5 BY SOPHIE MAY WANG (WITH LOTS OF HELP) KelseaCristinaAdrianaContributorsHopperAmeyaRaoAndrewGreeneClaireKellyGaragusiEmmaLouiseJakeFosterJonathanGeorgeLonganacreLiviaCaligorLydiaWangMarleeWeillMayaWanelikNehaGundavarapuSofiaAzconaSofiaJainTaylorBiccumTheoVasiloudesYvonneSchichtel
206 Zine CHAPTERSTHE 3. Identity & Freedom Page 84 1. Pressure & Success Page 10 2. Love & Intimacy Page 50
I was 13 when Taylor Swift released her single 22 from her fourth studio album Red, and I still remember my confusion. Aren’t your teenage years for being “happy, free, confused, and lonely,” not your 20s? I’ll be graduating college, I’ll be grown up, I told myself. 22 is old. Growing up, we are prepared that our teenage years will be messy. We’ll drink too much, kiss the wrong person, follow questionable trends, lash out, and reinvent ourselves. It’s a part of the process, a rite of passage, and we’re young enough to earn forgiveness. I’ll get this all out of my system and once I get to 20, I’d tell myself, I’ll figure all this shit out. My teenage years were messy, but within constant structure. The school system and my competitive dance team planned every minute of my days. I split the calendar in semesters and summers, in Septembers and spring breaks. From age 13 to 19, there was always someone telling me what I needed to accomplish to be successful. And to comfort myself in my years of expected chaos, I used what I knew to plan for a better decade. I wrote up ten year plans for my twenties. Colorcoded and detailed, they were planned to the month with milestones such as graduating university, moving cities, working for a fashion company, getting married, starting a company, having a child, and making the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. Once I get to 20, I’ll start my life. But as soon as I turned 20 and the buzzer sounded, I froze. A countdown started and I realized I had no clue how the next ten years would unfold, no matter how hard I tried to stick to a plan. The 10 year plans I used to make for myself neglected the fast-paced changes and unpredictability of life. Not one predicted spending the first months of 20 in eating disorder treatment or the first months of 21 back home with my family during lockdown. Not one scheduled in severing ties from my senior year roommates at 22 or losing my childhood pug while living in another country at 23. Not one said I’d turn down an incredible job opportunity because I couldn’t be a full time student and have a full time job. Not one said I couldn’t do it all. Without the structure and goals I was used to, I desperately tried to hold onto my own structure and goals from age 18, even if they weren’t necessarily right for me. I always thought that if I just followed a schedule, my life would turn out how I wanted it to look. But how I want to live changes and evolves as I do. Even if I checked every box I created for myself in my teens, I’d be unsatisfied. Because I’m no longer in the same mindset as I was when I wrote the list. Although freeing, once I accepted that what I want out of life will be ever-changing, I became more confused than ever before. It felt like fate that Taylor Swift rereleased Red when I was, in fact, 22. And this time, she released Nothing New (feat.
208 Zine
DEAR SOMETHINGS,TWENTY-
9
Thank you for picking this up and for reading this note. Welcome to 20 Zine: the good, the bad, and the twenties. I hope flipping through these pages helps you feel a little less alone. Working on it has certainly done so for me. All my love, Sophie May Wang Founder and Creative Director 20 Zine
Phoebe Bridgers) (Taylor’s Version) (From The Vault), with the only words that have ever been able to simply and accurately describe this time in my life: How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?
I started talking with friends, really talking, about these years: the balance of experimentation and purpose; what ‘settling down’ might actually look like and when we’d want to; our frustration with older generations telling us we have to save a planet they destroyed; my anger towards fast fashion companies capitalizing off of the confusion and insecurity of our early 20s; the difficulty of asking for a decent starting salary when we’ve been taught through internships to just be the opportunity to work for free; how to be independent but not feel lonely; how to plan a life that, for the first time, we do not have set-in-stone guidelines for. And that’s how 20 Zine came about. The more we talked, the more I realized how prevalent these topics are and how important these discussions are. And how important the art that emerges from these years is in telling our stories and communicating how we are getting through. This issue focuses on three topics that these conversations naturally fell into: pressure and success; love and intimacy; and identity and freedom. So this is my story and other twentysomethings’ stories. It’s my confessions and secrets and theirs. And, hopefully, some will resonate deep enough with you that they’ll feel like yours too.
2010 Zine ONE:CHAPTER
11 Pressure and Success PRESSURE & SUCCESS
A photography story by Jonathan George SPOTLIGHT
2014 Zine being in spotlightthe while simultaneously not wanting to be in thenspotlightthelosingthespotlight then wanting to be in the spotlightagain.(repeat)
Being in the spotlight is an exhilarating yet intricate experience that deserves to be butcelebrated,howdoI manage dealing with success, how maintain success, and how do avoid sabotage?
self
17 Pressure and Success
do I
I
19 Pressure and Success
IS POSSIBLE I WAS WRONG ABOUT MY DREAM CAREER?
the very first biology class I took at age 14, I was confident that I wanted to become a doctor. This dream persisted for 9 years until age 23 when I got rejected from all 34 medical schools that I applied to. After realizing that my decade-long quest to become a physician was fruitless, I was faced with the following series of difficult questions: Did I still want to become a doctor? Was it possible that I was wrong about my dream career for ten years? And, perhaps most pressingly, if I was wrong about my dream career, then what did I want to do with my life? If there was any silver lining that came from the Covid-19 pandemic, it was that it gave us all plenty of time to reflect on our lives. During this period of introspection, I came to terms with the fact that, for many reasons, I no longer wanted to become a physician.Aftermaking
IT
this decision, one question still loomed heavy over my head: what did I want to do with my life? I found myself surrounded by people who were so sure about their career paths. While they were busy celebrating their big promotions, I had, all of a sudden, been hastily ushered back to the drawing board. I needed time and space to clear my head and think about what my next steps should be. So, naturally, I decided that I would attempt to ride my bicycle across America completely alone in search of a profound realization about my future.
Words by Andrew Greene.
I bought a bicycle, a tent, and various other camping accoutrements and caught a flight from New York City to Oregon. When I arrived, I took a bus to a coastal town, dipped my back tire into the Pacific Ocean to signify the start of my journey, and started pedaling east. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was not cut out for the bike-touring lifestyle. I left New York in search of space, and boy did I find it… lots of it. I climbed snow-capped mountains, crossed desolate deserts, and rode through quiet towns. After about 650 miles, though, I quit.
