I hope this email finds you well. Celebrations are in order.
First and foremost: novel enrichment hit 100 subscribers this past weekend (!!!) and continues to grow into something I’m proud of. Since this newsletter’s beginning last April, every new subscriber is a milestone to me, but this particular number filled my heart to the brim. Looking back, I remember how hesitant I was to open this door for myself, because I didn’t know what was waiting for me on the other side.
I felt compelled to send this while everything is still adorned in pink and red, and covered in hearts—the world feels cozier this way, before it all hits the clearance aisle at your local CVS tomorrow.
Truthfully, I’ve written about love a lot, for as long as I’ve been online (despite this, I don’t think I’ll ever know enough about it). But I’ve never been honest about how far I’ve gone to avoid feeling or confronting the opposite of it.
The first time I stole something, I was three, maybe four years old. I was at a discount hardware and plant store with my grandmother. Known for being long-winded, she kept chatting with the cashier after her transaction, which included a box of DOTS gumdrops for me. Her back turned, I stood next to the candy display and slipped another box into our plastic bag with startling ease. Over the years, there have been so many inconsistencies to this story when it comes to the consequences I faced, as the women in my family like to embellish, but I remember getting caught. My grandmother went through our purchases back in her car, bewildered to find two boxes of gumdrops instead of one, quickly realizing how it got there—horrified at what I was capable of already.
1) Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love; 2) Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals; 3) Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
To this day, I’m not sure what inspired my first brush with petty theft. But of all the places to sin, it only got worse in Catholic school. I stole my classmates’ school supplies from their desks, when I’d innocently ask to go to the bathroom during the after school program I attended for kids whose parents worked 9-5 jobs. My mistake was bringing more people into the operation, because a guilty conscience was inevitable at a place where weekly mass was mandatory.
Thankfully, I left this habit behind long before it could turn into grand larceny. At the time, I couldn’t properly answer the angry why’s I was met with—why did you do this, why do you think this is right—I let the adults in my life think I was ungrateful, but I knew I was suffering from an absence I didn’t have the words for yet. And the things I wanted that I risked so much to take—they were never going to feel like mine.
I awoke to my alarm yesterday thinking it was an ordinary Tuesday. I boarded the train, walked to my office building, stopped for a coffee at a place I hadn’t been to in a while. When I got to my desk, and more coworkers shuffled in from the cold and exchanged pleasantries, it finally occurred to me why the date, February 13th, felt so familiar. Galentine’s Day—a day defined by female friendship, popularized by Leslie Knope of Parks & Recreation, a show containing a slew of characters and messages I felt so emotionally protective of in my teens and early twenties. As a concept, Galentine’s Day is wholesome in nature and I’ve always admired it and participated to some degree, but social media exacerbates the anxiety behind the question How will I spend it?
When it comes to holidays that celebrate love of any kind, it’s easy to be threatened by loneliness. More than once, I’ve avoided giving up histories to postpone the shame of having to start over. But I’ve noticed that the shame doesn’t last long at all—it’s replaced by the anticipation of showing up somewhere only as myself.
My love has roots in eagerness, and I’m trying to be better about it. I used to question who would claim me, who would save a seat for me. But now I know where it is and feel safe holding onto it.
I hope you’re holding onto it, too.
“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart.” - Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”
If you would like to hear Greg Kinnear reading this Carver story aloud, watch Stuck in Love (2014)—a star-studded romcom I revisit at least once a year.
“The stars go waltzing out in blue and red.” - Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song”
A favorite heart-stopper of mine: Ewan McGregor serenading Nicole Kidman with “Your Song.”
Occasionally, when I’m doom-scrolling on TikTok, the algorithm feeds me clips from Modern Love, the Amazon series based on essays from the New York Times column. I highly recommend watching Anne Hathaway’s episode (S1E3), “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am.”
Speaking of Anne Hathaway, she would like to contribute: