My father joined the navy right after he earned his Master’s degree. He agreed to a five-year term, but stayed for two extra years because he didn’t know where else to go. When telling his stories, my father never says anything with a whole lot of opinion or feeling, so putting all the pieces together and trying to find a human out of it was my job. He grew up in Merced, California, and hated school. His family was poor, but he didn’t want to end up like the people he saw in the parking lot after graduation bragging about their new factory jobs, so he went to his local community college. After two years, he transferred to a different community college, moving out of his parents’ house. Two more years and he was enlisted. Nobody in his life really felt or expressed much, and the trend carried through with him. He just stayed alive, left the navy, married a woman because she was the first person ever to tell him she loved him, and had a kid. Then he was recruited to teach in Virginia, simply because he had been in the navy and they wanted to implement that discipline in their school. He had already gotten divorced and was holding his son while agreeing to leave. I always admired my father because he never stayed in one place. Even when he lived on a submarine, he was traveling the world and walking through cities I’ve always dreamed of. I wanted to be like this since I was young: free, unchained, and allowed to roam. It wasn’t until I got older that it really clicked for me: my father never made any substantial change in his life because he honestly wanted to. He went to college because it was cheap to live at home and he would earn more money with a degree. He went to the navy because it was free housing and he would be paid with benefits. He got married because his parents never told him they loved him. He moved to Virginia and started teaching because he was newly divorced and somebody scouted him to go. He married my mom and stayed with her because they got pregnant. The only thing he chose to do for himself was move from Virginia to Vermont, putting more distance between his eight-year-old son and his father, after he had already committed himself to a relationship with my mom, who still lived in Virginia. In my father’s words, I discovered a dream of mine: I wanted to work somewhere that didn’t cause me intense worry, that took care of me, and that allowed me to travel like I always wanted. In my father’s actions, I discovered a parent, child, and spouse that I hope never to turn into. I will find work that gives me hope, and an outlet for my passion. I will tell my mom I love her every day. I am in college at sixteen because I want to be, despite the inconvenience and the unwillingness to help from my father. I won’t live a life that my children have to discover from the people I’ve wronged. I will spend my working days doing good work that I’m proud of and that I choose each morning, so my family will never have to think of themselves as what came to be only because I was too scared to sit down with myself and discover what I truly want. I will choose my future wholeheartedly, so all involved know that they were a choice, not a consequence.

Once upon a time, on a sunny afternoon in seventh grade, I was lulled into a comfortable sleep by the screams of a newly-born baby. The day was May 16. An important day for me, because my crush (!!!<3) was turning 13! We celebrated the day bright and early at 7:00am at a jazz band rehearsal, then he lived it up in lunch detention because his friend kicked dirt on someone's shoe. We don't know who told, because the victim "ain't no snitch." Then, as the day came to a close in last period Science, a cherub started singing. We were in our reproduction unit despite the cooties flying around us, and our teacher had it in his mind that we would finish off strong with a video of two live births. The first one was natural, which went okay. We washed the video down with a blurry, zoomed-in photo of the best friend of my crush (!!!<3), then artfully segued into the friendly neighborhood Cesarean Section. Sometime during the video, someone hacked the screen, because all I saw was a black-and-red image of my man-child science teacher crouched over me, looking awfully worried. They must have hacked the speakers, too, because I was hearing, "Go to Mrs. Williams's room!" and "Get the nurse!" It was a super cool effect, really. Whoever did that was uber-talented. My subconscious must have been really annoyed with my teacher, because in my funky red-and-black dream (which I had come to assume it was), his abrasive voice kept telling me to breathe in that annoying hospital-y way. Then I realized it wasn't a dream. Of course, out of panic, but mostly out of spite for my teacher, I started hyperventilating. Blah blah blah, I had fainted and fallen backward, blah blah blah, nothing hurt, blah blah blah, no one told my mom (she was literally downstairs) blah blah blah, my science teacher rubbed a crusty brown public school paper towel into my head wound, blah blah blah. Then he and the school nurse get the bright idea to shove me in a wheelchair. Altogether not a bad decision. The kicker? MY TEACHER PUSHED THE WHEELCHAIR. I don't know if I've made this obvious or not, but I had some teensy weensy trust issues with said teacher. Geography lesson: this was the third and top floor of my school. There was a staircase going all the way down to the first floor on the left of the end of the hallway, and right next to it, on the right, was the elevator. As you can imagine, I had a bit of a headache at this point. To nurse this ailment, I covered my eyes with my hands to keep the light out. Consequently, I could not see where my teacher was steering me. Consequently consequently, the entire floor heard my delirious wails: "PLEASE DON'T PUSH ME DOWN THE STAIRS." Someone finally told my mom and we went to the hospital for some stitches. I was crying, of course, and the doctors were really worried. My mom had the pleasure of explaining to them that I was not in pain, that I was simply proclaiming about myself that I was "too smart to be dumb," and would I miss my music competition the next day? It all worked out in the end, because I didn't lose any hair getting stitches, I got a perfect score in the competition ("you should bruise your skull every year"), and if I ever have a shaved-head breakdown, I will have a hardcore scar with a story to tell.

