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Content warning: I share some personal stories about self-harm and mental illness. If you need professional help, call the 988 hotline for crisis support.

Yesterday, I finished a novel called She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb. It came out in 1992, and I had wanted to read it at some point because it was an Oprah’s Book Club pick, but I was too young to read it. I finally decided to pick it up because I had always been curious about Wally Lamb’s books and had not made the time to read them before. I am glad I finally got around to reading the book because I was dealing with my crush rejecting me and panic attacks, and I didn’t know how to deal. I have struggled with self-hatred for much of my life, and I have found that reading has always brought me comfort whenever I deal with any negative feelings or tough experiences. So, I went to my local library and found a copy of She’s Come Undone, ready for me to bring it home and read. Honestly, I don’t know if I have ever met anyone like Dolores Price. She is sarcastic, fierce, and resilient, and honestly, I felt as if I had made a new (fictional) friend.

The novel takes place in 1956, in Rhode Island, and Dolores Price’s family gets a television set. The TV serves as a form of escapism for young Dolores as she deals with a tumultuous childhood. Her father is having an affair with a woman he works for, Mrs. Masicotte, and Dolores’ mom, Bernice, is pregnant with her second child. Dolores is excited to have a baby brother, but during the birth, the baby gets strangled with the umbilical cord when emerging from Bernice’s womb and dies, leaving Bernice and her husband grieving. Dolores’s dad leaves Bernice and Dolores for Mrs. Masicotte, and Bernice falls into a deep depression. Dolores’s grandmother lives with Dolores and her mom and is very conservative and religious, shaming Dolores and her mom for their lifestyle. Dolores starts eating a lot of junk food and continues to stay in and watch TV while her mother smokes and doesn’t take care of herself. Dolores gains weight and becomes the target of vicious bullying at school. A new 20-something couple, Rita and Jack Speight, move in with Dolores and her mom in the same housing complex, and at first, they hit it off well. Jack comes off as attractive and charming, and Dolores finds him attractive, too, but then he starts coercing Dolores to ride in his car and touches her inappropriately. One evening, when Dolores is just thirteen years old, Jack leads her into a dark alley and rapes her. The trauma Dolores suffers at the hands of Jack continues to follow her well into her adulthood, and she continues to gain weight and eat as a coping mechanism for dealing with her trauma. She gains weight and everyone stares at her. Her only friends are Roberta, who works at a tattoo parlor and has the same sarcastic humor as Dolores, and Mr. Pucci, her guidance counselor from school. Mr. Pucci encourages Dolores to go to college, but Dolores refuses because she doesn’t think she has a future going to college. Mr. Pucci tells her and her mom, Bernice, that if Dolores doesn’t go to college, she will regret it. After a lot of arguments with her mom and grandmother about not wanting to go to college, Dolores applies to college. She gets rejected by school after school but finally gets admitted to Merton College in Wayland, Pennsylvania. However, Dolores and her mom have an argument one evening and Dolores refuses to go to college, much to her mom’s disappointment. Bernice, tired, goes off to work at the toll booth, and is killed in an accident. Even though she is reluctant to go to college, Dolores does so because she knew her mother would want her to go.

