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[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

my golden boy

My favorite time of day isn’t the day at all. The sun, bright and everlasting, can take its nightly leave The dawn chorus, it’s song, means nothing to me now Goldfinches and Dunnock can fly to a far off coast Relieve me of your luminescent cries

My hour is holy A sacred silence, on hallowed ground

When slices, pearly white, carve a lantern out of air And crickets sing lullabies to an ancient rhythm

I wake each night with the cycle of the earth Perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour Each night the same When im stirred to life by the forces that be, compelled to vision like a forced awakening

I turn to you

you, my love, you Perfection reaches higher ground in you when you rest, silent in the tomb of your sleeping form, I understand

My glory, my lord of the sun Halo of everlasting life You run your chariot across my darkening skies Bringing me to life every day you spend breathing

you sleep easier Perhaps because your relentless pace Bringing our world the gift of light It’s a wonder You find time to rest

I come alive in the night In the darkest corners of the earth you’ll find me as far as your vision reaches I am there Charting the stars across the darkening sky Pulling the worlds shadows west Soaring to the moon

Your queen of night

My king of light

If legend dictates we chase Ever apart, yet intertwined in the neverending cycle Why do we cling together so?

I scorn the sun but you illuminate me so As you sleep I trace the rise and fall of your chest

sometimes i dream you wake Indulge in my moonlit vigil Keep the midnight oil burning with me We would talk of ancient stories and strings of quantum mechanics Of lands of yore and dreams of the future

but when daybreaks and you begin to stir you pull me closer and thats when i know

Id give a million nighttime gazes As many nights with you as i have to live For just one breathless moment when you slip from dreamlands to our living heaven on earth and press your lips against my hair

breathing me. breathing yourself awake. i illuminate your skies, and your eyes.

and you bring me into your light

xox. j.a-b

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I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

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general moods on december 20th, 2018

“when you first took my hand on a cold christmas eve, you promised me broadway was waiting for me” fairy tale of new york, the pouges

“i think im having an episode? i cant stop cleaning and my heart is racing” - text to my friend A

“i was fine all day and then i crawled into bed, lay my head down on the pillow, and cried because it smelled like him”- me to my friend S

“can’t wait to square up with that giant chinned white boy!!!” - me to my friend J

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“Bubbly”

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You’re a 🍑

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on the eve of my 20th birthday

sept. 12th, 2018

sept. 13th, 2011

13. Thirteen. ThirTEEN. A teenager, am I? no. but yes. im a TEEN. 

I don’t remember what I did the day I turned 13. I wasn’t a happy kid. Maybe blew a candle out of a cupcake with my parents. ran my first team race and realized what it means to be spectacular at something. 

sept. 13th, 2012

the world is ending this year. and obama might not be president anymore. (spoiler: he won)

“Come up and give us a big, 14 year old answer,” my history teacher said to me. I was trying out for the soccer team. I didn’t make it. 

sept. 13th, 2013

fifteen is the first teen year, in my opinion. 

i was finally a lucky one, gifted a group of friends with a coveted group chat and constant hang out sessions. we rode scooters down my street in the twilight and shouted to the stars, forgetting our history homework. 

sept. 13th, 2014

16. 

a big year. i tried weed for the first time. first real crush. 

but also stared in the mirror for the first time and wondered what the world would be like if i wasn’t in it. 

sept. 13th, 2015

“young and sweet, only SEVENTEEN!!”

i screamed into the ether, dancing in stockinged feet with my best friends. i wondered what youth really meant. 

sept. 13th, 2016

18. 18. 18. 

adult? not really. but i called myself out of classes and registered to vote. i ran 6 miles and felt free. i had hope. 

sept 13th, 2017

i had my first birthday party in ten years. my new friends smiled and a boy i thought i loved gave me an acorn. i think i lost it. but for the first time in my life i felt so loved and so, so, so truly happy. 

sept. 12th, 2018

tonight im reading about ethics and the how the french keep time. my phone broke today. i had class and didn’t see too many people. i guess tomorrow might be different. 

i don’t know if im ready but one thing is for certain

i’m 19

and im on fire

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

some general moods on august 19th, 2018

“waking up is never easy, i know, but i have to go” - knowing me, knowing you by abba, sung by lily james in mm2

“i’ve gotten bubble tea every day for a week, i love newton culture” - me to my brother, discussing being home for the summer

“janey, your life is a movie” - my friend izzy

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

Twin Oaks Part Four

May 24th, 2018

I sat in ZK, the main Twin Oaks dining hall, dumbfounded. 

The adult woman seated across from me, probably 30 years my senior, had finished her meal. Rather than bussing her plate back to the plastic bins where they awaited washing, she lifted her off brand porcelain plate to her mouth, and licked in clean. 

All around me, grown men and women ate with their hands, sans napkins or knives. Bare footed children ran amok through the cooking area, and a long-tressed woman stood behind the stove, hairnet-free. I felt slightly woozy, at the thought of a stray hair landing in my vegan pad thai. 

April, 2013

“In Italy, they vaccinate themselves. Like an epipen.....” There I was, sitting in my Italian class in the 8th grade. We had begun our unit on diseases and health and were learning about how the Italians medicate themselves. My teacher made this still unconfirmed claim that they stabbed themselves with epipens for colds and flus. 

I felt the blood rush from my head as my peers began discussing the power and intensity of an epipen needle. I had always been squeamish about blood and needles before, but suddenly, I felt heat rising to my cheeks and the sound of rushing blood in my ears. I blinked, trying to push away this foreign and deeply unsettling feeling from my body. My hand shot up, and I assume I asked to go to the nurse because next thing I knew, I was in the hallway. 

I never made it there. 

I remember seeing red, as my body went clammy and my hands and feet tingled. I remember stumbling into the bathroom, running my hands along the cold white tiles before I crumbled to the floor. 

May 24th, 2018

The chill would have been lure enough, but the true reason behind my love of the Tofu Hut was the cleanliness. It was like night and day on the farm- dirt, dust, and broken down wood existed outside. Inside was clean, shiny chrome. As I chopped tofu methodically for two hours, I fell into a blissful trance, unfazed by the overwhelming mechanical sounds and blasting music. 

March, 2016

“AIDS is a cluster of symptoms related to infection by the human immunodeficiency virus.....” Reading off of meticulously written notecards, I stood in front of my AP US History class, presenting on the topic of my graduation thesis, a 25 page monstrosity in which I eloquently slammed President Reagan. 

Glancing up, I saw the 20 eyes, some on me, some on their phones, some staring out the window. I looked down, past my notecards and at my corduroy skirt, stockings, and loafers. This was so bad. I was so bad. The skirt clung to me in all the wrong places, and I had a run slowly forming in the knee of my tights. 

My hands began to shake, and I felt that same familar feeling rising up around me. Red vision. Clammy skin. My knees knocked together, and I spluttered out a few words about FDA regulation of AZT before I dropped my notecards to the floor. 

I ran a single finger across the cold tiles. Gasping for air, I collected the cards, blinking back tears. When I rose back to standing, I dusted off my hands and adjusted my skirt. 

“Thanks.”

August 10th, 2018

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had been experiencing panic attacks since that fateful day I fainted in Italian class at age 14. I don’t know what caused this, and thankfully they have been few and far between. I’ve only had three severe panic attacks in my life, and all three resulted in fainting. My low grade ones? Ones where I would feel an overwhelming need to escape, a sense of absolute terror and fear inside me caused by any number of things? In high school, maybe once or twice a month. Nowadays? Haven’t had one in almost two years. 

I don’t know what it is about my brain chemistry that causes this, or what made it end. I’ve seen a therapist, taken medication, and tried yoga. While I’m sure those routes helped tremendously, what I believe really helped was my radical self-transformation in college. Something within me snapped summer of 2017, and I haven’t been the same since. I’ve been more laidback, more self aware, and most importantly, had tremendous gains in the health department. My mental state is good, and my physical ailments have been at bay. Maybe it was getting out of the pressure cooker high school, or maybe it was finally moving out. But whatever it was- I’m happy it happened. 

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Timothée Chalamet photographed by Fabrice Dall'Anese at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival

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some general moods on august 1st, 2018

sometimes i like to write little snippets of what will someday be lyrics or poems, that speak to my general mood at the moment. or, lyrics by others that speak to me. peek into my world on august 1st. 

“Kisses like pink cotton candy Talking to everyone but me I'm staying up late just in case you come up and ask to leave with me” - mitski

“im trying to lay my head down, but im writing this at 3 am” - mitski

“i can’t stand to be where you can’t see me” - mitski

“it’s not that i wanna die. i just don’t wanna be living this existence right now, ya feel?” - a tweet by me, august 1st. 

“i like waking up with a vendetta against the world” - another tweet by me

“i love my Village Bank Daddy, Slater Cream” - me to my friend in the car

“never say that ever again janey” - what my friend said to me after the aforementioned statement 

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

on relapse

tw: eating disorder, depression

i’ve been asked one question often. 

“will you ever relapse again?”

how could anyone answer that question? even if i was recovered i couldn’t answer, truthfully at least. 

of course i could. That doesn’t mean, however, I will. 

but that answer necessitates one condition. 

recovery. 

i am of the pessimistic mindset that one is never fully recovered from an eating disorder. it lives in your brain permanently, but you must choose not to listen to the voice. after living with this demon for nearly 9 years, i think i may be something of an expert. 

I went through treatment, and i’d say i exist on a precarious cliff between stagnation and full relapse. 

if i found out i was stuck in the body i have now forever, i could live with it. i wouldn’t be happy, but i surely wouldn’t die over it. 

but given the chance to fall back, i’ll always pick the demon. 

its a coping mechanism, more than anything. when i lose control, when i need to regain my power over myself or others; you’ll be there. i go through periods where its as if i was never sick at all. i can eat a french fry without a mental breakdown or skip running for two days. but sometimes it feels like a single trigger with send me back down the rabbit hole of sadness and terror. and suddenly im crying because i skipped a run or chopping lettuce into tiny pieces and wondering how i let this happen again. 

why am i even writing this? have i fallen into the dark trenches again?

i skipped a run yesterday and i feel on edge. 

i couldn’t find my safe salad dressing yesterday and i managed to eat without it. begrudgingly. and today i ate a starburst. 

but as i type these words, sitting across from my full length mirror, i have the urge to measure the width of my hips against the width of my shoulders. i run my fingers along my collarbone and wrap my fingers around my wrists, and im relaxed. 

i suppose this is the existence im destined for. i don’t like it, but what can i do?

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

Part Three: Hippies in 2018

Part Three!

May 19th, 2018

“It was nice to be somewhere...clean. Like, properly clean and not in a ramshackle building.” Sitting on the couch in Aurora, I wrote in painstaking detail the events of the day. Coming from the city that never sleeps destined me to perpetual boredom. Earlier in the day we got to visit the Tofu Hut, where the community produced the tofu they sold through Whole Foods. The tofu operation was the main source of income for the farm, and one they took lots of pride in. It was starch and clean, and I felt a sense of calm within the industrial walls. 

Aurora was the name of the visitors cabin, where all seven of us outsiders slept. At Twin Oaks, each building is named after a commune or intentional community. ZK, the dining hall up the way from Aurora, was a Jewish collective in Crimea. 

Upon our arrival at Twin Oaks the day prior, we were greeted by Tony and Tyler, two men who had lived on the farm for over ten years. I expected to be introduced to life here by some Woodstock era hippies, but Tony was a former teacher, and Tyler had a goatee and wore a baseball shirt. As we waited for the rest of the visitors to arrive, we discussed three cruicial things for our “survival” in this new place. 

1) Not all members like having visitors. Though there were plenty of smiling faces, reading to greet us, there were also plenty who side-eyed us from across the dining hall.

2) Labor rules all. At Twin Oaks, one of the first things you learn about is the labor system. This system, formed in 1967 when Twin Oaks was established, ensures that anything a community of 100 people would need will get done. Gardening, cleaning, cooking, child care, labor assigning, cutting down trees, building new spaces, doing laundry, fixing cars- you name it, someone had to do it. 

3) Nothing is ever clean. Absolutely nothing. 

Coming from a cramped and hot dorm room, I was quite comfortable in my temporary home. That is, until I ducked my head below the lofted bed on the first day to find a layer of dust and three massive spiders, writhing in the mess. 

I suppose the nature of living in the sticks and detaching from modern society is that those who live here don’t care a whole lot about the state of their living quarters. While I typically wouldn’t be caught dead with an unmade bed or unkempt hair, I found plenty of messy spaces, fulfilling my urge to clean. 

March 5th, 2018

“I just don’t think its okay to leave dishes for other people to clean”, Annie muttered, picking at her nails. “I mean, we’re not here to clean up after you.”

I glanced around the living room. I was sitting in my apartment, with my three roommates, my RA, and the Graduate Director of our building. For the past six months, the number of complaints lodged in the residence hall office about our flat and the members of it had prompted a forced mediation. 

The primary complaint was Alison’s entire existence. 

Alison was an...unfortunate person. On the first day of school, she looked me up and down and proclaimed, for the entire hall to hear, “you’re so skinny!” Regardless of my (supposed) slight frame and her lack of self awareness, she could be classified, according to my mother, as a “future Jodie Foster shooter waiting to happen”. She was obsessed with Broadway star Andy Karl, to the point that “obsessed” doesn’t quite capture the level of infatuation. 

She saw his musical, Groundhog Day, 16 times. She slept with a portrait of him above her bed, on the ceiling. She was a hopeless romantic, and had no problem with letting me know my frequent hookups were irritating. She left pots of mac and cheese out on the stove for days at a time, until someone (usually me) invariably cleaned it. 

I’m not a neat freak. My dorm room often appeared tidy, soley for the fact that I simply don’t own a whole lot of stuff. But there are two things I absolutely cannot stand. 

Dirty floors, and food scraps. Go figure. 

By the end of the meeting, we had reached a someone tenuous agreement to clean the floors more often and to not leave crusted pots in the sink unwashed. Though I would move out of my apartment a month later, I was satisfied in my clean crusade. 

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

Part Two! Hippies in 2018

Part one can be found here. Enjoy :) 

March 25th, 2018

“Are you shitting me?” Annie slammed her bowl of quinoa down on the table. “You realize communes are all cults right?” 

“No, it’s not like that! Really, I did research. It’s all about communal living and loving the land and-”

“That’s how they start. That’s how they get you. I’ll send you some links,” she gestured to me with her spoon. “All I’m saying is I’ll be an hour from you. If it even SEEMS like they’re indoctrinating you, I’m coming and you’re out of there.”

May 18th, 2018

She was looking out for me, I know. Everyone was. Even when, to my surprise, my phone signal returned and my phone lit up with texts from her. The first? 

“jim jones. jonestown. look it up”. 

My stomach turned. The last twenty four hours I had spent either on a cramped train or rushing around Washington DC, and I could feel it. My legs wobbled under me, and the world seemed to spin. Tears welled in my eyes as I imagined my family opening the news, to see their only daughter indoctrinated to a cult. Or worse. 

“I think you should stick it out. I’m excited!” I turned back to my companion. Franka had been on my train to DC, however I had no idea we were going to the same place until I realized she was the only other person with a camper bag. She was doing research for her PhD, in planning. We had been waiting for nearly two hours, as the tripper was stuck in traffic picking someone else up. They were nearly here. 

“You don’t think this place is...sketchy, do you?” I picked at the plastic on my backpack, looking down.

“I’ve been doing research for a while. It’s definitely legit.” She checked her phone again. “They should be pulling up soon...”

March 30th, 2018

“Well, you applied to the Community Partnerships garden internship, right?” Dr Hersh tilted her head, swiveling back to scroll through the list of internships. “You could try the Botanical Gardens...”

“No, this is what I want. This is like, combining everything I’m interested in. Econ, and politics, and biology. I think its gonna help me find what I-”

“I understand that, Jane.”

“Janey. That’s my name.” She always called me by my birth name. The name only my mother uses when she’s furious. I glanced behind her, at her three degrees hanging behind her office chair. 

“You’re entering a highly competitive field. Moping around a field for three weeks isn’t going to make you any connections, give you any real work experience. As your academic advisor, I strongly urge you to consider something else.” Dr Hersh pushed forward a sheet of paper. “I know you’re considering transferring. It could help to try and find a lab position in a city you’re looking at.”

“I think this place is whats going to help me. I need to do this. I know it.” I stood, collecting my bags. “And if you were really my advisor, you would advise me to follow my heart.”

May 18th, 2018

“it smells. like, really bad” Hiding the phone screen, I texted my mother under the seat. I had made it, into the tripper van. The communards had been collecting the weekly groceries, and things that couldn’t be made on the farm. Like five cases of beer, upon which my bags rested. Though I could handle roughing it in the country, the only mandatory item on my “must haves” was, truly, deodorant. And it seemed some of my new companions had forgotten it. 

“So, what brought you to Twin Oaks?” A raspy voice croaked beside me. I turned, and I lay eyes upon the second visitor. Her name was Janis, she was from Connecticut, and was recently let go from her job as a temp worker. She sat beside the window, staring out at the lush green countryside. Shorter than me, I couldn’t put a finger on her age. Truthfully, I would have guessed she was in high school in any other context. 

“Well, I guess I just wanted to try something new. Live differently for a bit,” I slammed my phone down on my thigh, hiding the newest message from my mother. 

“eww. they’re dirty hippies. what did you expect?”

“Well, I was laid off, and I don’t really have anything else going on....I’m thinking, you know, if this works out....” she trailed off, allowing me to fill in the blanks. She spoke like this often, speaking in circles and dropping sentences off insinuating for the listener to assume. 

My fear going into this adventure was that Twin Oaks wouldn’t be a place of achievement. Rather than being filled with those wanting to make the world better, it would be those running from the outside; individuals who, for one reason or another, couldn’t hack it outside. 

Was I destined for this life? Was I running to this new land not for adventure and excitement, but out of fear? Fear of the future, a future where I couldn’t succeed?

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

versions of myself

i feel as though i have existed a thousand times

simply by forming in the minds of others

and existing. 

my preschool teacher

my best friend from high school

that cute guy on the train

each of you have a plasticine me, formed from the memories and impressions and words i said 

but never whats real. 

do you think of me? the version of me you hold tight each night as you drift to sleep, fading from existence by morning?

i wish i could scrub your brain, peeling away any thought of me from within you- and shake you with my flesh and bone hands, and form myself within you. 

i want myself back. i want to be me, not the hundreds of versions of myself that float in the inky darkness, illuminated only when you think of my perfume, my skin, my smile. 

I want you to see Me. 

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

my running

(for someone who spends a majority of her time either thinking about running, or actively running, i have written surprisingly little about my training and running lifestyle. I have attempted a number of poems and narrative stories on the subject, but they have all failed to capture the sport properly for me to share them. So, rather, I decided to share some facts about my running in the hopes that it gives insight to some of my personal life! 

I entered my first road race at the age of 8, and this one mile charity run began my love affair with the sport. In the 7th grade, at age 13, I began running competitvely. I ran mostly 100, 400, and 800m races and ventured into the mile and 2 mile when I began high school. and However, my training didn’t become serious until the age of 16, when I began training for my first marathon. I had watched my other friends on the track team find massive success in high school, while I was left behind. In all honesty, I began the marathon club team with the intention of finally proving I could be better at something. Though, I would become better simply because I decided to grit my way through 9 months and thousands of miles of training in order to run 26.2 mile (42 km) race on a sweltering day in May. 

I began cross country the next fall, running typically around the middle of the pack. I trained consistently and pushed myself hard to make the varsity squad. However, I was sidelined throughout junior year when my health took a downward turn. I slogged through a half marathon in May of 2016, running a slower pace than I had run my marathon at. 

This slow period continued through my senior year, where my race times slowed down and my effort was minimal. I was again sidelined, this time due to an injury. My poor running form (hunched, with pronated feet) and weak core resulted in a severe overuse injury to my SI joint, in my hip. This required 4 months off from running, 9 months of physical therapy, and a steroid injection into my hip socket in order to prevent even further damage to my body. 

This injury refocused me, and I began to fall back in love with running again. The recruiting process for college, which had petered off when my times slowed, came back into my focus and I committed to running cross country in college. This was a huge accomplishment for me, and out of the 25 girls on my cross country team who graduated with me, only three of us were recruited to college. It was a miracle to me that my career would continue.

And continue it did! In college, with higher level of training and an attitude check, my times decreased dramatically, earning me a spot on the scoring squad. (The top five runners from each team in a race earn points towards that teams score. The first place runner gets 1 point, second place gets 2 points, etc. The team with the lowest score wins.) 

I trained harder than I ever had before, hitting multiple 50 mile weeks throughout the fall. This continued into the winter, where I trained solo for the first time in my career for a half marathon. I crushed the race, getting 4th place and smashing my previous personal best by 20 minutes. 

Running is truly my identity now. I eat, sleep, and breathe in order to run, and race my best. Rather than go out and party, I will sleep 10 hours to prepare for a tempo workout. I track my food intake in order to ensure a balance of protein to carbs for energy use. I now consider myself a half marathoner and a cross country runner, which means typically 6km races for women. 

Due to NCAA regulations for college athletes as well as team confidentiality agreements, I can’t publicize my teams workouts or what I do in an average week of training. However, I can summarize! 

As a collegiate cross country runner, my team workouts include mostly speed based training, which means track workouts (short intervals of sprints) tempo workouts (a run that consists of slowly getting faster and faster, until you reach race pace, which you sustain for a mile or so) and long runs (7-10 miles on wooded paths and trails). Not super high “junk” mileage, but rather, fast workouts that target the short distances we run. 

However, when I am training for a half marathon (13.1 miles, or 21 km) this is what a typical week looks like:

Monday: 3-5 miles easy. Probably only around a 9:30 mile pace. Just to get “out there” and run! I will also do core and probably arms as well. 

Tuesday: 45 minutes to an hour on the elliptical, steep incline and fast pace. Probably an 8 min mile, if converted to running. I’m always super dead after this!

Wednesday: 6 miles, average pace. Probably 8:30 pace. 

Thursday: 1 hour of yoga, and 1 hour to 1.5 hours cycling. Typically will get to around 11-15 miles. core and arms for 20 minutes. 

Friday: rest

Saturday: long run, between 7 to 12 miles. I run these at a steady pace, however I try to pick up the pace for at least one mile in the middle and the last mile. 

Sunday: rest. 

Why include cycling, yoga, and elliptical? For me, I’ve noticed that at heavy volume running with a priority on distance rather than speed, I tend towards aches and pains and injury. So I utilize other cardio methods to make sure I’m not overusing my smaller ligaments and tendons. This is the schedule that led to me dropping 20 minutes off my half marathon time, so I trust the process!

I thrive off of schedules and strict planning, and running definitely feeds that need. If I didn’t have running, I imagine I would be way more neurotic! Though not everyone benefits from being so insane about exercise as I do, I highly recommend even just casual running to anyone who wants a new way to work out or to boost endorphins :) 

[goldhatted-highbouncing-blog]

Hippies in 2018: A Summer of Tattoos, Communism, and Way Too Much Tofu

This is part One of Many! While I have an official, very Formal “article” to be sent to my university newspaper, this is a more narrative-style creative non-fiction piece, exploring more than the first article could. Nearly all of the official article is incorporated into this piece, this one just expands on it. Enjoy! 

may 18th, 2018.

“Five more minutes. If you really wanna run, I’d say do it now.”

Standing in the pouring rain, beside a busy road, I listened as my travel companion hung up the phone and turned to me. “I’d say stick it out.”

I looked around at my surroundings. A squat station building. A single train track, overgrown with weeds. A large Amtrak sign, which said, in glistening letters, “Charlottesville”. A hill, a bridge, buses. Cute coffee shops and street lanterns. Massive puddles were forming in the divets in the road. Behind me sat a single Northface backpack and a rolling suitcase. If I decided to make a break for it, I could hack it.  

How did I make it here? Was I going to give up on the dream I had waxed on about for the last three months? Was I going to run out of fear of what came next? Or out of fear of my own disappointment?

……………………………….

march 2018.

I was midway through my second semester of college. I was an athlete, participating in two sports, and captaining one. I was performing in a show, attending multiple clubs, and attempting to balance a massive workload.

My first semester had been revelatory and filled with happy moments, achievements, and new friendships. My second semester, however, was a Sisyphean march towards an eventual burnout. I rarely saw my friends, I was struggling to run races that would have been a cakewalk 6 months ago. My commitments began drowning me.

“Did I really come to Sarah Lawrence for this?”, I thought often. Sarah Lawrence is a place to radically reconstruct our norms of education and activism. The classes and extracurriculars that once excited me and made me actually want to write 20 page papers were now just another hurdle towards the ultimate sign of achievement: The Degree. Instead of joining clubs because of a true interest, I was simply thinking of padding my resume.

And, like my peers, I was suddenly swept into the immense wave of Summer Plans. At the apex of this discussion lay the most prized of the summer positions: The Internship. To both appease my anxious mind and fit in with my other high achieving peers, I applied for probably fifteen internships, in various unrelated fields, simply because it seemed like I should. And while I received some yes’s, the overwhelming response was “nope, try again next year!”

The thought of something greater had been rolling around in my mind for the last few years. In high school, a friend mentioned going on a tour of a commune in Virginia that made tofu. At 16, it wasn’t feasible to travel 6 hours away from home, alone, to live in the woods for three weeks. But now, at 19, with a job and independence, it seemed like I could make it work.

I opened an application to a visitor period at Twin Oaks, an intentional community in rural Virginia. Based around the principles of feminism, income equality, and environmentalism, it seemed almost too good to be true.

At Sarah Lawrence, I was taught radical new ideas that reshaped the way I understood the world. I can wax poetic on Chaucer, analyze American political trends, and evaluate carbon sinks in Yonkers. Through my education, I have passionately written for 25 pages on the merits of composting or how to construct an artificial language. We are taught to learn not for the sake of a grade, but in order to better ourselves and the society we will eventually enter upon graduation.

And yet, for all this passion and love of understanding the world, we still live unethical lives. We overuse plastics and never recycle; we buy clothes made in sweatshops; we use words like bitch or slut to degrade our peers. Though we may espouse ideals that, in theory, aim to make the world better, we don’t always live up to these expectations.

At Twin Oaks, however, “communards” have chosen to devote themselves entirely to the principles many of us simply choose to ruminate on. Founded in 1967 out of the hippie revolution, Twin Oaks has existed as a safe haven from the capitalistic pressure cooker of the mainstream world. Within its old growth forests and ramshackle buildings live 100 individuals, all working under the common goal of supporting each other.

On “the farm”, individuals work forty-two hours a week in communally owned businesses, dometic labor, food production, or on a myriad of other tasks, in order to provide food, shelter, healthcare, and friendship to one another. No one earns a paycheck, but no one pays a cent in order to live there.

It all seemed like a dream, to me anyways. My adolescence was spent in a world where to be successful was to be considered worthy. The Boston suburbs, where I was raised, produce doctors, lawyers, and more Ivy students than anywhere else in the country. From birth on, children are raised with the singular goal of “success”. Flute lessons, Russian math, soccer club, summer school- we were fed a strict diet of intense education and little rest, with our senses of normality crushed when we leave for college. When you grow up believing that earning less than $100,000 a year is a marker of poverty, you come out the other side with a warped sense of both the world, and yourself. I spent my nights petrified of the future, wondering if I was smart enough, strong enough, brave enough to make it in “the real world”.

In high school, this cutthroat environment collided with my own personal neurosis. My terror of being unsuccessful was compounded with my low self esteem, which resulted in years of depression, anxiety, and multiple relapses of an eating disorder. And I wasn’t a unique case: by senior year my entire circle of friends was in therapy or taking some sort of medication.

I came to Sarah Lawrence for a fresh start, believing like so many other first years do that it was a space devoid of the competitive nature of the outside world. I imagined myself free from the prison of my own creation, and for the first time in my life, seeing education not for the result at the end, but for the betterment of humanity.

It wasn’t meant to be. Though I made friendships to last a lifetime and my mental health has improved leaps and bounds, it wasn’t the life-changing reset I thought it would be. And I ended up right back where I started: in a pressure cooker environment, surrounded by people who fed into my selfish and harmful behaviors.

And here, I suppose, is where Twin Oaks came in. 

After my application, I began to dream of a life so different from my own- hard farm work, a lack of stress, a world of new friendships and relationships. A place where my activism isn’t for nothing, where my actions speak louder than my words. A place where, for all my faults and neuroses and vices, I could belong. 

When I was accepted to a visitor program in May, I was over the moon. I alerted my friends and family with glee, most of them curious and none of them eager for my departure. But it didn’t matter- for I, Plain Jane, was off on the adventure of a lifetime! On a commune! 

……………………………………………..

may 18th, 2018.

So how did I end up here? Running from what would become the most transformative experience of my life?

Two words: Jim Jones. 

part two and more coming soon!