THIS ONE LIFE

By Courtney Rockwood

Imagine a rushing stream.

Imagine the water running swiftly downhill, bubbling and gurgling and inevitably getting right to where that water needs to go.

Now imagine a stone, stuck right in the middle of that stream. Incapable of moving with the water’s flow, it is too heavy and instead the water rushes around it as the stone remains in place.

That stone is me — or at least the perception I have of myself.

I am a classic 21st-century product of divorced parents. In my case, I thankfully wasn’t old enough to remember the mess of the actual separation and lived a childhood of blissful ignorance peppered with once-a-year visits from my mother. My dad married my stepmother when I was 5 — there was no wedding, and I remember sitting on the couch in the front room of our single-story brick house in Georgia, late afternoon sun coming through the windows — “We’re married now!” And so it was.

My childhood comes to me in flashes of images and colors. The gray streets of London where I spent kindergarten, just my dad and me, holding his hand as I tripped through the puddles. The green mountains of Appalachia — warm summers filled with fireflies and screened porches during our time in Tennessee. My dad again, grilling steaks with a glass of Jack Daniels in his hand. The dusty orange tones of Arches and Bryce and Zion national parks, my own feet dragging in the dust as he disappears around the corner ahead of me — showing me the world that he loved, that was his goal. He was everything to me.

My dad died when I was 22 years old.

He had a rock-climbing accident; he was showing a new friend the joys of climbing in Joshua Tree and things didn’t go as planned. I still remember my mom’s voice over the phone — asking if my boyfriend was with me, could I come home, was I OK.

I was OK — I was strong. I was going to get through this. I was going to prove to everyone that I was the daughter he had raised, and I was going to behave how he would have wanted me to. I comforted others, particularly my family, and bonded with his old college classmates at his Celebration of Life over funny stories and drunkenly sung songs accompanied by an off-key piano. I moved to New York City right after the celebration. I made sure to keep in touch with my family. I started my job as a consultant two weeks after his death. I moved in with my boyfriend. I adopted a dog. I was OK.

And then I broke.

“If anybody else ever says that I’m an incredible writer again, I won’t believe them. Because they are not my dad. I have learned that the identity I developed for 22 years of my life was based on one person’s opinion and respect of me, and now he is gone and I don’t know left from right.”

One of my favorite memories of my dad is from my time at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. It was parents’ weekend, which he attended religiously every year (whether it was to relive his college glory days by drinking room-temperature light beer on the front porch of a frat house or to see me, we’ll never know), and we attended a reading by one of my professors. Afterwards, speaking to this professor, my dad — the writer, the poet, the one who did everything — said, “Courtney is an incredible writer.”

Fast-forward to current me, sitting, incomplete, on my couch, with my dog, overlooking the Manhattan skyline. If anybody else ever says that I’m an incredible writer again, I won’t believe them. Because they are not my dad. I have learned that the identity I developed for 22 years of my life was based on one person’s opinion and respect of me, and now he is gone and I don’t know left from right.

Don’t get me wrong — I haven’t dropped out of the “school of life” completely. I do things — jesus, do I ever do things. I live in a perpetual “year of yes.” My friends and I coined this phrase in college – the “year of yes” was our way of living each moment of our senior year at Vanderbilt to the fullest; saying yes to everything meant we never missed anything. Now, I want my life to be one big “year of yes.” I go to concerts; I go to music festivals; I become utterly absorbed in the rhythm of a good bass beat or in the searing rip of a saxophone through a crowd. I travel — to Ecuador, to ski weekends, to Miami just for a weekend. Everything that comes my way, I absorb. People tell me they are jealous. Jealous. Of me?

I am unstable. I teeter on a thin tightrope between two rooms — the room in which nothing can go right and the room in which nothing can go wrong. I’ll dance for five straight hours then leave to sit by myself in a chair in the corner of a room. When my boyfriend doesn’t unload the dishwasher, my brain jumps to the extreme — why would I date somebody who doesn’t unload the dishwasher? I haven’t made a confident decision in my work life since I started my job as a consultant almost two years ago, and making strong decisions is pretty much a consultant’s job description. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told to “have more confidence – you ask good questions; don’t be afraid.”

“Because there is one thing I’ve learned from my life turning itself upside down over the past couple years: There’s nothing more important than my own happiness. It’s become starkly apparent to me that this is my one life. And I better fucking live it.”

And even though I hear that, I have a screaming, questioning voice in my head — Am I really doing it right? Is this what I want to do with my life? Just get up. Just do it. — I smile and I accept and I fade, back into the cool pocket of water where I’ve found myself lodged.

Because there is one thing I’ve learned from my life turning itself upside down over the past couple years: There’s nothing more important than my own happiness. It’s become starkly apparent to me that this is my one life. And I better fucking live it.

I have friends who are contentedly making their way through their lives doing what they believe they should be doing — they are graduating, they are getting good jobs, they are putting money away in savings accounts and generally living life as they “should.” They are doing it right. Am I doing it wrong?

That will always be my first thought: I’m doing it wrong. The water is rushing around me, it flows over me; I’m drowning.

And then it subsides. I get a breath of fresh air.

I hope to abandon my rung on the corporate ladder soon and give it to somebody more deserving. Maybe I’ll move to Portland and dream up my own line of organic soaps. I want to travel to New Zealand. I won’t worry about how many vacation days are left on my calendar or what the client might think about my time off, and god forbid, no, I will NOT align to a career path at 23 years old. I need to be happy, and call me cheesy, but I will be happy — in this one life.

Guys, do you know? We only get one.

Let the water rush by. I was never one to go with the flow anyway.

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Courtney Rockwood is a music and nature lover in Brooklyn, New York, currently exploring the other half of her personality as a consultant.

FORK IN THE ROAD

By Karen Desai

This is my mother at the age of 25 and my father at 27 on the day of their arranged wedding in India.

I grew up seeing this photo framed in my living room my entire childhood, always reminded of their story: My mother’s parents invited my dad over for tea. My father was awestruck by my mom’s beauty, intelligence and unique ambitions — he thought she had it all. My mother felt that my father talked too much, yet they shared common goals of becoming doctors and moving to America. It was a match. And with that, they were married, moved to America in 1975, practiced medicine, had two children and today are enjoying 40 years of marriage.

My parents were driven by a few unified goals, and that’s what motivated them to take a giant leap together.

Today I’m the same age as my mother in that photo, and I don’t understand how my parents did all of this. For the first time in my life, I feel the pressure of several pivotal decisions  — relocation, career, a serious relationship —  and I’m frozen in fear, unable to choose one path over the other.

I moved to New York City at the age of 17 for college and have lived here for nearly eight years, now working in media and marketing. I owe my growth and development to this vivacious city. It threw me into a playground of opportunity, energy and sin. I learned how to say "no," "yes" and to ask for more — transforming into the independent and driven person I am today. In this city, I’m surrounded by strong, ambitious friends who have the desire to learn and see the world. They are excelling in their careers, moving to new countries, meeting exciting people — living seemingly without worries. So many of my peers say, “We’re in our 20s — this is the time to take risks, be independent. It’s the only time we can be selfish.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to achieve the goals I have set as an ‘I,’ when I also become a ‘we.’ I’ve stood at this fork in the road for months now — what path do I take to ensure I have the most fulfilling journey ahead of me?”

But I’m also in a committed relationship with my boyfriend of five years who is waiting for me to move to Chicago after being long-distance for over two years. I love him, he loves me, my friends and family love him. We could live near our families, get married, settle down. While this premeditated future is something I definitely desire, what has both brought us closer and driven us apart for so long is shared ambition and our individual longing for fulfilling careers. Leaving New York, where my career is growing, seems to contradict the independent, adventurous mindset I share and appreciate with my peers and colleagues.

I don’t know if moving to Chicago and starting a life there with him will hurt the career I’ve worked hard to build here in New York. I don’t know if this move will inevitably impact the independence I have fostered as a New Yorker. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to achieve the goals I have set as an “I,” when I also become a “we.”

I’ve stood at this fork in the road for months now — what path do I take to ensure I have the most fulfilling journey ahead of me? I’ve been paralyzed and unable to take a step forward, filled with the fear that I may choose wrong. I’ve continued to delay my move to Chicago, effectively hurting someone I deeply care for, and yet unable to truly live my life in New York City with one foot out the door.

“My parents shared stories I’ve never heard before — stories of the rejection they faced when moving to America, the risks they took starting their own medical practice, the multiple failures that taught them how to work together through thick and thin. … It was the perspective I needed.”

Recently I watched Netflix’s “Master of None,” and I realized that these are sentiments shared among many millennials. Taking a cue from the show, I confronted my parents about my fears to understand how they felt at my age. They shared stories I’ve never heard before — stories of the rejection they faced when moving to America, the risks they took starting their own medical practice, the multiple failures that taught them how to work together through thick and thin. As a couple, they struggled and succeeded to achieve one selfless goal: to create a comfortable and happy future for their family. After hearing these stories, I felt like my situation was trivial in comparison. It was the perspective I needed.

At one point in “Master of None,” Dev (Aziz Ansari’s character) reads a quote from “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath: “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.... I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I don’t know what my future should be or will be, but I do know I no longer want to be paralyzed with — starving from — indecision. I want to move forward with my life. I want to be surrounded by people who inspire me and embrace me for me. My boyfriend does just that, and I’d like to build a life with him in Chicago so that we can try to achieve our goals, together.

I’m learning to be comfortable with creating unified goals, not knowing what mistakes and lessons our future holds. Like my parents, I’ve decided to take that leap of faith — to Chicago, definitely a shorter distance than India to America — in pursuit of building my life with another.

