Millennials Magazine is the brainchild of Kyle Chayka, a recent college grad currently working at an art magazine in China, who went to Tufts with a friend of mine from high school. Along with Kyle’s friend Jess Bidgood, NYU Local Editor and Voice blogette Rosie Gray and I have decided to team up with Kyle to help him edit and churn out the online mag. We’re all located in different time zones– me in San Francisco, Kyle in Beijing, Rosie in Prague and Jess in Boston. We’re doing this armed only with Gmail/Gchat, Wordpress, Submishmash and Twitter. It’s a true millennial experiment.

The Internet has given us a platform to speak out in a meaningful way against stereotypes, incorrect information and bunk studies perpetuated by most news media organizations that like to slap on generalizations like “millennials hate jobs” while simultaneously overlooking the obvious fact that because of the economy, there are no jobs. By soliciting contributions from young people from all over, we hope we can serve as an effective mouthpiece for the current zeitgeist to voice their opinions about The Way We Live Now.

It’s a grand undertaking, and since we are primarily white, middle class, liberal arts-educated media nerds, there’s a big chance that we could end up only appropriately representing those kinds of Youngs: the suburban-turned-urban, slightly hipster, underclass of the creative underclass. This is why we hope to collect contributions from young people of all backgrounds and geographic areas, so that we don’t end up pigeonholing ourselves as “college grads who will go blind from staring at their Macbook screens too frequently.” We want submissions of all kinds–fiction, essays, reported articles, poetry, photos, videos–anything that you feel captures the spirit of what it means to be a young person now. With Millennials Magazine, we hope to answer the question that silly NYT Magazine piece purported recently–What is it about 20-somethings?–with an honest answer that is for us and by us.

We’ve begun collecting pithy one-line definitions of millennials, which are on display on our splash page. As of Monday, the site had been up for a week, and we’d already gotten 1,000 uniques, 125 user submissions and 15,500 refreshes. Those are some pretty awesome stats for a fledgling publication run by “baby adults” in four different corners of the world. We are very excited!

MM will publish features quarterly, but we’ll also have columns that will be updated a couple times a week. Our first issue drops September 20th and will feature many talented young contributors writing on everything from “fear of a black Hermione” to school shootings to embarrassing middle school screennames.

I think you guys will really like it, and I’m excited to have an outlet for my editorial itch. I suppose we’re hoping to serve as a worthy platform for your self-actualization. A little self-indulgent? Perhaps. But if it wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t be real millennials.

Become a fan on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and e-mail us if you’d like to contribute.

I want someone who is scary-smart, someone who hand-writes me notes and leaves them beside my morning cup of coffee. I want someone to bake for and to moan for, someone who sneaks up behind me in the kitchen and puts his hands over my eyes and I can tell by his smell that it is and always has been him. I want someone who doesn’t care if I stay up late writing in bed, whose face lights up at the sight of small children, who can make impressive literary references without appearing pompous, who knows in which spots I’m most ticklish. I want someone brave, someone who makes me brave, someone worth surrendering for.

I do not want someone who is neglectful of text messages, who sleeps with other people and doesn’t understand why that might bother me, who does not offer to pay for dinner even though he knows I’ll refuse. I do not want someone who secretly thinks Tucker Max is funny or uses the term “slut” with honest conviction. I do not want someone who fiddles with his phone during conversations, is uninterested in reading or does not want to hold my hand but insists on kissing my collarbone.

I’m scared that it’s impossible to love anyone the way you did the person you first fell for. There is something so pure about the moment you first feel that warmth breaking in your chest, your feelings so unburdened by history and the dread of repeated patterns. The brightness of your life is suddenly turned so far up that the stars begin to look like they’re just hanging out in the next town over. The first time you love someone you are both genuine from the start, not yet conscious of the comparisons that you’ll eventually fall victim to, unaware that love rarely begins but always ends with honesty. My first real love is entrenched in mythology, memories threaded with hopeful fallacy. How I loved him in my mind is very different from how I loved him in the world, but neither matters anymore.

At night sometimes I fear that we spend our whole lives learning to love less, every day our hearts growing the subtlest bit thinner. Falling in love is a series of diminishing returns, a quiet crisis. It’s cruel that it takes so much painful practice before we get it right.

