Goodbye, Vitamin

by Rachel Khong

You know what else is unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him.

I don’t know how I got to be thirty. I don’t feel thirty, the way I felt so definitely nine, and thirteen, and twenty-one.

What I want to know is what counted for something and what counted not at all. Now I feel like a shit for spending that time—that’s the word it’s convention to use: spending—on what turns out not to matter, and neglecting the things that did, and do.

If I were you is something I’ve never really understood. Why say, “If I were you”? Why say, “If I were you,” when the problem is you’re not me? I wish people would say, “Since I am me,” followed by whatever advice it is they have.

Sharing things is how things get started, and not sharing things is how they end.

The mind tells you what or whom to love, and then you do it, but sometimes it doesn’t: sometimes the mind plays tricks, and sometimes the mind is the worst. But I’m trying—I really am—not to think about those things.