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Karen Desai is a product marketing manager who resides in New York City, soon to be residing in Chicago.

I'M NOT OK

By Jenny McCoy

I snapped this photo of New York City’s iconic Lincoln Center at 2 a.m. on a Saturday, about six months after I graduated from Northwestern University. To my Instagram followers, it probably looked like the idyllic end to a fancy night out on the town — an encapsulation of the elegance, wonder and magic of living in New York City as single, 22-year-old woman. In reality, I took it as I trekked home through snowy sleet after my night shift at Trader Joe’s, where I worked weekends to supplement the meager salary of my 8–6 gig as a PR intern. The moment was both beautiful and achingly brief as I knew I’d be trekking back in just 10 hours for another shift.

This reality was a far, pathetic cry from the one I imagined when I decided to move to the Big Apple post college to pursue magazine journalism. Sure, I knew the first few weeks — OK, maybe month — would be challenging as I’d have to 1) find a job that would cover my expenses (my parents had lovingly, but firmly, cut me off financially) and 2) adjust to life in a new place. Of course I was nervous for the leap but mostly just so freaking excited. Nothing seemed more glamorous, more thrilling than life in the big city. Everyone kept reiterating this excitement — parents, professors, relatives, friends — saying encouraging things like:

“Amazing!!! You’re going to be living the dream!”

“Nothing like NYC in your 20’s!”

“I can’t wait to hear about your wonderful adventures!”

No one said things like:

“The first six months are actually going to be really tough — you’ll cry most days.”

“Job hunting will be a frustrating, ego-bruising experience.”

“Forget 4 a.m. nights at exotic jazz clubs; after 75-hour work weeks, you won’t have the energy to explore anything but your twin bed.”

And so I arrived in New York as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as they come. I unpacked the boxes I’d just packed up from college and threw myself fervently into the job search. I scoured Mediabistro, stalked alums on LinkedIn and arranged coffee dates. I printed writing samples on cream-colored cardstock and hand-delivered them to prospective employers. I set up camp in Starbucks and obsessively finessed my resume, widening my search beyond journalism and applying to 53 jobs in three weeks. And while my parents had warned that the process required patience and persistence, after a dozen or so outright rejections, my optimism began dwindling. In its place came despair, and before long, panic. I tallied up my expenses and realized I was paying $47 each day just to exist there. I imagined my life savings quickly draining like sand in an hourglass. I looked at my successfully employed friends and classmates and felt like a failure. After a particularly humiliating experience interviewing with a fashion communications firm (they asked for my three favorite designers; I nervously word vomited, “Coach, Gucci and Nordstrom”), the panic worsened.  

“No one said things like: ‘The first six months are actually going to be really tough — you’ll cry most days.’”

Enter Trader Joe’s and the PR internship.

A regular TJ’s customer, I applied to become a “Crew Member” upon realizing my weekly shopping trips there were oddly soothing in the midst of my jobless angst: The people were genuinely — almost unnervingly — friendly, the music nostalgia-inducing (Van Morrison and the Beatles peppered their playlists), the free samples generous. At least this will provide some amount of income and temporary mental reprieve while you get your life together, I told myself as I suited up for my first shift, pulling on the baby-pink cotton Crew Member tee, fastening my bright red all-caps name tag and lacing my Chuck Taylors. The internship opportunity came not long after, through a third-degree connection. I knew nothing about the company and even during the interview had trouble feigning interest in the work. Still, I accepted out of desperation and quickly adjusted my TJ’s shifts to accommodate the new weekday gig.

Thus began the 75-hour, seven-days-a-week schedule. Neither job resembled anything near my dreams for post-college, but the combined salaries covered my rent and provided an answer to the dreaded, “So, what do you do?” question. I could report back to those who had so encouraged this move that I was “a busy bee in the Big Apple!” and “learning to love that fast-paced big city lifestyle!”

But as I spent my weekdays in an office where smiles were seldom and my weekends bagging Joe’s O’s, the panic morphed into a bone-deep fatigue. Fridays, the days I worked both jobs, were the worst. I’d tuck my TJ’s attire inside my workday purse, and as soon as my intern duties wrapped at 6, I’d commute uptown for my second shift at 7, eating dinner (usually an apple and a Clif Bar) en route and changing clothes in the cramped bathroom stalls I’d later scrub down.

For the first three hours, I’d man the cash register or start the requisite cleaning: sweeping, mopping, Lysoling bathrooms, taking out the trash, etc. Once the store officially closed at 10 p.m., the managers would turn up the music, bust out communal snacks and assign everyone a section for restocking. In a sad, strange way, it reminded me of sorority recruitment minus the glitter and crepe paper. If I was lucky, I’d be assigned to stock bread (minimal heavy lifting, plus it smelled good); unlucky, I’d get frozen fish (so, so cold). Either way, restocking required serious hunch-backing, and by the time I clocked out at 2 a.m., I was beyond beat. On the plus side, this resulted in deliciously deep sleep. The sleep was never long enough, though, as I’d be up at 10 a.m. on Saturday for my noon to 8 p.m. shift and then up again at 10 a.m. on Sunday for more of the same. I continued the maddening routine by staying on autopilot, not allowing myself to think beyond the bags of bread in my hands.