She goes off to college and meets her roommate, Kippy, who doesn’t like her because she is overweight. Before going to college, Dolores lies about her identity in her letters to Kippy because she doesn’t want Kippy to know about that she is overweight, that her mom is dead and that she was raped at 13. Dolores wants to present Kippy with this perfect image of her and lies about having a boyfriend and a stable family, but it backfires when Kippy meets Dolores in person. Kippy feels that Dolores lied to her and they already start off their rooming relationship on rough footing. There is one other person in the college dormitory who is overweight and an outcast like Dolores, and that is Dottie. Dottie, who is a lesbian, falls in love with Dolores and sleeps with her, and Dolores feels ashamed to be around Dottie because she wants to fit in with the thin girls in the dormitory. The other girls gossip about Dottie, and Dottie tells Dolores to not get involved with the girls, especially because Kippy makes a really hurtful comment out of earshot that she would have killed herself if she had been overweight like Dolores. Kippy takes advantage of Dolores, making Dolores her personal servant, having her grab sodas and food for her and making her do all her errands. Dolores seeks solace in the letters that Kippy’s boyfriend, Dante, sends her, and steals the letters from Kippy because she doesn’t think Kippy deserves someone as handsome and charming as Dante. Still grappling with the traumatic death of her mom, Dolores feels like she has no one to turn to, and she ends up leaving Dottie’s house after a one-night stand and poisoning the fish in Dottie’s fish tank with chemicals. She hitches a ride from a West Indian immigrant who lives in the same neighborhood as Dottie, and they drive to the Tri-State area. The driver, Domingos, tells her about a bunch of beached whales on a local beach, and drives Dolores over to see them. The first time she hears the whales crying, she is overwhelmed and yells at Domingos to get her away from the beach and to go back to driving her to where she needs to be.

In part two, Dolores ends up in a mental health institution after her grandmother has been trying to locate her. Dolores sees a therapist, and he tries to get her to open up about her trauma, but Dolores is reluctant to do so. After several sessions, the therapist has Dolores swim in the pool and has her recall all of the painful memories from her childhood, namely Jack raping her at 13 and her mom dying in an accident. Even though the therapist thinks he is helping, Dolores tells him that she is better and wants to discontinue therapy, even after the therapist pleads for her to not go because he doesn’t think she has finished the inner work she needs to do to recover from her trauma. Dolores later ends up tracking down Dante, her college roommate’s ex-boyfriend, and they begin to live with each other. At first, Dante seems charming, and Dolores thinks that he will love her as long as she hides her past from him (her being overweight, the sexual assault, her mom’s death, etc.) However, Dante becomes more controlling and abusive, and Dolores sees that he is not as charming as his letters to Kippy in college made him out to be. One evening, Dante asks Dolores if she is on birth control before they have sex, and Dolores lies and says that she is. However, her life changes when she becomes pregnant. Dolores is hesitant about getting an abortion, but Dante forces her to do so, and Dolores ends up going through the abortion and mourning the loss of her unborn daughter, Vita Marie. This reminded me of the movie Waves because in the movie, there is a teenage couple named Tyler and Alexis who are at the center of the film, and they have unprotected sex, and Alexis ends up pregnant with Tyler’s baby. Tyler tries to calm her down and they go to an abortion clinic. On the way home, Alexis cries and tells Tyler that she doesn’t think she can go through with the abortion. Tyler gets angry at her for changing her mind and wanting to keep the baby, and shouts insults at her, even when she tells him that it’s her body and she can make her own decision about whether she wants to keep the baby or not. In She’s Come Undone, when Dolores aborts her unborn baby, she feels a lot of grief and shame, but Dante doesn’t really care about her feelings. Dante loses his job as a teacher after he sleeps with a high school student, and he starts becoming more sedentary and spends his days locked in his room brainstorming half-assed poems. Dolores realizes that her marriage to Dante is extremely codependent, and she felt she had to hide her authentic self from him so that he wouldn’t leave her. Thankfully, Dolores’s old friend, Roberta, comes by and they spend time together. I love the part when Dante tells Roberta and Dolores to keep it down while he is upstairs meditating about poems, and Roberta bluntly tells him from downstairs that he needs to lighten up and that life is too short to act so serious all the time. Later on, Dolores confronts Dante at a fast-food restaurant about his erratic behavior and confesses about her past sexual trauma and the abuse she suffered growing up. She also tells Dante how much of a hypocrite he is because she went vegetarian because he was vegetarian, but now he has stopped being vegetarian and is eating meat again. She tells him how hurt she is that he slept with other women, many of them his high school female students, and that she used to be overweight. Dante doesn’t want to hear any of it because he wants to continue to control Dolores’s life, but finally he angrily lashes out at her and punches the restaurant manager and leaves the restaurant. Dolores finally wins her freedom from Dante after the divorce and spends her time with Roberta, who helps her learn how to live as a newly independent single woman.

