Fighting Demons
I want you to be present. Hold your hands out and soak up the sunset until you are full. Sit among the flowers. Watch a duck float peacefully on a lake. Draw a heart in the sand. A star, maybe. A silhouette of a faint memory that does not hold the power it once did. … Continue reading Scream.
Your friend calls you idealistic. Later he’ll tell you that he meant it, but now he’s only saying it because it’s the thing that will hurt you the most. You are on the New York City subway. It’s your first time but you think it would be a good idea to get off at the … Continue reading Death by White Lies
Duolingo 101 Learning is about making mistakes, and doing things that help you not repeat those mistakes. This is how Duolingo works. They tell you that one way to avoid making mistakes is practicing a little bit everyday, just a little bit, never mind the passive aggressive notification. Think of it as a game, there … Continue reading Most Swedes Are Real
Lagom Är Bäst I am probably not saying anything groundbreaking here, in fact I might be creating a gap in the literature, but a big part of learning a language is learning how people use the language. I mean, in context, slang and such. This is the only situation in which those street interviews are … Continue reading Vad Fan!
All You Need To Know In Northern Sweden Is Älg I assume that learning a language is about speaking it and having people understand what you say. A good way to do that–if you’re into that kind of thing– is to hang around with locals. But sometimes you live in America and the people who … Continue reading A Swedish Guy Once Told Me
Cooper Lund wears his hat backwards. He thinks his truck is no good and he doesn’t like to drive it. “But it’s good to have around, you know?” He says “that’s mint” when he thinks something is cool. This doesn’t really mean much because he thinks everything is cool. He likes beer and he likes … Continue reading Cooper Lund’s Rules for life
This absolutely stunning person will inevitably be reduced to “the girl I’m seeing” or something like that. As in the girl I’m seeing says, mercury is in venus and why do I bother you are not even listening. As in the girl I’m seeing is telling me that it is important we blow into a … Continue reading if there was an award for most improved i would be nominated but i wouldn’t win
She says you can’t really learn from a mistake you only made once; you need to make it two, three, maybe four times before you learn and because I can not be bothered to make the most of situations I start to think that maybe this how it is always going to be, people telling … Continue reading Listen, I can’t tell you how to feel…
I am using my newfound boyfriend to work on my confidence. When he pulls my arm out and cups his hands tightly around mine—his baby blue eyes boring into mine—and calls me beautiful, I lace our fingers and say I know. So he says, I love how confident you are and I pretend I know … Continue reading Good Damage
The first thing you hear is an uncomfortably high-pitched attempt to sing along to Wannabe. A high wobbly table, sweaty drunk teens and twenty-somethings’ bodies wrapped around each other, jumping in discordant coordination, throwing down beer cans as an invitation for someone to trip, each step a gamble between dry land and pools of spilled … Continue reading Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party
Most of this story happens on the bed in Dani’s room. This is important because it means that the story doesn’t always start the same, in a dark room, with an essential melancholy that never turns into anything beautiful. She sits facing the TV, with the volume turned all the way down. I ask her … Continue reading Dani Gives Me A Chill Pill
“I always just want to be understood, and I want to understand other people too,” I sigh, exasperated. This is a conversation I have rehashed to a point that I don’t want to ever have to talk about it again. Yet I keep doing it because somewhere, not-so unconsciously I have an unfounded belief that … Continue reading Never Rarely Sometimes Always
I am walking around New York City on my own. I’m thinking how liberating it is. There is a magic show, and there is rain, and there is a crowd. I wonder if this is what everybody means when they say, “forget about him, live your life.” Do they mean that I should blend in … Continue reading A Belgian Guy
Barely Optimistic 