“In vocalizing my angst, I realized I was not alone in it.”

My breakdown came in October, on my 22nd birthday. In a very rare evening out on the town, I was seeing Ben Rector (one of my favorite musicians) at Irving Plaza (another iconic NYC venue) with one of my best friends. In theory, it was exactly the kind of night I once imagined would be my norm in New York. Instead, triggered by her thoughtful probing — “How are you, really?” — I started sobbing uncontrollably.

Yes, it was exhausting working 75 hours a week, having no weekends, and spending my Friday and Saturday nights scrubbing shit off of public toilets. But the tears weren’t about my tiring schedule or the fact that I was paying my dues in roles I had no intention of pursuing. The exhausting part was fooling others — and myself — in thinking I was OK. And so I stopped. I finally admitted it: “I am not OK.” With that honesty came clarity. In vocalizing my angst, I realized I was not alone in it.

My friend working a prestigious fellowship at a major media company? The job left her in such a continual state of exhaustion that she fell asleep in a Barnes & Noble.

My childhood pal who up and moved to Seattle for a sought-after college ministry internship? She felt homesick every time she saw mountains.

My high school chum embarking on a life-changing journey with the Peace Corps? She confessed she’d never been more lonely.

Everyone felt it, whether we were in a Trader Joe’s stockroom, a Barnes & Noble aisle, a solitary church pew, a rural Indonesian village.

More than two years have passed since I snapped that photo of Lincoln Center. Acknowledging that everyone, in some way or another, was struggling to orient themselves post grad helped me move on to the next step. I no longer work at Trader Joe’s or the PR firm, and am lucky enough to have just one, 40-hour-a-week job that pays the bills. I spend my Friday and Saturday nights not scrubbing shit off of public toilets, but out with my friends (or in my bed with HBO GO).

Despite all this, every now and again, that feeling resurfaces when I compare the fantasy life I moved to New York for with the newly comfortable one I’ve actually created.

It’s a creeping weariness that most of us have felt, or are feeling, or will feel.

It’s a collective I’m-not-OK-ness that, in the end, makes us OK.

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Jenny McCoy is putting her Trader Joe’s experiences to use in the food department of a global communications firm. She lives in New York City.

LIFE CRISIS BLUES

By Lauren Lily Carrington

My friend Melanie and I had a lot of life talks when I was 21.

I remember one in particular so clearly: I am about to graduate college, and she is about to turn 25.

Melanie is an Arkansas girl through and through. Born and raised in Conway, she graduated from the University of Central Arkansas in ’09 with a business degree and promptly started working in sales at Hewlett-Packard. She has bright blond hair carefully ratted then smoothed over to create gravity-defying volume on the crown of her head. I’ve never seen her without full makeup, or wearing something pink or sparkly. The amount of shoes she owns is truly impressive. In comparison, I am obscenely low maintenance. In fact, if you never get past the surface, I am nothing like her. When I first came to Arkansas, this intimidated me, but now, after four years of camaraderie, she is my soul sister.

As she drives me to Little Rock in her shiny red car, she confides in frustration, “I thought I would be married by now. Or at least close!” “Amen sistah,” I say — although I do not share her particular concerns. Here is a girl who was always racing to grow up — and did. But now what? She is frustrated by the emptiness of her apartment, the relentless continuity of her steady job, the lack of maturity and echoing emotional distance between her and her former boyfriend of six years.

“As she drives me to Little Rock in her shiny red car, she confides in frustration, ‘I thought I would be married by now. Or at least close!‘ ‘Amen sistah,‘ I say — although I do not share her particular concerns. Here is a girl who was always racing to grow up — and did. But now what?”

I, on the other hand, have always dug in my heels and clawed at childhood, desperate to hold on as long as I could. Perhaps that has something to do with why I look like I’m 16 and could get carded at an R-rated movie. “You asked for it!” the universe snickers at me. But I am not 16. The world spins and life moves forward, taking me with it. I watch light come through windows and move reliably across walls. This day, overcast and muggy, is already halfway over. The flowers that have been blooming in droves around campus will wilt and drop soon enough. I have a life crisis every other hour.

“Melanie, you are having a quarter-life crisis. Don’t laugh! It’s real! You need to trade in your car for a Cadillac and date a 19-year-old frat boy. Trust me. It will totally make you feel young again.”

This is the only way I can respond to her because she won’t believe me when I say that 25 is young. After all, I'm speaking all the way back from 21.

“You will definitely be married by 25,” she accuses me. There is truly no basis for this. In spite of my mother’s misguided hopes, Carrington girls don’t date, much less marry young.

“You know that marriages that happen after 25 are twice as likely to last?”

