I seem Dirty

Like your jokes and your car

You like to play pretend

play music

and judge overpriced art

You’ve got a record but baby you’re a clean slate

Know what not to bring up on a first date

I think your poetry is corny

But it’s fine cause you’re hot

You only write what you know

And you don’t know what your not

You’re not special

We’re not even

And I’m sure as hell not yours

But god forbid

that god forbids

what happens

behind closed doors

You’re gonna make me make make me say I’m yours

Your gonna make me write a song and I’m sure

That you’re never gonna cut it

And I’m gonna stay a mess

And when you call this bullshit off we’re gonna know It’s for the best

sick and loved and twisted

I’d rather sleep through an alarm than face what I insisted

Would get me up the morning

Better than myself

Something I wouldn’t look down on

Something close enough to hell

But blurry faces call me baby

Have a tight grip on my arm

Know its not real but one day maybe

Love won’t mean to cause harm

He loved me and left mark

He wasn’t wasn’t real but he left me in the dark

Didn’t have a name or fingerprint

Nothing I could hold against him

Open eyes and I was still convinced

Life could stay beautiful and grim

I used to think of myself as at least an eight, a nine with some heavy mascara. I’d been told I was pretty my whole life, and for the longest time I believed it. I recalled a conversation with my friend group in highschool, a girl who was “honest”, but never very well liked, gestured to me and said “well obviously you’re the prettiest of the group, lets not pretend we don’t know that”. And what’s funny is, in the present moment I have no clue why she said that.

Sure I wore the most makeup and dressed a little sluttier than the rest of my friends, but objectively at least, they were and are, much more attractive. In the moment though, I believed her. What was being said around me only enforced the belief I had of myself: I was beautiful. Or at least beautiful enough.

Somewhere between sixteen and seventeen that belief flew out the window along with any semblance of my self respect. I could no longer look in the mirror and like what I saw. I fell into a pit of bulimia and substances and a depression so suffocating it hurt to swallow.

I didn’t expect guys to ask for my number in public anymore. I didn’t expect compliments from strangers. All I could do was torture my body more and more every day in a pitiful attempt to achieve that self concept I once held so easily.

On the day of prom, my dress didn’t fit. I’d bought it three weeks before and yet, my friend tugs on the corset straps as hard as possible with no will of the dress staying up. When I got my prom photos back I cried for hours. To me, it was the worst I’d ever looked. My eyes sunken in and my pale skin stretched tight enough to see every inch of my collarbone, I was no longer pretty. And I did it to myself.

Eventually I couldn’t keep up this wild rampage of self hate. After a year of binging and purging and falling asleep standing up, i found myself sobbing as a slew of doctors stood in front of me in a cold clinical line. They looked at me in pity with their heads tilted, and said I had no choice but to leave school for eating disorder treatment. That was the last day I ever purged.

It took me until a few months after that doctors appointment to remember what I used to think of myself.

I used to want to model, and truly believed I could do it, that I was pretty enough. This year I worked backstage for a few runway shows during New York Fashion Week. On the night of the last show, I was talking to one of the menswear models, whom I was honestly infatuated with, and had talked to every other day of shows previously. “So, why don’t you model?” He asked, and I laughed out loud. I laughed so hard in that poor mans face. He tilted his head at me like the doctors did as I pulled myself together. “Oh, um… I guess I just never thought of it…I’m not very…tall”.

Day by day I’m reminded of the old me who was beautiful and knew it. Sometimes she taunts me, and sometimes she begs me to let her come back.

