Goodbye, Vitamin

by Rachel Khong

I’m over it, swear to God. But sometimes a thing washes up, out of nowhere—like an ancient candlestick from some wrecked ship.

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.

The phrase “born humans” is what I think of whenever I see someone wildly different from me.

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person—what we felt about that person. Here’s the fear: she gave to us, and we took from her, until she disappeared.

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.

I like also that having a terrible day pretty much guarantees that the next day will be much, much better.