Also, when I thought about this book, I thought about this memoir that I had read last year called I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, who was a child actor in a show called iCarly. To be honest, I never saw iCarly because I stopped watching a lot of TV around the time that it came out on Nickelodeon, but by the end of reading her memoir, I just wanted to give Jennette a huge hug because I was crying throughout the book. In the book, Jennette describes the traumatic abuse she suffered at the hands of her perfectionist mother, Debra McCurdy, who died of cancer in 2013 when Jennette was 21. Honestly, the emotional and psychological abuse that Jennette’s mother put her through was painful to read about, and by the time I got to the scene when Jennette is recovering from bulimia, I wept because I just could not imagine the pain this young woman went through. Jennette’s book showed me that grief is complicated, and that recovery from abuse is a long journey. There is one part of the book where Jennette falls in love with a guy, and she thinks that he is the perfect partner. He tells her to get professional help when he finds vomit stains on their toilet and finds out that Jennette has been struggling with bulimia. Jennette goes through a long period of recovery and reading about how she recovered from years of anorexia and bulimia made me have mad respect for anyone who has had to go through an eating disorder and go through recovery, because recovering from any psychological disorder, be it depression, schizophrenia, or any eating disorder, is far from easy. I remember when I was trying to stop cutting myself in college, and it was very hard. Unfortunately, the therapist I was seeing at the time was not helpful and didn’t take my problem with cutting seriously, so I felt I had no one to turn to. When my parents found out I was harming myself when I got back from college, I felt ashamed. I even went back during my spring semester that year wearing a lot of long-sleeved shirts because I didn’t want people to see that I had harmed myself. There have been many ups and downs with me trying to stop harming myself well after college, and there have been a few times just these past few weeks where I had to reach out to the Suicide Hotline for help because I was just in a very dark place. But I am getting better and taking antidepressants, exercising, re-engaging with my hobbies and trying to practice more self-love through my Buddhist practice.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched She Said for the second time. If you haven’t seen it, it is based on the true story of this article that these two female journalists, Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, published in 2017 called “She Said,” detailing the multiple allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, who was sentenced to prison for sexually assaulting several female actresses and assistants who worked for him. The movie reminded me of other movies I have seen about predatory behavior and sexual violence. There was a movie I saw a couple of years ago called The Assistant, and it is about a young woman who has aspiring dreams of being a film producer but works in a toxic environment at a film production company. No one at her workplace is willing to speak out against the guy who runs the company because they fear losing their jobs if they speak out. There was one scene in The Assistant that haunts me forever, and it is when Julia Garner’s character, the assistant, goes to Human Resources and tries to file a complaint of sexual harassment that she witnesses. The guy in human resources condescends to her and tells her basically that they can’t do anything about it because the guy harassing these women is a powerful man, and he fears for his own job at the company. It was extremely disturbing to watch this film because neither the assistant nor the people who worked under this powerful boss could file charges against him because the boss could fire them or threaten them, so they stayed silent while he continued preying on young women.

