Author: Bryanna Doe

My whole life, I’ve struggled with an inability to speak my mind without immediately second-guessing myself.

I could speculate about exactly what causes this. Maybe it’s a subset of the anxiety disorder, maybe it’s from being socialized as a girl in a society that still largely prefers women to be seen and not heard. Or maybe it’s Maybelline, who knows?

Whatever the deeper underlying cause, the surface reason is a simple one: I care way, way too much what other people think of me.

Now, don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that you should never give a shit about other people’s opinion of you. Obviously there’s a balance to be struck between “not letting public opinion control your life” and “still being welcome to participate in polite society.” It’s insane to really and truly not care at all how you’re perceived by other people. Only serial killers and Fortune 500 CEOs can get away with that.

But I am saying that it’s possible to care a little too much, or in my case a lot too much.

I’ve never been able to assert my opinion on a topic or, God forbid, disagree outright with someone without feeling like a rude, ill-bred little asshole. Somewhere over the years, I got it into my head that rudeness was the worst crime a person could be guilty of. And it’s rude to challenge someone else’s opinion, or to assert your own opinion too strongly in case they take that as a challenge to their opinion, which will undoubtedly offend them, and if someone is offended it’s obviously your fault for being rude to them, and so on, and so forth, and thus is written the story of me biting my tongue near-constantly, even in situations where I really should speak up.

It’s no way to live. It’s hard to get through life feeling like you’re not allowed to have opinions for fear of offending someone, and that expressing an opinion is tantamount to intentionally starting a bar brawl. It does a number on your sense of self. It stops you from standing up for things that are important. It keeps you from living your best life, or really from living your life at all- instead, you’re just living the closest approximation that you can get without anyone knowing that you have thoughts and feelings about what happens in the world around you.

So over the past few months, I’ve decided that I can’t go on being afraid to say what’s on my mind. I’m no longer going to let my life be steered by a near-pathological need to avoid upsetting anyone. No more falling into the same old trap of staying silent to avoid conflict. Now I’m trying to learn to feel comfortable being assertive and opinionated.

For some reason, I thought this would make my life easier. So far, it’s made things a lot more difficult, but for slightly different reasons. A real bitch of a Morton’s Fork.

For starters, I’ve learned that a non-zero number of my friendships were only surviving because I never had the balls to openly disagree with something that was said in front of me. I should probably welcome the opportunity for personal growth by weeding those relationships out of my life, but first I’d have to stop beating myself up for daring to think that I had the right to open disagreement.

Secondly, the thing about expressing an opinion is that you’ll then be called upon to defend it. This is something that I’m still struggling with, and will most likely struggle with for the foreseeable future. I mean, I know how to use my words and explain my position on an issue. I just don’t know how to do it without my heart rate skyrocketing in anticipation of some terrible outcome.

Every time I get into a debate, I’m running a mental countdown of exactly how many exchanges could possibly be left before it escalates into a full-blown argument where everyone decides that I’m the asshole. Even if I’m correct, polite, and articulate in my arguments, I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s that paranoia of thinking that you hear someone coming down the hallway when you’re secretly up reading comic books after bedtime: I’m definitely doing something wrong by engaging in this conversation, so it stands to reason that I’m going to be caught and punished. Even though, generally speaking, the only punishment received is my own unwarranted inner turmoil.

At the end of the day (and this article), I guess that all I can do is learn to trust myself a little bit more. Emotions and anxiety aside, I know on an intellectual level that there’s nothing wrong with speaking up, speaking out, and speaking my mind plainly. It’s just a matter of reinforcing the behavior until it’s a habit, and not something that I need to spend a week steeling myself for and another month recovering from.

It’s hard to muster up that last little bit of self-confidence that it takes to stop second-guessing myself all the time, but I’m holding onto hope that it’s possible.

As my favorite song introspectively states, “Though you can see when you’re wrong, you know you can’t always see when you’re right.”

For the first time in my life, I’m going to allow myself to think that maybe, just maybe, I’m right.

A while back, I wrote about how I could no longer maintain friendships with conservatives that I know. In retrospect, it wasn’t an article worth writing.

At the time, I was still sorting through my moral convictions and struggling to give myself permission to have political opinions. So I pulled a lot of punches while trying to describe my problem with conservatives, inadvertently made said article more divisive by saying “conservatives” when what I should’ve said was “Trump supporters,” and ultimately didn’t end up feeling like I had really taken a meaningful stand with my post.

But forget the weak writing. By far, my worst failing was in not even sticking to my newfound principles. For everything that I said about cutting ties with Trump supporters (if you’ll allow the addendum to stand), I didn’t actually make a move to cut anyone off.

I wish I had a good reason for this, but I only have a stupid one: I was too afraid to end a particular long friendship “over politics.” That’s it. Even after a solid year, or almost two years, of being at my absolute limit with this person’s opinions and attitude, I still couldn’t bring myself to click the Unfriend button.

I could go into more and more detail about my justifications for keeping the peace, but my reasons would still be just as stupid now as they were at the time. I knew I was only holding on for the sake of not rocking the boat, yet I was afraid to rock the boat all the same.

But within the last couple of weeks, I decided to just flip the boat over.

You see, like everyone else I’ve been watching racial tensions in the United States rise to a fever pitch and eventually hit what looks like a tipping point. I’ve vacillated between outrage and a tentative hope for change more times than I can even count. I’ve been spreading awareness, donating money, and really caring about a cause. I’ve been talking to friends that I don’t normally discuss politics or social issues with, and for the most part I’ve been supported, heard, and pleasantly surprised at how many people are on my side in this fight.

But then my aforementioned Trump-supporting friend posted something that, for the sake of simplicity, I’m just going to describe as tone-deaf. Too tone-deaf for me to ignore, although I did just that for almost anything political that he posted recently.

So I commented on the post.

And he replied to my comment.

And I replied again, and he replied again, and we argued about what’s racism and what isn’t, and which one of us is the problem with America, and which one of us doesn’t respect the other’s opinion, and yadda yadda yadda….

It got a lot uglier than I expected, I’ll be honest. I didn’t anticipate that me pointing out an issue I had with a post on Facebook was going to lead to a Come-to-Jesus talk, or that the talk was quickly going to devolve into a litany of personal failings throughout the many years of our friendship.

I guess that’s what I get for trying to talk politics with someone I disagree with. Or, as was more particularly the issue here, trying to talk about racism with someone who didn’t care enough about me to fucking listen when I told them that their actions were hurting me. You know, whichever.

But in the end, I dropped the subject and I still didn’t end up Formally Declaring an Unfriending. Not so much because I lost my nerve as because I realized it would be an empty gesture. Because from my perspective, the friendship had already ended.

I suppose you could still say that I ended this friendship “over politics” and be more or less correct, but I’d say it’s a little more nuanced. Politics were what spurred me to reevaluate the friendship, yes. But at the end of the day, I didn’t cut off a friend for being a Trump supporter.

What ultimately made me walk away was a conversation about race where I realized that our “friendship” was sadly devoid of compassion, empathy, or respect.

Politics aside, if that’s the quality of a friendship, there should be no shame about tossing it in the trash.

Note: I use the term “dated” loosely and for the sake of clarity. These are more or less in chronological order.

Nathan L.
Kindergarten. I learned that contrary to the advice in magazines, it’s fine to be smarter than your boyfriend. If he’s a quality guy, he’ll appreciate that you’re able to teach him things and help him understand the world.

Brandon A.
Middle school/High school. I learned that it’s possible for someone to treat you like absolute shit and still walk away from the situation feeling like they’re the good guy and you’re the villain. I learned that some men will ignore your boundaries and won’t respect the word “no”. I learned the legal process for filing a sexual assault claim, and I learned that it won’t actually help. 

Austin U.
High school/College. I learned that it’s a waste of time for all parties involved to date someone just for the sake of being in a relationship. You might be able to pin a guy down into being your boyfriend, but if he doesn’t actually know you or care about you then you’re not going to get that Boyfriend Treatment you’ve been looking for.