2020 ZineSince
I had finally recognized that the big epiphany that I was searching for on this insane bicycle trip was that, quite simply, there was no big epiphany to be had. I realized that I didn’t need a new dream career right away.People always say that your twenties are for experimenting and making mistakes. I had always been so afraid of those two concepts; I wanted my life to be predictable and mistake-free. The failures that I experienced in my early twenties, though, made me realize that it’s okay to experiment, step out of my comfort zone, and come up short.As I continue to grow as a person, I recognize that whether it’s my first “dream career” or my tenth, there will always be new goals to strive for and unfamiliar paths to explore.
Photographer:
Jonathan George. Stylist: Aaron George. Model: Darryl Dorzelma.
I spent a week in New York City without a care in the world before I started. It was the first time in almost a year the dark cloud of potential unemployment, deportation, and anxiety hadn’t loomed over my head and I felt hopeful. The Sun was finally shining on Ameya Rao, and it felt good. The dark cloud returned again the day it dawned on me that I couldn’t continue working the way I was. I worked from home and lived on my desk, taking pee breaks and buzzing in the Doordash delivery man every five hours or so. But that’s just what working in a Pandemic is like right? My days were filled with micromanaged menial tasks that never required the “excellent written communication skills” or creativity that the
SORRY, CAN’TTALK HAVENOW,I I
20 Zine
“It’s hard to consider the concept of ‘quitting’ as the daughter of Indian immigrants. The cultural nuances of accepting defeat, when all you’ve heard are the heroic tales of your parents battling struggle after struggle and still somehow always managing to prevail by the skin of their teeth, are inescapable.”
25 Pressure and Success
job description highlighted, or even my brain. Had the chance to be creative and thoughtful about my work eluded me? Or is that just what being in your first-year out of school is like? I didn’t have the work-family I had so often fantasized about, being on a team of two. But wasn’t I getting great exposure working under an industry veteran? Never mind it had been made abundantly clear he had no interest in investing his time in a fresh grad. Most days I worked from 9am to 11pm, available on Outlook, Teams, Workiva, iMessage and for any surprise phone calls. I remember receiving such a call mid-shower, careful not to let anyone on the other line hear the chattering of my teeth as I stood sopping wet, frantically typing my tasks for the night into my notes app. But that’s Wall Street right? What I now see as warning signs, for months I attributed to “paying my dues.” I was surviving. And was thriving ever really an option? It’s hard to consider the concept of “quitting” as the daughter of Indian immigrants. The cultural nuances of accepting defeat, when all you’ve heard are the heroic tales of your parents battling struggle after struggle and still somehow always managing to prevail by the skin of their teeth, are inescapable. I am abundantly lucky and privileged to have parents who support, in all senses of the word, and validate my experiences. I felt beyond empowered to have them on my side, but I had to deal with my own self-doubt and priorities first. I had to take a step back and reevaluate the life that I was making for myself.Myparents’ belief in the work environment I deserved allowed me to be in a position where I could feasibly take the time to nurse my burnt-out-self back to happiness and find an opportunity where I could not simply survive, but thrive. I ended up coming across a new opportunity. I asked all the questions I never did the first time around, weighed all my options, and valued my own worth. Instead of feeling lucky that a company would hire me out of all the other candidates, I felt lucky to have found a match — a place that I could contribute to meaningfully and that I knew valued me as not only an employee, but as a person. I am, for the first time, surprisingly confident enough in my newfound ability to prioritize my well-being and self to know that I have made the right decision. As change and uncertainty are life’s greatest constants, I have no way of knowing what my future will hold — but there were dogs in the office today, so it can’t be all that scary. Words by Ameya Rao
JOB! TO QUIT MY
STRUCTURE A photography story by
Cristina Garagusi
&C H A O S
2028 Zine
29 Pressure and Success “IN OUR 20S, CULTURE OFTEN COMMUNICATES THAT WE SHOULD SEEK FUN & PLEASURERECKLESSWITHABANDON, WHEN AT OURWECOREREALLYPURPOSE.”CRAVE
Not only was I expected to enroll in college as soon as practically possible, but I was destined for the medical field. My single mother who’s been a nurse for the last 20 years raised me, and therefore it had been slowly steeped in my brain that medicine was the only logical industry to study. I chose Speech and Hearing Sciences as my specialty and graduated with my bachelor’s degree at the age of 21. I was immediately waitlisted for grad school, but taking time off was not an option I was afforded. I had to start working right away and I would try for grad school again later. I began my first ever full-time, “big girl job” as an occupational hearing conservationist. While I excelled at the work just as I had in my undergrad, the stress and conditions were crippling. At the age of 22, I realized that all of my work led me to a place that I could not stand to be in for my entire working life. It was incredibly confusing to achieve what you were told to strive for, only to be incurably disappointed. I made the decision to leave that first job, after only 8 months.
THE FALSITIES OF THE “BIG GIRL JOB”
Words by Kelsea Longanacre
“2022 is the last year of my 20s... Retrospectively, trying to have my shit together at 22 is laughable. I wish I could’ve been surrounded by voices telling me then that those feelings were typical and warranted.”
I had zero experience in advertising and marketing, but I was a millennial who found a tech start-up willing to give her a chance. The first two years were full of many learnings, both academically and socially. Learning what an annual review was like and how it could impact everything? Terrifying. Drinking and mingling at work events without getting too drunk in front of your boss? Precarious. The two years after that moved even faster. I was learning more about the advertising industry, marketing skills, and professional appearances. Promotions seemed to come every year like clockwork, with rapidly increasing responsibilities. By the time I turned 25, I was the youngest person on my team, the youngest person at the entire company to hold a corporate card, and the entire c-suite knew my name. I had reached a point in my career where everything I had learned about business and marketing was from job experience, and I felt I was missing a formal education compared to peers in my field. I chose to get my MBA fully online, (before Covid-remote was a thing) while still working full-time in the field and traveling for work. Personally, it was the best choice for me because I didn’t want to take time out of my career. I graduated in one year, days before my 27th birthday.Earlier this year I was applying for a job and realized that I was now considered for senior titles, with 8-10 years of experience. In my early 20’s I can vividly recall looking at roles like this and thinking to myself, “I’m so unqualified.”2022isthelast year of my 20s, and I am so humbled to look at where I am now compared to where I started. Retrospectively, trying to have my shit together at 22 is laughable. I wish I could’ve been surrounded by voices telling me then that those feelings were typical and warranted. Just remember as you take one step forward and two steps back, that the version of you from third grade would think you’re amazing.
2030 ZineIwas
a gifted child. Years ahead in reading and accepted to all of the universities I applied to, a person who was “on track.”