She Said shows how two women stood up to a real-life bully through their work in investigative journalism, and after seeing the movie a second time, I have a much deeper appreciation for anyone who works in investigative journalism because it must be a tough job. In She Said, Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) both work as journalists at The New York Times. The film opens with a haunting scene in Ireland in 1992. A young red-haired woman is walking on the beach, and she sees a film crew shooting a movie. Her face lights up, and the crew welcomes her as a new member of their team. She is hopeful that she can make it in the world of film production, and she is enjoying her time working with the team. However, in the next scene, she is running with tears streaming down her face, her heart racing fast, as she escapes from something/ someone terrifying. The movie cuts to New York City in 2016. Donald Trump has been elected as the 45th president of the United States and is under fire for making inappropriate comments about women and sexually harassing them. Megan Twohey is expecting her first child and is also investigating into the allegations against Donald Trump. She speaks with a woman who alleges Donald Trump abused her, but the woman says that the New York Times isn’t going to do anything to stop the harassment because she tried to speak out and no one did anything. Megan speaks to Donald Trump on the phone (James Austin Johnson from Saturday Night Live does the voice of Donald Trump in the film) about the allegations, and he cusses at her and threatens her. She later receives a phone call from someone who works for Trump, threatening to rape and kill her. Jodi Kantor, meanwhile, is a young Jewish woman who is happily married with two daughters, and she is doing an investigation into the film producer Harvey Weinstein, who co-founded the film company Miramax with his brother, Bob Weinstein. In 2020 Harvey was finally sentenced to prison, with eighty sexual assault allegations against him. Harvey allegedly raped several women who worked for him, and no one has taken him to trial for his crimes. Jodi reaches out to a woman named Rose McGowan, who Harvey raped when she was a young actress, and when Jodi asks her permission to do an investigation into her account of the assault allegations, Rose refuses to participate in the investigation because she tried to speak out against the allegations, but the media didn’t do anything about them. Jodi and Megan contact each woman who Weinstein assaulted, and while not all of the women are willing to come forward and talk about the trauma they experienced while working at Weinstein’s company Miramax, some women, including Ashley Judd, come forward to talk about their stories of the rape and the trauma that they experienced under Weinstein’s management. It was really hard hearing the audio of one of the experiences in the movie of Harvey coercing one of his female assistants into sex, and her telling him no over and over again, telling him to stop touching her, telling him she didn’t want to be alone in the room with him. The audio plays as the camera moves slowly through a dim hotel hallway with no one in the hallway. It was scary, but as someone who hasn’t gone through what these women went through, it was important for me to hear these real accounts so that I could understand that sexual assault is real, and a lot of women didn’t want to come forward because Harvey and Miramax forced them to sign non-disclosure agreements saying they wouldn’t tell anyone that he groomed and assaulted these women. The last experience about the young woman in Ireland was also hard to listen to because like so many young women working for Miramax, she was promised that she was going to launch her career by working with an influential powerful guy like Harvey, only to realize that Harvey cared nothing about her career or the careers of the women who worked for him. He used his influence to coerce and intimidate these young women and left them with a lot of shame and trauma, forcing them to deal with the silence and shame after the abuse on their own without telling anyone.

I still remember when I read about the allegations against another media figure, Bill Cosby, and at first, I was ignorant and didn’t understand how bad the allegations were. When I read more about the allegations, I asked my dad, “Why didn’t the women just say no? Why didn’t they speak up?” and my dad told me, “Because Bill Cosby threatened these women if they spoke up. He threatened to take away their jobs and careers if they spoke up, so they were scared.” It was tough at first because I wanted to believe it was as easy as pie to somehow speak out against sexual abuse, but after my dad explained why these women didn’t go forward with their accounts of Bill Cosby sexually assaulting them, I took a step back and thought, Damn, I need to be a better ally to victims of sexual assault. I need to educate myself more. In a college essay on sexual violence in 12 Years a Slave, I conflated the words “rape” and “sex,” and thought that the character Patsey wasn’t being “raped” but that her master was “having sex” with her. I’m glad my professors called me out a few times on me conflating rape and sex, but I finally didn’t get the message until I was on Facebook in 2017 and was reading posts by my friends and acquaintances from college about how rape is rape, not sex. I felt really stupid for conflating rape and sex, but it was a learning experience that I needed to learn from so that I wouldn’t continue to conflate rape and sex or minimize sexual assault allegations.

This movie, She Said, showed that fighting against injustice is challenging, but it is so worth it in the end because the women who Harvey assaulted didn’t have to have their trauma ignored because after the New York Times published the investigation into Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations, Weinstein was sent to prison and many women in other industries outside of Hollywood felt empowered to come forward with their own accounts of sexual violence. There was one scene that really stuck with me in the movie, and it occurs when Jodi, Megan and a member of the New York Times staff are out having drinks. They are talking about the investigation, when a young man comes up to Megan and starts flirting with her. Megan at first politely refuses, but the guy insists on getting her number. He finally proceeds to say something overtly sexual, like “I would bend you over…” to Megan, but before he can finish, she slams her hand on the table and shouts at the guy, “FUCK YOU! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” The guy leaves, and him and his friend call Megan a “frigid bitch” under their breath as they leave the bar. That scene showed me how much of an impact this investigation into the assault allegations against Weinstein are having on the women’s personal lives because maybe before the investigation, Megan wouldn’t have said anything, but after hearing experiences by the women who Weinstein assaulted, Megan realizes that she doesn’t have to take any kind of sexual harassment from any guy, even if the guy seems like he is joking around.

The movie She Said also made me think of another movie I saw called Women Talking. Women Talking is about an isolated Mennonite colony that has a long history of sexually abusing the women and girls in the colony. The women and girls meet in a private location where their husbands and sons can’t see them, and they discuss whether they are going to leave the colony or stay and fight the men who abused them. The movie is terrifying because while it shows scenes with the women making the plans to leave the colony, it shows each woman grappling with her trauma and having flashbacks to when the men of the colony sexually assaulted them. There is one good male figure in the movie who stands up for the women, and instead of mansplaining them, he listens and helps them leave the colony. He grew up with a female figure who raised him to see women as equals, so he has a different perspective on the women’s roles in the colony. He respects that they want to end years of sexual abuse in the colony and takes action to help them, even when not all of the women are receptive to him helping them out.

Also, I loved the music in She Said. Nicholas Britell is one of my favorite composers. He composed music for Moonlight, Vice, If Beale Street Could Talk and the TV show Succession. I loved the cellist’s solo parts on the score as well. The score was intense and haunting, which was fitting because the movie was intense and haunting. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to handle watching She Said a second time. But the acting by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan (and Andre Braugher, RIP) is incredible, and left me sitting on the edge of my seat. My parents watched the movie with me and thought it was really powerful. As I watched Carey Mulligan playing Megan Twohey in the movie She Said, I thought about another movie I really liked her in called Promising Young Woman, which has similar themes. Even though She Said is a true story, Promising Young Woman, even though it’s a dark comedy, raises awareness about the topic of sexual assault, which is very real, and gives it a vengeance twist in which a young woman gets revenge on the people who were involved in some way, either directly or indirectly, with the sexual assault of her friend from medical school. Cassie’s friend, Nina, was sexually assaulted in public and committed suicide after she was raped, leaving Cassie grappling with grief at losing her friend. Cassie drops out of school and lives with her parents, but she doesn’t want to feel powerless. She wants to avenge her friend, so she goes to bars, pretends to be drunk, lets a guy pick her up from the bar and take her back to his place. She pretends to be unconscious, and the guy proceeds to assault her while she is unconscious and drunk, but she fools them into thinking she is going to let them do that to her and confronts each of these men with a knife in hand and a look that says “Don’t fuck with me. Literally. Because I will kill you, motherfucker.” And it’s not just men she is getting revenge on, but also a female classmate and the dean of the university who didn’t speak out when Nina was raped in public. Cassie gets revenge on them, too. I didn’t really like the way the movie ended (I won’t spoil it, I promise) but I had to remember that it’s a dark comedy and dark comedies are usually grim and uncomfortable to watch because these movies get you to think about serious issues using very twisted humor. I don’t resonate with all of the dark comedies I watch, and frankly some comedies are too dark (or gross) for me to watch, like Triangle of Sadness (don’t look it up if you don’t know what that movie is about. I have a fear of vomiting and to this day have flashbacks to when I saw a promo for the movie trailer). But I really liked Promising Young Woman because it was clever, and Carey Mulligan’s role was epic. I really liked her in She Said, too. I have only seen Zoe Kazan in a couple of films: The Big Sick, in which she plays Emily Gordon, the real-life wife of comedian Kumail Nanjiani, and Ruby Sparks, in which she plays a character written by her real-life husband (and fellow actor), Paul Dano. I really also loved Andre Braugher’s role in She Said. He plays a member of The New York Times staff named Dean who calmly calls Harvey out every time Harvey threatens him and the staff if they publish the investigation into the allegations against him. Seeing him in his last movie role was really bittersweet because he plays Captain Raymond Holt in this TV show I loved called Brooklyn 99. Andre Braugher passed away quite recently, and when I heard the news, I was really sad and cried a lot. He played the role of Dean brilliantly, and to this day I still really miss Andre Braugher. I also recognized an actor in the movie named Peter Friedman, who plays a representative of Weinstein in the movie. Peter Friedman was in this show I love called Succession, and he played Frank, who was one of the people who worked at Logan Roy’s company Waystar Royco and is Logan’s confidant. He is a really good actor in the show, so when I saw him in the movie She Said, I was like, Oh my God, that’s the actor who played Frank Vernon in Succession! The show Succession is pretty dark, a dark comedy, a satire of the wealthy, but the acting is phenomenal, and I watched it mainly because Sarah Snook won an award for it, and one of my family members told me the show was really good, so I watched the entire thing in two months.

