My tears were for another reason entirely. — I figured that my first post after this involuntary hiatus of mine would shine with positivity and joy. That I’d share the 5 Lessons I Learned While Being Happy. That I’d type this with a smile on my face. In reality, my tears have barely dried. But let’s rewind. Six…

Seeing the world from a child’s perspective has been truly eye-opening. — There probably are about 9,000 posts about what babies and toddlers have taught Medium writers on this platform already… probably. I have nothing to back this up, but I still contend it’s a conservative estimate. I have read none of them. Why? Because I have an 11-month-old niece of my…

The content will surprise you. — For the first time in my 29 years on this earth, I’ve connected with a fellow human being in a romantic way. Yet this debut relationship comes with endless questions — I’m a recovering perfectionist, so I want to do this right. I care for this person, for him, and…

The clock is ticking, but I won’t try to stop the handle. — Earlier today, I video called a friend of mine who has reached her 70s. She’s a comic and a traveler, agile and quick-witted even though most of society would pronounce her dead. “I’m 70 going on 30,” she says with a laugh, putting her loyal companion, a brown teddy bear…

He went from acquaintance, to friend, to brother in the space of a year. And within a handful of weeks, we became something worse than strangers. — Summer 2018 hangs bright and warm over the city of Berlin. The sunshine makes my depression easier to cope with, yet I am still in the midst of my eating disorder. That evening, the self-help group I’ve been attending for months convenes on the balcony of our assigned room. One…

And what it can teach anyone, regardless of how vanilla you are. — Like so many new to the scene of BDSM subculture, I thought that I needed to be dominant if I wanted to remain a card-carrying member of the feminism squad. Fortunately, the fanfic (i.e. fan-written stories about existing narrative universes) I read in my formative years quickly showed me how…

After eight years of severe bulimia, I have a lot to learn about a healthy relationship with food. — When I finally managed to lose a considerable amount of weight at the age of 17, I didn’t expect this supposed success to derail my life into one of constant binging and purging. Some moments when I was neck-deep in my eating disorder and all my attempts to stop kept…

Here’s what sharing the truth has taught me about the role of age in romance. — The older you get, the less of an issue a large age difference becomes. Imagine an 18-year-old and a person in their late 40s together. Peculiar, I’d say, bordering on icky. Yet if you put a 50-year-old next to someone in their 80s, it inspires more of a ‘So what?’…

Seeing myself in pictures is difficult given my body image issues. So I booked a session with an erotic photographer. — When I see myself in pictures, my default reaction is to criticize. To ‘compare and despair’. I spent over a decade obsessing over my body, starving myself, and struggling with bulimia because of it, then tried to achieve “body positivity” at the beginning of my recovery. Being happy about something…