STORIES
Advika Rajesh, Anonymous, Ana Chen
Advika Rajesh, Anonymous, Ana Chen
The Fuckboy Aesthetic
Anonymous
Simply put, I'm a fuckboy.
I don't know when I realized this: perhaps from all those Subtle Asian Traits memes about your neighborhood ABB, perhaps from the knowing laughs of those around me. But I'm your typical ABB, give or take a few bullet-pointed characteristics. And this bothers me. My identity bothers me. Writing this bothers me - it sounds so much like a plea for help. It sounds pathetic.
A few weeks ago, one of my friends showed me a meme, laughing. Y'all cute, a woman on SAT had posted. Now go break a fuckboy's heart.
She means me, I thought. Somehow that made me feel uneasy - I'd been homogenized into an archetype. I had a moment of vindication, where I thought I was the target (women are objectified - so are fuckboys!) before realizing that people actually thought I was a stud. That bothered me to the extent that I began to reflect. Was I actually misogynistic?
I really don't know when thisABB phase began. My friends and I just kept moving through public school and eventually into college. Adopting the mantlehood of fuckboy-ship felt natural, even inevitable. Had it come from place of insecurity? I don't know. Now, I keep waiting for something big to change me from the outside, like a drastic move or disaster that will force me to change my personality away from my ABB status. But nothing has happened.
I know change has to come from the inside, but I don't know where to begin. My friend's aren't the peer-pressure type, but that somehow feels worse, like their easy-going facade is hiding something. If I walked away from these mindsets, I'd distance myself from them. I'd have to redo myself.
And honestly, it kinda feels good to saunter around like this. It feels kinda good to embrace the ABB label, to endure even the teasing and taunting on SAT. I'm trying to keep the good parts of it without risking the other parts. There are just some parts of me that I'm not comfortable with. They also turn out to be important parts (haha, get the joke?): confidence, a social life.
This has kinda become a plea for help, a shout into the void. Still, I'm not feeling down about this. I'm glad I got this out.
Anonymous
Simply put, I'm a fuckboy.
I don't know when I realized this: perhaps from all those Subtle Asian Traits memes about your neighborhood ABB, perhaps from the knowing laughs of those around me. But I'm your typical ABB, give or take a few bullet-pointed characteristics. And this bothers me. My identity bothers me. Writing this bothers me - it sounds so much like a plea for help. It sounds pathetic.
A few weeks ago, one of my friends showed me a meme, laughing. Y'all cute, a woman on SAT had posted. Now go break a fuckboy's heart.
She means me, I thought. Somehow that made me feel uneasy - I'd been homogenized into an archetype. I had a moment of vindication, where I thought I was the target (women are objectified - so are fuckboys!) before realizing that people actually thought I was a stud. That bothered me to the extent that I began to reflect. Was I actually misogynistic?
I really don't know when thisABB phase began. My friends and I just kept moving through public school and eventually into college. Adopting the mantlehood of fuckboy-ship felt natural, even inevitable. Had it come from place of insecurity? I don't know. Now, I keep waiting for something big to change me from the outside, like a drastic move or disaster that will force me to change my personality away from my ABB status. But nothing has happened.
I know change has to come from the inside, but I don't know where to begin. My friend's aren't the peer-pressure type, but that somehow feels worse, like their easy-going facade is hiding something. If I walked away from these mindsets, I'd distance myself from them. I'd have to redo myself.
And honestly, it kinda feels good to saunter around like this. It feels kinda good to embrace the ABB label, to endure even the teasing and taunting on SAT. I'm trying to keep the good parts of it without risking the other parts. There are just some parts of me that I'm not comfortable with. They also turn out to be important parts (haha, get the joke?): confidence, a social life.
This has kinda become a plea for help, a shout into the void. Still, I'm not feeling down about this. I'm glad I got this out.
Embracing Mental Health
Advika Rajesh
in partnership with Plannr Consulting
Imagine you are sitting in class taking notes for every subject throughout the school day. Then, you come home and you have a plethora of things to complete: sports practices, orchestra or band rehearsals, club meetings, volunteer work. Don't forget that you also have to prepare for tests, quizzes or complete homework given by the school. While trying to accomplish all this, you also want to have a life- spend some time with family or friends, watch your favorite TV show or even just take your dog for a walk. Stressful right?
This is what students have to think about and go through every day. I, myself, am a student in high school and when I think about college or my future and what to do for them, I just fall into a pit of stress. Stress is something every student goes through, and if this stress is not tackled, then anxiety develops. Anxiety is a type of mental health condition that targets students mainly, and therefore needs to be addressed.
