Clueless Twenties

  Kill the Bad Boy! Or at the very least, let the cliché die. You are sitting, scrolling through your film app of choice, and you fancy yourself a hopeless romantic, so you settle on a romance movie. You already know the plot. Two people who should not end up together somehow do. One of them runs through an airport. Somebody makes a dramatic confession in the rain. The music swells. Roll credits. Or maybe it's a book you are reading. See, dear reader, that's the difference between you and me. I'm not immune to the formula. I watch them too. But I know better. Or at least, I thought I did. Because somewhere between the brooding stares, the leather jackets, the emotional constipation, and the "I don't do relationships" speeches, we were sold one of the greatest marketing campaigns of the last century: the bad boy. And I think it's time we let him die. Not the rebellious one. Not the biker. Not the man with tattoos. I couldn't care less about leather jack...

  Father's Day has always felt like a room with two doors. One I still peek through, hoping memory will answer. The other, I walked into unexpectedly, only to find that love has a peculiar way of introducing itself. I've learned that fatherhood has never belonged solely to biology. In quiet consistency. In showing up. In staying. There are men whose absence shaped me. And there are men whose presence stitched parts of me back together. Both have left fingerprints on the woman I am becoming. One gave me roots. The other reminded me I could still grow. What I deserve, and how to be loved. Victories I wish could have been witnessed. Versions of me that never got introduced. Grief is strange like that. It doesn't always ask to be noticed. Sometimes it simply sits beside celebration, smiling through watery eyes. And somehow, love makes room for both. Today, I think of the men who father quietly. The ones who never asked for recognition. Who offered guidance before opinions. Who ...

  I need to start this article carefully. Not because the topic is controversial, but because people tend to hear things that were never said. This is not an attack on women. This is not an invitation for men to tell us how difficult we are. And this is certainly not a declaration that women are uniquely flawed. Jealousy is human. Men experience it. Women experience it. The difference is that female jealousy often arrives dressed as something else. Concern. Advice. Silence. Distance. A compliment that somehow leaves a bruise. Sneaky comment. And I think we need to talk about it. Not because it is comfortable. But because pretending it doesn't exist has never made it disappear. Recently I have been in predominantly female spaces, and ooh, my God, had I forgotten how women can be; let's not even get to my high school experience. What struck me wasn't the obvious hostility. It was how subtle it felt. How difficult it was to point to and how gaslit I felt as a girl who'd ju...

  I think about my younger self often. Not in a nostalgic way. More in a "girl, if only you knew" kind of way. The younger me would be completely fascinated by the life I live today. Not because I've made it or because everything turned out perfectly, but because some of the things I do now once felt impossible. There was a time when speaking up for myself felt terrifying. Making decisions without seeking everyone's approval felt selfish. When peace felt like something other people had access to. When I thought adulthood was about having answers instead of learning how to live with uncertainty. Looking back, I think she'd be proud. Not of the achievements, necessarily. Not of the milestones or the things that look good on paper. But of the person we've become. Somewhere between heartbreak, mistakes, unanswered prayers, difficult conversations, and growing pains, I picked up a few things that now guide how I move through the world. These aren't rules. They...