She looks hopeful at the news.

“I totally made up that statistic, but it’s based on a real one, I swear.” Melanie sighs heavily.

Well, if all else fails, bring up a mutual friend: “Look at Amy — 25 and she’s divorced with a kid. At least you’re not divorced with a kid.”

“A Cadillac won’t work,” Melanie muses thoughtfully. “That’s an old man car. But a 19-year-old frat boy, hmm?”

“That’s the spirit!”

Of course, giving advice to others is often easier than listening to it ourselves. But like Melanie, not too long ago I was questioning many aspects of my own life.

“She tells me that nothing I’m going through is unusual — a comforting and terrifying thought. If this is true then I’m in good company, but can everyone else really be wandering around clueless, barely scraping by? How does society manage to hold itself together?”

First semester of senior year in college I hit a wall. The future was a frightening blank. The present was mind-numbingly pointless. Gray days increased. I dragged myself to class when I could, only to gaze unseeingly at the back of so-and-so’s head, nearly always near to tears. My painting professor of three semesters demanded to know what was wrong with me. Where had my endless enthusiasm gone? I could only shrug helplessly and drag my brush slowly across the canvas like nails on a chalk board.

“I’m coming home,” I informed my mother. “I’m wasting time and money.”

“I’m leaving,” I informed my roommate. “I don’t know what I want.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I informed my academic advisor, shrugging. “I’m a burnout.”

Sensing my misery, those to whom I revealed my insane plan listened sympathetically and offered their support. The thought of making more and more choices I couldn’t understand the significance of grated inside of me. I thought that maybe I could just opt out altogether from the process. Work in a supermarket for a year. Collect my thoughts and a paycheck. Write more blues.

But I don’t faze Mary-Anne, the campus counselor. As silly as I can be, she knows how seriously I take being happy. Too seriously she often points out. She tells me that nothing I’m going through is unusual — a comforting and terrifying thought. If this is true then I’m in good company, but can everyone else really be wandering around clueless, barely scraping by? How does society manage to hold itself together? I peer with new eyes into the faces of my classmates: those who always seem to turn things in on time, those who walk at a confidently comfortable pace in laughing groups… their sense of self seems so stable. Are they wandering? Are they lost?

I buckle down and just finish my final semester.

It slips by quickly, and I've managed to stay through graduation, although I've pared down my schedule to be more personally manageable. I say goodbye to the things I love. And I do love them, I let myself admit. I must let myself have something to lose. I don’t know if it’s really possible that I matured so much in a semester that everything has changed.

Despite my own crises, I am a hopeful person. If there’s nothing we’ve feared to lose, is there anything we’ve let ourselves love? The reality of losing, of dying to what we know, makes our moments brave.

Riding on the passenger’s side of Melanie’s car, I roll down the window and stick my arm out, feeling the wind resist as it threads through my fingers. A fast and flashy car passes us on the highway and we both peer through the window. We burst out laughing at the same time when we see a small elderly woman hunched behind the wheel. Amen sistah.

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Lauren Lily Carrington lives in Salt Lake City where she teaches autistic kids. She is preeettty much doing the same things at 25 as I was at 21, minus college, and stands by that 25 is not actually old.

STARING BACK AT ME

By Katlin Bole

Mirrors and I have had a rocky relationship since 2012, the year of “Call Me Maybe.” Since then the mirror has been the toxic significant other that I should’ve (could’ve, would’ve) dumped. But I was addicted. Addicted to control, to restricting, to binging, to over-exercising … most importantly to over-analyzing every part of my body. The mirror was my partner in crime. It rewarded me when I showed progress. It shamed me when I lost control.

A girl having a problem with body image? Tale as old as time, as my favorite childhood film, “Beauty and the Beast,” would say. Eating disorders in young women, at varying degrees of intensity, are sadly prevalent. A trend that is far from trendy. It’s a story you’ve heard before and a story you’ll hear again.

And if I’m being honest, that’s what has bothered me about this blip in my life the most. This struggle is “normal.” It’s nowhere near unique. And I have craved uniqueness for as long as I can remember. I grew up abroad — a fact I almost immediately force on people when I meet them, a fact I grasp onto as if to prove “I’m different, you see, I have something to offer,” and for a long time I believed that was all I brought to the table. My struggle with my reflection was more to do with my inability to accept my qualities and personality as “enough” or as “special” than it was to do with my physical appearance.

“A girl having a problem with body image? Tale as old as time, as my favorite childhood film, ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ would say. … And if I’m being honest, that’s what has bothered me about this blip in my life the most. This struggle is ‘normal.’”

Thinking back, I wish I could pinpoint and tell you exactly what the reason was, or why my eating disorder came to a head that year. All I know is as I was simultaneously falling in love and stressed about the future (the latter a necessity at my pre-professional school). I constantly found myself wondering if I was enough and then doubting that I was. The obsessive behaviors that came with my ED allowed me to shut up my terrible anxious chatter, and because of that, it became necessary (in my mind) to my day-to-day survival, to my ability to make it to graduation day.  

