s realizing. Those sorrowful faces you can’t help because you don’t even know where to start. But it’s okay because they look at you with that same sadness. Those voices that tell their stories and make you brave enough to tell yours. Those eyes that look at you not with pity, but with understanding. That recognition of mirrored loss and struggle and grief. And maybe you’re not the only one with newfound vision. There are those people that hear you and see you and sometimes that’s enough.

Gillian is currently pursuing a B.A. in Communications with a minor in English at Northeastern University. She enjoys creative writing and hopes to work in the television industry after college.

Read more from our Writing to Heal: College Student Stories series.

By Alisha Karuvannur-Sandhu

Summer is the loneliest season. I thought with age I could escape it, but there I was, alone in a hot not-home, and I was so afraid to fall again, down and down and down.

~

In grade school, summertime brought a big empty house with broken air conditioning. Strict working parents kept me inside, playdates sparse, and most of my time was spent in quietly overwhelming solitude. I ate hot sticky peaches and watched America’s Got Talent and fended off the heaviness that always showed up in slow moments. It felt never-ending, and when escapism failed me, I sat wondering if this was all life had to offer. I thought about God and the afterlife, and how dreadful it must be to go to heaven and have to experience pleasant nothing forever.

 The loneliness always ended in the fall, though. It was the one thing I could count on, school starting again, my sense of smallness dissipating. Companionship breathed life into my lungs, and I became myself again, studious and motivated and together (as together as a child can be). I left that peach-eating cocoon on the couch to rot; I emerged whole and new and ready for the world

~

When the pandemic hit, despite my best efforts to stay occupied, it wasn’t long before I became startlingly aware of how big the world was and how little I felt. The warmth of my bed called to me. The air was balmy, yet I wanted nothing more than to bury myself underneath the comforter and let the heaviness of gravity wash over me, weigh me down until I sunk into my mattress, through the bed, through the floor, down below the dirt beneath my house, down all the way to the center of the Earth.

Every night, I would click off my screen after a who-knows-how-long session of scrolling, left with a buzzing sensation in my head. As I sat alone in my bed, I felt a familiar crushing solitude creep into the room. Is it hot in here?

 Vague unease brewed deep inside my chest. Once they were unlocked, all these uncomfortable sensations seemed to follow me everywhere, sometimes lying dormant but always under the surface.

~

I woke up one morning unable to breathe. I checked the time on my phone. Just past 6am.

Inhale.

Exhale.

There was no use, it was too shallow. How could this happen? I had been so careful. My chest tightened and my heart fluttered. Heaviness reincarnated into something new. I started to feel lightheaded. Surely my blood oxygen levels must have been abysmal. I felt my pulse rapidly speed up.

Thump thump thump.

 My mind raced with questions. Do I go tell Mom? Do I go to the emergency room? What if I gave it to the family? What the fuck have I done?

 I had to get up and let her know. My father was gone already (he worked upstate and was only home some weekends), but I listened at her door and could hear her getting ready for work. I knocked quietly, then with more urgency. 

“Mom?” I called, my voice cracking.

After a few long seconds, she opened the door.

“Why are you up so early?”
            “I think I have COVID.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m short of breath.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I can’t breathe, Mom.”

My face contorted against my will. Fat round teardrops fell out of nowhere, and suddenly I was bawling into her shoulder like a baby, unable to stop. Shhhh, it’s okay. My face was caked in tears and snot. I gasped for air, but it was like breathing in a vacuum. You’re hyperventilating. You’re having a panic attack. I watched her hurry to the kitchen and return with a paper bag. She held it to my face as I heaved in and out.

A few days later, my test results came back negative.

As my summer continued its descent into malaise, I found refuge in the fact that I would be back in school soon, with classes to keep me busy, friends around me at all times, and bustling city air to cleanse away this steady taste of isolated suburbia. I spent most of the days lying in bed with the blinds shut—sunlight was too bright—scrolling through my phone or simply falling in and out of half-sleep. I reminded myself that fall would come again and revive me, as it always had before.

Rebirth was just in my grasp when the stories started coming out. All these kids going off to college only to be packing everything back up four days later. I joked about it with my friends, but the concern was real and growing. Then, one by one, they decided not to come back for the fall. Each housing cancellation was a light going out, until I had only one roommate left. A week before I was to fly back, I got a text from her. I’m sorry, Alisha. The last light fizzled into blackness. I looked out ahead at the dark apartment waiting for me.

I thought about staying in California, but I couldn’t do it. I had to get out. Change seemed my only hope of becoming myself again. I was going to make it work.~

The dark roots of something insidious were starting to take hold. Just a few days into the start of the fall semester, my senses began failing me. I sat in neurobiosomething listening to the professor speak sounds I couldn’t hear. I could feel the words go into my ears, I could feel my brain as it passively watched them float into my skull and spat them right back out, raw and jumbled and unprocessed. I narrowed my eyes at the slides on the projector screen, at the text that surely had to be English. I must have forgotten how to read, the way the letters amounted to gibberish.

Day after day, my comprehension diminished. Instead, I became acutely aware of the fluorescent lights humming in the classroom. My head buzzed in unison. Everything was too bright, always. Too hot, too. I shifted my weight back and forth in my chair, tugging at the collar of my shirt and stroking my sternum, my arms, my hair. Swallowing became manual; I compulsively gulped til I forgot how and would choke on my own dry throat. Day after day, the world became increasingly unintelligible. I was consumed by the thought that I was trapped in my seat with no escape. I feared my body would cease to function unless I kept it in check. Breathing was no longer autonomic; I had to shakily force air in and out of my lungs. I pressed two fingers to my neck to make sure I was still alive, that my heart hadn’t spontaneously decided to shut off. Dread shrouded my head like a fog, made me deaf and blind, day after day, day after day, I was falling, faster, harder, day after day. Eventually I stopped going to classes.

I took up shelter in that big empty apartment. Barely furnished, no air conditioning. I let oppressive heat overtake my body. A proverbial sinking feeling nudged me towards the couch, where I sat watching Zoom lectures, where I ate my paltry meals, where I slept less-than-soundly at night, where I could not fall, only sink, slow and steady. Although I felt barely alive, I found a strange assurance in my deadened state. Familiarity bred affection; I became so well acquainted with solitude that I developed a sense of dependency on it, the only stability in my life. I isolated myself from the world, scarcely communicating with friends or family, avoiding the news, embracing seclusion. Days blurred into each other, dishes piled up and up, the air outside grew frigid. I stayed glued to the cushions through it all, wrapping myself in blankets. Roots gripped me, enveloped my cocoon-bound body. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. Time after time I had broken free without exertion. Where was my renewal, my sacred rebirth? Now I lay there immobile—a carcass decomposing.

Images of my destruction, in endless variations, flashed through my brain like strobe lights. Flesh torn apart. Water rushing into my lungs. Carbon monoxide silently putting me to eternal sleep. Medleys of pills bubbling in my stomach, poison coursing through my veins and shutting down my organs. Jumping off a bridge and into the Charles—one final, irreversible fall.

Things got too bright and too hot and too loud and too much one night, and I concluded my only options were to get help or die. I thought of Mom. I wondered how long it would take for her to realize I was gone (she would surely be the first to realize). I wondered who would have to find my decaying remains, who would have to call her to relay my fate. I wondered what she would say at my funeral. I wondered if she would blame herself, if she would pick apart my life trying to find where she went wrong.

 I dialed her number with tears in my eyes.

~

With effort, heaviness, in all its incarnations, always proves fleeting.

Alisha is a third-year student at Northeastern University majoring in Philosophy, with a minor in Health, Humanities, and Society. She plans to pursue medical school after college and is particularly interested in healthcare ethics and narrative medicine.

Read more from our Writing to Heal: College Student Stories series.

I have a friend who works for an insurance company, just like her mom did for over 35 years. Surely, overhearing all those conference calls must have influenced her. One of my best friends is going to medical school. She will deny it in an attempt to see herself as independent, but it is because she wants to be like her parents, who are both doctors. My other friend is majoring in pre-law; it is no surprise that she grew up watching her father defend clients in courts. Children often follow the paths of their parents. There is an intangible level of influence and shaping that happens from the environments we are in.

My father sold cocaine out of the local town bar he owned while evading taxes for a living.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I grew up as a kind child who always spoke respectfully to adults and whose teachers saw me as responsible enough to deliver the attendance sheet to the office some mornings in elementary school. I was a good kid, who worked hard in school and played nicely with others. I am also a demon who was easily enraged, who wanted to solve problems with fists, who started drinking only a couple of years after reaching the benchmark of double-digit ages.

I grew up mainly in my mother’s house, who is, by all accounts, the average suburban middle-class mother. I spent some time at my dad’s house, and it shows. I am not sure where I stand on the nature versus nurture argument. Maybe my father’s genetics created this conflicted monster, or maybe it was my court-scheduled visitation that cultivated delinquent urges. I can’t say for sure where it comes from, but my incessant frustration as I suppress one of my identities is palpable.

When I was about nine years old, I was told that alcoholism is genetic-- I’m fucked.

What age does alcoholism start? Surely, a desire to deal drugs and hang around seedy bars must be genetic, too. When do I start carrying my weapon for protection?

I grew up asking myself when the bad side would set in. I thought about how disappointed my mother would be to see me follow my father’s path, instead of hers, despite her tireless efforts to protect me from his influence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was ready to branch out and meet new people after being tired of the same old judgmental faces in middle school. I was 13 and ready for something new, and I immediately found a group of upperclassmen that was uniquely fun. Each of them came with their own issues of problematic families, struggles to graduate school, or trauma from sexual assault. Regardless, I enjoyed their care-free spontaneity that let me experience their impulsive joy. One night, I came home around three in the morning with a bloody gash on my leg. I tried to hide it from my mom, but she saw the stained paper towels in the trash.

“Megan, what is wrong? Why are these paper towels covered in blood?” she asked with aggression and worry.

After stopping by to pick up the shrooms my friend Stef was buying, we decided to go TP a house. The cops pulled up, so I ran into the woods. I slipped on a muddy patch and my leg got cut. But it’s fine because the cops didn’t catch me.

“We were playing basketball yesterday and I got fouled and fell so I cut my knee,” I said, a little too quickly. I could not bear to see the mournful look on my mother’s face if she knew the types of activities I considered fun. I was not ready to host the funeral for the successful child she tried so hard to raise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My knee healed and I continued to act recklessly with friends during my first year or two of high school. After this, my older friends graduated high school. This left me more time to spend with other people, mostly my high school soccer teammates, who valued good grades, loyalty, and liked to watch movies on the weekends. In an attempt to fit in, I bought fuzzy flannel pajama pants to watch movies at their houses. I started to fall in love with the comfort of the cotton pants on Friday nights. I traded in the minty flavor of Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey for Junior Mints, and the pungent smell of pot for a lavender diffuser.

Moving forward, teachers began to see me as a hardworking athlete and not a careless kid, wasting intelligence and athleticism. At times, this identity felt stable. Other times, I craved the exhilarating experiences of my early high school days.

Ultimately, I began to root my identity more deeply in wholesome behavior, rather than recklessness. This became a constant for me until graduating high school. It remains a piece of my identity, with only a few interruptions during moments of stress and change. These moments have become shorter and less frequent as I convince myself of my identity.

The last time I had the urge to drink heavily to tolerate the stressors of life was yesterday. The last time I drank heavily to tolerate the stressors of life was four years ago. My interest in becoming the shady character perched on the local bar stool with an oversized black backpack filled with various illegal substances has subsided. My need to solve problems with violence is usually nothing more than a fleeting thought.

I do not act the way I once did. I do not partake in the activities I once pictured myself destined to do. I am 23 years old. I earned a scholarship to play college soccer and I am graduating with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in criminal justice. With my degree, I will soon prevent crime, I will rehabilitate individuals from their poor choices, I will guide youths who feel their family has set them up for failure.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My experiences are not unique. Every day there is a child struggling to suppress their conflicting identities. I’ve learned it is possible. While nature and nurture shape us, they leave us with options. No one is helpless in the path of their lives. Each day we must choose to be the person we want. We are so much more than a product of our genetics and environment. We have the agency to choose our own outcomes—destiny is a multiple-choice exam.

The author is a fifth-year student at Northeastern University soon to graduate with her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. She was a varsity athlete at Northeastern and is looking to continue her engagement with athletics after graduation.

Read more from our Writing to Heal: College Student Stories series.

by Theresa Chung

Korean Romanization - English Translation

Halabeoji - Grandpa

Halmeoni - Grandma

Samchon - Uncle

Maknae-imo - Youngest Aunt

Kuhn-imo - Eldest Aunt

Umma - Mom

Appa - Dad

Unnie - Older Sister

Ban-chan - Side Dishes

As tradition, my family would fly from whichever New York airport that had the cheapest tickets to Fullerton, California every summer to spend time with my umma’s side of the family. It was never quiet with so many kids and adults in one house; everyday was eventful, whether we took collective naps on the cool floor or threw each other into the swimming pool.

 Summer 2016 - Fullerton, CA

The last time I went to Fullerton for a vacation, I was fifteen-years old, a rising junior in high school. I was also having the worst experience with puberty, which had turned me into a terrible teenager. Every conversation with my parents ended with me annoyed at them for “never understanding me.” Umma still recalls how I always slammed my bedroom door.

 On the last day before umma and I had to return home, I had to complete summer AP U.S. History homework that I had pushed off. I only realized I had spent the whole day writing when umma and halmeoni started to prepare dinner in the kitchen. I asked umma what we were eating. She said leftover ban-chan and rice.

 I whined that I didn’t want to eat more rice and leftovers. I wanted something good, like fried chicken or grilled meat.

 Umma told me to just eat what’s given. We weren’t going to make food since there were only five people at home. I now suspect it was also because umma didn’t want halmeoni to feel obligated to make anything, especially since the chemo was taking away the energy that had once let her spend days making me mujigae-ddeok, my favorite rice cake, which requires sitting in front of a fire in 80-degree weather to make. I didn’t think to consider halmeoni’s health, putting my desires before her.

 I ignored umma’s words and scavenged for food. I walked over to the wooden pantry. Success. A box of Kraft Mac and Cheese. I grabbed it and told umma this was my dinner. She gave up and told me to do whatever I wanted.

 Umma set out a few plates of ban-chan on the table, which was strange because in past years, halmeoni would cook enough to cover the entire table. I re-read the directions on the box as I cooked the mac and cheese.

 Dinner felt gloomy. As the last meal I would eat with halmeoni, the mac and cheese wasn't good. I regretted eating it instead of halmeoni’s ban-chan, but being a teenager, I wouldn’t allow myself to show umma I made a mistake.

 The last night of the last vacation in Fullerton was uncomfortably quiet. The house had always felt empty once samchon decided to move his family away and maknae-imo didn’t sleep over as often. There were no giggles from cousins who couldn’t sleep, or songs sung by my halabeoji.

 The next morning, I found myself holding back tears as we packed for the airport.

 Halmeoni woke up early to make sure we had packed everything. As we put our shoes on, she shoved a package of coffee milk boxes into umma’s purse, reprimanding us for forgetting it. We had bought it at the supermarket days before, halmeoni taking notice of how much I liked it.

I gave my halmeoni a last hug, feeling how she was still soft to hold. That was the last time that I touched halmeoni, as I couldn’t bring myself to touch her while she laid in her casket.

 Like every summer before, halmeoni stood outside and waved as the car pulled out, my eyes wet with tears that I was too ashamed to let out.

At the airport, umma and I poked straws into the six cartons of the coffee milk while in line for the security check. We knew there was no way we were going to throw away the milk and so we chugged it before we made it to the scanner.

May 2017 - Albany Airport, NY

Umma decided to miss work for four days to fly to Fullerton. Halmeoni was no longer on chemotherapy and was forgetting who her children were at times.

Appa and I picked umma up from the airport the day I took the APUSH exam.

Only three days later I received a late-night phone call from my cousin, who I have heard cry just once in my life.

The three of us returned to the airport at dawn on the 9th, only this time we were all flying to Fullerton. It was the first time we had ever purchased such expensive tickets and paid for the overpriced airport parking fee.

 Spring 2017-2021 - Experiencing Guilt

Every day since May 8th…

I have asked myself why I chose to eat the mac and cheese that night. I ask myself when I crave mac and cheese. I ask myself when I see store-made mujigae-ddeok. I ask myself when I ask umma to make my favorite summer food of oi-ji, pickled cucumbers and she responds with how halmeoni was the only one who could make it how I liked it, and then we fall silent.

 I have hated my fifteen-year-old self for putting her stupid pride and teenage angst before everyone else. Because of her, I lost my chance to eat halmeoni’s food one last time. I don’t remember the last thing I ate that halmeoni made. I only remember that I ate the dreadful mac and cheese.

 I have felt useless. For years, I never knew what type it was nor did I ever ask. Umma told me that it was simply cancer. That’s all I was to know.  

For years, I’ve asked myself, why did umma never tell me what it was? I never knew what was happening, what symptoms were present, that halmeoni was tired… Umma and her siblings talked to each other about the appointments in Korean, words that I was unfamiliar with even in English and thus words that I could never understand. Leaving me to ask these questions to myself, umma decided to depend heavily on unnie the whole time.

 Unnie was older, smarter, and preparing for medical school, so she was more familiar with the terminology. She helped translate during halmeoni’s appointments even though she was busy studying for the MCAT. I knew nothing about the human body or cancer. I avoided phone calls, self-conscious about my Korean and fearful of embarrassing myself. I didn’t do anything to help halmeoni.

 Fall 2018 – Interstate 90, MA

While driving home from college in Boston, I finally mustered up the courage to ask appa what the diagnosis was. Liver cancer and… Throughout the conversation, I also realized why I was never included in conversations about halmeoni. It wasn’t just the cancer, it never is. My umma’s side of the family dealt with many struggles that come with being immigrants and being human. Life was never easy for them, but that was nothing they wanted to make obvious to the children. This is typical within Korean families as we Koreans are very prideful people. The adults in my family have endeavored to allow their children to enjoy blissful, naive childhoods, and to some extent, I feel gratitude towards their efforts.

 2019-2021 - Processing Grief

My anger towards umma for not telling me everything about halmeoni has long dissipated Even when halmeoni was dying, I focused on myself. I hadn’t thought about how my umma had to hear her own umma had died just days after she had left to go back home to work. That my umma had to spend years living so far away from her umma while her siblings were always there with her. That my umma had to deal with her daughter being so cruel at a time when she needed support. Only years later have I realized how selfish I was.

 Since May 8th, 2017, I have come to college in hopes of becoming a doctor. Sometimes as I do homework that mentions metastasis, I wonder if it would’ve been better if halmeoni had lived longer. But would I have felt better after taking heavy science lectures? After reading research papers full of jargon? Would I truly have thought I was doing something to help, or would I have continued to feel useless in this uncontrollable, solution-less situation?