By 3 stops in, you’re part of the city
Pulled under the current of the street
Shoulder to shoulder inside the crowd
Waiting without looking up for the train
Announcements blur into background noise
Fluorescent bulbs buzzing overhead in harsh light

There’s no real dark, just 2 kinds of light
Reflected in windows that double the city
Sirens cut clean through layered noise
Footsteps slipping out of sync on the street
Someone’s asleep across three seats on the train
Unnoticed, carried forward by the crowd

After 5 blocks, everyone looks like the crowd
Faces washed out in passing light
You learn to stand without holding on in a train
Learn to belong without naming the city
Every turn rewriting the last street
Until memory sounds like static, like noise

By 6 p.m., it’s a different noise
Even alone, you can feel the leftover crowd
Pressed into the concrete of the street
Flashing red-blue slicing up the light
No clear edges to a place this much like a city
Always arriving, always leaving on a train

By 7 days in, you start timing the train
Measuring distance in layers of noise
Reading the pulse of a shifting city
By the pace, by the weight of the crowd
By the way night bends into artificial light
And spills itself back onto the street

Throughout the novel, Plath puts a heavy emphasis on the idea of “cleanliness” and “purity”. She often describes other women, or an idea of other women, as clean and pure. This appears repeatedly as a symbol tied to control, identity, and mental stability. Esther Greenwood often fixates on being “clean” or pure, not just physically but emotionally and morally. This obsession reflects her desire to create order in a world that feels chaotic and overwhelming. When her thoughts and emotions become too intense, she turns to small acts of control like hygiene, appearance, and tidiness, as a way to manage her anxiety and regain a sense of stability.

This focus on cleanliness also connects to Esther’s mental health struggles. As she falls deeper into depression, she becomes more disconnected from her body and environment, and her sense of cleanliness shifts between extreme care and neglect. At times, she becomes preoccupied with washing and maintaining order, while at other moments she is unable to care for herself at all. These extremes highlight how her internal state is reflected in her external behavior, making her level of cleanliness a measure of her psychological condition.

Plath uses this motif to show how Esther’s desire for purity is also a desire for escape. For her, it’s an escape from expectations, confusion, and emotional pain. However, the more she tries to control herself through cleanliness, the more she realizes that it cannot resolve her deeper struggles. In this way, the obsession becomes less about hygiene itself and more about the impossible search for control and clarity in a world that feels increasingly unstable.

What Esther Greenwood leaves unsaid often reveals more about her mental state than her actual dialogue. For example, when she is at the New York fashion magazine and observes the other women around her, their confidence, appearance, and ease in social situations, she rarely directly says she feels inferior or out of place. Instead, she describes the scene in a detached, almost analytical way, focusing on details like clothing, behavior, and social rituals while remaining emotionally distant from the situation itself.

What’s really going on beneath the surface observation is Esther’s growing sense of alienation and self-doubt. She does not openly admit in the moment that she feels disconnected or overwhelmed, but her careful and almost clinical attention to others and the details of their lives shows that she is comparing herself constantly and feeling like she does not belong. The silence around her emotions, and her inability to fully express her discomfort, highlights how trapped she feels inside her own mind.

This gap between what Esther observes and what she says aloud reflects a larger pattern in the novel: she suppresses her true feelings until they become too intense to manage. Plath uses this silence to show how Esther’s internal struggles are far deeper than her outward behavior would suggest, revealing the emotional weight hidden beneath her seemingly calm or indifferent descriptions.

“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.” This passage is the central metaphor of the novel. It encapsulates the “paralysis of choice” that will eventually define Esther’s breakdown. While it begins with the hopeful imagery of a “wonderful future,” it quickly decays into a scene of rot and death. It marks the transition from Esther as a high-achieving student with so much potential, to Esther as a woman immobilized by the impossible expectations of 1950s womanhood.

The phrase “Starving to death”: is a sharp, violent contrast to the abundance of the fig tree. It highlights the irony of Esther’s situation: she is surrounded by life but dying due to what is only internal. Plath begins with a long, flowing sentence structure that mirrors the “branching out” of the tree. However, as the realization of her paralysis sets in, the imagery becomes more rhythmic and stark. The narrative tone is detached and filled with despair. Even though Esther is describing her own life “wrinkling” and “going black”, she observes it clinically and factually. This creates a tension between the vibrant imagery and the emotional numbness of the narrator..