Cristina Garagusi Models: Emily Auer and Hailey Crawford
33 Pressure and Success
Photographer:
2036 Zine
37 Pressure and Success Work by Sofia Azcona
SO F I A
Sofia Jain started her vegetarian food blog, @sofiaeatsnyc, in 2016 during her freshman year at Barnard College. What began as a way to combine her love of photography with her love of trying new restaurants has since gained a following of over 93K who visit the page for recommendations and mouth-watering images of perfectly-captured cheese pulls. @sofiaeatsnyc has evolved over the past six years as the social media influencer market grew, as Sofia graduated college and began a full-time job in finance, and as the world went into lockdown. Now, at 25, Sofia makes sure that her brand remains authentic to her followers and to herself. At its core, @sofiaeatsnyc has always been, and will always be, a creative outlet necessary for Sofia to live a balanced life.
Over the past six years that I’ve had my account, I have learned that I don’t always have to say yes to every opportunity. I used to say yes to everything, because I wanted to build connections and relationships in the industry. I’ve become so much more selective because I know that I can be, and because I feel like I need to maintain the brand that I’ve built. There are times where it makes sense and there are times where it doesn’t. I have a busy schedule, with my life outside of work and with work, so now I only say yes to things that make sense.
41 Pressure and Success
For instance, a lobster restaurant reached out to me, and it looked like a beautiful spot, but I couldn’t promote what they want me to, because what I would order on their menu isn’t what they want to sell. And I want to make sure they would get good content. I get emails probably four or five times a week with paid opportunities. I do maybe four or five a year. I don’t want to get into a paid campaign if I’m only doing it for the money, because that feels so inauthentic to me and I want people who follow me to know they can trust my recommendations. So if I enter into a paid campaign, it’s something I would spend my own money on. I did a paid campaign with Essie, the nail polish brand, which also so happens to be my favorite nail polish brand. So when the opportunity came around to work with them, I said, “of course.” If I would promote something for free, why not get compensated for it? But I won’t promote something that I don’t believe in. I am also very fortunate that this isn’t my livelihood. I can turn it on and turn it off when I want to. And I love that. I love doing it and I love what it has turned into. I never expected it to turn into what it did. But I’m very fortunate that it’s not my full-time job, because it’s really not that reliable. I saw that with Covid, like in 2020, a lot of my favorite food bloggers had to either get side jobs and figure out something else that interested them that they could do and make a living off of, or start doing tons and tons of sponsored posts they didn’t necessarily want to or that might not align with their brand. I do this for fun. I do it because I like to, not because I feel like I have to, and that helps me stay very true to my brand. As soon as I made my food blog, I was critical of what went on it, because, even if I had a hundred followers, it felt more real. And I felt like I had to selectively pick what looked good enough to go on it. Part of that is because I was trained in visual arts. I grew up studying that every summer of my life. I took digital photography classes and learned how to use Photoshop at my camp. I learned how to edit lighting and color, how to shoot underexposed. I was 10, 11, 12, with a small point-and-shoot camera, doing my photography assignments. And so I approached food photography the same way and took it a lot more seriously than probably a lot of people at the time that I started. And part of that is because I was beginning to develop an audience who followed me for a purpose. My personal account was followed by my friends, it was private. But my food blog was public. So if people followed me, “In my mind, I’m like, ‘these people I don’t know are following me because they genuinely care about my recommendations. They care about this girl who grew up in New York and is a vegetarian and likes to go out to eat and likes photography, they care about what she thinks and what she considers is a good restaurant or a great meal.’ And so I felt like I had to live up to that.”
Making money off of any form of social media is so new. Born in 1997, I’m on the cusp of being a Millennial and Gen Z. And with that, my exposure to technology has been in the middle, too. I never had dial up internet, but my first cell phone was an iPhone, at age 13 or 14. I was a sophomore in high school when I downloaded Instagram. 2012. I was 15. Everybody my age, we started out with the ugly filters and the weird selfies that you would take in the Instagram app. And the pictures of our silly fro-yo with a hundred toppings that probably cost double what it should have. And even then, I posted it. Not on a food account, but my personal account.
2042
And so in my mind, I’m like, “these people I don’t know are following me because they genuinely care about my recommendations. They care about this girl who grew up in New York and is a vegetarian and likes to go out to eat and likes photography, they care about what she thinks and what she considers is a good restaurant or a great meal.” And so I felt like I had to live up to that and I had to consciously think about what I would post knowing that people follow me for these recommendations and not necessarily just because they know me as a person. With Covid, my engagement was basically negative because nobody was going out to eat. Nobody was traveling to New York and everyone who was already there had their places. Nobody was trying anywhere new. So my engagement was terrible. It was in the negatives for seven or eight months. I would lose followers every day or I would say stagnant at a zero gain. I would gain a hundred followers and lose a hundred followers in a day. It was a plateau. But I still enjoyed the creative element, so I kept doing it. There were times where I remember thinking, “I could stop and it wouldn’t matter, because people don’t care.” But then I would think about the hundred that do follow, even though a hundred unfollowed.
thereZinewas a reason, you know? You don’t follow a random public account for no reason. Especially, back in 2012, people cared a lot more about follower count than they do now. You didn’t want to follow an account that didn’t follow you back. People cared, it mattered. I don’t care now. It doesn’t matter to me. But back then it did. And so when you followed an account, it was a conscious choice. You said, “something about what they post matters to me, even though I don’t know them. And I want to keep seeing this content.”
“I have so many restaurants that I love and I want them to succeed and I want them to do well. And if there’s anything I can do to help, I will.”
45 Pressure and Success
“I’m now not even just being recognized or wanted for my posts, but the actual, artistic photography behind it. And that’s how it started to begin with. I just loved photography. I always loved photography. Instagram came later. I’ve kind of come full circle.”
I was also able to help restaurants during this time. I had five months without going to restaurants, but I had an endless supply of photos that I had taken over the past four years at restaurants that I could post. And I was helping restaurants publicize that they were open for delivery or takeout. I would put that in my caption and post a photo that I took and I would try to really help the restaurants I cared about because I knew that that’s what I could use my platform for. I have so many restaurants that I love and I want them to succeed and I want them to do well. And if there’s anything I can do to help, I will.Ifsomeone unfollows me, I have no way of knowing why. A lot could be bots. Or maybe someone moved out of the city, someone stopped using Instagram, someone’s account got deactivated. Somebody just doesn’t want to see pictures of food anymore because it means something to them that they don’t want. Maybe it’s emotionally not good for them. Maybe I post too frequently. Who knows? And so it doesn’t really hurt me that much. The older I get, the more I stop caring about judgment, like external judgment, judgment from people whose opinions don’t matter. If my follower account dropped by two, who are these two people? Two people I’ve never met before. So, why should I let this impact me? And I’m not gonna lie, it definitely did. When I first started my account, I was thinking, “why are people unfollowing me?” But now, I don’t care as much. I barely gained any followers for five, six months and I kept doing it because I loved it. I love the creative outlet and sharing with my friends. I love going out to eat, trying new food. That was enough to keep it going. And if I lost 100, 1000, 2000 followers, I’ll gain them back one day. And if not, it’s okay. I do it because I like it. I also started doing so many shoots at home. Currently, I probably do them four times a week in my own apartment with restaurants, markets, and brands that I developed relationships with during the course of the pandemic. Now, they will send me a new product and they trust my photography skills and that’s really exciting. They don’t even say I have to post, I’m never required to post ever. They just would love my photos. And so I’m now not even just being recognized or wanted for my posts, but the actual, artistic photography behind it. And that’s how it started to begin with. I just loved photography. I always loved photography. Instagram came later. I’ve kind of come full circle.