I graduated college weighing 92 pounds. Wet. Today, I have no idea what I weigh. I do know I’ve gained around 30 pounds in the last year and a half — a feat that seemed impossible a mere three years ago.  

When my friend Sam came to visit Chicago early last year, I was word vomiting about my problems with food, my problems with myself — the frustrating loop that I felt stuck in. Two steps forward, three steps back. Sam sighed, looked at me and said the words I needed to hear (and most importantly was finally ready to really hear): “Then Katlin, do something about it.”

Cue intensive group therapy, the worst yet most wonderful thing to happen to me, the place where I finally made the choice to make an active recovery.

It wasn’t easy, and it won’t be easy. People aren’t kidding when they say recovery is an ongoing process. I’ve strained relationships that I will never be able to fix completely. I’ve lost some trust in myself. But I’ve gained self-awareness. I’ve gained the ability to eat a cookie and not freak out. I’ve gained an overwhelming appreciation of the people I have in my life and a thirst to move forward and live life to the fullest (cheesy lines be damned). One-on-one therapy, a body positive trainer, yoga teacher training … all were and are important steps in my life journey, and though sometimes I wish I could imagine all my past battles away, they are an integral part to the person I am today. The person I can finally make eye contact with in the mirror.

Today I’d say my relationship with the mirror is “on a break,” or maybe more appropriately, “It’s complicated.” I’m slowly coming to be comfortable in my body — to be proud of what it can accomplish, both inside and out, and to refrain from attaching too much to that image staring back at me.

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Katlin Bole currently works as a strategic planner at an advertising agency in Chicago. Yoga mats, fancy cheese, and terrible pop songs are a few of her favorite things.

PIXELS AND PETALS

By Tracy Mutugi

My decision to finally join Instagram came wrapped in a New Year’s resolution with accompanied social pressure in my third year of uni. I had promised myself that I wanted to visually document more of the things that happened in the year so I'd have something interesting and memorable to look back on when I had my next usual quiet New Year’s Eve at home. And it was a way for me to exercise my photographic muscles and note the little interesting moments that don't always get their 15 seconds of fame.

Once that resolve was established and the Instagramming started, I began to develop a system for my posts.

Image: cool things, pretty things, lovely people, awesome places.

Captions: funny, informative, abstract, witty, explanatory.

Hashtags: VSCO (always), city or country the photo was captured in, relevant buzzwords, funny and unexpected tags, other general descriptions of the image contents.

“Each flower he ‘gave’ me sparked a conversation, gave me something to smile about.”

These were carefully and lovingly constructed posts — my spin on the signature square image.

One day, I posted a picture my ex-boyfriend had sent me of a lovely yellow flower. But for the first time, I didn’t follow my formula.

☐ ☐ ☐

Taking pictures of flowers around campus had become a sort of hobby for my now ex-boyfriend. He said it was a way of reminding himself that the world isn't all so bad. He had been taking these pictures for quite some time, even before we met, seemingly for his own simple pleasure — he was not interested in getting an Instagram account and didn’t have a particular audience for his collection of flowers. But then we met, and I became that audience.

I had been hoping and praying and patiently waiting for a boyfriend for a long time, and since I was a preteen had always envisioned being with a man with a flower in hand. So basically, he was a dream. His sending me pictures of flowers was probably the most delightful aspect of our initial courting — when I would wake up to a good morning message, each day accompanied by a different flower. I never expected to get such joy from digital flowers as opposed to real ones.

Flowers became a motif in our relationship. One day, after a coffee date, before things became serious, we walked around our campus and settled at a bench to chat. I had plucked a flower somewhere along the way, and during a lull in the conversation, he suggested we take a picture of it. This meant sitting much closer than usual to get a good view of the phone display, softly sharing suggestions of how to position the flower and detailed explanations of how the camera app worked, both of us trying to be cool about this new level of intimacy. He held the phone and flower, and I pressed the capture button on the screen. This image — this flower — signified progress in our relationship. Soon after, we were officially a couple.

Each flower he “gave” me sparked a conversation, gave me something to smile about. One day I asked, “So what if I put one of these flowers up on my blog?”  

“I don’t like leaving my photos open to interpretation, but this time, I just couldn’t find the words.”

He responded simply with, “Sure. When I send these to you, they equally become yours as they are mine, so you are totally free to share them if you wish.”

He continued, "I'm just glad I finally have been able to share these flowers with someone.”

I smiled, thinking, Where did this guy come from? It was the sweetest thing I'd heard in some time.

☐ ☐ ☐

The image of that lovely yellow flower I posted to Instagram was my favorite flower photo he gave me while we were dating and one that I was very keen to post. But I was biding my time for the right moment on my blog or Instagram page to post it — maybe on our anniversary, maybe when I had a fitting and funny snippet from one of our weird conversations to use as a caption (with a lovingly placed #him somewhere in there too).