By using beautiful objects (figs) to describe a horrific outcome (starvation), she shows how depression distorts the perception of beauty into a source of pressure. The first-person perspective forces the reader to experience Esther’s claustrophobia. We aren’t just told she is indecisive and uncertain of her future, we are shown the literal rot of her options. She chose the “fig tree” metaphor to highlight the binary nature of women’s choices at the time. You couldn’t have all the figs, because choosing one meant the death of all the others.

Shifts in setting and point of view are physical manifestations of Esther’s deteriorating mental state. When Esther moves from the bustling, high-fashion world of New York City to the stifling, suburban slump of her mother’s house in the suburbs of Boston, the shift is existential. The transition from the “city” to “home” represents a loss of identity. In New York, Esther is a professional in training; in the suburbs, she is a “failure” returned to the nest. New York is described with sharp, metallic imagery, she thinks of it as electric.

The suburbs however, are described through a lens of stagnation and domesticity. This new setting acts as a pressure cooker. Without the distractions of her internship, Esther is forced to face her own mind. The “Bell Jar” is illustrated most heavily here because there is no external noise to drown out her mental static. While the novel is written in the first person, Plath subtly shifts the psychological distance of the narrator. In the beginning, Esther is cynical but somewhat engaged. As her depression deepens, the point of view becomes increasingly dissociative. She begins to describe her body as if it were an object she is inhabiting. Plath makes this choice to simulate the feeling of depersonalization.

By distancing Esther’s “self” from her “actions,” Plath shows the reader that Esther is no longer in control of her own narrative, and especially not her future. When the setting shifts again to various psychiatric hospitals (Caplan, the state hospital, and finally the private asylum), the environment becomes a reflection of her treatment. The city represents her pre-mature ambition, sensory overload, the “illusion” of a future. But quickly it turns to her mothers house, illustrating her paralysis, the weight of social expectations, the “Crotch of the Fig Tree.” The final settings of the institutions show stripping of agency, the clinical reality of the “Bell Jar,” and eventually, a sterile path to the possibility of “recovery.”

Plath uses these shifts to mirror the fragmentation of Esther’s self. By moving her through different environments, Plath proves that Esther’s problem isn’t where, it’s who. Whether she is n a luxury hotel or a padded cell, the “bell jar” of her own mind moves with her, distorting the view of the world regardless of the setting.

I’m sitting in front of this coffee shop. Alone, cold, prepared for two hours of my tutor taking pity on me as I struggled to hold back tears. He was nice. Young, taught at a Jewish school up the road as his day job. He spoke with a stutter that I tended to unconsciously adopt whenever we’d been sitting there together too long.

He’s taking a little bit to get to the coffee shop. We’re scheduled for four, it’s four eleven now. My dad pulls out of the parking lot in front of me, black coffee in the cupholder. I think about the iced vanilla latte waiting for me to order inside. It’s four thirteen now, the parking lot stays empty.

I get up and walk inside, blissfully hopeful my backpack and laptop will remain on the table until I return. The woman in front of me orders my regular iced vanilla latte, and I wait prepared to say the same. Suddenly under no prior thought whatsoever, I lift my head to the man at the register, “Hi I’ll just get a large black coffee, thanks”. “Room for cream?” “No, thats all right, thank you”. I was pleased with myself. If anything, proud. Proud of my new black-coffee drinking persona who could be anything I wished, maybe even good at chemistry.

I grabbed my coffee, waved the barista goodbye, and returned to my seat outside; backpack and laptop intact. My chemistry tutor soon arrived, and went in quickly to order a drink. As he walked back outside, latte in hand, I smiled to myself. I felt superior. All because I could go without the cream in my coffee, I felt that I had accomplished something; I’d won.

Unfortunately, the caliber of my coffee did not make me better at chemistry. It did not make me a new person, and surely not a better one. It made me feel older, sure. Maybe even a little bitter.

Today, I still drink my coffee black. I relish in the confidence that comes from a friend or a stranger being impressed in my ability to handle such a thing. Occasionally though, I’ll think of me at fifteen, and my tutor, and how vehemently awful I was in chemistry, and I order and iced vanilla latte.

