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...