I watch every man on the train, in the coffee shop, in the rickety elevator, wondering if he is someone worth surrendering for.  I am young and I am terrified,  but I still look into everyone’s eyes, just in case.

Last week you went to Amsterdam without telling anyone, leaving the rest of us to quietly worry stateside. I imagine you wandering in and out of dimly lit coffeeshops astride the stone bridges and canals. I imagine that she went with you, her head dropping to your shoulder as she slept soundly on the flight. I imagine that you both got high in a park and fell asleep on a giant hotel bed with an art deco quilt. I know what it’s like to be in Europe with someone you love who doesn’t love you back, and now I imagine that you do, too. On the phone I ask if you are having a good birthday and you say, “Yeah, I really am,” and I imagine that she is sitting there beside you as I speak hesitantly into the phone, trying to mask the slice of my voice that shakes when I realize how much I miss you.

In February, on my own birthday, I threw a big party even though I hate big parties. You and I snuck out after an hour and I made almond pancakes and we fell asleep listening to This American Life. You hated how I would always wake you up in the middle of the program with my commentary on how the story unfolded. Once, during the episode about the girl who becomes pen pals with a South American dictator, I got so worked up that I had to go smoke cigarettes by myself in the living room. I hoped you would find some small part of my neuroses endearing the way I did yours: I loved when you wore the bent wireframe glasses you stole from your Dad, or how you always made the coffee far too strong. Learning how to love people’s flaws is the easiest way to shed misanthropy. I loved yours from the start, but this was not without consequence. It was all the things I forced myself to overlook that drove us to ruin; I was so willing to accomodate the worst of you that I ended up losing the best.

Today is your 33rd birthday and I still dream about you more than I’d like to admit. On Sundays my brain scampers off into some abstract galaxy and keeps me half-conscious throughout the night, thoughts of you lumbering in slow succession across my eyelids. There you are with your ankles buried in the sand, there you are with your scruffy cheeks hovering above my mouth. I think about drawing you a card and riding my bike to your house to leave it on your doorstep. I don’t–I won’t–and I’m sorry for that.

It’s your 33rd birthday. I see other people now, but in them I still see you: how they are like you, but mostly how they are not.

We had just emerged from seeing Inception, during which he had not tried to hold my hand even once. I’d let it sit invitingly on my knee the whole movie, even though it was freezing and I was tempted to tuck it beneath my thighs the way I usually do when I’m cold. I wanted him to know without me saying anything that if he decided to hold my hand, I would be okay with that, because first dates are hard and people should make it as easy as possible for each other. The suspenseful plot of the movie had made me paranoid, but in truth his lack of forwardness terrified me more, launching me into an internal debate over whether or not my hand was holdable enough.

It was late when we left the theater, so the fog had rolled in heavy and unrelenting, clinging to the tops of buildings and making the high-rises look like lopsided cotton swabs. As we walked further down Mission and deeper into the Tenderloin, the world appeared ever more dreamlike: like in the movie, this was a dream nested in a dream, and Sam was leading me deep into the recesses of what every local blog deemed “the most dangerous neighborhood in the city.”

Somewhere around Mission and 7th Street, after having officially decided that Sam was in fact taking me to some rat-infested alley to rape and kill me, he realized that we had walked quite far past where he had parked his car. “Do you think it got stolen?” I asked, eyes wide and anime-like, neck swiveling around to make sure no crackheads were nearby. In San Francisco I am hypervigilant of safety precautions, even though I was never scared in New York. I left parties in Bed Stuy alone and I commuted to my boyfriend’s apartment in the Bronx and I rode my bike around Alphabet City at night, and none of those places ever scared me. I suppose I can peg this to the comfort I developed with New York, my home of four years, with its lovably familiar street signs and intuitive architecture. In San Francisco, where every petty crime is scrupulously documented on the local blogs, it’s much easier to let yourself be consumed by fear.

At the Yerba Buena parking garage, we finally realized that Sam’s car must have gotten towed. During a call to the local police precinct to confirm our assumption, I attempted a hug to cheer him up, but he was distracted by the phone call and my arms landed uselessly around his neck in an awkward side maneuver. He mumbled some stuff to the officer and I looked at my shoes and felt helplessly silly, like a little kid who’d failed at getting the attention of her parents.