In detention currently. Massive headache. One hour down, One to go.

I’ve been on the verge of tears all day.

I don’t even feel like writing, I don’t have shit to write about.

I’m so stressed. I feel like I’m at war with my own body.

And I feel so guilty. For anything and everything.

And I feel angry. And I feel lost. All the bad ones.

I miss being a kid. I want to have no responsibilities. I don’t want to be in charge of anything.

I don’t want to go to college. Or get a job or get married or have kids.

I want to lie in bed with my baby blanket forever.

And maybe occasionally smoke weed and occasionally have a milkshake and that’s all and that’s my life forever.

And I’d be so disgustingly content with it all.

I think if I’m ever able to decide on what it is that I want, I could know the future. If I could just really know what I really want deep down, in any aspect of my life, I could make it happen just by knowing.

But I don’t know. Every thought I have contradicts the one that came a millisecond before it.

Prom has me thinking a lot about the things I want and don’t want. And how I only want things when they don’t want me back.

Fuck.

We’re reading 1984 in AP Lit right now, and I think I resonate a lot with the term “doublethink”. Its like I’m just existing in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.

It makes my chest tight and my head throb and my stomach ache.

How can one hate and love everything all at the same time?

Like feels impossible

.

Sometimes so many things go wrong at once that I am convinced I must be on a prank show. And there are many times that I forget my life is, in fact, mine. Like almost everything that I do is for the satisfaction of other people, and I do such a poor job of it that I don’t stop to think that this is actually my life. Like I’m in control here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about free will. And like, determinism. We were discussing it in AP Lit and I seemed to have an entirely differing opinion than everyone else.

I don’t believe in free will.

But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Or that I’m being pessimistic- I actually think it’s a quite freeing concept. That we really don’y have any control over anything but to me that really means that we have complete control over everything.

I don’t know how to explain it. And I don’t know why I’m trying to explain myself in my own diary. Like I even fucking live and write for other people in my own diary. I’m taking back control over my life. This is MY life.

You know what fuck it, I do have free will. Even if I don’t believe in it.

Throughout my childhood, I was obsessed with the idea of having a job. I was constantly coming up with business ideas, things to sell, ways to (narrowly) avoid child labor laws. Almost the instant I turned fourteen, I got my work permit and began searching for a job. I walked into a beautifully lit restaurant – lined with plants, wall to wall to ceiling – the floor thoroughly damaged by bleach. I met a small, frazzled woman named Ann and asked if she was hiring. She told me I start tomorrow, and not to wear my hair down again.

It was almost fun for the first few weeks – packing orders and making rice. The sheer unfamiliarity was entertaining, and I finally felt like I’d contributed to something. Quickly, though, the novelty faded, and it all got to me: the overwhelming smell of raw chicken, the heat that only a restaurant kitchen with too many people and not enough space can provide. After a month, I was moved deeper into the kitchen, in charge of making every appetizer for the whole restaurant. I watched the pink and yellow order tickets pile up on top of each other, as I burned dumplings, spilled sauces, and knocked over dishes.

Somehow, I was promoted to cook, moving even further back, right next to the stove. More heat, more yelling, more mistakes, more risk. In my last role, I started hosting and waiting tables. I became the person customers complained to: the one who absorbed their frustration, and loud words, and apologized for mistakes I hadn’t made.

One afternoon, I was instructed to de-vein shrimp for the entirety of my shift. As a vegan who had never touched seafood in her life, my stomach turned as I peeled their shells, my hands shaking. I wanted to quit right then. But I didn’t. I picked up the next cold, dead shrimp, and kept going, because at fourteen, quitting felt like admitting I couldn’t handle the real world I had begged to be a part of for so long. I kept going until my hands ached, and smelled like salt and iron, and the seemingly bottomless bucket of shrimp was empty.

I worked almost every day from three to eight, maybe nine, even if I had an essay due at midnight, or a test the next day. I stuck out that job for a year. I’d stayed the longest out of anyone I knew, just because I didn’t want to feel like I failed. When I’m dealing with something at work or in life now, I think about a timid 14 year old me, and how much she could handle.