Mental health should be taken into account in every school, college and university, since so many students have problems with maintaining a healthy mental status. According to CollegeStats, 75% of students who suffer from depression do not seek help for their mental health problems and 80% of students feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities as a student. These are alarming numbers that immediately needs to be addressed. Addressing that you have a mental health problem which you need help to get through shouldn’t be considered as shameful. On the contrary, it is a valiant and respectable thing since you are taking ownership of your future well-being and your success in life. The stigma around mental health should be broken down and to do that, actions need to be taken.
In the past few years such actions have been taken with more emphasis on mental health. The mental health awareness month (May) has become more influential with far more emphasis placed on the importance of addressing mental health. More schools are taking part in the mental health awareness month. Additionally, even the government is taking more initiative. For instance, in the 2017 election, “there were more mentions of mental health in that election’s manifestos than for any other health condition in any other election since 1945.” These steps taken have raised more awareness on caring more mental health and continue to raise more awareness.
If you have fallen down the pit, that is stress, you need to climb your way back up. The only way to do that is by creating a plan and a list of what to prioritize first. If you need help to take that first step, Plannr Consulting is the way to go. Plannr Consulting is a not-for-profit organization that offers students free consultations to plan whatever they need to with our consultants. The organization offers consultations with standardized tests, college admissions, tutoring, or generally just lifestyle planning. By signing up for our free consultations you don't need to be alone in this journey. Additionally, Plannr Consulting has a discord chat community where you can talk to other students. This is to prove that everyone feels stress and you are not alone in the journey to get rid of the stress surrounding school life. By taking the first step of planning out your life, you will have already started to climb the dark pit to reach the sunshine that there is outside.
Advika Rajesh
in partnership with Plannr Consulting
Imagine you are sitting in class taking notes for every subject throughout the school day. Then, you come home and you have a plethora of things to complete: sports practices, orchestra or band rehearsals, club meetings, volunteer work. Don't forget that you also have to prepare for tests, quizzes or complete homework given by the school. While trying to accomplish all this, you also want to have a life- spend some time with family or friends, watch your favorite TV show or even just take your dog for a walk. Stressful right?
This is what students have to think about and go through every day. I, myself, am a student in high school and when I think about college or my future and what to do for them, I just fall into a pit of stress. Stress is something every student goes through, and if this stress is not tackled, then anxiety develops. Anxiety is a type of mental health condition that targets students mainly, and therefore needs to be addressed.
Mental health should be taken into account in every school, college and university, since so many students have problems with maintaining a healthy mental status. According to CollegeStats, 75% of students who suffer from depression do not seek help for their mental health problems and 80% of students feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities as a student. These are alarming numbers that immediately needs to be addressed. Addressing that you have a mental health problem which you need help to get through shouldn’t be considered as shameful. On the contrary, it is a valiant and respectable thing since you are taking ownership of your future well-being and your success in life. The stigma around mental health should be broken down and to do that, actions need to be taken.
In the past few years such actions have been taken with more emphasis on mental health. The mental health awareness month (May) has become more influential with far more emphasis placed on the importance of addressing mental health. More schools are taking part in the mental health awareness month. Additionally, even the government is taking more initiative. For instance, in the 2017 election, “there were more mentions of mental health in that election’s manifestos than for any other health condition in any other election since 1945.” These steps taken have raised more awareness on caring more mental health and continue to raise more awareness.
If you have fallen down the pit, that is stress, you need to climb your way back up. The only way to do that is by creating a plan and a list of what to prioritize first. If you need help to take that first step, Plannr Consulting is the way to go. Plannr Consulting is a not-for-profit organization that offers students free consultations to plan whatever they need to with our consultants. The organization offers consultations with standardized tests, college admissions, tutoring, or generally just lifestyle planning. By signing up for our free consultations you don't need to be alone in this journey. Additionally, Plannr Consulting has a discord chat community where you can talk to other students. This is to prove that everyone feels stress and you are not alone in the journey to get rid of the stress surrounding school life. By taking the first step of planning out your life, you will have already started to climb the dark pit to reach the sunshine that there is outside.
Homecoming
Ana Chen
I love airports. They boast a blissful balance of detachment and anticipation, of stability and impermanence. No matter how familiar a terminal feels, you are never meant to stay. This is comforting.
