“It’s not the calm before the storm, but the cohabitation of serenity and calamity. It captures the future’s grasp on the present; anxiety is in the very air.”
“When I saw him again for the first time in nearly thirteen months, we chatted as though no time at all had passed, as though we were still standing there, waiting for the train to arrive.”
“I was never the kid to get tangled up in chatroom relationships and online communities like many of my friends in middle and high school. I repent now, for the way I invalidated, even in my own head, the authenticity of their attachments. Laughter over Zoom is still laughter.”
“Looking back, I feel the peculiar embarrassment of having been a teenage girl with teenage girl concerns, but the lives and concerns of teenage girls are often dismissed as trivial things, and if I could tell myself at 13 what I know now, I would.”