Eric D.
College/Post-college. I learned to trust my instincts when a guy was giving me mixed signals. I learned to play it cool and let the other person make the first move instead of making myself vulnerable. I learned that it’s possible to do everything right and still have a situation blow up in your face, and the only thing you can do to retain a little dignity is walk away. I learned that someone can be unfailingly polite and still incredibly cruel.

Will N.
College/Post-college. I learned to stop going after men just because I thought they were attainable. I learned that sleeping with someone doesn’t automatically guarantee that you’re in a relationship. I learned that a legitimately mutual breakup still sucks if you’re not the person who brought it up first.

Anthony G.
Post-college. I learned that it’s actually possible for a relationship to be casual and uncomplicated.

Micah F.
Post-college. I learned that it’s actually possible for a relationship to be casual and still very complicated. I learned that you should always respect Girl Code and make sure that you’re not going to get into a fistfight for going on a date with someone’s ex-boyfriend. I learned that if you do get into a fistfight for going on a date with someone’s ex-boyfriend, you should immediately seek to retain sole custody of the video that your toxic BFF takes of the incident. I learned not to date within your friend group, not even the extended friend group.

Phil S.
Post-college. I learned that having a one night stand isn’t the sad and pathetic thing that Sex and the City had led me to believe, nor is it the empowering and feminist thing that Sex and the City had led me to believe. It’s just rolling the dice on a guy, being pleasantly surprised when you get to his apartment and he owns the complete DVD collection of Frasier, and being only mildly offended when he never calls you again afterwards.

David ?
Post-college. I learned not to get trapped in a situation where you’re dependent on a man you don’t know very well.

Chris C.
Post-college. I learned that you can’t fix someone. I learned that being shitty and manipulative isn’t more acceptable when the person genuinely doesn’t realize they’re doing it. I learned that you can decide something you previously put up with isn’t okay with you anymore. I learned that you don’t have to stay in a bad relationship just because you’re already in it.

Matt S.
Post-college. I learned that sometimes two people are both perfectly lovely, and they just won’t click with each other.

Peter B.
Post-college. I learned that it’s totally okay to lose interest in a guy for no real reason, or for a completely superficial reason that you have to pretend was “just one of those things” because telling him the actual reason would make you sound like a shallow bitch. I learned that not every potential relationship is worth putting in the initial legwork, especially if it requires you to reverse course on a personal dealbreaker for a guy that so far you only sort of like.

Caleb R.
Post-college. I learned to trust that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. I learned that if you have a suspicion that a guy is lying to you, or using you, or two-timing you, the most likely reason for that feeling is because he IS lying to you, using you, and/or two-timing you. I learned that if you ever find yourself competing with another girl for your man, you only lose if you decide to keep competing. I learned that you can’t make someone else feel remorse for their bad actions. I learned that self-reflection is the only tool we have in healing from past traumas.

Ryan K.
Post-college. I learned not to bring my prior relationship’s baggage into a new relationship. I learned to just speak my mind instead of playing games. I learned to call a guy out on his bullshit the moment he starts trying to pull one over on you. I learned that if a guy is cagey about people knowing that you’re together, it’s because there’s something wrong with him, not you.

Kevin M.
Post-college. I learned that you don’t win any prizes for trying to be nice. I learned that when you’re the only girl nice enough to give a certain guy a chance, you should stop and ask yourself why no one else is making the same mistake. I learned that the most docile, unassuming, throw-him-a-bone-he’s-a-nice-guy type of dude can still be a MASSIVE creep.

Jim B.
Post-college. I learned that going after someone who you wouldn’t normally like might expand your horizons a little bit, but you might also just wind up with someone that you still don’t actually like.

Max S.
Current. I’m learning that most of the Life Lessons you think you’re collecting from previous relationships are just a catalogue of things that were wrong with a particular guy, or things that were wrong with you at a particular point in your life. When you actually meet someone worth a damn, you don’t feel like you’re making an entry into your little black book. You feel like you’re closing the book and starting the only chapter that actually matters. 

BONUS ROUND: BIG CRUSHES AND WHAT THEY TAUGHT ME

Brandon G.
Elementary school. Don’t take relationships too seriously, no one really knows what they’re doing.

Kasey S.
Elementary school/middle school/high school. Waiting for the right moment to make a move is just a surefire guarantee that you’re going to let every opportunity slip by you.

Jake T.
Middle school/high school. If you don’t know someone well enough to sustain a three-minute conversation with them, you definitely don’t know them well enough to justifiably have a crush on them.

Nick D.
Middle school. Just ask the guy out. Life is too short to waste time.

Casey G.
High school. You’re allowed to have a crush on a girl. Anyone who makes you feel weird about it is an asshole.

Robert R.
High school/college. I rarely say this about any of my life experiences, but I learned absolutely goddamn NOTHING from this one.

Jeremy W.
College. Any boy prettier than you are is going to break your heart.

As is customary (if not essentially mandatory) for women who are about to be married, I’ve been on a diet for the last few weeks.

In my case, I’m not trying desperately to fit into a wedding dress that I bought in an optimistically low size or to get ready for a beach trip immediately after the ceremony. I’m just trying to look hot for the photographs that are going to be hanging in my house for the rest of my life.

As you can imagine, everyone has an opinion about this. Most of the opinions have been some variation of, “You don’t need to be on a diet, you look great!” While largely unhelpful, it’s at least nice to hear.

But every once in a while, someone will tell me that I don’t need to be on a diet, and they’ll try to drag some unrelated bullshit into it. Usually this comes as someone saying, “Why do you think you need to lose weight? You should stop comparing yourself to models on Instagram.”

Here’s why this bugs me: I’m not comparing myself to any models, anywhere.

Never once have I looked at someone else’s body and thought that I would try to make myself look like that. I mean, maybe if you count the time in middle school that Anna McCormick got her belly button pierced so then I asked my mom if I could get my belly button pierced, but really I was just testing societal boundaries.

No, the truth is that I’ve really never been the kind of person to compare myself to someone else and then decide that I’m too fat or too flabby or too whatever else.

But I’ll sure as hell compare myself against myself and realize that I could be working harder, and that’s something that no one else can seem to understand.

I felt like I needed to slim down a little before the wedding photos because I was sitting about 20lbs higher on the scale than where I feel comfortable in my body. That’s it. All I did was compare myself when I looked and felt my absolute best to how I looked and felt at present, and realized where I’d rather be. No girl on Instagram had any bearing on the decision.

So it’s caused me to start wondering why everyone else always jumps right to that assumption, and I’ve got a couple of theories.

First, it’s generally out of vogue right now to be talking about losing weight.  Everyone is really into a specific brand of Body Positivity in 2020, and/or is currently leaning in to gaining the “quarantine fifteen.” The only people I see still talking about diet and exercise is Fitness Instagram, so it’s a reasonable assumption that I’m getting my motivation from there, although it happens to be incorrect nonetheless.

But I think this is most likely an instance where Occam’s Razor is best applied, and thus the simplest and most obvious explanation is the correct one: you think I’m comparing my body to other people’s because that’s what you’re doing.

And all I can say to that is that you should stop.

All you’re going to do is make yourself unhappy over what other people are accomplishing, when it doesn’t have anything to do with you. (And I promise, unless you’re my ex-boyfriend, I am not losing weight AT you.)

I’m doing me, and I’m catching flak for it, because you’re not doing you.

So maybe from here out, we all stop judging ourselves against others and instead everyone tries to hit a personal best. And then no one has to end up with an infected belly button, so that’s a win for everyone.

I think we can all agree that life isn’t exactly a walk in the park. We all have our bad days, our dark times, our trials and tribulations, our disappointments and our failures. It’s just how things go.

So why is it, then, that every time you try to open up to someone about something negative happening in your life, all you ever get back is a flood of advice about how to stay positive and optimistic?

I mean, obviously I know the answer to this question. People are tying to help, first and foremost. They want you to feel better about your problems, whatever they are, even if you have no real reason to feel better in that moment. You have to at least have the hope that things will turn around, so you can stop yourself from wallowing in a pit of sadness, right? So people will say just about anything to inspire that hope, even in a situation that doesn’t warrant optimism.