My final semester of college, I took a seminar in behavioral economics and did a regression analysis on why some of my posts performed better than others. There is a huge behavioral aspect to how we engage with Instagram. I looked at my top and bottom performing posts in terms of likes, saves, etc. I looked at what camera I used, what the lighting was, what was featured. I found that a lot of my top performers had some aspect of human element in them. If it looked like someone took a bite out of something or if a hand was lifting up a piece of pasta, I think it makes whoever looking at it feel like it could be them. It’s not untouched. It’s real. It’s less like a work of art and more human. That said, I haven’t shared too much about who I am. I don’t necessarily feel the pressure to, and honestly, I don’t want to share every aspect of myself publicly on the internet. I think if I put so much of myself into it, it would start to feel more like my identity. It would consume my life. And my current self doesn’t want that. Maybe in a couple years, that’s what I’ll want. But right now I really love having a separation.Ihavemoments where I love to go to a restaurant, unplug, not take a single picture, and just have a good time with friends. I care about my relationships and my friendships so much. And I know that my jobs don’t mean anything if I don’t have people around me that I love and support and who support and care about me and my success. If it was like, oh, keep my food blog or lose all my friends? Fuck the food blog.
“My jobs don’t mean anything if I don’t have people around me that I love and support and who support and care about me and my success. If it was like, oh, keep my food blog or lose all my friends? Fuck the food blog.”
Food photography feels like a creative outlet. I love the entire process, not only taking the photo, but the aftermath: editing, getting the perfect lighting, the perfect level of clarity, the shadows and the tone and everything that goes into getting a good photo or video. My full-time job is creative, but there’s still people telling me what they want. My blog is creative and I decide what I want to post. I love that my job is separate, but gives me the time, freedom, support, and financial stability to live my life outside of work and really prioritize and embrace my creativity.Ithink that’s a really important balance. That’s really hard to get at my age and something I really value. I don’t think I would be in finance if I was at a firm that didn’t value personal time outside of work and a good work-life balance, because it means a lot to me. And it always has. I like to know that when I log off, I’m done until the next day, and that’s expected and that’s fine, because I have a life outside of my job. I think that’s something that if people are able to, they should advocate for, for themselves. Obviously there are times when people are not in a position to advocate for themselves or to be able to have that straight out of college. I’m definitely in a very rare, lucky situation, especially being in finance, because this is not the norm. Most people my age in finance are working crazy hours and don’t have time for a part-time job, which is basically what I have.I’m having a good time. I’m happy. I’m living my life. I’m traveling, I’m young, I’m creative. And I have a really good balance of structure and creativity that I always knew I needed.
47 Pressure and Success
Words by Sofia Jain
Photographer: Maya Wanelik. Makeup Artist: Marlee Weill. Lighting Assistant: Holly McCandless-Desmond
2050 Zine TWO:CHAPTER
51 Love and Intimacy LOVE INTIMACY&
2052 Zine EMMA LOUISE ON WITHHOLIDAYTHEIRPARTNER
55 Love and Intimacy Photography story by Emma Louise
2056 Zine
T H E O VAS I L O U DE S
61 Love and Intimacy
I’m a visual artist who uses installation and multimedia to question narratives of desire within the gay community. In my most recent work, I used messages I received on Grindr about my body and paired it with a bunch of multicolored Jell-O molds as a way of thinking about how the interactions I’ve had on Grindr have molded my perception of my body. Jell-O was a lovely material for this — it’s made by processing animal bones, so it’s reconstituted body parts, and there’s something simultaneously erotic and innocent in the way that it jiggles. I laid out a bunch of Jell-O molds on my bed, underneath which was a speaker that would read out Grindr messages I’ve received. The vibrations from the sound of the messages would jiggle the Jell-O, highlighting how these words have shaped the experience of my body. This installation was the centerpiece of a solo exhibition I put on in my flat called hosting. ‘hosting’ is a term used on hookup apps to describe somebody who is willing and able to ‘host’ another stranger in their home. Playing on this, I invited people into the private space of my home to view this and other artworks that questioned how the body and body-image are regulated through the user interactions of location-based hookup apps.
Photography by Stone Stewart, from hosting
Work and words by Theo Vasiloudes
In the summer of 2017, Rachel* and I approached the Free Poetry man perched half a block North of the Met. He sat on a little beige stool at a little beige desk with just enough space to carry the typewriter on which his fingers fluttered away. We were mesmerized by himeyes wandering mindlessly over the herds of passerby around him, fingertips dancing with zeal and conviction, ink-stained pages spewing out of his machine. I remember the type-writer had a broken striker for the letter “A.”
It’s been years — almost a decade — since I’ve seen her, and sure, I have many new and undeniably stronger friendships today. I have friendships that have withstood the test of time — unlike Rachel’s and mine — and I have newly-born friendships that I don’t doubt will grow eternally alongside me. Yet, I’m inevitably overcome by pangs of sorrow when I think back to these days… when I remember our mutual love for The Book Thief, hours-long catch-ups after cross country practice, essay editing sessions over cookies, summer weekends spent journaling in the park and discussing museum exhibits. Cream pie was our code name for our cross country coach, Clementine was the codename for her crush. She showed me the most beautiful picnic spots in Riverside Park when I moved uptown, and I taught her how to make dumplings following my grandma’s recipe. I went to my first middle school party with Rachel, who did my makeup with her mini Sephora eyeshadow palette she received for Christmas and took photos on her digital camera. The first time I drank was with Rachel — I recall us awkwardly fiddling around with our open but full beer cans, afraid of getting drunk. She stayed with me past midnight to help me set up my middle school fashion show though she had an exam the next day, and I was the first person who stood up when she was elected Student
RachelPresident.andIfacetimed here and there the first year of college. But as her dream of running for office was supplanted by a prestigious consulting internship and my summer was filled with unpaid creative internships and a constant hustle of parttime writing, time slipped through our fingers, and I found that in the little time we did have together back at home, we had less and less to talk about each time. She began to wear designer bags and asked me to accompany her to her daily Soul Cycle classes and weekly manicures, as she didn’t have time to hang otherwise. Perhaps I was too judgmental, but I felt increasingly repulsed by her lifestyle — I felt foreign in her life. I began to decline her requests in favor of spending time with other friends, friends who I connected with.
