Teeth, Love, and Growing Up

  are humans supposed to live alone?  “Man is by nature a social animal,” Aristotle claimed.  What would he make out, I wonder, of our Loneliness Epidemic? Would he furrow his brow when we explain to him the authorities have deemed it a public health crisis, stemming from the burnout, social media, and physical isolation we’ve collectively normalized in our post-Covid era? What would he say when we tell him one in two adults feel lonely, and yet we continue to burrow into our screens – desperate for connection, of something we can’t put our finger on? Aristotle did not live alone. am I supposed to live alone? “Mom, what was I like as a baby?” I asked in the car one day. “You were mostly content, as long as you were being held,” she replied. “I think you just wanted to be in on the action rather than left in your crib.” I nodded my head, quietly reflecting on how it then took me years to fall asleep in my own bed. My parents – fatigued by bigger issues stir...

I am embarrassed by the curve of my shoulders. I have started to notice them more in photographs, how my neck is pushed forward and there is a bit of a hunch. My sister, in her fifth year of school for physical therapy, comments on it every time she sees me. There are ways to fix it, I have started to go to yoga, but for now, it is there, the evidence of my life as a reader.  I have never felt close to my body. I lack the innate awareness I’ve seen in my peers. When I turn corners, my hip usually hits the side of the wall. I have never been great at catching things. In college I started saying that I would prefer to be perceived as an amorphous blob. I am not naturally athletic, although I enjoy moving my body and being outside. Every team sport in elementary school felt like a lesson in dissociation. I could never figure out how my body connected to my brain, never mind trying to successfully coordinate plays with teammates.  Recently, I listened to an interview with an autho...

     I’ve spent my whole life on a quest for control—of my circumstances, my emotions, others’ perceptions of me. In college, with the obnoxiousness only a twenty-year-old could have, I thought I’d cracked the code: avoid uncertainty, act logically, and make others as happy as I could while tempering their expectations of me.  An ex once quoted the line from Persuasion , “I am half agony, half hope” to explain the depth of her feelings for me. I hadn’t, and still haven’t, read the novel. I didn’t understand how she could feel that way after only knowing me for a few months. Moreover, we’d agreed to only date short-term, exclusive but casual, just enjoying our few months together until we graduated college. What could she possibly be agonizing over? What was she hoping for? It feels horrible to admit my ignorance now, because it’s a concession I didn’t feel as deeply for her as she did for me. When she accused me of just that after we broke up, I took offense. In th...

The rest of March flew by in a whirlwind of exams, presentations, and projects. A brief spring break trip to Athens, a reprieve of architecture, history, and cats, then I came back to Finland and was once again in the thick of it. Writing my masters project proposal (MP2 for short), putting together my masters project proposal presentation (MP3, if you will), accumulating hours upon hours in the library. Redbulls sprout on desks near hands of students, ripe for plucking, the air tense with concentration, hundreds of hands typing, pencils scribbling, track pads clicking. Boredom feels to me as far away as the heat of summer, this northern country, these days in late April, trees just beginning to bud. Temperatures just on this side of freezing, I leave the house with mittens but leave my hat at home. Drooping piles of snow desperately clinging to solidity in shadowed building corners, ice on the lakes completely gone. Spring came early this year I’m told, a quick snowmelt, weeks o...

Alternative titles: school is kicking my ass, all my friends are punk rock guitar players, offseason life, the birds are singing -- Packed powder in winter turns to ice in the spring mummontappokeli – grandma-killing weather, I’m told as we gingerly pick our way down the sidewalk laugh so hard I slip this season does not discriminate by age. -- Mist lay thick in the trees under glowing grey sky I walk to school in this weather March entwines October ghosts of fall resurface in spring and versions of myself from past seasons come closer, I remember iterated and reiterated -- Woke up this morning to stiff muscles and popping joints Yesterday at the skate park learning how to drop in feet on board on lip of halfpipe Ose tells me falling forward is infinitely better than falling backward Take his hands, stomp down jumbled limbs and board and twisting and air and ground coming up behind me Ose towards me a moment of oh god infinite millisecond later we loo...

         I'm sitting on the couch in my very messy living room in LA, mourning my long and restful winter break. I'm supposed to be tidying up right now so that I can start the new semester with a clean slate in a couple of days. Syllabi, Google forms, and meeting agendas already sit untouched in each of my three (soon to be four, maybe even five) school-related inboxes. Why does so much of adult life involve creating new email accounts? I resent this deeply.     Next to me on the couch are the "2026" balloons from New Years Eve that we've taken off the wall but still don't know what to do with. I'd suggested we save the two and the six for my roommate's next birthday, but was immediately hit with the realization that we won't still be living together then.  Directly in front of me is a small easel propping up a half-painted portrait of Nori, one of my roommate's cats, that my roommate started a couple of nights ago. Strewn around it are an a...

In recent weeks, temperatures have finally plummeted as wind and snow swirl on the roads and in the forests. The sun makes an appearance for 5 hours each day, tracing a short, low arc across the horizon before re-entering its 19-hour slumber. Daylight in December became a perpetual sunrise-sunset; the sun so low in the sky I can almost look at it with the naked eye, the city awash in golden hour, the sky pink-tinged.  For the most part, though, I live in an eternal night. The darkness is pervasive, consistent, a constant companion. It’s a time for rest, hibernation, and rejuvenation. After the semester ended I spent my days inside, catching up on all the slow activities I didn’t have time to do during these first frantic months in Finland. Cooking, baking, knitting, painting, listening to music, podcasts.  Spending winter break freely and peacefully ...

I ’m writing as I sip on a strong latte at 1369 Coffee Shop in Central Square, admiring the snow fall outside and feeling the shock of the cold air each time the door opens and closes. As frigid temperatures have slid into the Northeast over the past month, life has felt numbed. A physical numbness spread from my nose to my chin, as I brave the headwinds on Comm Ave during my walks home from work. A mental numbness burrowed behind my eyes, as I type run-on sentences with disappointment that my writing skills have atrophied. A spiritual numbness sprawled across my chest, as I sit on my meditation cushion searching for a connection with myself that I can no longer access. This morning, as I peer at the glowing faces filling the coffee shop and scan the community board that showcases hundreds of local events and support groups and services, I feel a familiar sadness: a grief for college. It’s been two and a half years since we graduated, and while I long ago accepted the reality that I’m ...