The movie, She Said, also gave me mad appreciation for people who go into investigative journalism. I don’t work as a journalist, so seeing the work that Jodi and Megan put into the investigation of the Weinstein allegations looks like it was serious work that required a lot of dedication. Jodi and Megan really cared about the women being able to come forward with their stories so that men like Harvey Weinstein don’t get away with predatory behavior in the future. I didn’t know much about investigative journalism other than watching a few shows or movies in the past about it. Even though the New York Times article, “She Said” gave me goosebumps when it came out and haunted me, I kind of just moved on afterwards. Then, the allegations against other powerful figures in the entertainment industry, namely the rapper and businessman Sean “Diddy” Combs, were released, and so watching the movie She Said reminded me that the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were not isolated incidents, and that there are multiple Harvey Weinsteins out there not just in the media and entertainment, but also in food and retail service, hospitality, the legal field, politics and other industries, so we need to keep talking about the topic of sexual assault even though it is uncomfortable to discuss because this all boils down to human rights and respecting the dignity of people’s lives and speaking out against anyone who tramples on the dignity of people’s lives. There was a movie similar to She Said that came out called Bombshell. I saw it a long time ago, so I can’t remember all of the plot, but it stars Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman, and it is based on the real-life sexual harassment allegations that female employees at Fox News made against the late Roger Ailes. It was a really good movie and brought to light an important issue that is very real: the sexual harassment allegations against powerful men in the media.

Overall, I really recommend you watch She Said. It is a powerful movie, and the acting is incredible.

She Said. Directed by Maria Schrader. 2022. Rated R for language and descriptions of sexual assault.