It all feels childish now — silly, even — but the truth is, my purest and sweetest memories were with her.
Livi nd Rchel re best friends, they are silly, they like to lugh, hhhhhh heheheh i cnt type the letterThough. New York summers are sweltering with happenings and oddities, few passerby -tourists included -- even glanced at the Free Poetry man. Rachel and I, however, could barely suppress our giggles, eyes darting from the poem-in-themaking to each other, practically counting down until he reached the end of the page. We tore the poem in half (sorry, Free Poetry man) and put each half in our respective wallets. Two years later, when we said goodbye before parting ways for college, they were still there. Now, her grandmother’s quilted wallet has been replaced by a chic credit card wallet boasting a large gold Fendi emblem, which was a gift from her manager at her boutique consulting firm. I often wonder if she transported the keepsakes to her new wallet, but just between you and me, I feel childish for even wondering.
HEARTBREAKFRIENDSHIPMY changedbeenhave*Names
2064 Zine
Words by Livia Caligor
I felt that she was no longer growing as a friend or an individual; if anything, I felt that she had regressed, fallen deep into the trivial traps of wearable, dimensionless success. She subscribed to social norms, she wore her new money, and she lost her values that connected us. When I think about it, though, maybe she thinks that I never grew up — that I’m stuck in my naive childhood reveries and detached from the harsh, materialistic reality of society. To me, abandoning your values and sense of self is regressing, but perhaps to her, it is simply unrealistic. I suppose she didn’t regress; she didn’t stop growing, just like I didn’t stop growing, though I didn’t in the same direction she did. Nothing “happened” between us — no falling out, no classic toxic friend group, nothing dramatic at all. I guess in theory we didn’t stop being friends, but we haven’t exchanged a single text in years. It is often these slow, quiet endings that are the most painful. I can’t quite articulate what happened, how my most genuine and happy memories devolved into a nonexistent relationship. A relationship of the past, gone. Those are just my memories, however, and perhaps those salient anchors of our friendship exist solely to my mind. It really messes with you, unpacking the ins and outs of the death of a friendship. Romantic breakups inspire books, films, TV shows, and conversation. They elicit empathy from others because they are a socially-validated source of pain. They validate crying in bed with ice cream, retail therapy, Tinder rages, overthinking every last detail, and doing dumb, reckless things to cope. But it’s your friends who are kind to your partner even if they secretly hated them all along, listen to you practice your breakup speech, eat ice cream in bed and watch stupid shows with you after your breakup, flag the dating app weirdos, help you choose your outfit when you go on a first date, and get you up and running again and feeling better. You enter a romantic relationship knowing that partners come and go, but you never expect to come out of one without your best friend alongside you. It’s friendships that forge your path and shape your memory; it’s friendships that clarify your understanding of growth. It’sstrange, isn’t it, the way in which the grief of losing a childhood friend follows you and dominates your memory. It’s a painful reckoning, and it’s odd that nobody seems to talk about it. Perhaps because girl fights are perceived as stereotypical and frivolous — boring and drama-seeking, even. And sure, they certainly can be, but they are also the relationships you choose to keep and invest in because that unwavering bond is so inevitable that you know that person is your family. The weird thing about love is that it fills a hole in your soul that you didn’t even know existed -- it creates space for itself in your mind-- and it grows and grows indefinitely, deeper and more intimately than imaginable, quite literally expanding your heart and mind, until it ends. It can’t be filled or replaced, and it takes up space inside of you even after it ceases to exist. The most bittersweet part is that the space that love of friendship occupies in your mind remains.
“You enter a romantic relationship knowing that partners come and go, but you never expect to come out of one without your best friend alongside you.”
65 Love and Intimacy
“Nothing ‘happened’ between us — no falling out, no classic toxic friend group, nothing dramatic at all. It is often these slow, quiet endings that are the most painful.”
POSTCARDSTOALOVEBACKHOME
2068 Zine Photography story by Taylor Biccum A WORLD GREETINGSAWAYFROM
71 Love and Intimacy WISH YOUWERE HERE
2072 ZineSEE SOON YOU
2076 Zine my mom and dad got married at 25, and here I am, two years away from that age, writing sad poetry about boys I neverdatedeven
2078 Zine
Lover’s Patrón You ask me to kiss you With the bottle of Patrón still by my lip, Rushing And I take another sip. around your room,D a n c i n g I t on the bottle’s empty box on the floor.ri p Your lover gave it to you, I give myself another pour. You ask if you can kiss me, Just as you asked three years ago, And I tell you all this time you’ve waited has placed me high up on a pedestal I can’t promise I can reach, so I reach for the bottle across the bed — But you grab it from me, Patrón For men only love who I am when we meet, For you could only love who I was in 2018. s w i gn n gi your l o v e r ‘ s likedownwater,
The girl who had 19 years of first impression practice, From private schools to ballet classes, Who leaves you wanting more, But never seconds, never thirds. I hand you a dream sequence And memory of a girl you can’t unearth, A girl whose reputation is carefully curated quirks And a refusal to kiss you as you think you’re worth. b l u rr y
79 Love and Intimacy
And you turn it into a world, Spiral it into attraction, shove, Shape it into lust — You swing it into love. I swing the bottle. And I let you kiss my mouth as it nurses your lover’s Patrón And tomorrow, you’ll check it off your bucket list And tell her you drank it alone.
E
There was also V, S, K, W, and letters I only refer to in code, some I don’t even remember their names. The common thread amongst these letters is that they all remain undefined: never a boyfriend, rather a somebody. I don’t know why a label in love feels so important. Maybe it is that we are told there is a right way to be in love, and for me, maybe it is because I have never had that.But just as A is for Apple, it is also for autonomy, and ambitious, and affectionate. It is for adventurous, artistic, and adaptable. A is a piece of series that makes a whole, and maybe I began to create a definition of love amongst this alphabet. Maybe, I have seen A in its many forms, and maybe I will use B to define love in the future.Words by Claire Kelly
ZineIdon’t
There was J, there is J. J knows most of my story but in fragments and fills in the blanks with his own twisted and anxiety ridden tales of who I am, should be and we could be. With J we play a game of tug of war, between friends and something more. J, is my complicated, and never became simple.