In late November, following the eighth week of my fall quarter, my family friend drove me to San Jose International Airport. I was one of the last people to leave my dorm for Thanksgiving break; in the twenty-four hours before, a terrible emptiness had settled over the halls, an emptiness swollen with the darkness outside.
I’d spent the past week watching a plethora of Instagram stories. finally home! everyone seemed to cry through my phone screen. haven’t seen them in so long! damn home-cooked food hits different! baby bro/sis! Homecoming is and has always been something romantic.
So when I took my first breath of Seattle air since September, I’d expected that same exuberant rush of relief. I’d expected some catharsis of familiarity at the sulking skies. I’d expected to rejoice at the rain.
And I did, but it was muted. A quiet awe filled me as my dad drove us home: I’d forgotten how beautiful Seattle was. I’d forgotten the scintillating greenery, the smoky steel buildings and graffiti-scarred roads. I’d forgotten how fiercely I’d grown to love downtown Bellevue, which the sun now halos with a haughty gold haze. Here, the sky breathes periwinkle, watery in the winter light. Here, the cold has so many layers, so much nuance.
Is this what home is? I thought, my finger tracing the fog on the window. My time away had condensed Bellevue’s beauty into something majestic, something equivalent to the star-hewn buildings of New York and the tawny boulevards of Los Angeles. Something to be loved from a distance? A raindrop streaked across the glass, bowling hurriedly from my touch. I’d forgotten how much I’d hated the rain. I hadn’t seen it in months.
Later, watching my ceiling light flicker, I wondered why this house felt so much smaller than my dorm room.
Distancing yourself from home means resentment riddled with guilty relief; it means confronting anger you never knew you possessed. “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome,” one of my middle school teachers quoted from Hope Floats. I’d visited them on Monday; my middle school had been one of the happier places of my hometown.
And naturally, there have been many places to which I’ve dreaded returning. Ballet studios, my high school, my violin teacher’s house. And this list isn’t limited to the physical: emotionally, I’ve found myself retracing all the thought patterns that had defined the more harrowing months of 2019. This year has been a year of waiting: waiting for people, for closure, for a future. The cold here bites through more than my three layers of coats and sweaters - it pierces those early winter memories from January and February: college applications, a long-forgotten relationship, a suicide note.
Yet there have been the beautiful moments. I laughed until my stomach hurt as my conglomeration of twelve Monopoly hotels bankrupted my dad. I got Jamba Juice, found thirty-dollar Levi’s at Nordstrom Rack. One night, as my best friend and I sat on my spare mattress, her head on my shoulder, I realized that I had missed this most of all, this trust of casual familiarity.
“Are you glad to be home?” she asked, as the rain banged ceaselessly against my window.
“Yeah,” I said. It was not the answer that surprised me, but its sincerity.
Home is painful. And somehow, as I boarded my flight on the Sunday after Thanksgiving break, a pang of longing shot through me. I would only spend two weeks in California before I returned for winter break, but the idea of leaving felt so heavy. Somehow, I dreaded the next two weeks more than I had ever dreaded the last two months.
But time blew by. Finals, performances, and schoolwork blurred my home into a tangle of sounds, tangible only through my phone calls to my mom.
Surprisingly, and perhaps poetically, it had begun to rain at Stanford. “Disgusting,” I muttered, as the mud splattered my brand-new Converse and every inch of my previously-spotless bike. “Atrocious,” I hissed, as I hurled my mud-freckled jeans and backpack into the wash.
Finals week slammed to a halt. Before I knew it, I was writing packing lists again, wondering whether I could cram three weeks’ worth of clothes into one suitcase. The process was nearly identical to the one I’d followed before Thanksgiving break, yet something felt jarringly different.
I had treated Thanksgiving break like a pit stop. I’d packed lightly, neglecting even moisturizer in the process, and I hadn’t bothered to unpack beyond my needs for a day. I’d walked carefully through my home, as if treading carelessly would root me to a permanence I couldn’t quite afford.
But for winter break, I did the opposite. I emptied out half my closet at school. I brought back three pairs of shoes. And I came prepared for the momentous to happen: the end of a year, the turn of a decade.
In the days before winter break, a series of uneasy dreams plagued me, all of them tied to home. I would wake up weary and dazed and sometimes nauseous, my fingers throttling my blankets. Had I really just seen my brother as a frat boy? Had my house really stood empty, skinned, ablaze?
Perhaps the same had happened before Thanksgiving break, but I’d been too preoccupied with schoolwork to think much of it.
Then the night before my departure, my hands froze over my suitcase. I turned to my roommate.
