HOW DO YOU SAY

[In order to put this out into the world, I have to write a sort of prelude: I haven't read the books, and I haven't seen enough of the show to have an assured, totally informed opinion about it. What I know is that being a woman is really freaking hard sometimes, and that there are triggers which suddenly overwhelm me with all that difficulty. This show is one. It makes me reel at all the sexist bullshit that is embedded in my life--in friendships, relationships, interactions and non-interactions with strangers and coworkers--and it begins to feel insurmountable. It's people I love, it's me, perpetuating this stuff. To be fair, when I first saw GoT, I was in the pits--self-esteem was crashing and burning; I'd recently been shown a diagram by a nurse which depicted (no lie) cookie-cutter cutouts of a woman with her "heart" in her chest and a man with his "heart" in his dick; and while working in a bar, I was experiencing way more ogling and hara...

The thing about living alone is that it isn’t.  You’re not.  You dance, but you want to draw the curtains first. You shuffle, but it’s with a lightness. Sure, there’s nobody waiting for the bathroom or bothered by your dishes. But there’s the clicking claws of the Australian shepherd upstairs (want. one.), the lilt of the Dubliner landlady’s evening phone calls. Some rooms you avoid because of the dimness. You’re accumulating lamps at a disturbing rate. You never used to hit your car’s panic button except now, now that you are returning, late, past the neighbors’ bedtime: a flurry of whispered curses. The hallway seems long when it’s just you to walk it. Cold stone. But then conversations carry in both directions, under doors and through the cracks of ceilings. You get to know voices. You are alone, but no, you are not. You never are. Breakfast at the round kitchen table on a rainy Monday morning with just the pipe’s rushing water for company is just what you need. Comin...