The smell of bleach will always send a rush of relief down my spine. Suddenly, I’m cleaning up at the end of the night, going home, feet sore and head pounding. But it’s more than that. It’s a reminder of my perseverance, my determination, my ability to turn adversity into opportunity, and find meaning in the menial. I carry the confidence that I gained at that restaurant in how I work and learn today, and into my future. It wasn’t glamorous or inspiring, and no one clapped for me when I made it through a shift without crying, but it taught me more about life than any class could. It taught me about being underestimated and terrified, and doing it anyway

.

Last year I became very intrigued with the teachings of Buhdism, manifestation, quantum physics, philosophy, and psychology. I gave my life such a strong sense of meaning to make sure that I wouldn’t give it up. And when that would eventually fall through (although it really kept me going for a long time), I turned to control in the only way I knew how: to be self destructive. I began to rely on substances to dissociate, I controlled my food so intensely that I eventually spiraled into multiple eating disorders. And all the while I’ve been existing to my friends and family as the perfectly cheerful and bubbly character that I’ve been since birth.

Lately I wake up feeling like I’m already living in a different version of my life. Like my mind has moved ahead but my body is still doing laps in the same tiny orbit. It’s almost suffocating, but in an emotional way. I can picture myself somewhere else, doing things I’m not doing now, being someone I’m not yet, and it makes the present feel like a prologue I’ve been stuck in for too long.

Sometimes I feel like my nervous system has no off switch. I’ll be fine, then suddenly feel like I’m unraveling, like I’m barely holding myself together. And food becomes part of that — not because I want to eat, or even because I want to punish myself, but because it’s the only thing I feel like I can control when everything else is chaos. I’ll try to stop, then panic, then promise myself I’ll be better, then collapse again. It’s exhausting.

Some days I feel like I’m living in fast-forward. I’m constantly doing the things I have to do — school, family, social stuff, expectations — and the things I actually want to do get shoved into the margins. Music, writing, art, the parts of me that feel like me — they get lost in the noise. I worry that if I don’t make time for them now, they’ll never exist outside my head.

And yet, I catch glimpses of the future I want. I feel it when I do something that belongs to me, even for a second. It’s terrifying and thrilling at the same time. Like I’m already outgrowing my own skin, but I haven’t learned how to walk in the bigger body yet.

I think maybe this is what coming-of-age actually looks like — not one big moment, not some sudden revelation, but the slow, messy, exhausting realization that you’re not who you were and you’re not yet who you want to be. That you’re somewhere in between, learning how to carry the weight of your mind while trying to build a life wide enough to hold it.

And maybe the point isn’t to stop panicking. Or to fix every unhealthy thing. Or to be perfect. Maybe it’s just to keep moving. To keep stretching toward the cinematic, bigger version of yourself even when the present feels small, chaotic, impossible, like you’re spiraling and exhausted and everything is too much but also not enough.

Fuck. That’s life, I guess.

This moment is significant because it marks the first pivotal moment where Gregor’s identity begins to falter. His inability to control his movements is an exact parallel to his inability to control his life. The matter-of-fact narrative tone contributes to Kafka’s absurdist style, which is common throughout his work. The impossible and ridiculous becomes routine, reflecting Gregor’s pre-existing dehumanization in his daily life. Kafka wants readers to experience the same sense of disorientation that Gregor does, turning the physical metamorphosis into a metaphor for the psychological wear caused by modern life.

A significant motif throughout The Metamorphosis is the recurring imagery of doors. We often see doors being closed and silently locked, cracked open, slammed shut, or cautiously unlocked. Gregor’s story is structured heavily around who can access him and when. At the beginning of the book, Gregor’s family gathers outside his bedroom door, calling his name and begging him to come out, but unable to cross the “boundary” of the locked door. Later, Gregor pushes his body against the door to open it, which displays his desire to stay connected to his family and the outside world, despite his transformation. As the story progresses, doors shift from points of connection to a show of confinement and isolation. The family closes him in and restricts his movement, treating the door as a barrier between “human” and “monster”.

