1. Other Women
Oh, how I love female camaraderie. I love the way our room booms with Ice Spice and NewJeans as we ask each other, “Do my eyebrows look even” or “Is it a skirt day?”
I love how:
- we tuck in each other's tags, tighten each other’s bra straps, and artfully weave bows into each other’s hair;
- we squeal to our favorite songs and pull each other onto the dance floor (and how party bathrooms teem with gushing praise);.
- each compliment of “I love that lip color” is attached with a wink and an invitation of “Do you want to try it? This color would look great on you.”
- we walk home linked and intertwined, arms woven so closely that we almost become one in our womanhood.
I love the purity of the love shared by women and the almost indescribable joy it brings. We have a groundbreaking kind of love that whispers, there is good in this world, my dear, so love loudly, love recklessly, love despite everything else.
2. Fun Little Drinks
A Chai. A dirty chai. A grande iced coffee with three pumps of white mocha and sweet cream cold foam from Starbucks. A large iced blackberry mocha with oat milk from Grit. A warm matcha chai with oat milk from Wawa. Always with oat milk because every hot girl must have raging stomach problems. Sometimes, however, the painful trip to the bathroom is worth the joy that lies in a strawberry yogurt boba from Moge Tee. Whether I’m chugging my drink so fast I barely have time to breathe or forcing myself to sip carefully, life is better with a fun little drink in my hand.
Sometimes, however, the painful trip to the bathroom is worth the joy that lies in a strawberry yogurt boba from Moge Tee.
3. Debriefs
We talk, we laugh, we cry into the deep quiet hours of the night and when we wake, we recount everything all over again. I love to talk, but I also love to listen. Facetime calls, voice memos, long braindumps via text.
I’m sorry, I’m talking so much about myself–
Now why would you ever apologize when I asked for more?!
Gush about your passions and vent about what you loathe most. Tell me more, I beg, always tell me more. Watch as we connect in our vulnerability; watch as we build empires from simple childhood stories and petty complaints; watch as we grow in our power through casual conversation and deep dialogue.
4. Being Delusional
My friends and I clasp each other’s hands and close our eyes.
I’m so lucky, everything works out for me. I’m so lucky, everything works out for me. I’m so lucky, everything works out for me.
This epithet of manifestation rings in my ears, almost as if my friends and I are chanting a cultish spell. There is such joy in collective romanticization and exaggeration, in the camaraderie that lies in egging on your friends to indulge in their innocent crushes, pushing them to turn thought experiments into romantic relationships.
Take matters into your own hands, rip your self-insert fanfiction off the page and into reality. Maybe you, too, can be y/n; maybe if you, too, open your big brown orbs and tie up your hair into a messy bun, then maybe you, too, will realize your greatest dreams and fulfill your deepest desires.
This epithet of manifestation rings in my ears, almost as if my friends and I are chanting a cultish spell.
5. Obsessions
Fangirling. Fixations. Pure fascination and infatuation. What era are you in now? A list of my fixations in no particular order:
- wearing platform shoes
- baking for my friends
- putting bows in my hair
- acrylics adorned with charms or chrome
- Stray Kids
- tabi mary janes
- fresh colorful bouquets
- fermenting kombucha and kimchi
- analyzing intergenerational trauma through an intersectional lens
- the establishment of more affordable housing in Charlottesville
- and beating my latest Tetris score.
My friends may point out how quickly my passions die, but they neglect to notice how bright and strong my love burns. How I have so much love to give, it can never stay in one place.
6. Hysteria
Crucify me. Burn me alive. Stone me for my emotions. Maybe I feel, maybe I feel a little too much to your liking. *cue the uncontrollable laughter* How I delight and revel in my own mania.
HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I am teetering on the tightrope between sanity and insanity. Dancing, twirling, dangling my pretty little legs off the precipice of eccentricism.
Oscar Levant once said, “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
7. Run-on sentences
What if I took the literary torch and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran—ran further than the 26 miles that Phidippides traveled from Marathon to Athens, ran even further than the 15,248 miles Forrest Gump covered during his five-time trip across the USA, or even further than the 24,901 miles Jean Passepartout hurried over in his whirlwind trip around the world in 80 days. What would happen then? What if my sentences never grew tired, what if they constantly ran a relay, passing on the baton to just another clause at each new comma I tagged on? What would happen then? My sister says I need to be more definite. Take a break, she says. Let your words rest. But what if I have more to say? What would happen then? She doesn’t understand the clutter and the mess, she hates having to edit my relentless sentences—word after word after word. When will it end, she begs. When will it end? But what she doesn’t understand is that the beauty of a run-on sentence is that it never ends.
Take a break, she says. Let your words rest. But what if I have more to say? What would happen then?
8. Hoarding
I could use this box for a gift later. I could use this piece of ribbon to tie into my hair later. Later, later, later. Later, I carefully lay another birthday card into a small box of mementos and smooth down the pleats in a sheet of tissue paper—to save for later. There is always later. Oh how I hate goodbyes. Everything will forever be preserved on my memory wall—the first ticket to Bodos, photobooth photos, premiere night movie tickets to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and fortune cookie fortunes from high school. Then maybe, I will never be left alone. For it is never goodbye, but always later.
9. Self-sacrificial love
My mother stays up all night cooking, filling up plastic containers with fragrant dishes to stuff my empty college fridge with. My sister quietly absorbs my every rant and cooly gives me the best sisterly advice. My best friend arrives slightly early to pick me up because she knows I’m always running a few minutes late. My roommate picks up an extra pastry during her morning bakery run and writes a small note to say I love you. My friend speeds through her own makeup, so that she can take her time to artfully paint on mine.
I hand her another fresh-baked good so that her stomach is perpetually full, a fullness that says I love you.
I watch how all the women in my life give their time, their energy, give all of themselves. This is how they quietly say I love you. And I hope they know, I love them too.
For every meal my mom cooks, I send her a photo of me sharing her food with my friends, all of us savoring a full, delicious bite that says I love you. For every rant my sister digests, I hand her another fresh-baked good so that her stomach is perpetually full, a fullness that says I love you. For every few minutes my best friend arrives early, I drive over to her house just to sit with her in comfortable silence—a silence that screams I love you.
Our love, shared quietly and intimately, still resonates within our bones.
10. Making Lists & Categorization
My notes app is a graveyard—Halloween Costume Ideas, Dream Pet Names, Friends’ Drink Orders to Try, Niche Gift Ideas, and States that I’m Missing from my License Plate Scratch-Off Map—littered with lists that begin so lovingly, excitedly, wholeheartedly, lists that look neglected, but really they’re just unfinished and waiting for my return like a forlorn 18th century maiden waiting by a window for her lover who is off fighting in the war. I love lists, they bring order and control in a world where I often feel none.
No list is finished to me—not even this one. I will come back and scribble in the margins, add items until it runs
off the page,
for there are so many things I love,
too many things I love about being a woman.