Plus, it makes everyone uncomfortable to be around a sad person. Nobody knows what to say, or where to look, or what to do with their hands. It’s awkward. But you know what isn’t awkward? Encouraging positivity! It’s the easiest way to diffuse the gross energy that someone’s problems bring to the party, so obviously it’s the first tool in everyone’s arsenal.

But the thing about being told to look on the bright side is that it doesn’t always help. In fact, in some cases it’s downright insulting.

If your mother gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and you’re trying to make peace with the idea of losing her, it doesn’t help you at all to be told that she could make a miraculous recovery. It’s just a setback in your emotional processing. When you find out that you’re not going to be able to have the wedding you’ve been planning for the better part of a year because a virus closed down most of the country, it’s tone-deaf and irritating to have someone say, “Think of what a great story this will make!”

Not every bad thing that happens to you is a character-building experience. Sometimes it’s just a really, really bad thing. Not every problem that arises can be solved with Yankee ingenuity and elbow grease. Sometimes you’re completely screwed, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

And it should be okay to acknowledge that. But if you ever try, you’ll get told to how important it is to stay positive.

So let me say, on behalf of everyone on the other side of that particular piece of unsolicited encouragement: fuck your positivity, okay?

Sometimes everything sucks, and it’s okay to acknowledge that it sucks. We live in a culture that’s pretty much demonized not Making The Best Of Things at all times, and it’s not really doing anyone any favors.

I learned this week that there’s actually a term for what I’m talking about. It’s called toxic positivity, and it’s defined as “the concept that focusing on so-called positive emotions and rejecting anything that may trigger negative emotions is the right way to live life.” The toxicity comes from the fact that this approach essentially cuts out any outlet for your negative feelings.

Toxic positivity is the reason behind every platitude you’ve ever been fed while trying to vent to a friend about a legitimately shitty situation. It’s the reason that you feel like you can’t complain too much, or feel too bad about what you’re going through, or take too long to get over something awful that happened. You’re infected with this idea that staying positive is the only correct response to hardship.

And I want to say again, louder for the people in the back: fuck your positivity, seriously.

If you’re having a bad day, have a bad day. You don’t have to bend over backwards to make yourself focus on the fact that tomorrow will (read: might) be better. You don’t have to reject your feelings to uphold the current cultural standard of constant optimism. You’re allowed to feel bad.

I don’t have a profound conclusion for this piece, by the way. I just think it’s time we remember that we don’t live in a binary system where optimism is always right and pessimism is always wrong, you know?

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned how uncomfortable he felt being required to wear a mask at all times in public.

Not because he felt his civil liberties were being infringed upon, or because he had read a scientific study claiming that masks were somehow making us sicker.

It was because he, as a black man, feared that he would be mistaken for a criminal and shot on sight without any chance to explain himself.

But really, the mask just brought the possibility to the forefront of his mind. In truth, he already worried about getting shot for being black.

We all do.

And I wish I could say we were being needlessly paranoid. I wish we lived in a world where just existing while being black wasn’t legitimate cause to feel uncomfortable.

But unfortunately, it is. As a black person in the United States, and especially growing up in Vermont, I’ve felt uncomfortable most of my life.

We all have.

We feel uncomfortable when you defer to us during class discussions in February, with the expectation that just being black makes an eight-year-old an expert on Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman.

We feel uncomfortable when you see us with our non-black family and ask us where our “real” parents are.

We feel uncomfortable when merely expressing that we think someone is attractive prompts a discussion about whether or not they’re “into black girls”.

We feel uncomfortable when you make fun of us for wearing “fake hair” and then come back from a trip to Jamaica with yours braided in our traditional styles.

We feel uncomfortable when you ask us to grant you “n-word privileges”.

We feel uncomfortable when you “compliment” us by expressing surprise that we can speak articulately, with the expectation that we would speak in ebonics.

We feel uncomfortable when you give us a genuine compliment only to append “for a black girl” to the end, with the expectation that we’ll be happy to hear that you think we’re better than the other niggers.

We feel uncomfortable when you vote for a political candidate who says and does racist things, all the while claiming that you don’t agree with those words or actions.

We feel uncomfortable when you turn over a new leaf and become a crusader for social justice without ever apologizing for the horrible racist things you used to say to us.

We feel uncomfortable when you argue with us over how uncomfortable we’re allowed to feel.

We feel uncomfortable when you read posts like this one and immediately comment that your race is also treated badly.

We feel uncomfortable that it’s 2020 and this still needs to be said.

The hashtag may be Black Lives Matter, but it would be nice to get a little acknowledgement that Black Feelings Matter Too.

It would also be nice to leave our houses without worrying that we’re going to be shot merely for standing in the wrong place with dark skin.

But apparently we still have to worry that we’re going to be the victims of a hate crime, just as we still have to field a dozen little micro-aggressions in every social interaction. It never goes away.

We can never be comfortable, because there’s always a target on our backs.

I had a weird epiphany this week: I guess I’m an atheist.

The reason I call this a weird epiphany is because it took twenty-eight years for it to click, despite the fact that at literally no point in my life have I ever actually believed in God.

I didn’t grow up in a religious household, you see. And without a church giving you the hard sell on Christianity, believing in God turns out basically the same way as believing in the Easter Bunny. I accepted it at face value as a kid, until one day I got old enough to really think about it, but then it was never relevant again and life went on.

So I never called myself an atheist, because I simply didn’t care enough about religion to take a strong stance against the existence of God. Plus, every atheist I had ever met was a smug, rude asshole and I didn’t particularly care to cast my lot with them. (Still true, to a degree, but I digress.)

Instead, if you had asked me whether or not I thought God existed, I would’ve said that I was straddling the line between agnosticism and ignosticism. Agnosticism, as most people are aware, is answering the question with, “I don’t know.” Ignosticism, as fewer people are aware, is answering the question with, “I don’t think that human beings have formulated a clear enough understanding of the concept of God for that question to even be answerable.”

Either one is a much more polite answer than just saying, “No, I don’t think God exists.” And because America persists in this tired misconception that religious tolerance means never, ever, EVER implying that someone’s beliefs are anything short of (pardon the pun) the gospel truth, it was really the only way I could safely explain my position.

But this past week, I realized three things that led me to finally just bite the bullet and acknowledge my atheism.

The first realization occurred when I got into yet another philosophical discussion about politics, morality, and the law. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just cheekily summarize the conclusion: the only reason that prostitution is illegal in this country is because Puritans believed that God hated whores, but Puritans probably only said that in the first place to limit the autonomy of the womenfolk. (Yes, I know how Woke™ that sounds. Sorry, not sorry.)

This got me thinking about all the ways that organized religion has been used as a tool to control the masses throughout history, and how profoundly uncool that is in light of the fact that, as far as I can tell, God doesn’t even exist. And I realized that every time I refrain from admitting that I don’t believe in God because I’m trying not to be rude, I’m tacitly allowing Big Church to press its boot down on my neck. Unsurprisingly, I’m not into that.

Second, I realized that when I say, “I don’t believe in God,” I’m not saying that I don’t believe in morality, or in good and evil, or in right and wrong. I’m not saying that I don’t believe in spirituality or divine cosmic forces. I’m not saying that I don’t believe in fate, or destiny, or a greater plan for all living things. I’m not even saying that I don’t believe in an afterlife, or some other form of life after death.

No, when I say that I don’t believe in God, I’m specifically saying that I don’t believe in the Abrahamic concept of God. I’ve studied a lot of world religions and philosophies, and that’s the only one that strikes me as truly implausible. I’m certain that there is a higher power guiding our lives, but I’m equally certain that it’s not a temperamental old man with a long white beard.

And this brings us to the third realization. If there was a God, and if He was indeed the Christian God as I was taught in my youth, then that guy would deserve absolutely no power over me.

I didn’t ask to be created. I had no hand in my creation, and no choice about whether I wanted it to occur. But now, because through the grace of God I was conscripted into existence, I’m supposed to owe Him something? I owe Him my unquestioning faith and allegiance, for something that was supposed to be a gift rather than a transaction, that I didn’t even want and have no option to return because that would really make Him mad? Count me out of this relationship, thank you very much, because that’s nothing but a bundle of red flags.