Kafka commonly repeats this door imagery in order to highlight the emotional and psychological distance within the Samsa family. Even before the metamorphosis, Gregor’s relationship with his family was reliant on obligation rather than love. The motif of doors reveals how communication and connection become increasingly impossible. This is not because Gregor is newly an insect, but because his family refuses to confront anything that might disrupt their comfort in their current life, which was fully supported by Gregor. By the end of the story, the locked door becomes a symbol of Gregor’s total isolation and his family’s deliberate emotional detachment. The repeated focus on the motif of doors shows how boundaries, or lack thereof, would ultimately contribute to Gregor’s downfall.

About halfway through the novella, there is a noticeable shift in narrative perspective and tone, once Grogor’s sister Grete begins to shift her behavior toward him. Early on, Grete is kind and treats him as if he is still her brother just experiencing an illness, bringing him food and cleaning his room. She becomes Gregor’s only connection to the human world, as she is the only one brave enough to treat him with the same decency she always had. Eventually though, Grete’s attitude towards Gregor hardens. He is no longer her brother, but a monster living in their home. Grete stops cleaning his room, he becomes more of an observer of the family than a participant, and quickly the narrator’s attention turns toward the family’s actions rather than Gregor’s inner thoughts.

This perspective shift is significant because it mirrors Gregor’s psychological fading. As his family stops seeing him as a human being, the narrative also pulls away from his internal consciousness and voice. The limited third-person perspective becomes much more distant, as if the whole of the story is losing interest in Gregor in the same way his family does. Kafka’s choice in this strongly emphasizes Gregor’s loss of identity. When no one recognizes Gregor as Gregor, even the narration begins to abandon him, leaving him in self-isolation just as his family does. This structural shift reinforces the impact of his alienation, and prepares the reader for his death, so much so that the death of our protagonist feels unsurprising and almost anti-climactic. The shift in focus suggests that Gregor’s existence has already slipped away, long before his physical insect body actually does.

Throughout The Metamorphosis, Kafka frequently repeats words associated with burden, duty, and obligation. The words “must,” “necessary,” “responsibility,” and “demand” are common in Gregor’s internal monologue at the beginning of the story, even long after he wakes up transformed, and should have let go of his human responsibilities. This repetition is important to the plotline because it reveals that Gregor’s entire identity is built around ideas of work, pressure, and obligation. Even when he knows he can’t physically move or take action, he’s in a panic about catching the train, apologizing to his manager, and fulfilling his role in the household.

This vocabulary pattern is very meaningful, due to how it contrasts with the language Kafka chooses to use later in the novella. As time goes on, Gregor becomes weaker, his family grows more distant, and words like “useless,” “annoying,” and “unnecessary” start appearing frequently in others’ descriptions of him. This shift in repeated vocabulary mirrors Gregor’s shrinking place in the family, and his function in the home. The story moves from the language of obligation to the language of rejection. Kafka’s writing style uses these vocabulary shifts to show Gregor’s decline not just physically, but also socially and emotionally. The repeated words create an atmosphere where Gregor’s worth is constantly measured by what he can contribute, illustrating how the language used to describe his situation reinforces his isolation.

1. stop lying to my therapist -This one is hard to say if I accomplished or not, but I’d like to say I became at leas a little more open and honest than I was previously

2. get license -definitely did not happen that year

3. get skinny -did happen but under extremely poor and unprecedented circumstances

4. make bank -somewhat true because I ended up geting another job, still spent so munch money I was paycheck to paycheck though

5. actually finish some songs -did finish(ish) writing a few! Didn’t do anything with them though…

6. do open mics -waited quite a long time but eventually ended up doing it

7. let myself be happy -like yes…. but no.. but yes!