The year 2022 was the busiest on record: starting off strong with the first death of a pet eleven years before “his time” and finishing off strong with making the Dean’s List at college at age 16. There were times when I felt like I had died, times I had built up in my head when I would have my big homecoming after an important event. I thought after I starred in my high school’s play, I would come home wearing my Grandduchess Anastasia Romanov crown and sensational hair-do, and my dog would greet me at the door. I thought my friends, or foolishly, my brother would be in the car waiting for me when my mom picked me up at the airport after five weeks in Europe. I thought I would come home to a family over my first break at college. I just thought I would have more time before I had to make peace without final living goodbyes. An unexpected side-effect of burying a pet is goodbyes get easier. I found myself branching out, no longer dreading the lonesome melancholia of being my only teammate. I reached for opportunities that were far away from home because home, by definition my mom, my cats, and my dog, had a lot less to offer. A threat had been made to my mom's job and money was no longer guaranteed. I had to do what I could while I still could. I went to a leadership conference and learned what goals looked like; I accepted an invitation to attend an intensive camp for aspiring musicians; I explored Edinburgh and the highlands of Scotland; I alone completed a language immersion program in France; I went to college after my sophomore year of high school; I visited family in Mississippi that reminded me what a warm home and a kind father felt like. I traveled all around the world and around my own capabilities, searching for something to clasp between my fingers and nurture until fruit grew from a sick tree. I found hope. I found a home with a garden and a library and a fireplace, with a well-lit guest room for my aging mother. I found trips to Europe, I found volunteering in Haiti. I found writing a book. I found adopting three cats named after cheeses, and installing a plush rug for them to lounge on. I found hope. There are beginnings beyond endings. Spring comes again and airplanes still operate. Dreams still come true and love still needs a tether. Poets still romanticize the littler things, and singers still exalt the bigger. Life needs to be lived. Freak accidents before the age of four and hideaway fathers and brothers cannot be all that anyone knows of life. There are cities and castles and princess dresses, all miraculously available to those who make their dreams come true. I will make my dreams come true and I will not wait for it to make perfect sense. Having more time is a fickle luxury no one can assure. I will find my way through cafés and thin European streets. I will learn three languages and whisk my loved ones away to places where magic still exists. I will love and I will lose, I will recover and I will remember. I will dance in the rain and I will cry, and I will pick myself back up, wash my face, tuck myself into bed, and dream new dreams of coming home to myself after searching oceans and continents for the smile on my face I believe I will see again.

I have no qualms about subjecting an entire population of different states of mind to They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera. I don't recommend this book in a sadistic way, though I will admit that I cried more to this book than I have to any other book/movie. The message of the story is beautifully ambiguous, and the art lies in everything that makes the book its own self. In seeing a book with a damning title revealing an ending no one wants to read, yet choosing to read it anyway, a unique relationship between book and reader is created. The reader chooses to acknowledge the beauty and the value of something ill-fated and impermanent. Though the loss and the deep thinking and all five stages of grief are absolutely guaranteed, the love and the connection and the lessons are not refuted or cast aside. After I read this book, every relationship I was in underwent this monacled examination, during which I clutched the book in my hands with an open mouth, wondering what my conclusions would be if this person and I were alone in a world we were destined to leave within twenty-four hours. How would this person make me feel if I stopped to bury a dead bird? Would they let me sleep on the train? There is a devastating wonderment, looking inside the minds of two teenagers who have just been told they are doomed to die; watching them change their points of view, and the evolution of how fury and regret transformed into acceptance of love. In their last hours alive, they fall asleep instead of going skydiving or meeting the president because they have found their peace in the love they have nurtured and created. The two do not mistake their relationships for what they are not; they simply ask open-ended questions of love and admit their desires to spend a last moment with the one they have found amidst chaos and confusion. Empathy is a powerful tool, and it is no secret that people in this world feel less remorse for those who do not appear as they do. If people can feel sorry for two teens doomed to die from the beginning, maybe their sorrow would last after the reveal of minority race and sexuality. Empathy is a powerful tool, and despondency is a rallying cry.

