Last December (2024), I started grad school. After taking three years off following a tumultuous undergrad experience, I began pursuing my MS in Information and Library Science. Shortly after finishing my first graduate course (a short, accelerated winter term), the spring semester began, and life… went downhill. My dad, who had been sick for a decade, passed away. Around the same time, my boss, ever incompetent, started demanding that I lay off student workers while picking up extra responsibilities like covering extra open hours, etc.

But despite all of that, 2025 has had its ups and downs.

My girlfriend and I celebrated our one-year anniversary in August. I hit the three-quarters mark of my library science degree and am tentatively applying either to another master’s program for this upcoming fall—or seeing if I can continue on and pursue my Ph.D. in Information Science at the same university.

I’ve also decided to keep this blog solely as a personal, online diary of sorts. In pursuing my writing and storytelling interests, I’ll be launching Out of Circ, a (unsurprisingly) library-inspired newsletter and blog where I’ll discuss queer living, life, and everything in between. If you want the occasional life update, you can still keep up with me here!

(I’ll also be republishing some older writings that I still like—either to reference on the new blog or to give them a bit of polish.) But for the most part, this will remain my low-stakes, once-a-month update space for life stuff!

And it ended in flames.

Ma* had marked me in ways I didn’t yet understand. After them, I kept falling for echoes—people who carried their essence in fleeting gestures, familiar glances.

And so, the Spaniard entered my life.

She said she was 5’7. Our first date was in Central Park. She waited on a bench, calm and patient, as if she already knew how the story would unfold. We walked and talked for hours, the crisp autumn air swirling between us. I had double-booked myself that evening, a friend waiting for me later, but it didn’t feel like a mistake. She was a Capricorn—like Ma—though a January one. Observant. A pianist, a musician on a Fulbright, the perfect storm of past loves: Ma, Sophie, E.E.

Narcissism does not always arrive grandiose, nor does it wear a warning sign. It slips in softly, masked in warmth, until it tightens like a snare.

Early on, she mentioned a show she was playing in Queens. I wanted to see her in her element. She let me follow her on Instagram, and I told her I’d come. She played beautifully. I watched, spellbound. I had a drink. I met her older friends, Gem, a successful tech entrepeneur and her husband, Tor.

I felt myself falling.

On the subway home, we kissed between bursts of conversation, promising to see each other again soon. More dates followed—a stroll through the botanical gardens, nights wrapped in tangled dialogue, mornings that felt lighter than they should have. I was enamored with her story: an immigrant, navigating a world that neither fully embraced nor rejected her. She spoke several languages, each one rolling off her tongue like a secret. She was fascinating. And, at the time, I found her beautiful.

It felt like I had won the lottery.

Little did I know, I had fallen in love with a mirrored image of myself.

She loved Cubbyhole, drawn to the bartender Bee, who slipped her free drinks and too-long glances. My ex thought she was hot. I, for my own reasons, did not. Still, I played along, tried to be friendly.

I wasn’t imagining it—the way Bee’s gaze slid over me, dismissive, predatory in its own way. If we sat at the bar, she’d talk only to my ex, throwing me scraps of conversation laced with condescension. If the place was crowded, she’d always find her way close, a casual “Hi” that lingered in the air too long. She had a crush. And it irked me.

My ex denied it, swore she didn’t see it.

One night, my irritation boiled over.

“Maybe if she wasn’t so desperate and embarrassing, she’d have a girlfriend.”

I struck a nerve. That night, my ex kept her distance. Not long after, Bee was dumped by her own girlfriend. Like me, her ex had no patience for someone so starved for validation they clung to it at their job.

But I digress.

By January, for her birthday, we ventured to The Woods bar.

It was a disaster.

Her ‘friend’ arrived, bringing her roommate. The friend was a twenty-year-old architecture student, lost in the wreckage of her family’s rejection. Arianna. A name that would burn into my brain. She’d been seeing my ex girlfriend for months; starting early in the Fall and ending a week before my ex’s birthday. The roommate of Arianna—a walking thirst trap with a TikTok following and little else. I nudged my ex to introduce me, hoping to stitch myself into her world. The reception was frigid. Her “friend” flirted—openly, deliberately. Right in front of me.

