Issue #77: In the Company of Wild Women

How I got through last year (and today).

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Maybe I’m not cynical enough, but I have always loved Valentine’s Day (and still do). Yes, it commercializes love, but when you strip away the mass-marketed cards and overpriced prix fixe dinners, it’s also about memories of shoeboxes filled with notes, furtive glances at your crush, the cards my dad would slip under my door before school, and—at its heart—love. Though today is my first Valentine’s Day solo in over a decade, I still feel giddy to celebrate it, intentionally and on my terms, with carefully-selected company…

Last July, after months of feeling unattuned to myself, I moved out of the house I shared with my husband into an Airbnb. I needed space to hear my own thoughts, which were constantly drowned-out by the culture I was swimming in: You are married to a truly incredible human—what more could you want? Keep your head down: This house, this life will make you happy. Have a baby. My heart sank when I recently came across a journal entry from July of 2021. It was written exactly a year before I moved out, and two months before I quit my job and began my Master’s program: