I Thought I Was In Love and Felt Like a Crazy Person

 Could I skip to the stage of a relationship that would have been Liz Lemon's dream and just be done with this? 'Kay, thanks.

          I can't possibly be the only person who has thought to themselves, 'UGH. I am so SICK of this stage of love'. Mind you, I know I previously had limited experience with the emotion: I'm part of a warm, stable family and have some semblance of love with a few friends. But 
I stated in January that I am currently in romantic love for the very first time, and holy s--t - I have been thinking like an insane person for the past - mmm, seven months, I think - going through the scientifically proven stage of love that has me much more attentive to small children, dogs and babies, having more difficulty focusing on tasks, getting annoyed with myself.

 

This piece was first published on 3.29.14 and the title was changed on 11.28.20

Recovering From a Friendship Breakup REDUX: Recent Toxicity

Time to cut ties with the recent past and not write about it for a long, long time:

The hardest part of letting a longtime pal fall away has, for me, been the struggle to end my long obsession with the other person’s wrongdoings. If someone I really like and respect screws up badly enough, I’ll cut off all communication with them until I have thoroughly processed recent events, which can take months or even years.  The majority of the time, the person from whom I’m gaining distance is needy;

Gender Dysphoria

----AUTHOR'S NOTE JANUARY 29, 2023: I look forward to revisiting this topic in the future, so maybe this essay can be a resource or a time capsule item, but please know that it was specifically created by the person I was in 2014, and even she wasn't anywhere near award-winning levels of rifling through one's own mental Rolodex or researching for her writing. Thanks for your time!---- 

          I’ve been learning more about gender and sexuality in the last few years and I have to say that I’m fascinated by a lot of it. As you know, gender is a complicated thing, so I've made a conscious effort to seek out the information. It started in my teens with an article in some girly magazine (Girls' Life? er...), interviewing a couple of gender-transitioning individuals and their parents, of which I now only remember a photo of Samantha, a trans woman, and her dad’s statement that he was supportive, and just last year, I turned to an episode of Our America with Lisa Ling on the OWN Network. I love that show, and in that particular episode, two adults, one of them middle-aged, were undergoing transitions, and I got to see how, in the one case, there was a woman who had lived in a man’s body for over four decades, married, and raised two sons, each of whom were in their teens or twenties when one of their parents started to build an identity that she could truly be herself in.

I Want to Make My Own Major

 

            I've surpassed a need for an honesty warning, right? Right.  

          So I'll unhappily admit that I am not an ideal student. For instance, I’m very intellectually curious but a terrible test-taker.I'll space out a lot during an exam and get very sleepy, which is entirely a psychological problem, but a reality all the same. I learn a lot and enjoy it and study only to end up with grades far below A, often around C; Just this past semester I got an 80% on my American History I midterm and requested high-fives from my parents. It's obvious that I'm one of those people who has to put in a hell of a lot of work to do well in most academic things. I'd need a study buddy, too. And the IED* my parents had set up for me years ago. But even with that obstacle, I've been trying to move forward as a passionate student of writing and the human experience.