You’re Gonna Die Alone (& Other Excellent News)

by Devrie Donalson

Take what helps. Leave the rest.

I wish my fear of failure was smaller than my fear of a Too Small Life.

He was the sort of man who loved you by always answering the phone, by being at every big game, and by putting air in your tires while you watched a movie inside.

As we walked through the botanic gardens together with frozen hands and toes, I told them about the flowers we were passing and about the people who were no longer blooming in my life, and wondered if maybe I was bad soil. They reminded me that some plants, no matter how hard you try, just want to fucking die. I should try not to take it personally.

I was born hungry. But life isn’t easy for hungry girls.3

I learned fast that little girls aren’t supposed to love decadent, full-fat, indulgent things, and we aren’t supposed to crave a decadent, full-fat, indulgent life.

I was taught that if I ever wanted to be accepted into a community and granted access to the exclusive club of femininity, I needed to live my life in devotion to restriction.

We are meant to posture and pose, and to speak in terms of morality when talking about food and pleasure, so we use terms like “good” and “bad” to describe foods and eating, or not eating. We link morality to our consumption or lack thereof. We turn our ability to deny ourselves pleasure into a declaration of personal good or evil.

We want someone to believe in us the way we believe in everyone else.

It’s okay to be the only one who is believing in you.

There is such a strong relationship between the way we are socialized to interact with our appetite for food and our appetites for other delicacies.

When I was told I was eating too much, I ate less and was ashamed. When I was told I was asking for too much, I asked for less and was ashamed.

I might end up just another falling boy with high hopes and wax wings, but shit, at least I tried.

the woman in question is very intimidating. I’ve heard it so many times. It makes me tired because I’m not intimidating. They are intimidated. That’s very different.

The “Any Chick on Here Not Crazy?” Philosophy Recommendation: Fuck off.

will spend their lifetime carrying an unequal burden of guilt and shame,

You bend down to the ground, no matter all the creaking of your long-day bones,

my toxic trait is that I refuse to learn if I don’t wanna.

Life is not on the other side of a different body, and you don’t need to change before you can experience a brilliant life or a brilliant love.

To be a young woman with a body that was built to carry weight, starch, and children during the Obesity Epidemic era was to know that you were responsible for the weakening of America by being a size 10. America’s Next Top Model, The Swan, Biggest Loser—all television you tuned into with your family.

There is no version of you on the other side of the size 6 door you are trying so hard to fit through. There is no you waiting to be unearthed so you can finally start living the life you deserve. It’s just this you, and it’s only this now, and time is ticking by.

You deserve to be in the pictures.

Of course I believe in ghosts— don’t you know how many hallways my heart still wanders through? So I burn candles— pile wildflowers, cloves and crunchy fall leaves together in the sunlight then whisper: Come back to me? And sometimes, I swear I see her, out of the corner of my eye, but she is haunting empty hallways. She never learned to say goodbye.

We might have been haunted, but we were also very busy.