After hanging up he said, “I understand if you want to go home,” in that way that actually means, “Please stick this out with me.” I was exhausted and hadn’t eaten all day so I kind of looked longingly at the empty cabs whirling by and said, “No way, I’m not going to leave you here alone!” which was just my way of saying, “This is our first date and I want to impress you with my compassion.”

In the cab on the way to the Impound I watched his hand fluttering nervously on his knee. He lifted it up and then put it back down, and I could tell that he was trying to decide whether or not to take my hand. I don’t know if he could tell that I was looking at him, but finally he gathered the courage and in one swift gesture, before I even knew what was happening, his hand was interlocked with mine. I looked out the window and thought, “I guess my hand is holdable.”

It was my first time at the Impound, a squat cement building across from the SFPD nestled between SoMa and the Tenderloin. Inside, the agents sat with exhausted grimaces behind sheets of glass, which may or may not have been bulletproof. This private towing company had been contracted by the city to tow all cars the SFPD ticketed, and the employees’ contempt for city bureaucracy was quite evident. The woman at the counter warned Sam from behind the glass that he would have to pay both the towing fee and the ticket. “I’m sorry, it really is ridiculous,” she said in an attempt to empathize with him. “That’ll be $503.87.” He shook his head and looked at me. “You are one expensive date,” he joked. He sighed and then looked back at the agent. “Do you take credit cards?”

While Sam paid, I struck up a conversation with the man behind the counter. “What is it like to have to constantly give people bad news?” I asked him. He looked defeated. “It’s awful. I had three women in a row today and each of them cried.” Apparently it is commonplace for the women at the Impound to burst into tears. “I’m sorry. That’s so sad,” I said. I turned towards Sam, who was looking at me oddly. “It is, but I have to pay for school,” the agent replied. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, and then: “Life is hard.” It was the truest thing I’d said all day.

Sam and I went on one other date, but he was allergic to my cat and his commute from the South Bay was arduous and I think I audibly gasped when he admitted he didn’t read the news. Later over Gchat we both agreed that maybe his car getting towed on the first date wasn’t a sign of the beautiful future we would have together, but instead it was an early indication that neither of us really liked each other enough to overlook minor obstacles like allergies or 30 minute commutes. That night, after he left, I sat on my bed with my knees pulled up to my chin and thought about that Jenny Holzer quote, “The only way to be pure is to stay by yourself.” I looked down at my hands and they looked the same as they had before Sam touched them: holdable.

The thing about college is that it’s such an unrealistic life experience that for four whole years it allows you to propagate the illusion that you know who you are. You meet new people, you buy new clothes, you try new drugs. You get drunk all the time and bruise your shins in alleyways and you fuck people you can’t bring yourself to love and you talk to ‘intellectual peers’ about really important topics like the inherent dangers of groupthink and The Way We Live Now. All of these things aid in forming a sense of self that is satisfyingly solid, at least compared to the ping pong nature of your high school self. College is about figuring out who you are, but I had no idea that image I worked four years to construct would be so easy to lose.

I am mad that no one warned me that being 22 would feel exactly the same as being 15. The only difference between who I was then and who I am now is that now problems are ‘real.’ Bad decisions have become emotionally expensive, and suddenly casual gestures have the power to unravel 10 years of closeness. I can’t stop unconsciously destroying things. I can’t stop consciously destroying people. I’m not 15 and so I can’t funnel my angst into outward physical expressions of nonconformity and I can’t blame my parents for anything anymore without seeming like an asshole.

Last night I tried to sit down and write a list of things I know about myself, qualities I possess that are so decidedly me that they’re inherently inarguable. I couldn’t formulate a single trait, because the truth is that while I’m one person today, I may feel like someone completely different tomorrow. I have become amorphous, an unnamable thing, and for someone who analyzes and ties words to meanings as frequently as I do, this is a very difficult idea with which to come to terms. I’ve always been so attracted to truisms. I am intent to know very specifically what I am and what I am not. But right now my life is so untethered and in flux that I can’t seem to figure any of that out. I know who I was and to some extent I even know who I want to be, but right now, in this moment, I have no idea who I am. It’s very hard to figure out what it is you want when you don’t understand who you are. It’s very difficult to connect with people when you’re unsure of how it is you should be connecting.

Sometimes I force myself to remember that I am supposed to feel this way. I am too hard on myself, and so not only do I feel confused and sad but I also feel angry at myself for feeling like this, because I’m pretty sure ‘quarter-life crisis’ is the very definition of a first world problem. The trouble is how easy it is to forget that feeling like a bumbling, hormonal brat is totally normal for 22, and judging from the overwhelming amount of trend pieces on millennial malcontent these days, it seems I am (we are) not alone.

But despite what you may read in these articles, I really do think that twentysomethings have always felt this lost. Perhaps this confusion used to last for shorter amounts of time because we settled down at younger ages, but that seed has always been there, blossoming slowly and breeding self-doubt and overanalysis and the looming, impossibly terrifying realization that this is the rest of your life. I’m not sure twentysomethings today have it harder, but I do think that our confusion is more acute. We’ve grown up in a society that is totally wedded to psychology, taught how to analyze our actions and feelings from a very early age. We’re constantly watching ourselves, judging, taking mental notes. We know how we are–the ways we act, the ways we react–but we don’t know who we are.

There is some comfort in knowing that this is a collective problem, some sense of camaraderie in understanding that we are all feeling alone together. Maybe we just need to learn to accept that we’re going to be lost for a little while, and that that’s okay. After the hyper-planned lives we’ve lead for the past 22 years, maybe we owe ourselves that.

(Images via)

You kissed me in July on a set of flannel snowman sheets. My hair was wet from the swimming pool. Your mom was downstairs, drunk at 2pm. I thought, “This is just like kissing a window.” I told one person and you told everyone.

You kissed me in school when we were supposed to be in class. We were never in class. When the bell rang I wasn’t relieved, just nervous. I kissed you in my Dad’s car. The cops were polite when they caught us with our clothes half off. They promised not to tell. We made promises just to break them. You kissed me on your bed while our snow boots pooled water in the foyer. I thought I loved you but I was 17. Every day was Casimir Pulaski Day. You smelled like Dove soap. We were always getting caught, but never minding.

You kissed me on my dorm room bed during an “Arrested Development” marathon. Your tongue was sluggish. My hands moved fast. We ate pancakes in a diner in Koreatown. I hated when you put your feet up on my parents’ coffee table and you hated that I hated it. We went to the New York Public Library to see the “On the Road” scroll. We went to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. We ate egg sandwiches in London. You kissed me on the subway. I kissed you on the underground. You drank too much and I worried. We took the backroads in Virginia, we sped through Washington DC. We got lost on the freeway and you screamed at me and tossed the directions out the window. You liked when I touched your hair. It reminded you of being a kid. I baked you muffins. We stood in my driveway at sunset. We wrote each other poetry. Into your neck I spoke three words: I love you. Into my hair you ran your fingers. I learned then that just because you love someone doesn’t mean they love you back.

You kissed me on election night. A French girl kept shouting, “Il a gagné, il a gagné!” I kissed you in a restaurant in Montmartre. You touched me in a taxi. You touched me in a club on Rue Oberkompf. All we did was kiss. You went to Geneva for Thanksgiving. You left for the Sudan. In New York, on a fire escape, I realized I had changed.

You kissed me in my apartment on 13th street. I had to stand on tip toes. I took you to the Empire State building. I took you to Battery City. We kissed in a hotel in Chelsea. We kissed in Central Park. You had workman’s hands. I wanted to move you, wanted to move for you. We got drunk in the afternoon on West Broadway and watched the Kentucky Derby on a dingy bar TV. We stretched our legs on Fifth Avenue. You were here, but also somewhere else. We could never get the timing right.

I said, “I want to kiss you but I’m scared.” You bent my neck back and it was done. You showed up on my doorstep in the middle of a snowstorm, cradling icy roses. I touched you on the A train. We fought over operating systems and I locked myself in your bathroom. You brought me gifts back from San Francisco. Every night I fell asleep in your company t-shirt. Our bodies forgot how to exist without each other. We loved our cats like children. You didn’t want children but I was always smiling at babies. My joy scared you but I refused to apologize for it. I told my family you’d be there at Easter. We went to the Cloisters and stared at the Hudson. It was always so cold. You told me you loved me and then, a week later, you told me you loved her. I knew then for the first time what it was like to really want to punch someone. I screamed at you and sobbed. You held your face in your hands like a broken thing. I couldn’t stop asking why. I could never stop asking why. I wanted you to hug me but you were the reason I needed a hug.

I slept for four days and didn’t eat for two weeks. You stayed in your apartment, fridge full of fruit I’d brought you. I left notes for strangers in bookstores. I went to the same parties with the same people. On rooftops I could see for miles. I was so alone. I kissed someone I didn’t love. You moved to San Francisco. I kept quietly crying in the bathroom at work. I drank too much. New York in Spring is a rebirth. I was reborn without you. I cried on the Brooklyn Bridge and put all of my books in a box and moved to San Francisco.

I have changed, but it’s how little I’ve changed that scares me. My parents divorced, remarried, had babies. I lost my virginity at sunset on a baseball field. My sister went off to college. I cut my hair, then grew it long again. I let people touch me when I didn’t want them to. I crashed a car and watched my father cry on the TV news. I threw up on a train platform in Florence and in the airport in Barcelona. I kept stacking the odds against myself and breaking other people’s hearts. I kept running and running. I told people what they wanted to hear because it was just easier that way. I cried in public restrooms and subway cars and crowded airport terminals. I waited for things to settle but nothing ever did. I cut my finger slicing an avocado for you. I apologized for things that weren’t my fault. I carried secrets like anchors and lied for the hell of it. For a year I refused to brush my hair. People came suddenly and then left without warning. I fell in love over and over, courting recklessness like a person near death. We fought over the same things and bought the same groceries. Everything happened but nothing changed. You didn’t hold me but clung with a tightness so fierce I resigned. I’m sorry I threw away your books. I’m sorry I cried in the carriage house. When you told me you loved me on the bridge, I’m so sorry I said nothing at all.

My sister was captain of the field hockey team, and I was layout editor of the yearbook the year everyone proclaimed it “too artsy.” I was Alice in the 8th grade production of “Alice in Wonderland,” and she was…Ali Roy–no need for acting, her own name, its three-syllable rhythm cascading with verbal ease, carried enough cache on its own. I got grounded time and time again for exposing my PG-13 exploits on various blogging outlets (Xanga, Deadjournal and Livejournal), and she got grounded for attending the popular kids’ parties. Everyone knew we were siblings, but we looked and acted so differently everyone also probably thought one of us was adopted. She inherited my mom’s tan Portuguese glow; I am pale, freckly, embarrassingly Northern European.

My sister left for college yesterday. Senior year amplified her self-doubt, so I’ve been the recipient of many teary late night phone calls punctuated by wails about how much she loves and looks up to me. I try my best to respond with sisterly things like, “You are going to do amazingly at college,” and, “It’s going to be scary, but you’re awesome and you’re going to love it.” She’s always appreciative, but with the knowledge that we’re both aware that she is far more emotionally intelligent than I could ever hope to be.

Sometimes late at night I regret moving to California, if only because I made a decision that resulted in being so far away from her. When our parents got divorced, I was 14 and she was 10. They broke the news to us in the living room, which is how we knew they were going to do it in the first place–there were only two things that happened in the living room: opening Christmas presents, and breaking bad family news. My reaction to their announcement was to run back to my computer and pound out an angry blog entry about the ordeal. My sister’s was to scream and cry and bang her fists. “But what will my friends think?” she wanted to know. I thought that was brave of her, to be so blatantly selfish. It was such a “fuck you” to our parents–who cares if you two don’t love each other anymore, what will my friends think when they come over for dinner? She has always cared so much about what other people think. I used to hate that about her–it struck me as vaguely Stepfordian–but now I see it’s because she’s hypersensitive to the way other people feel. As a writer–as a person–I wish I had her intuition, her innate ability to read the emotions of others just by looking at them.

When I was in elementary school, I preferred sleeping on a mattress on her bedroom floor instead of in my own bed. It was a scratchy, lumpy mess of a mattress, but I didn’t mind, because sleeping on it meant that I got to be near to her. I slept there for two years straight.