8. fix intimacy issues -boy did I… take with that what you will

9. get rid of nicotine addiction -Yes! quit cold turkey

10. learn how to handle my alcohol -Yes as well! Stopped drinking the sugary shit and getting plastered

11. stop getting wildly hungover -Yes(ish), but the emotional hangovers are still rough

12. stop spending so much money -nope, if anything the spending habits increased

13. get into an actual relationship -HA no

14. be a better friend -Yes!

15. more piercings -Yes! Got three new ones

16. get a tattoo -didn’t happen but probably for the better

17. get rid of that weird feeling (at least for a little bit) -I think the little bit part was pretty accurate

18. make new friends -yes!

19. go out more with people I actually know -yes(ish)?, still mostly out with people I barely know though

and I’m outside

and the stars are beautiful

and the world is quiet

and the only thing that can hurt me is myself.

Not a boy

not my history teacher

not that sense of impending doom I know all too well.

And I listen to billy joel

and I understand that anything can happen

which is scary

but which is what makes life interesting and worth sticking around for.

And then suddenly I’m in my best friends yard

and we’re talking about the future

and I say we don’t need to worry about it because the universe will keep us together.

And I truly believe that.

I believe that the universe is giving me what I need

and it won’t let me down

even if what I need is to be let down.

And then suddenly its seven pm

and I’m thinking about a boy

and history class

and I’m hit with that sense of impending doom I know all too well.

And suddenly its 3am again, and the stars are beautiful.

My chemistry teacher Mr. Carter, whom I’d never developed a relationship with beyond the sporadic concerned email about my test scores and slipping grade, stood in front of the class holding a full size hershey bar. The kind a kid would brag about getting on Halloween and hide under his bed for months to preserve its specialness. “How many calories do you think are in this chocolate bar?” He posed to the class as if we’d be at a complete loss and have to make up some wild guess. I never raise my hand in class, not unless I am one hundred percent confident I have the answer. I had not yet raised my hand in honors chemistry, it was late March. That day though, my hand shot up faster than he could finish speaking. “Jessica?”. The surprise in his voice at my sudden passion for participating in his class was honestly offensive, and he called me by my full name because only the teachers whose class I excel in call me “Jessie”.

“Two hundred and ten”, the three syllables that echo in my mind every time I see a Hershey’s chocolate bar. 13 grams of fat, 24 grams of sugar, 8 grams of saturated fat, 35 milligrams of sodium, and gluten free for all intents and purposes. While I was proud of my seemingly “random” knowledge of name brand candy nutritional facts, I didn’t pause to think about the quickness with which I’d raised my hand, as if I’d already known the answer before he asked the question.

Like a far too large number of teenage girls, I struggled with eating, and lack thereof, in high school- still do. At this point in life it’s become embarrassing. To turn down a dinner with friends or have such a lack of self control I find myself kneeling in front of the toilet every time I have a bad day and indulge- often more days than not. There’s a certain point in teenage-hood in which romanticizing shitty self-destructive behaviors is no longer relatable or sexy- its just classless, and often narcissistic. I’ve refused to acknowledge my problem to anyone in my life who’s pointed it out, but it was at this point in my sophomore chemistry career, that I admitted to myself I had an issue.

I got quite a few odd looks around the room, and quickly snapped out of my pride. I was not special for knowing this information, and even if I was, it was the kind of special that gets things written about you on bathroom stalls. That gets rumors spread before the bell even rings. Thankfully, everyone looked away and forgot I existed within seven seconds of the words leaving my mouth. But this exact moment lent me the pivotal realization that I did have a problem. And if I didn’t fix it, it would become me. And these would remain the only numbers I know.

What a privilege it is to be so known

To share stories and secrets and success

In company always, never alone

To be understood so well, to be home

For someone to hold words you can’t express

What a privilege it is to be so known

To be sworn on sticks and stones and on bones

To speak in a gesture is to confess

In company always, never alone

To learn and live a language of one’s own

And appreciate all that they possess

What a privilege it is to be so known

A minuscule seed or a flower grown

Even in failure you would be impressed

What a privilege it is to be so known

In company always, never alone

In happiness, health, in peace and in stress

To call another being in some way home

What a privilege it is to be so known