So as it turns out, even if I thought God existed I still wouldn’t be a believer. And I guess that’s really the final nail in the coffin of pretending not to be an atheist, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ll let you know if I get smited (or is it smote?) after publishing this article.

As I’ve mentioned before, trying to plan a wedding during a global pandemic is a special kind of pain in the ass.

Around every corner is another unexpected obstacle. The bridal salons are closed, so no dress fittings. The bakery showrooms are closed, so no cake tastings. Don’t order anything with the wedding date on it, in case it needs to be changed. But don’t wait too long to order anything with the wedding date on it, because it takes a month and a half for packages to ship. The marriage bureaus are closed, so good luck getting a marriage license in the first place. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The latest twist of fate has forced my fiancé and me to join the ranks of quarantine couples having “micro-ceremonies” instead of proper weddings. Have you heard about these? Basically it’s just the bridal couple, their officiant, and the minimum number of legal witnesses, standing six feet apart from one another, hoping to sneak in a few nice photos before getting told off for not wearing a mask. More of an elopement than a wedding, for all intents and purposes. It’s the hot new thing all over Instagram, and the reality of the global situation is that if getting married in 2020 is at all important to you, that’s the kind of wedding you’ll probably end up having.

Even so, I won’t pretend it was an easy decision to go micro. Even though seemingly every higher power in the known universe was pushing us toward this outcome, it’s tough to abandon a plan that you’ve been working on for almost a full calendar year. Even though we knew putting off the big celebration with all of our loved ones was the safe, responsible, and correct thing to do, it still feels to some degree like admitting defeat. Alright, Universe, you win. We’re licked. Take the wedding from us, we can’t stop you.

But that’s looking on the gloomy side, which isn’t the mindset you want to have going into your own wedding. So instead of wallowing in despair over the whims of cruel fate, which we’re all doing quite enough of these days, I’m deciding instead to take a walk on the sunny side of the street.

I invite you to come along with me, and think of some of the positive aspects of jumping onto the micro-ceremony bandwagon. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Less Stress
Anyone can tell you that the more moving parts involved in any undertaking, the more tiny little things you’ll find to worry about. Planning a wedding is no shortage of moving parts, but a lot of them fall by the wayside when you downsize the ceremony. Cutting a list of roughly 50 moving parts down to about 6 certainly takes some of the edge off.

No Babysitting
As Sartre said, Hell is other people. I love my family and friends as much as the next girl, but like any sensible person I’ve been lowkey wondering which relative was going to get thrown off the property for getting too drunk or starting an argument with their sister or asking one too many times when we’re going to have a baby. Not having to worry about managing everyone else’s behavior on my wedding day? Huge plus.

True Intimacy
A lot of people, in my observation, tend to focus more on the event of the wedding than the idea of a marriage. Yes, this is the blending of two families and should be commemorated by everyone involved. But it’s also, much more importantly, the joining of just two lives. At the end of the day, this is really just about the bride and the groom. And if we’re essentially the only two people at the event, that certainly makes sure we won’t forget it.

I’ll close with some encouraging words to anyone else (or any millennials, at least) trying to weather this same storm: “I see you. Big oof.”

Earlier this week, I made the mistake of publicly admitting that I didn’t want to vote for Joe Biden.

Now, this isn’t going to be an essay about why I’m not a Joe Biden fan. And it doesn’t need to be, because if you’ve been paying even the slightest bit of attention, then you know damn well why I’m not.

No, this is an essay about why I’m seriously considering becoming an expatriate as soon as international travel becomes a viable option.

So as I said, earlier this week I made the mistake of publicly admitting that I didn’t want to vote for Joe Biden. Overwhelmingly, the response that this generated was an assertion that by not voting for Joe Biden, I’m instead voting for Donald Trump.

Which, first of all, fuck off. Pithiness has its place in political discourse, but not when it’s so reductionist that any attempt to clarify totally derails the conversation. But I digress.

The vast majority of my friends seem to believe that if I don’t throw my whole-hearted support behind Joe Biden, warts and all, then I’m actually tacitly (or directly, depending on who you ask) supporting Donald Trump by splitting the vote. And I completely understand that argument, and can even go so far as to admit that it’s more or less true.

