I’ve been here for two months. I was planning to move to a large city, to get a job and a boyfriend and go see shows on the weekend and be young. And then my Grandmother was found on the cold, hard floor of her bedroom. She had a fall, broke her wrist and her cheekbone.
There are certain truths we cannot see because we have internalized clichés that mask them with a superficial similarity. I had always shied away from “positive affirmations” – italics here are representative of a knowing cynicism – because I imagined that they were intended to make me “like” myself, and that once I “liked” myself all of my problems would evaporate.