I left my alarm clock off this morning because I didn’t have work today. The roads were icy and there was snow, so they advised folks to stay home. I don’t think there was enough snow for me to make a snow man, and frankly, I didn’t want to freeze my ass off, so I stayed indoors. Thankfully, my power and heat stayed on, which is a huge blessing because in 2021 we had a horrible winter storm called Uri and it knocked pretty much everyone’s power out here in Texas. I have to count my blessings every day, which is what I did when I woke up. I have had a rather rough time because I’m not sure if I’m experiencing panic attacks, anxiety attacks or just a general feeling of unease that comes with being a human being in a world full of chaos. But I found myself ruminating about what happened the day before at work, and what I didn’t accomplish. I had a crazy workload yesterday, and I felt overwhelmed, like I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, so I was pretty dang hard on myself. I tend to ruminate about a lot of negative stuff, so when I wake up in the morning, if I am too worried to get out of bed (and too snuggled under the covers to confront the challenges of daily living) I read something. From a physical book. Lately, I’ve been reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and also reading a darkly comic memoir by Jenny Lawson called Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, which has a taxidermized mouse wearing a Shakespearian costume on the cover against a gray background. I also love reading The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, which is a compilation of letters that a Japanese Buddhist reformer named Nichiren Daishonin wrote in the 1200s. When I feel too scared about the state of the world, reading these letters encourages me to persevere. So, I woke up and read for a little bit, then figured I needed to get my morning routine going with some breakfast. I grabbed my little orange bottles of Zoloft and Buspar and headed over to the kitchen to make some breakfast. I dug out some bread from the freezer and made myself some toast. I pulled open the bottom drawer and took out the container of Quaker old-fashioned grits. Since I didn’t have work today, I figured it would be the best time for me to make grits. I filled up a saucepan with water and threw a little bit of salt into the water. My toast popped up, and I gave it a nice spread of peanut butter. I popped open the pill bottles and took my medications with my peanut butter toast. As I waited for the water to boil, I decided to recite my morning Buddhist prayers. I got in front of my family’s wooden altar and got out my prayer book and beads. Every morning and evening, as part of my daily Buddhist practice, I recite excerpts from the 2nd and 16th chapters of this Buddhist scripture called The Lotus Sutra, which teaches that everyone has an inherent life condition called Buddhahood, which is characterized by wisdom, compassion and courage. As I chanted, I remembered the passage I read this morning in a letter called “On Attaining Buddhahood in This Lifetime,” and in the passage Nichiren is telling the person he is addressing the letter to that in order to free themselves from the sufferings of birth and death, the person needs to understand that their life is the law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which we chant over and over again in order to bring out this life condition of Buddhahood from within our lives. As I chanted to the scroll in my Buddhist altar, called the Gohonzon (the fundamental object of devotion that embodies the law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo) I reaffirmed that my life was the law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo and that I was absolutely and inherently worthy of respect.

I finished my prayers and went to check on the water. Little bubbles emerged from the depths of the saucepan to boil up to the surface, and so I measured out a cup of grits with a measuring cup and put the grits into the saucepan of boiling water. I turned the stove onto a lower heat and turned the kitchen timer on for twenty minutes. I got out my laptop and prepared to work on my writing project. But then I checked YouTube because it’s my go-to source for entertainment, and I found in my video feed that they were live-streaming the state funeral of Jimmy Carter from Washington, D.C. I decided to watch it, especially since I didn’t have to go to work today. I watched as members of the military guard carried his casket, draped with the United States flag. The members marched in place, and took step by step, halting with each step they took as they brought Jimmy Carter’s casket into the giant cathedral before the service began. The kitchen timer went off and I checked on my grits. They were thick and ready to eat. I opened the fridge and took out the vegan butter and maple syrup. I love a little sweetness in my grits, so I poured a little syrup over the grits and stirred them together in my ceramic bowl and then topped it off with some pecans. I dug in while I watched the funeral on YouTube. The grits were delicious and had a nice Southern-style sweetness to them. I polished off the entire pot of grits, which was enough for four servings. The guard was still bringing in the casket, and then a commercial interrupted the proceeding. I sighed and decided to watch the funeral on the television in our living room. I grabbed a knitting project that I am working on and with my belly full of Southern-style grits, I waddled over to the television room and sat down on the sofa as if I was pregnant with a food baby and didn’t want the baby to accidentally come out of me. I flipped through the channels, and came to CBS, where they were showing the state funeral for Jimmy Carter. I grabbed my knitting needles and knitted away. Knit 1, purl 1, knit 1, purl 1…my fingers crisscrossed the needles with each stitch and loop of acrylic blue yarn over the needles. I saw Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff, Donald Trump and Melania Trump, and George W. Bush and Barbara Bush seated together.