Here’s the thing, though: it shouldn’t be.

Democracy, in my humble opinion, shouldn’t be about voting against a candidate that you hate. It should be about voting for a candidate that you truly believe is going to do the best thing for your country. My vote should be my chance to advocate for what I want in my government, not currency in a nationwide prisoner’s dilemma.

Unfortunately, that’s not really the way American democracy works anymore.

At this point, we’re not much more than two bitterly opposed political factions that will do just about anything, even abandon our personal principles, to ensure that our party comes out on top.

And yes, one party are objectively the good guys and the other party are fascist sacks of shit, but even so- we’re at war with one another more than either side is really advocating for the good of the American people.

And that doesn’t look very likely to change. I can’t imagine the left and the right learning to play nice with one another after everything that’s happened between 2015 and now. I just don’t see a future in this country where the divide is somehow magically mended and we start caring about politics for the correct reasons again.

And I can accept that, but it doesn’t mean that I need to sit here and watch it happen. Especially when the admission price of sitting here and watching it happen is compromising my own integrity.

I shouldn’t have to feel like a bad person because I don’t like the idea of voting for someone that I don’t want to be the president in order to stop someone else who I also don’t want to be the president.

But, again unfortunately, in present-day America that’s just how things are. And as much as I wish it were different, and as much as I hope that it can be changed, I can’t help but think that sometimes it’s best to know when to walk away.

I once heard a riddle that went, “How far can a man walk into the forest?” And the answer is, “Halfway, and then he’s walking out of the forest.”

It is now Day 28 of Quarantine, and it’s finally starting to feel like we’re walking out of the forest.

We’re still tired and hungry and covered in mud, still a little disoriented and unsure of how much further we’ll need to walk, but it does feel like we’re on the way out.

And maybe next week I’ll be back writing about what a myopic, naïve thought that was. But for now, I’m going to embrace the good feeling. Because it’s been a rough road, walking into the forest, and we’ll all be glad to put it behind us.

It’s a careful balancing act that we’ve been asked to execute; not jumping the gun too quickly on everything going back to normal, but not wallowing in despair at the prospect that this is forever going to be our new normal. It’s been stressful, it’s been scary, and now that I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, I just want to take a moment to believe in the light. Call it an Easter miracle.

In this vein, I’ve started to think about what life lessons we’ll take away from living through this pandemic.

When all of this is over, will we keep washing our hands every time we go in and out of our houses? Will we still stand a little farther apart from each other at the grocery store? Be a little nicer to our trash collectors? Consider it weird not to have an entire case of toilet paper in the house at all times?

It’s hard to say, from inside the forest, what life is going to look like after we get back into civilization. Perhaps things will be exactly the same as they ever were, and our memory of these strange times will collectively fade in a generation or so. We’ve certainly refused to learn from the past a time or two before.

Personally, I would find it disappointing to hear that someone went through this experience without learning something worthwhile. Even if it’s just the smallest of epiphanies about how going outside a couple of times a week really does make you feel better. Life has never been like this before- how can you go through something so new and so different and come out the other side exactly the same person?

Of course, I’m really only speaking for myself. I can’t, and won’t, tell everyone what they should be learning from living under quarantine. How does that old saying go? You can lead a person to a new experience, but you can’t make them self-reflective about it?

Instead, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from living under quarantine. I’ve learned that most of my problems in life are unimportant. I used to spend so, so much time worrying myself sick about little issues like how to interpret something my boss said at the office, or whether or not I needed to lose another ten pounds, or if I was spending enough time doing my French lessons. These seemed like big, important worries because I didn’t have anything else to put them into perspective. But after the last month, when all of a sudden those problems were dwarfed in comparison to the problem of keeping myself and my loved ones alive and safe, it’s impossible to look at them as anything other than piddling.

And I feel like that’s a step in the right direction. It may have taken a global pandemic to teach me to draw a distinction between the things that matter and the things that don’t, but the bottom line is that I’ve learned it.

I didn’t enjoy walking into the forest, but I’m glad to be walking out with a new perspective.