1. Homesickness for a person instead of a place.

2. Embarrassment for someone.

3. The strange mix of exhilaration and regret that comes after sleeping with someone you didn’t really like that much.

4. How it feels when someone else touches your hair.

5. The first person who kisses you after a really bad breakup.

6. The desire to hug someone.

7. The very specific melange of sadness and nostalgia that comes with reading old Gchat conversations.

8. Disappointment over a text not being from the person you’d wished it was.

9. The awkward, subtle code used on a first date to see who’s going to pay the bill.

10. The excitement of meeting a new person.

11. Having popcorn stuck in your teeth.

12. The first day you feel better after being sick for awhile.

13. The place where you lost your virginity.

14. People who make a big deal about quitting Facebook and then rejoin less than a month later.

15. The feeling of loneliness that creeps in at the laundromat.

16. Tasting a new food for the first time.

17. Crying out of happiness instead of sadness.

18. Awkward elevator conversations.

19. The time of day when you really need a nap.

20. When you’re really hungry but can’t figure out what you want to eat.

I’ve observed almost all of the various styles of airport goodbyes: the enthusiastic “See you soon!” as arms fling hopefully around sagging shoulders; the casual handshake and curt, jaunty wave; the drawn out, meaningful embrace of long distance lovers whose bodies have already begun training for how to be alone again. Being together apart takes practice and a distinct knack for calendar organization. It’s funny that to love someone from afar is cowardly, but to love someone from far away is startlingly brave.

I want to give all of the affection I have stored up inside to someone who deserves it. I want to be less careless with my feelings so that others will learn to be less careless with them, too. People don’t always automatically know how to treat you with sweetness–sometimes, they just need a little guidance. I used to take his hand and gently move it to my collarbone; once I told him “Go to hell!” when he made me cry in the living room. Together we could do so much damage, so we take deep breaths and thank god for the distance that keeps us apart.

Before bed I think of the silly shape his body used to leave on the mattress. I give in and let the smell of my perfume remind me of New York and the way I liked to rest my head on his shoulder on the A train. I think about how to say things before I think about what I want to say. Sometimes it seems like writers are so busy narrating the world that we forget how to live in it. I know how I’d describe his face but I don’t always remember how it looks. I feel bad about that, for both of us.

We are vulnerable creatures. We are flimsy and careless. We have delicate bodies with papery skin and veins more like rivulets than rivers. When we say to each other, “You can tell me anything,” or “I promise not to hurt you,” I just think that we all should mean it.

The man had a phone number written on his hand. It was less written than scrawled, less scrawled than carved into his skin, which appeared husked like a stalk of corn. “This is my lifeline, you know? If it rubs off of my hand and I can’t remember it, I’ll be totally screwed.” He fished around in his torn wallet for a scrap of paper on which to copy the number. Seeing the patchy skin around his eyes and the crumbs of dirt beneath his fingernails, and knowing there is a crack epidemic in parts of my neighborhood left over from the 90’s, I suddenly feared that I was searching for a pen so that this man wouldn’t lose the number of his drug dealer. But I kept digging, wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt.

It was taking an awfully long time, so I punctuated my frantic arm movements with soft “I’m sorry’s,” and nervous looks. People were staring at me, clearly wondering why I had bothered to stop and talk to this person, someone who, because he has no home in a city filled with thousands of other people with no homes, is as good as a ghost. It was 6:30 in the evening and the fog had never quite burned off and I was searching for a pen to give to a ghost.

“Don’t worry, baby. Take your time,” he said. “It’s just all my stuff is in storage and I’m going to lose everything if I lose this number.” Finally I recovered the pen, a cheap black Bic, and thrust it at him. “Here! You can keep it,” I peeped, and scurried off.

I don’t know if he was lying about losing his things, but seeing the hollowed look in his eye made me believe him, somehow. I always err on the side of believing someone, even if he is a stranger with a potential drug habit. I trust everyone until they give me a reason not to. I think that because we are both human, and we’ve both felt the same way at one point or another, I owe them the benefit of the doubt. This frequently results in me getting hurt or betrayed; often times I hate myself for being so unquestioning. But I think it’s this naive belief in the inherent goodness and beauty of each other that makes getting out of bed every morning worthwhile. My permeability is what makes me ache when I witness kind gestures or hear the arc of someone’s silvery voice dip into low whispers, but it’s also what makes me capable of relating, identifying.

I get scared sometimes thinking about how much of my life I share here. A few nights ago I dreamed that we all gathered around someone’s laptop to watch a recurring dream of mine unfold. I don’t remember who was there, but the room felt full. I wasn’t embarrassed, just nervous. When I get messages from girls and boys going through the same things I do it reminds me that I’m doing this for a reason. It’s the same reason I stopped to find a pen for that homeless man: it’s the small things that remind us how to be human, and writing here is my way of remembering.

(Illustrations via)