Suddenly, I heard a loud scratching noise, and then a buzz. Oh, shit. We have had a serious bug problem with these large wasp-like beetles coming into our house unannounced. I understand they needed a warm place away from the cold, but all I could think was, OH NO IT’S A BIG-ASS BUG AND IT’S GOING TO COME AFTER ME!!! I screamed the minute I saw the big flying black bug buzzing against the wall and ran out of the room. My parents heard me, and I grabbed the spray bottle of rubbing alcohol. My mom sleepily walked over to the garage, fresh from a deep sleep until I woke her up with my blood-curdling scream, and she grabbed the broom. I sprayed at the bug and retreated as he raced in my direction. I yelped and ran off, and came back, fearful. He was dancing around the lights and trying to escape the poisonous spray of the isopropyl alcohol. I sprayed him again, and he danced his final waltz in the air before collapsing to the ground. With the little ounce of life that he had left in him, he tried to combat the fumes of the alcohol, but he was no match. I squished him with the magazine I had on hand, and he was gone. I thought I had taken out the last of these critters, but as I was about to enjoy some Yoga with Adriene, another big black bug touched my shoulder and buzzed past me, greeting me with an innocent, “Hey girl! You missed me?” as if the bug I killed reincarnated itself so that it was never really dead. I screamed bloody murder again and ran out of the room. I quivered and called my parents for help, and my dad looked around the room to see if Mr. Big-Ass Flying Black Beetle was really in my room. He could not find him, and so I decided to take my laptop into the living room and do my yoga there. After doing a few downward dogs and cat-cow yoga poses, my mind was still ruminating on how big and scary that bug was, and how thirsty he was to avenge the earlier death of his brother by coming after me. I remembered that my floor had quite a few dust bunnies and hairballs, and that in general my room was still very messy and cluttered, so I decided to put my worries to rest by doing some cleaning around the house. I grabbed some Trader Joe’s peppermint castile soap and mixed it in a silver bowl with some water from the tap. I scrubbed down the countertop, the kitchen cupboards and the baseboards with the soap-water mixture as Giveon’s crooned from my laptop speakers a beautiful song called “Like I Want You.” My golden hoop earrings dangled from my earlobes as I got on my knees to scrub those baseboards. I feel like such a badass bitch wearing these new hoop earrings. I feel so much sexier for some reason. I finished and dusted the floor with the Swiffer mop and cringed as I collected loads of dust and little stray hairballs left from many a natural-hair braiding session I have had in my bedroom. I wiped down my headboard and the baseboards, and I found Mr. Big Black Flying Bug clinging for dear life to my orange box of yarn and knitting needles. He didn’t want to die. I get that. If I were living a bug’s life, too, I probably wouldn’t want to get squished. But seriously, the bug was scaring the shit out of me, so I decided to put it out of its misery and kill it. The moment I saw it, I let out a war whoop (which was actually just another blood-curdling scream) and squished the little guy with my Swiffer pad. That ought to finish him, I thought. But again, little guy didn’t want me to kill him, so he flapped his wings and continued to traverse along the edge of the knitting box. I squealed like a little girl while my mom asked me where the bug was, thinking the bug was going to exact his vengeance on me right then and there. When he tried to get away, crawling on the floor, I finally stomped him out with my woolen blue slipper, saying, “Ha! You’re dead!” I felt bad, but I knew that if I woke up screaming in the middle of the night because the bug touched me again, I wouldn’t get any sleep and would also keep my parents up for the umpteenth time with my screams. I laugh because I’m in my 30s and have had this irrational fear of bugs since I was really young, and it hasn’t gone away. I think I need to keep going to therapy.