We ended the night in a fight. She was drunk, looping through the same arguments, her words spinning into incoherence. I begged her to see how deeply disrespectful she had been. She refused.

She begged me to forgive her when I initiated not speaking to her for three days. She swore that she’d made several horrible mistakes. That she wouldn’t do such a thing again. I granted her an ultimatum.

Dump the friend, and never do it again. After a week, she complied and apologized.

Time blurred after that. Her friend Flo visited. I met her ‘supposedly’ homophobic parents, who, to my surprise, welcomed me in. For a moment, it felt like family. A cruel illusion.

Because as our relationship progressed, so did the distance between us.

The hardest part of healing is accepting that none of it was real.

What kind of person who loves you triangulates you with others? Gaslights you into questioning your own reality? Makes you doubt every gut feeling you have?

We never truly recovered from the Arianna incident.

I began spiraling often. Why had her Instagram following gone up? Why wasn’t she texting me back? Did she even like me anymore?

That wasn’t who I was before.

March and April started to become rocky again. I often opted to stay home while she ventured out with friends. And while texting me that she was too tired to go out one night, I had a funny suspicion that that was a lie. And so I checked her friend’s stories. While she had told me she stayed in, she had gone to The Woods, partied with her ‘friends.’ A lie again.

She’ll never stop cheating, I thought to myself.

I slowly began to disconnect from her. And she felt it. And then, in May, she discarded me—casually, like small talk about the weather. It was brief, for a day, before she backtracked. We were back together again after what was a less than twelve hour break up. I attended her graduation at the Manhattan School of Music, and when inquiring if she’d consider long distance, she said she didn’t know.

We broke up again in June.

This time, I made it final. But the aftermath was brutal.

For a month, I could barely move. Bathing felt impossible. Work drained me beyond comprehension. I had re-downloaded dating apps before the discard, setting up a bare-bones profile. But by June, as I forced myself back into the world, I paused them. What if I saw her? What if she saw me?

She reached out later to ‘check in,’ claiming she was considering therapy and wanted feedback on how she had been in our relationship. I poured myself into a response—an autopsy of our time together.

I asked for my things back. She refused.

Then, another text.

She had been in bed for three months, she claimed. Depressed. Said she’d reach out when she was ready.

But from my experiences with her, I knew that, too, was a lie.

And then, I sent my final message. I’m blocking you on everything. I wish you the best, happiness, and healing.

A TikTok found me that August—a runner, once celibate, now not. And the reason? My ex. They broke up not even a month later. My ex harassing her until she erased every trace of their time together.

I felt nothing but disgust.

I won’t pretend I’m fully healed. Though it’s frowned upon to move from one relationship to another, I have found myself in that position. But I am changed.

Healing from narcissistic abuse is already excruciating—but when you’re part of a marginalized community, the wounds cut deeper. The questions come sharper. Why did this happen? Why did it have to happen to me?

Months later, I was driving home when I saw her.

She crossed the street alone, slouched, carrying a Domino’s pizza box. A silhouette of something I used to know.

God… she looks so pathetic…

I laughed to myself and kept driving.

Good riddance.

In our busy, often overwhelming lives, hobbies tend to slip through the cracks. Work, endless responsibilities, and the soul-sucking grind of just keeping it together leave little room for the simple activities that once brought us joy. But there’s something magical—profoundly refreshing—about dusting off an old pastime or diving into something new. Recently, I’ve found myself reconnecting with a long-neglected love: running.

This year has been a circus of distractions and major life events. I’ve been saving (read: sacrificing morning coffees, bailing on friends, etc.) to buy a place in NYC, navigating the wild waters of dating, and—oh yes—stumbling into a serious relationship just two months after a breakup that left me emotionally bulldozed. Amid all this chaos, I’ve been asking myself: What makes me, me?

And while I might not have everything about myself figured out, I have discovered that at my core… I’m a runner.

In college, exercise was less about joy and more about control.

I have orthorexia—a vicious loop of calorie restriction and obsessive exercise that sometimes feels less like wellness and more like a prison sentence. In college, I was at my worst. I’d wake up with insane exercise goals and subsist solely off of one packet of ramen a day. Five miles one day, seven the next, then ten. No breaks, no excuses. For me, it wasn’t exercise; it was punishment for not being perfect.