 I don’t know, but I do know that I must forgive my younger self for choosing to eat the mac and cheese that night. As much as I resent her for her decisions, my younger self is still me. She deserves to be forgiven.

As a fifteen-year-old, I knew nothing about death, so I didn’t know how to process my grief. But on this never-ending path to forgiveness, I have learned that there is no proper way to experience grief. I realized it years after halmeoni left before I could show her a better version of myself. And I realized it weeks after kuhn-imo had ended her own fight with cancer and decided to leave us for halmeoni.

August 2021 - Growing Up

I didn’t realize it until a few weeks after kuhn-imo passed, but I didn’t hate myself as severely when she died, despite feeling the same frustration towards oncologists and money, or lack thereof. I questioned if it was because I unconsciously liked halmeoni more and if I was a bad person, but it wasn’t that. Guilt hadn’t shrouded the grief I felt for her passing. I mourned kuhn-imo without being overwhelmed with selfish thoughts. I was able to send her off in a more peaceful manner. Of course, I regret being unable to mourn for halmeoni in a better way, but I believe she would feel proud, knowing that I am trying to make peace with myself.

Theresa is a fourth-year student attending Northeastern University in Boston, MA. She is pursuing a major in the Health Sciences as well as a minor in English Writing. She hopes to attend medical school and also to continue to write both nonfiction and fiction.

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By Ashley Lynch

My New Hampshire Colonial-style house sat at the edge of a cul-de-sac, and this is the house we still live in today. Despite regular renovations and repairs, I sometimes feel the house has aged more than I have in tangible years, and attempts to fix the house have resulted in an altered-kind-of Botox look after a few too many surgeries—different from the original, fixed but in an unfamiliar way. When I was younger, the cul-de-sac seemed expansive, and to leave the end of my street was not something I pondered without the presence of my family.

When I was young, my mom was my only caretaker and main source of comfort, to the point where even being close to her could serve as a security blanket. As a shy kid, I would sometimes attempt to escape meeting new people or interacting with strangers by hiding near my mom's feet, covering myself with the bottom of her summer dress as a makeshift disguise. Her wardrobe rotated through a few calf-length, heavily-worn dresses, some I recognized as purchases from Walmart and others I knew to be gifts from the maternity section from my aunt. My mom struggled with holding weight around her midsection, and I remember her initial offense and later realization that these clothes helped to shape her form a bit more nicely.

As a toddler, I can recall I would only venture to leave the house on my own if I could not immediately find my mom. One hazy, humid summer morning, my twin and I heaved open the front door because we did not see mom and were met with the feeling of insecurity, of momentary anxious abandonment. It was early enough that clouds still covered the promise of sunlight. My bare feet were instantly chilled by the cool nighttime still clutched by our stone front steps. I leaped to the neighboring grass for temperature relief and decided I preferred the slightly more pleasant feeling of sticky, damp grass; the layer of dew provided the grass with increased shear force for the blades to get stuck between my stubby toes.

Mom was talking with an unfamiliar technician, and Sarah and I were relieved to have found her. “Uppie,” Sarah repeated our familial, conditioned word in asking to be picked up, to be comforted after a few moments of lostness without Mom’s presence. Our gray house was the most familiar physical place I knew, but this familiarity lost its relief when our emotional source of comfort was not there, making us cinnamon toast or joining us to watch cartoons. Sarah outstretched her arms; even though Sarah was asking for this affection, mom’s physical comfort was not a question, and she was swept up before I could fully raise my arms as well.

“Uppie,” I repeated in turn. I was the second twin to be delivered and sometimes still following in Sarah’s footsteps. “No,” my mom looked down for a moment, still in conversation with the stranger, “I can’t pick you both up anymore. You’re too heavy. Sarah needs this more.”