Vacations Into Womanhood I have been thinking about what it means to be a woman, and when it is that I feel most like a woman. I think it’s when I dance. Alone in my room, my sanctuary, to a song I have decided to play, or the song in my head cutting through the silence in my room. Now that I’m alone, I don’t have to censor the ways I express my emotions. If I find myself gloriously elated, I can hop off my bed and jump around with my hands in the air. I can put on a prom dress just to cry over Sylvia Plath. I can sing out loud to songs that remind me of soft lighting and cinnamon. In a way, I miss girlhood, but I think I’m also figuring out that you never totally lose that. You don’t lose anything. It just transforms. It grows up too quickly, and now you find that childish feeling ugly with stretch marks. But it isn’t gone, and you didn’t lose. It takes a small reminder: the touch of tulle, a pomegranate the color of sticky Hello Kitty lip gloss, or the smell, the color, the bottle texture of a DIY lip balm kit. I think being a woman means feeling separate from girlhood, but traveling back at the resurrection of senses. I think being a woman is organizing. I think it’s figuring out how to separate the feeling of playing on a playground with your best friend and planning your joint wedding, from the feeling of realizing for the first time that you will never be as safe as your brother, no matter where you go. Being a woman is discovery; it’s compensation; it’s bargaining. Being a woman is having a community of strangers who feel what you do, and go through the same stages as you. Being a woman is never being alone. Being a woman is remembering. Being a woman is thinking. Planning. Color therapy. Finding the right tea. Trying mom jeans for the first time. Learning. Catering. Baking. Failing. Trying again. Being a woman is looking at sunsets. Listening to water. Being a woman is thinking about eating fruits, and keeping a house clean. Being a woman is building a home that needs only you. No father, no brother, no partner. Just the earth and the air. A garden out back. A bookshelf. A big closet filled with the things that make you feel good. A full pantry. Something special in the oven, just for you. Little presents for yourself. Maybe a little cat. Cute shoes. Comfortable shoes. Candles. Being a woman is constantly working on your own sanctuary and building the life that you want, even if it is all just inside your head.

I kissed my dog goodbye one last time a year ago today. Through the devastation, I had to sit with my own thoughts, claiming that I shouldn’t be sad over a dog I only knew for three years; some person buried a real family member today. It was an experience I know I will live through again, with my own conscience gaslighting me into smiling through it because someone out there actually merited the sadness I was wasting on a loved one who couldn’t even talk. The year 2022 was the busiest on record: starting off strong with the first death of a pet long before “his time” and finishing off strong with making Dean’s List at college at age 16. There were times when I felt like I had died, times I had built up in my head where I would have my big homecoming after an important event. I thought after I starred in my high school’s play, I would come home wearing my Grandduchess Anastasia Romanov crown and sensational hair-do when he saw me. I thought he would be in the car waiting for me when my mom picked me up at the airport after five weeks in Europe. I thought I would come home to him over my first break at college. I just thought I would have more time. As humans, or perhaps as optimists, we hear heart-wrenching stories of horror and loss, but mercifully believe that such atrocities could never sneak their way into our own lives. As pessimists, we prepare. I fall somewhere in between: I knew the possibilities of the word “gone,” but I still had the hazy assumption that no one in my life could ever be referred to in the past tense. And yet, I had already figured out exactly where to bury him by his first birthday. Regardless, watching the bonfire thaw the ground under his shady tree, and the backhoe dig up a four-foot cavern, and the old Kohl’s box with his blanket, his ball, the letters we wrote him, and his immobile body was like watching a part of my corpse detattach itself, unable to stick around for me. Crazy as it sounds, a hyper English Cocker Spaniel had become by male role model. He taught me what love was supposed to feel like, and he showed me what I was missing in my other relationships with my father and brother. After him, I had to find something else to cling to. I found hope. I found a home with a garden and a library and a fireplace, showcasing a rock with his name on the mantle. I found trips to Europe, I found volunteering in Haiti. I found writing a book. I found adopting three cats named after cheeses, and installing a plush rug for them to lounge on. I found hope. No longer emotionally attached to something only offered at my house alone with my mother, I found myself branching out, reaching for opportunities that were far away from home because my mom would love me no matter my geography. A threat had been made to her job and money was no longer guaranteed. I had to do what I could while I still could. I went to a leadership conference and learned what goals looked like. I accepted an invitation to attend an intensive camp for aspiring musicians. I explored Edinburgh and the highlands of Scotland. I alone completed a language immersion program in France. I went to college after my sophomore year of high school. I visited family in Mississippi that reminded me what a warm home felt like. There is life beyond death. Spring comes again and airplanes still operate. Dreams still come true and love still needs a tether. Poets still romanticize the littler things, and singers still exalt the bigger. Life needs to be lived. Freak accidents before the age of four cannot be all that anyone knows of life. There are cities and castles and princess dresses, all miraculously available to those who make their dreams come true. I will make my dreams come true and I will not wait for it to make perfect sense. Having more time is a fickle luxury no one can assure. I will find my way through cafés and thin European streets. I will learn three languages and whisk my loved ones away to places where magic still exists. I will love and I will lose, I will recover and I will remember. I will dance in the rain and I will cry, and I will pick myself back up, wash my face, tuck myself into bed, and dream new dreams of coming home to a cozy fire and a Coalby paw print mantlepiece.