Came after A. With E, the comfort of my company started to mend his broken heart, and his kindness and clear communication mine. E taught me that you can be honest, and communicative, and end things before they collapse. C, was charming and inquisitive, the man straight from my imagination. With C I fell fast and I began to picture a future of us. My time with C only came to an end due to circumstance. For a long time I lingered in an alternate reality subsidized by what’s app messages, and facetime calls. With C, I eventually chose to punctuate with a period, rather than a question mark.
2080
CA B S
remember sitting in a classroom learning that A is for Apple, D comes before E, or that sometimes Y is a vowel. But I remember my ABCs. I cannot live without my ABCs. The alphabet is so ingrained in everything I do, I forget the importance of the fragments that make the whole, and the weight of the symbols I use to define the world around me. I don’t know if I have ever been in love. I said I love you once, and now I don’t think I meant it. I think when I may have meant it I was too scared to say it. I’ve started to wonder if I’m addicted to butterflies. To initial moments when my stomach drops, my heart flutters, when I have no sense of time, or reality. The weeks of bliss, where every flaw is a cute quirk. To the time where there is nothing but possibility. Am I stuck on infatuation, on late nights, on pillow talk? Will I ever be loved by definition? A, nearly destroyed me. He was older, and manipulative. I was enthralled in his chaos, torn to pieces by his whirlwind. He was the first, and probably the worst. For a long time after his toxic shit storm, nothing felt quite as exhilarating. To this day, I see a red flag as a mystery rather than a reason to run. When I catch glimpses of him in others, I tend to fall faster even if I hate myself for it.
On night one, I already felt myself start to twist, my mind start to race. But this was not night one. It did not start here, in London, but rather in ruralWhenMaine.we first met, I didn’t deem myself worthy of him. So I introduced him to her. He was the cool boy who lived at the end of our hall. She was my best friend, and a literal model. I was me. Still riddled with my same high school insecurities, figuring out how to navigate this new terrain. While they may have dated, rarely was it the two of them. Often it was just him and I, and always it was us. He became my best friend. She broke his heart. Us ended. Us ended because of them, us ended because of me. I started seeing an older man they both warned me about. He, in particular, wanted nothing to do with it. After weeks of fighting with the other guy, trying to drag me out of parties, protect me, he gave up. Our lunches, constant texts, and late nights stopped. Months later, I was at his door hysterical with a wounded heart. He was not home. But he was right. He knew me, he could see through my bullshit facade. He was the only person I wanted in that moment.Thenext year, I was struggling with terrible anxiety and an eating disorder, side effects of the aforementioned toxic relationship. He was not himself, depressed, anxious, out of it. While we were never together, the ending of us tore me from my person and him from his. We struggled alone. We began to mend our friendship in a drunken state. For the first time, I began to see an us again, but something was different. There was a chemistry not there before. It was tangible, it was confusing. There were dates, just as friends. There were vacations, just as friends. There were drunken nights where I begged him to date me and he said
YOU ARE MY C O M TPLICAED
The third stop was a bar named after the great Sherlock Holmes. Maybe we were both looking for clues. What do you want, what do I want? What should we want? Hours later the night was ready to close. You hailed me a cab. My heart was full but you stayed complicated.
2082
ZineIcame to London with a romantic vision of our relationship. For years you have been my complicated. But this time, I convinced myself, you, my complicated, would be simple. You arrived at my flat dawning deep blues and blacks, scruffier than you had ever been before. You stood tall holding a bottle of champagne and what felt like a new sense of confidence, maturity. London looked good on you.We walked through the cobblestone streets of Shoreditch, stepping into the first pub you deemed simultaneously authentic enough and sceney enough to be to my liking. You let me order a spicy margarita just to have yourself a laugh. As we sat you asked questions with a curiosity that was newly found but we caught up in the way we always did, seamlessly. Our eye contact was unwavering, as I batted my eyelashes you never once looked away. We left the pub and you asked if I wanted to see the sights, have a first night full of adventure. Yes. Always yes. We walked to the tube, a station far out of our way but it was the one I would take to university the next morning. You knew this would ease my anxieties, and make this transition even slightly smoother. Our banter kept up with theWeunderground.leaptoutof the tube and the Eye, Big Ben, and the London Bridge appeared into sight. I was practically skipping. You let me have it for maybe 5 minutes before scoffing at how touristy it was and taking me to stop two. We walked to your building and rode up to the rooftop. All of London was illuminated below us. There on the balcony, backlit by the London skyline we just stood. I loved the moment of silence, but you couldn’t handle it. I wanted to feel the energy. What was this between us?
The The B os t on Globe (B os t on, M as s ac M a r r i a g e o f M i c h a l s k i / W a n Mg a r r i a g e o f M i c h a l s k i / W a n g C l i pped B y: sm w344 Thu, Oc t 29, 2020 Copy right © 2020 News papers c om A ll Right s Res erv ed letgo. Words by Claire Kelly
83 Love and Intimacy
you? Surrounded by art, we walk the halls making commentary on all that is around us. We talk so much about how we feel. Just not about how we feel about each other. How can I ruin a day like this? How can I ruin this? You took me into the exhibit I wanted to see, you don’t let me pay, you open doors. You humor me as we weave in and out of stores on the high street. As we part at the tube we hug awkwardly because something feels wrong. There is so much emotional energy spent on this relationship that I don’t have room for another one. We need to lean in or I need to let go.
2084 Zine THREE:CHAPTER
85 Identity and Freedom IDENTITY & FREEDOM
2086 Zine YVONNE
87 Identity and Freedom DESIGNERFASHIONYVONNESCHICHTELCREATINGINHER20SON
Identity and Freedom “Savor theanonymityandbiggrandbottomofthemountain.”
