I should be dead. Now that I’m not, I don’t know how to construct a meaningful life when every morning feels like a fresh new horror, even if it’s not. How does one decided to just get over and get on with their life? We edit and polish the stories we tell on social media to create a mirror that will reflect a better version of ourselves than the one we know or think we know. Our lives are far messier than we wish to admit, even to ourselves. Yet, what we won’t tell…

My abusers underestimated me. That was a mistake. — I grew up in a fundamentalist home. A good day was when I didn’t get molested or sexually assaulted. I started writing about this a year ago, but I didn’t know then how often or just hadn’t put it to myself in those terms, which is important for some reason…

Life, when you’re living with a narcissist, stands still. Time moves on the outside, but inside, everything remains, just as it was the day you met, like an emotional and psychological time capsule. You may not see it when you’re in it, but when you’re not, time speeds forward like a VHS tape on fast forward. — When I married my ex-husband, I thought my life was finally beginning. We’d made travel plans to Greece. We were going to make a movie. I was finishing one novel and starting another.

It feels good to love a narcissist. For those of us raised in homes where narcissistic abuse co-mingled with love and security, nothing feels more right. — Falling in love with a narcissist feels like being kissed by a star. Having never loved another kind of person, I can’t speak to how it compares. …

What is it like to love a narcissist? Empty, lonely, vacuous. …

My divorce has felt a lot like my marriage, confusing, empty, frustrating and exhausting. — I blamed myself for the end of my marriage. Over the pandemic, I started coming to terms with memories of child sexual abuse and adult sexual assault. Memories that I’d repressed came bubbling up from the depths. I got myself into therapy with a trauma specialist. Due to the intensity…

I refused to die. The alternative then was to dig into my insomnia, depression, anxiety and various addictions and look at the truth. That said, facing the trauma, many times in the last year, felt like the thing that would kill me. It is the thing that killed my marriage. — I’ve been thinking about our animal bodies. I recently saw the Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes on Netflix. It’s a private investigator’s journey into Monroe’s death to determine whether it was murder or suicide. Spoiler, it’s unclear.

It’s Friday night at 6 pm. I’m in my pajamas, with a cat on my lap, and there’s absolutely no place in the world I’d rather be or anyone I’d rather be with. I keep thinking about the horrors of dating and how, once I married, I felt the most…

A year ago, my marriage was ending. I was working too much at a job I hated but barely made enough to contribute in any meaningful way to our shared expenses. I had no idea how to get a good job, something my then-husband never understood about me. …