That opportunity never came. He broke up with me unexpectedly, and I felt stripped of this chance to showcase the lovely guy who gave me flowers on the regular. And this irked me. So I posted it anyway.

No caption, no hashtags — just bare. An empty photo. Unnamed and nondescript. I don’t like leaving my photos open to interpretation, but this time, I just couldn’t find the words. All I knew is that I wanted it out there. Then, maybe, if he checked up on my Instagram page, he'd see it and understand its significance. Like a pin on a map, I was documenting this moment of loss on my social feed, bright yellow.

It later occurred to me to find a quote as a caption about the nature of flowers — how something can be so beautiful and yet have such a tragically short life span, how you should appreciate things while they last. But I left it as is.

It felt more true.

---

Tracy Mutugi is an urban design student in Johannesburg, South Africa.

ROSE-COLORED REFLECTION

By Shaunacy Ferro

On August 17, 2014, I posted this standard “I’m a New Yorker doing cultural activities” selfie of my mom’s and my reflections in a Jeff Koons piece, adding a butt joke as my own personal touch. What’s lost in the pink, glossy image is that I was, at that moment, in the deepest depression of my life.

Only a few minutes afterward, I detached from my mother and my sister, making my way through the Brutalist hallways of the Whitney Museum into the adjoining garden-level courtyard. I desperately needed to get away from the rooms full of expensive, world-renowned art whose appeal and value I just couldn’t fathom. I sat down on a low wall and cried. I felt stupid and useless. My inability to at least pretend at normalcy was ruining what should have been a lighthearted family day with my mom, who had flown in from California in no small part because my phone calls had gotten increasingly morose, hopeless and panicked. When my sister came looking for me and saw tears, I just said, “I fucking hate art.”

On a surface level, I had a well-paying job at a magazine with a recognizable name. I knew my college professors would think of me as a success story for working there, and I had a supportive boss who was constantly trying to give me juicy assignments. Just a few months before, I had been flown to Norway on a press tour of some of the country’s nicest hotels and most beautiful scenery — Instagram gold — ostensibly to write about the Norwegian design scene. (Few knew I had yet to complete a single story.)

I had just emerged from the stress of an unhappy long-distance relationship, and I was genuinely excited to try out some of the dating apps that had emerged since I was last single. I told anyone who expressed their condolences how mutual it had been; how it had been the nicest, most loving breakup of my life; how free I felt the first day I was single; how much weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I had just adopted a cat and had already accumulated a stockpile of cute photos of her lounging around my apartment that I posted with boastful captions like, “There's a cat purring on my lap — what are YOU doing with your Saturday?”

“I stopped looking when I crossed the street. I wondered how much Advil could kill you. I tried not to look at the full bottle of prescription-strength Ibuprofen in my room, given to me for back pain, because it had started feeling like my secret escape plan.”

Not even my roommates — my best friends — knew just how much time I spent sobbing, in my room and in the bathroom stalls at work and on the subway platforms where even hardened New Yorkers would occasionally stop to ask if I was OK. “Yeah, I’m fine, it’s fine,” I would say. I worked from home many mornings and had panic attacks on the way into the office in the afternoons, thinking about all the stories I had been assigned that I knew I could never finish, thinking about how every new task assigned at an all-staff meeting felt like it would break me.

I felt desperately alone, even though some of my closest friends lived a train ride away. When my depression made it even harder for me to strike up a conversation with a stranger at a party — or even go to a party at all — I berated myself for my social awkwardness. Every day that I failed to meet my required post count at work, I took it as a sign that I was incapable, that after four years of journalism school I wasn’t cut out for this after all. I scrutinized the schedules of my coworkers and friends, taking note of every moment the people around me worked overtime. I wondered if there was something deeply wrong with me for not wanting to spend every waking hour on my job.

Worse, I couldn’t imagine life being any different. I’d only ever prepared for a career as a writer and barely knew what other job options existed. I didn't know anyone who had a job that wasn't stressful, or who regularly left the office on time, guilt-free. And I couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d have a more active social life. Out of all the cities in the country, New York was the one with the highest concentration of people I knew.  

On days when I managed to make it into the office by 9:30 a.m., hoping that the quiet, near-empty space would give me a jump-start on my day, lunchtime would see me having a breakdown on a Financial District side street, hoping that none of my coworkers would pass. I scheduled emergency appointments with my therapist and snuck out of the office on many afternoons to stare vacantly out her 22nd story window. I hinted to her about how much I willed cars driving through Manhattan to hit me, but I didn’t disclose the full truth. I was afraid she’d send me to the hospital, and I didn’t want to have to explain that to my boss, didn't want to fall even further behind than I already felt at work.

I stopped looking when I crossed the street. I wondered how much Advil could kill you. I tried not to look at the full bottle of prescription-strength Ibuprofen in my room, given to me for back pain, because it had started feeling like my secret escape plan. I didn’t want to kill myself. But there were moments when I sincerely wanted to die. It was a thought that felt too ludicrous to vocalize, even at the time.

