October is the month the Midwest pretends to be New England, then remembers it’s not—apologizing with sunsets so pink you feel rude looking away. I finished a grant proposal, baked a pie with Mina’s reckless amount of butter, and booked a ticket to Seattle to see the Pacific I’d only ever flown over. On the plane, I wrote another talk I might never give called “Soft is Not the Opposite of Strong.” It was mostly stories of women I knew who carried entire staircases alone and then taught themselves to ask someone else to grab the other end.
By Halloween, Hailey’s account had turned into a feed of platitudes over out‑of‑focus yoga poses. “Sometimes we lose everything to find ourselves,” she wrote under a photo of a candle. The comments were back on and ruthless. I scrolled two and stopped. I did not wish her ruin or redemption. I wished her quiet.