Lying Isn't a Part of My Personality—It's an Escape From It
I love to lie.
Below are your search results. You can also try a Basic Search.
I love to lie.
After over a year of lockdown, it was as though everybody had burst from hibernation, eager for the sun, the mild weather, and the sight of other people taking it all in—talking, laughing, teeming with life. Every square meter of grass, a picnicker. Every bench, crammed. It’d been a long winter. It felt like the first day of spring in ten years.
It’s May of 2020, and I, like the rest of the country, am crying over Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA). For many, ATLA’s newfound popularity is fueled by nostalgia, long–standing relationships to the show's characters, and memories of a less complicated childhood. But since I've never seen the show before, I interpret the hype differently. I see it as people finally recognizing what I’ve believed for a long time: Cartoons can be good.
1. A girl calls me Chinese in first grade. It’s the first time I remember hearing that word. It’s not an insult: She doesn’t know what "Chinese" means, and neither do I. But I burst into tears anyway. This is the day I learn that she is white, and I am not.
Content warning: The following text describes unhealthy eating habits and can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.
Going to campus won’t fix my problems, my mom said.
Whenever I talk about my allergy, I’m met with disbelieving stares.
Content warning: The following text describes eating disorders and can be disturbing or triggering for some readers. Please find resources listed at the bottom of the article.
Sea Breeze, N.J. was a small neighborhood along the Delaware Bay with a distinct aroma of salt and mud. A year before the New Jersey government bought out the neighborhood, my family made the mistake of trying to drive to our house in Sea Breeze without checking the tides.
My days have softened into routine. The gleaming novelty of dining hall food, snow, and independence has slowly drifted away. Curled up on my twin XL bed, you can find me reading the weekly novel assigned for my most unconventional class this semester, "Happiness and Despair." This week, James Baldwin’s narrative makes me fall in love with Giovanni’s Room. One quote is especially significant: “Perhaps home is not a place, but simply an irrevocable condition.”
You would think a lifetime of watching rom–coms and reading paperback romance novels would have prepared me for my first heartbreak. It didn’t even come close. I guess it’s because those stories usually have a happy ending, or at least the kind where the two people grow from the pain, move on, reflect fondly over their time spent together, and all that other flowery shit. (I’m looking at you, La La Land). But when I went through my first breakup, it felt like I’d reached the end of a cliff—there was nothing beyond but rock bottom.
In the year before life became real—that is, adult: exhilarating, pivotal, awful—I finished a crossword.
I’m lying in bed as rays of sun stream through my window. The weather app says it’s 40 degrees outside and feels like 36, but I wouldn’t know. My sheets are stained with last night’s tears and yesterday’s coffee. Instagram just told me I’ve been caught up for the tenth time today.
The first time I remember meeting you, you were late. You said that it wasn’t actually the first time we’d met—that I’d been introduced to you, multiple times, two years prior (once upon a Toasty Tuesday). But, that first day, you were indeed quite late, and I was a little ticked off.
Rummaging through our attic in early August, a heat trap coated in a decade’s worth of dust, I picked through abandoned floppy disks, daily planners from the '80s, and two grocery bags stuffed with empty CD cases. Amid the scraps of my parents’ memories, I found the album Blue by Joni Mitchell. The cover was scratched, but the disc was still inside.
Sometimes love sneaks up on you. Suddenly, everything shifts. You start to rethink everything you’ve thought or known. This kind of love recently snuck up on me, too. In the throes of a pandemic, I fell in love—with walking.
I've spent most of my life desperately crushing on someone.
Simplicity is hard.
On Oct. 4, 2020, I began my University–mandated quarantine. The story started with an unexpected positive result from a routine COVID–19 test. My boyfriend received the message while we were ordering breakfast from around the corner. Blissfully unaware. Convinced that it was only minutes until I would test positive too, I spared my eight housemates, packed all my belongings into a duffle bag, and moved in with him.
The first year of college is supposed to be unforgettable, liberating, and most importantly, in person.
Get 34th Street's newsletter, The Toast, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.
Newsletters