“I still have to sit in a therapist’s office every single week and admit how twisted my inner monologue is, and I still don’t always believe her when she says my harshest inner critic isn’t speaking the truth. But there are moments now — days, weeks even — where I am genuinely delighted by life and glad to be participating.”

I felt idiotic for letting what seemed to be very normal 20-something problems — a job that inspired low-level misery, an unsatisfying social life in a new city — consume me whole. I knew on a rational level that there were other ways to escape work than bodily injury, and that one day, I would make a few more friends in New York City. I knew that there were worse life choices than quitting your job and moving back home with your parents at 23, and that that was, in fact, a viable option. But I could not get rid of the spiraling thoughts that said, “You’ll always feel this way; you’ll always be depressed; a new job will not solve your problems; you’ll never have friends.” Even if I knew, on an intellectual level, that my life would turn out OK, I couldn’t feel that way. This wasn't the first time I'd felt depression take hold of my life for months on end, and the sheer persistence of my gloom-filled mental fog made despondence seem inescapable.

My Instagram from this period looks no different than any other period in my life. There are some cats, some pretty skylines, some twee Brooklyn merchandise, some brunch locales with exposed brick walls. My captions are sparse and unpunctuated, but none hint at the darkness of my life beyond the frame.

Eventually, I dug myself out of the hole. Or partway out, at least. I went on medication. I found yet another therapist. I found a new job that I didn’t have to work hard to be fascinated by. I went on a Tinder date that led to more dates that led to a slight but vital expansion of my social circle.

I’m still not what most would consider a happy person. I still get lonely and inexplicably sad and panicked about my future. I still have to visit a medical professional every few weeks to tweak the medications that keep me from drowning in self-pity, because after a year and a half we still haven’t found the perfect cocktail to right the delicate balance of chemicals in my brain. I still have to sit in a therapist’s office every single week and admit how twisted my inner monologue is, and I still don’t always believe her when she says my harshest inner critic isn’t speaking the truth.

But there are moments now — days, weeks even — where I am genuinely delighted by life and glad to be participating.

My last few Instagrams, as it happens, are also from a museum whose art I couldn’t truly appreciate. They, too, include juvenile jokes, this time about lost penises on Greek statuary and not-so-subtle references to ancient dildos. But elsewhere on social media, you can see me standing outside that same museum with my friends, a genuine smile on my face.

---

Shaunacy Ferro is a writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ONE SMALL ASK

From the Editors:

This has been an exciting month for Cropped.

As we've grown a bit and gotten our sea legs, we've been so inspired by the feedback we've gotten, and we're thrilled about the many directions this site could go. That's almost our problem — too many ideas and only so much time to get them all rolling!

One thing we are happy about is the incredible stories in Issue 3. The contributors tackled some really tough issues — from grappling with an eating disorder to the death of a parent to a breakup, they were willing to share some of their most terrifying and sad moments.

Jenny McCoy's touching essay about working at Trader Joe's when she moved to New York sort of summed up what Cropped is all about. She described this period of life as "A collective feeling of 'I'm not OK-ness that, in the end, makes us OK.'"

Simply stating our insecurities and acknowledging them is helpful in and of itself.

But as Cropped grows, we'd love to offer some solutions and tips that help push us ALL in the right direction.

Here's one we've been thinking about this week.

We're probably all familiar with the general concept of putting out the type of energy we'd like to come back to us. Whether you call it "karma," "The Secret" or the frequently cited Gandhi quote, "Be the change you wish to see in the world," this idea is a familiar one.

It's even in the Bible, at Matthew 7:7: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

In practice, this can be tough. Of course we know we should ask for a raise, but looking our bosses in the eyes and doing it is scary. We want to make a new friend, but our minds race, and we talk ourselves out of asking them for coffee. Sometimes it's even too intimidating to ask for help, or for someone to just listen to us when we need it the most.

And yet how can we expect our wishes and dreams for ourselves to come true if we're not vocalizing and asking for them?

Some inspiration: Adele became famous after putting videos of herself singing on Myspace.

One of Marina's favorite podcast-ers, Jess Lively, has gotten to have conversations with her dream guests, including bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert and researcher Brené Brown, simply because she asked them for an interview.

And on a (much) more attainable level, Maria got her current job when she asked her former boss to get coffee — even though she had to work up the courage to do it for weeks. 

That's our challenge until next issue: What is something you want right now? And what's one small "ask" you can make to help you get there?

To that end, we'd love for you to help us with our goal — sharing Cropped with friends who might feel as passionately about it as we all do.

That's our ask: If you feel so inclined this month, we'd be truly touched if you can share Cropped however you feel comfortable.

We're going to do our part to share it, too.

Let's see where we all are in a month!

Until then,
Marina and Maria