There’s something very precious about creating while you have no idea what you’re doing. This time in my life is very precious to me, when you don’t have the means or the tools or the skills…you just..figure it out. It’s where the creativity grows. The work you do in your early twenties is at such a special time, when you know just enough, have practiced just enough, have learned just enough to take a stab at executing your vision.There’s less fear of failure, because you’re already at the bottom.Toget through your twenties as a creative, you shake hands with being okay with making trash. Everyone starts out a bit garbage, but you can’t possibly surpass that until you look your garbage in the eyes and commit to putting it out there. It’s a game of staying in it long enough. My professor once told me that “if you do what you do long enough, you’ll do something new.” I listened to a podcast once by Martine Rose. She said she was so grateful for all the years she spent barely making ends meet with her label, simultaneously working in a bar to fund it all, failing a lot and making a lot of mistakes…with no public spotlight. She said if she had gotten press right away, she might not be the successful creative director and Balenciaga collaborator she is today, because she wouldn’t have had the same opportunity to fail. The whole time I was writing this, I was thinking about this quote by Ira Glass: “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get thispastphase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
93
— Ira Glass
A lot of the work I’ve made in my twenties has to do with youth…Maybe I’m trying to take a critical lens on it, or maybe I’m actually just romanticizing it all.Ialways begin projects based on a theory or hypothesis. Recently I was working on something I called MAMA — research questioning if there was any way to mend what’s been destroyed… more so is there any way to reinstate innocence once lost or rebuild after senseless violence? It is about growing older and leaving that childhood innocence behind, but youth isn’t necessarily tied to age. It’s not tied to time. It’s a state of mind, its a breadth or lack of experience. You can be 80 with the heart of a child, and you can be 5 years old having just experienced an entire war. You can’t undo what you’ve been through. That’s what makes youth so precious. Having not yet been exposed to horrors and knowledge of the world… of normative patterns of thought and antiquated systems..in theory at least.
2094 Zine
Words and work by Yvonne Schichtel
97 Identity and Freedom
There’s a lot of pressure these days for everything you do to “mean something.” Can it still mean something if we’re just acting on instinct and art? If we don’t actually know what anything means? Can we just breathe a little and create for the sake of it? Or is that selfish? There’s so much shit going on in the world, so what are we doing about it? What are we creating?
THE MEANING OF BEAUTY
TWENTIES
2098
ZineIam
Words and work by Neha Gundavarapu
still fresh into my twenties, but for me, the twenties mean reclaiming my life, mind, and body. I was obsessed with aesthetics as a teen, but as I get older, I understand more that beauty does not have a concrete definition, nor is it the defining factor for all things good in life. I’m turning 22 tomorrow, and I’m not a stranger to the many struggles my peers and I face, especially in the age of heightened social media usage. Growing up, constantly getting dress-coded, told to hide my figure, or told that my body should look a particular way to be “attractive” was exhausting. In my teens, getting Instagram at age 11, growing up with unrealistic TV, and watching picture-perfect models and their impossible standards were highly damaging to my body image. For years, I hated my body and struggled with body dysmorphia and disordered eating. So in the past couple of years, I’ve turned to art & design for consolation, and I couldn’t stop drawing… females: faces and bodies. The female body is life. Much of my artwork (often unintentionally) highlights the female body: its power and majesty. I often use vibrant and not-so-natural colors on bodies to portray the uniqueness that we possess within us. I hope my art helps others see the female body in a magical, whimsical light.Iwant to use my 20s and youthfulness to uplift younger girls and raise their selfesteem and self-love. I won’t be the first to admit that my 20s have been confusing, figuring out what I want to do for a career, whether to pursue my passion through art or find job security, what I want in a romantic partner and how to be the right kind of woman. Now I know the answer: there is no correct answer. There is no “right way” to portray femininity and beauty. Artists have had a tremendous role in studying and representing the feminine over the past centuries. However, the woman’s body was taboo for a long time, and only some of its most profound nuances came alive in art. I now feel that rather than a stable set of outlines, physical beauty is an evermorphing construct, a muse, a collective dream that artists confront sooner or later. My art has helped me reclaim my body and begin to love myself more wholly — the superficial parts, my vessel, and my heart and compassion. I engage with my body as a natural expression of my vital reality. And that’s where I’ve found true beauty. IN NEHA’S
ADRIANA “A reclamation to accepting and loving my body as it is.” A photography story by Adriana Hopper.
20102Zine
20106Zine “So much of my 20s has been about understanding my role as a queer designer; what it means to pour my queer self into my work, feeling the wasn’twithperformance,objectsbetweenrelationshipclosedesignedandmyidentityandstrugglingdesigningforaworldthatdesignedforpeoplelikeme.”WordsandworkbyJakeFoster
JAKEFOST ER
Identity and Freedom
ATHERE *TW: Self Harm
I always say that it happened one time when I was alone, piecing together a collage with rubber cement, an X-Acto knife, and old issues of National Geographic. I pressed the knife to my arm and suddenly, it didn’t matter which classes I was failing and which friends had made snide comments outside the drama room that morning. All I could feel was a cool, focused pain, and then all I could feel was panic at the sudden beads of blood, and all I could hear was the fan’s rhythmic heartbeat and the bridge of “Hey Jude.”
WHEN
According to The Recovery Village, about 17% of all people will self-harm at some point during their lifetime; nearly half of these people cite cutting as their preferred method of self-injury. Of every age and gender demographic, teenage girls make up the highest percentage of people who cut. Study after study shows that adults are much less likely to hurt themselves in general. But for some people, it isn’t a compulsion we leave behind with our adolescence.
But if I’m being honest, I’m not sure that was really my first time cutting. It was my first time using a blade and my first time thinking, Shit, what did I do, but it had been years since the first time I clawed at my arms until I drew blood, months since I’d escalated to disfigured paper clips and safety pins and finally, scissors. I’ve tried to write this essay before and I always come back to that moment in the art room, but the truth is, I don’t have a neat, linear story. The thing about cutting is that it isn’t always just an action. The thing about cutting is there isn’t always an easy beginning, a before and after. And the thing about cutting is, for me, it never seems to be the last time.
“When a person cuts, it calms them down, and that registers in the brain as a calming mechanism,” said Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, an addiction specialist and clinical trauma professional. “Once that happens, it’s a Words by Lydia Wang ISN’T
20110ZineBack in 2021, I applied to volunteer at a crisis support line. When I received an email a few weeks later — subject line, We have great news! — my first thought was, I’m in. And my second thought was, My entire application was a lie. The questions were standard. What makes you a good fit for our program? How will you take care of yourself while having difficult conversations? Why do you want to join our team? While answering, I found myself creating a narrative that I wasn’t exactly sure I believed. I applied as a person who’s dealt with a handful of mental health problems and a smattering of trauma; a person who’s now in recovery. I’d be a good fit for this program because I’ve made my way out, I wrote. I know what it’s like to call a hotline because I want to hurt myself, and I’m in a better place now. I want to help other people get there, too. But the truth is, I don’t know that I am. I called the same hotline days before sending in my application. I think about hurting myself every day, and sometimes, I still do. We talk about what it looks like to recover from substance abuse or trauma, and we talk about what it looks like to live with mental illness. But self-harm isn’t really considered either. It’s seen as a coping mechanism or a symptom of something much, much bigger. It’s seen as a phase. So what happens when it isn’t one? If someone asked me about my first time cutting, I would say that it happened in my high school’s art room. I used to hide out there during lunch, listening to my teacher’s old Beatles CDs, working on collages, and — most importantly — avoiding the friends who were slipping away from me more and more each day, avoiding the shiny, straight-haired girls who laughed at me in class, avoiding the terrifying cabal of popular, preppy guys who leered at anyone with boobs. I would hide in the art room and pretend I was hiding from the world, cocooned in this empty room with natural sunlight and a rickety old ceiling fan.