Sarah’s autism diagnosis was recent, and one that I would not fully understand for many years to come. As a toddler, it was implanted in my brain as a lesson, as essential as the alphabet and number line, that Sarah faced extra difficulties and needed more attention and support. By the age of four, mom told me I was old enough to get dressed on my own, but I still found it hard to differentiate the neck and arm holes or feel confident in deciding which clothes matched. We are twins, and eighteen years later Sarah receives help getting dressed to this day.

Growing up with Sarah requiring an institutionalized level of care for years, I was frozen in this yearning, young pose, with my arms still reaching up. I found myself reasserting my need for attention as we grew up. Sarah required more care on all levels, and simple communication with my mom could seem unfathomable. My arms attempted to stretch a distance of a thousand miles, and this distance grew even when my mom and I existed in the same home.

In our kitchen, there used to be a bar-top counter attached to the longest wall, with two wooden chairs placed beneath the pale counter, one stool uneven and rickety in its balance. Covering this wall was a large mirror that made the kitchen seem larger than it actually was; some of the repairmen who entered into the house would express their initial confusion, thinking the mirror represented the other half of the room or an open table instead of a sheltered countertop. My mom spent the majority of her time home typing at this space. Although this mirror is no longer in the kitchen, I can still envision my mom’s reflection here: her slightly-bent posture, how the wrinkles on her forehead and typing hands were less noticeable in this image than face-to-face, and her utter concentration on the screen. When I would attempt to speak to her while she was here, she would look back at me through the mirror, or answer without shifting her gaze from the laptop. Over time, I longed for eye contact that didn’t take place through a reflection.

I know now that this stretching of distance between us was unpreventable, and due to Sarah’s circumstances, my mom was truly not available. I am not sure whether she was aware of this.

 After her initial diagnosis, Sarah was assigned to work full time with an in-house behavioral management specialist, who operated with support from a larger behavior management team. Despite the continued efforts of this support system, over the years two of our car windshields were shattered, one storm door was destroyed, and more holes than I can recall appeared on the wall from the force of Sarah’s fist or head. Sometimes the holes would be patched up in a timely manner, but other marks of chaos lingered, and I struggled to shuffle visiting friends past these damages. I found myself arranging cafe coffee dates or simply agreeing to hang-outs I did not have to host. Growing up, the physical shape of my house felt like a part of my identity, like the clothes I chose to wear or food I selected to eat.

Now that I am in college, I am not home often, but one week in the summer when I stayed in New Hampshire, I woke to screaming downstairs. In the past few months, Sarah had been experiencing psychosis, a personality shift, and tested highly positive for Lyme disease. The latter can result in neurological damage. In the process of trying out various antipsychotic medications, Sarah experienced hallucinations as a side effect. Mom had gone out for a quick trip to the grocery store, and when I found Sarah, I discovered she believed that a truck had crashed into our living room. Since moving out, I sometimes find it startling how out of touch I have become to Sarah’s ongoing daily needs that mom provides.

College has also given me space to reflect on my upbringing, and when I return home, I can better understand the choices my mom made as a parent as well as the tension she carried and her constant closed-off nature.

 During that most recent trip home, I saw a large hole in the wall of the upstairs hallway, which I had learned via text a few weeks before occurred during a challenging time with Sarah’s hallucinations. Viewing the picture of the wall via text, I was initially upset that the hole appeared next to my bedroom door. Seeing the contortion of the wall in person, my heart sank, as I was able to fully make the connection that Sarah’s emotional distress, confusion, and images originating from her mind caused her to hit her head against the wall in frustration.

I no longer associate the physical structure I grew up with as strongly with my identity. It is still a large part of me and my early memories, but the broken facets of this location serve as indicators of endurance rather than of irreparable damage. I know that this hole in the wall has still not been plastered, but I have come to accept both the dynamics of my family and to recognize some things are not an easy fix.

Ashley is a junior at Northeastern University studying bioengineering with a concentration in cell and tissue engineering, and a minor in writing. In her free time, she is a member of Biomedical Engineering Society and enjoys yoga and watching cooking shows.

Read more Writing to Heal: College Student Stories.