In college, especially during my junior year, I was going out excessively. Every night, I had to go out to another party. I’d meet up with friends and have what seemed a like an amazing night. But inside, I felt so empty. And afraid.

When you go out, you drink. And drinking just meant that there were always more calories to burn.

I’d wake up early after a night out, severely hungover, to go walk my dogs for two miles. And then I’d come home, wash my face, and excessively hula hoop for hours before going for a run again. I was praised excessively for how skinny I looked, and the praise egged me on.

But then came the pandemic.

One of my best friends, an excellent chef, had gotten displaced from his campus housing and became my quarantine buddy. And soon after, a much-needed shift in my relationship with food occurred. We only lived together for a short amount of time, but his influence changed me for the better. I was being more conscious of what I ate and attempted to feign normalcy with food so much that I developed it.

He also ran. A lot.

But the thing about him that always stood out, was his willingness to rest. After running what seemed like insane amounts to me, he’d come home and make himself a snack. He’d lounge on a sofa or go out briefly to interact with friends in our pod. We didn’t live together for very long, but the short overlap affected me a ton. And when he moved away, I didn’t relapse into old habits: eating or running wise.

A year later, I moved back to NYC. My perspective on exercise had softened over the year away from home. It was no longer something that I needed to do to maintain my small physique. Rather running became my solace—not an obligation but an escape from the everyday obligations of life. For two years, I ran for the love of it, finding peace in the rhythm of my feet against the pavement.

But, as it often does, life threw a wrench in my routine.

First came the situationships. Oh, the emotional whirlpools of undefined almost-relationships. One involved someone recovering from a traumatic accident. Another was fresh out of a four-year relationship. Spoiler alert: neither was ready for anything real, and I was too busy chasing ghosts to lace up my running shoes.

Between both situation, I bounced between dating apps and sporadically ran on lunch breaks while working at a college library. And then came the doozy.

A year-long relationship with a Spanish pianist that could double as a telenovela. The ending? Dramatic, abrupt, and devastating. When that romance ended in June 2024 (lesbophobic, is that not?), I crumbled. I spent the summer indoors, binge-watching shows and feeling utterly unmoored.

Then TikTok entered the chat.

One day, as I scrolled aimlessly, the algorithm hit me with a video featuring my ex’s voice. Was that… her pants? My heart clenched. We’d barely spoken since the breakup, aside from her text lamenting how “miserable” she’d been when I contacted her in attempt to have her roommates give me back some stuff. Yet there she was, carefree and thriving. And with someone new!

Something in me snapped.

Anger surged—a rare, revitalizing burst of emotion. I was done wallowing.

Running had once been my therapy, my sanctuary; even if short-lived. I realized it was time to reclaim it—not for revenge, not to prove anything, but for me.

Ironically, inspiration came from my ex’s new flame. Her TikToks prior to my ex had be centered all around her “celibacy runs.” Those, of course stopped, after she met her. And while I didn’t aspire to emulate her lifestyle, the idea of running as self-care struck a chord.

Starting again wasn’t easy. I wasn’t the mile-crushing, endorphin-fueled runner I used to be and I was terrified to fall back into disordered habits.

To ease back in, I invested in a walking pad for my office—a compact treadmill that lets me sneak in steps between emails and meetings. Slowly, the joy of movement returned. For a few moments everyday, I’d zone out and grab a book and walk. It started with a strut, and then a saunter, and after a few months and towards the end of the summer; a run.

The walking pad has been my gateway back to outdoor runs. My distances are modest, but every step feels like a triumph. The mental clarity, the rush of accomplishment—it’s all coming back, piece by piece.

Running again feels like reclaiming a part of myself I’d lost. It’s not about my ex, her girlfriend, or the messy timeline of who-dated-who (and what overlap definitely existed). It’s about me—my health, my joy, my balance.

And as for my ex and her new fling? They’ve already broken up. In typical ASB fashion, she became overbearing… very quickly. The poor girl posted that my ex soon became violent, stalking her lives, begging her to see her again. It feels bittersweet. I’m thriving in a new relationship, my Hokas are breaking in beautifully, and my walking pad gets daily love. Meanwhile, my ex’s new ex seems to be stepping into her own storm.

All of that is to say, reclaiming old hobbies—and ourselves—isn’t linear. It’s messy, full of false starts and awkward steps. But each stride is worth it. Whether it’s running, painting, or picking up the guitar you abandoned years ago, hobbies have a way of reminding us who we are.

So here’s to moving forward, one step at a time. And maybe for my ex’s ex, she’ll find solace in running again too.

It was one of those days where the air feels weightless, where conversations with friends seem to stretch into the soft golden hours. We sat outside the Glass House, a group of us riffing off each other’s jokes, the kind of camaraderie you don’t realize you’ll miss until much later. Then, as if out of nowhere, a peculiar boy approached. He had a quick confidence, the kind of presence that announces itself before any words are spoken. He asked a friend for a cigarette.

I didn’t smoke. Smoking was anathema to me, a habit I’d grown to detest after watching my parents try and fail to quit countless times.

Smokers are fucking lame, I thought, though I didn’t say it aloud.

My friend offered him one anyway, and soon he was sitting among us. He blended into the conversation seamlessly, and when he eventually walked away, my friend turned to me, smirking.

“He was totally into you.”

“No, he wasn’t,” I replied, half-laughing.

“He couldn’t stop staring at you.”

I was 18. He was 20.1

It didn’t take long for us to start texting, a constant back-and-forth that carried me through my first fall semester break. When I got back from an extended ski trip, we met up for coffee, and from then on, we were inseparable.

Our next date is etched into my memory. He drove us to a mountain pass, a clearing where the horizon seemed endless, the trees framing the setting sun like a painting too beautiful to be real. We stood there for what felt like forever, until the stillness gave way to something electric. We kissed, and for the first time in my life, I felt a kind of certainty about another person.

We dated for two years.

Most of it was without incident, or at least that’s how I choose2 to remember it now. But then, things shifted.

One evening, sitting together in the quiet of our shared apartment, I felt a tension I couldn’t name. It wasn’t anger or sadness, just… something unresolved. I turned to E.E., unable to hold back any longer.

“Are you gay?” I asked.

“No!” came the reply, sharp and immediate.

“Then what is it?”

E.E. hesitated, their eyes searching mine for understanding. Finally, they said it: “I feel more like a woman than a man.”

I nodded, trying to process. I was bisexual3 anyways.

This revelation shouldn’t have mattered to me. And yet, it did. Not in the way I expected, though. If anything, I found myself drawn to her even more as she began socially transitioning. I loved the way she seemed to come alive, shedding layers of discomfort like old skin. But at the same time, I felt her pulling away from me, leaving me alone more and more in our apartment.

I was struggling too. My sister had another cancer scare, and this time, it felt more real, more urgent. I was juggling multiple jobs, a full course load, and an athletics team, all while trying to keep up the facade of a relationship that was unraveling in slow motion. I spent hours out with friends or locked in my room, drowning in my own loneliness. But no matter how bad things got, E.E. never seemed to notice.

I tried to not notice my own growing dissatisfaction.

“My transition’s been really hard on me,” she said one night. “I just need you to be more positive.”

I tried. God, I tried. But it wasn’t enough. By then, my best friend had started dating someone new, and that someone had a friend who found me “really hot.” Their name was C.O. We began going on dates, though I told myself it wasn’t cheating. After all, E.E. and I had an open4 relationship, didn’t we?

Still, deep down, I knew it wasn’t right.

Thanksgiving came, and E.E. asked if I wanted to go to Breckenridge with her.

I declined.

Instead, I spent the holiday curled up in bed, watching sad YouTube compilations and feeling the weight of my own dishonesty. By this point, I had fully began hooking up with C.O. I was becoming excited to see them, excited to message them, and run into them at parties. I couldn’t pretend anymore.

We broke up shortly after she returned. Less than 24 hours later, I slept with Sycamore. E.E. found us, but instead of anger, silence. That hurt more than anything else.

We split amicably5 when our lease ended two months later. For a while, we didn’t speak at all. Then, one day, I saw a comic on Twitter about the imbalance of emotional labor in relationships. Without thinking, I shared it with her on Messenger.

She read it.

And she took a while to, but she apologized. I never did6.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should have. But even now, years later, I’m not sure what I would have said. All I know is that I wish her well, wherever she is. E.E. taught me more about love and identity than I could have learned on my own, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.

But gratitude doesn’t erase the ache of a first love lost, nor the mistakes that led us there.