And I’d wonder, time and time again and year after year, if there would ever really be a last time. If, like my first time, my last time would be impossible to identify because cutting has become something I am as much as something I do. I wondered if I’d ever be able to write about self-harm objectively, clinically, with wisdom and reflection, when thinking about cutting is and might always be my automatic impulse, my most comforting safety net. When I learned about my great news!, I wondered if I’d even be able to help anyone struggling at rock bottom when I don’t know that I’ll ever really leave mine.
And then there’s the shame of being an adult who hurts herself, a woman with a support system and a therapist and a job and a decade separating her from the depressed, lonely teenage girl in the art room. I turned 22 and 23 and 24 and 25 and felt a knot of hopelessness with every relapse. I’m a 26-year-old cutter, I’d tell myself. I’m pathetic.
But if cutting doesn’t have a discernible beginning and concrete ending, that means recovering doesn’t, either: It’s a beautiful, temperamental, emotional thing that happens in present tense. I like to think that one day, I’ll catch myself saying I used to cut, and I’ll know it’s the truth. I like to know that one day, it will be the last time, and I probably won’t even notice.
“There’s the shame of being an adult who hurts herself, a woman with a support system and a therapist and a job and a decade separating her from the depressed, lonely teenage girl in the art room.”
LAST TIME
111 Identity and Freedom behavior that they will always be drawn to for the rest of their lives.” Although many professionals describe self-harm as an impulse-control disorder rather than an addiction, Hokeyemer noted that addictions are usually classified by three defining factors: a very regular craving, a loss of control once the thought of a substance pops into one’s mind, and the repeated use of a substance, despite any potential or known negative consequences. It’s a pattern I recognize.Inaspecial episode of Euphoria, created and written by Sam Levinson –who has spoken openly about his own struggles with addiction – Rue’s (Zendaya) thoughtful sponsor Ali (Colman Domingo) perfectly sums up the stigma around addiction. “The hardest part of having the disease of addiction, aside from having the disease, is that no one in the world sees it as a disease,” Ali tells Rue. “They see you as selfish. They see you as weak. They see you as cruel. They see you as destructive. They think, ‘Why should I give a fuck about her if she doesn’t give a fuck about herself or anybodyCuttingelse?”carries a very different stigma, but the quote resonated with me. Because people who haven’t cut don’t understand. They can’t understand. They often divide cutters into two categories – those who want attention, and those who want to die –without recognizing that, for a lot of people, cutting isn’t really about either. It’s a solution, not a strategy. Maybe some people out there cut because they want death, they want help, they want something else that will make everything better, but that’s never why I did it. I cut because cutting, in and of itself, made me feel better. At least, at first. As a teenager, cutting felt like a magic trick, a secret world, something that was mine. I’d catch two former friends looking at me and snickering, then whispering, and I’d dig half-moons into my palms and think, Forty-five minutes until we have a break between classes. Forty-five minutes until I can cut. Afterwards, though, I’d feel worse. I’d worry about the blood. Worry about people noticing, cry about feeling like a fuck-up. Fast forward a couple years and, after cutting, I’d immediately think about the first person I loved cringing at the sight of my naked, scarred thighs. I’d think about the look on my parents’ faces every time I came home from college and they clocked new marks on my arms.
working with people who have decades and decades of experience who are still learning. When I say I’m entering this space at 22, it feels comforting, because, if this is where I am at 22, where will I be in five years? I have an inherent fear that I’m not going to be able to do it all. But if I’m doing this much at 22, that must mean that when I’m no longer in my twenties, I’ll have done enough. Right? I just don’t know what enough will look like. I have always had it in my head that my 20s would be my last ride of freedom. And I think I’ve been acting like that — that I don’t have my whole life to figure myself out, that [at age 30] I will have to give myself up to a family so I better get this all done now, that this is all going to be taken from me or I’ll have to sacrifice it.
I want the world to let us be confused. We’re all trying to act like we know what we’re doing, but we don’t, and that’s okay. We’re not supposed to know. Normalize that, please, for like the sake of humanity. We’ll get there eventually. Words and work by Marlee Weill, featuring Marlee Weill.
113 Identity and Freedom LETTERS TO A GIRL I ONCE (ANDWASSTILLAM)
It’s kind of imposed on you your whole life. You see that women can’t do it all, that you have to sacrifice something. You see a strong woman on TV who has issues with family because she puts her work first, or a woman that is a mom and isn’t fulfilled with her career. You never see a woman like you see a man — with a fulfilling career and loving family. If you do, she’s lucky. She’s really fortunate. And I want children and a marriage like my parents have. But I want this career. I want this life that I’m building for myself, because it’s so freeing and exciting. I don’t want to give that up at the end of my 20s like everyone basically tells us we have to. That scares the crap out of me.
It was a lot easier to picture what I thought my life would be like when I was younger and I wasn’t actually having to figure these things out. I always wanted to leave the small town I grew up in — that was a big dream of mine: to go explore the world. But I didn’t think about how much that would change me. It is wonderful, but it is hard, to make this conscious, conscious choice to keep changing and growing, without any guaranteed reward. I grew up thinking I knew what it would mean to work as a fashion designer, but I’ve already challenged every single thing that I thought that would mean. And I’m realizing that there’s not really a formula. I have to define what it means to be a fashion designer for myself, rather than having it planned out for I’mme.
115 Identity and Freedom AyearagotodayIwasstrippingoffanoldchapterLikeajacketthatwastootightunderthearmsIboardedaplanetoindulgeinanewplaceAnewlifeAnewmeSomewhereyouhadn’ttouched
A gift that clears the space For me to out of a mold my bangs For me to To make art from fabric and clay
20116Zine
But the loneliness whispers back at me
A year later
Last night I looked out my large window
And instead of a burden Or feeling like something was missing ... c r a c k c u t
That it is a gift that I have given to myself
And then that loneliness starts to shape-shift
At a city that I do not know but still call home And for a moment I felt small
And for a moment I felt lonely
I sit marinating In the year of new
Nails by @ninakieunails
119 Identity and Freedom It felt like freedom.
20120Zine
123 Identity and Freedom OGODBY E (FOR NOW)