“I don’t wanna go home,” I said quietly. And I wasn’t being melodramatic: despite my exhaustion after the most hectic and exhilarating ten weeks of my life, despite how the clutter in the room was nothing if not a sign that I needed to leave, I didn’t want to return to Seattle for three weeks.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” my roommate said.
I shook my head. The moment passed. Later that night, tucked beneath two comforters, I dreamed about my dad charming snakes with my grandpa.
Home is a swollen place, bloated with roots turned deadweight.
The next morning, my flight from San Francisco was delayed. I parked myself at a terminal workspace to wait and pulled out my laptop. I wrote. I stared at the fog. I messaged some of my friends. I wrote some more. And I felt safe there: in this muted steel purgatory, I was untethered and unburdened. As the one-hour delay trickled into two, three, and four hours, I mused that perhaps this detachment was what I needed. Among these hassled, red-eyed strangers, I was obligated to no one. Everything feels so impersonal here, I wrote in my journal, but that doesn’t make me feel empty. It kinda does the opposite, actually, and I don’t know why.
My flight finally boarded at 4:30 P.M. The sun began to set as we took off, gold feathering liquidlike over a flock of mellow clouds. The sky burned into a melancholy pink, an undulating periwinkle, a weary indigo. We stand higher than the sun, I thought, a stupid grin overtaking my face, as the last amber threads fizzed into night. Below us, the lights of my city glittered to life.
The plane began to circle. My playlist blared Florence + the Machine, fun, Pink Floyd, Arctic Monkeys, blink-182, Wallows, all artists who could balance a song between the nostalgic and the sardonic, who could lend a certain grace to cynicism. This same playlist carried me all the way out of the terminal and into the baggage claim. This same eloquent bitterness beat in time to the suitcases revolving before me.
I don’t get homesick. I’m always bulldozing forwards, and when I do reflect, I tend to process the rational before delving into the emotional. Still, as I hefted my suitcase from the conveyor belt, yawned to pop my ears, and smiled at my parents in the pick-up zone, I realized that perhaps I’d judged my home too harshly. In my attempt to understand this town, to comprehend how it had shaped and damaged and changed me, I’d overlooked so many nuances, so many contradictions, so many paradoxes. I’d reduced my home to the narrative that had made the most sense to me, a narrative designed according to my terms; I’d labored to contain my home within something linear.
For the first time since elementary school, I have nothing to worry about during break. I have no college apps, no schoolwork, no finals. The days stretch long before me: sometimes, I find myself waiting for my sixteen waking hours to end, startling myself with my passivity.
I haven’t talked about this with my parents or brother. In every one of my essays, I try to come to a resolution on my own, no matter how artificial. But there is no resolution inherent in a home, in a family.
Would it really be home without the tribulations? If I were still at school, my section leader would be challenging me: but what is a home? What do you call home, Ana?
I don’t know, I’d tell him. I don’t know when a place erodes into a home. I don’t know whether the process of home-ifying, for lack of a better word, is a matter of time. I don’t even know whether it’s voluntary.
But I do know that the impossible has happened: I’ve missed the rain.
Ana Chen
I love airports. They boast a blissful balance of detachment and anticipation, of stability and impermanence. No matter how familiar a terminal feels, you are never meant to stay. This is comforting.
In late November, following the eighth week of my fall quarter, my family friend drove me to San Jose International Airport. I was one of the last people to leave my dorm for Thanksgiving break; in the twenty-four hours before, a terrible emptiness had settled over the halls, an emptiness swollen with the darkness outside.
I’d spent the past week watching a plethora of Instagram stories. finally home! everyone seemed to cry through my phone screen. haven’t seen them in so long! damn home-cooked food hits different! baby bro/sis! Homecoming is and has always been something romantic.
So when I took my first breath of Seattle air since September, I’d expected that same exuberant rush of relief. I’d expected some catharsis of familiarity at the sulking skies. I’d expected to rejoice at the rain.
And I did, but it was muted. A quiet awe filled me as my dad drove us home: I’d forgotten how beautiful Seattle was. I’d forgotten the scintillating greenery, the smoky steel buildings and graffiti-scarred roads. I’d forgotten how fiercely I’d grown to love downtown Bellevue, which the sun now halos with a haughty gold haze. Here, the sky breathes periwinkle, watery in the winter light. Here, the cold has so many layers, so much nuance.
Is this what home is? I thought, my finger tracing the fog on the window. My time away had condensed Bellevue’s beauty into something majestic, something equivalent to the star-hewn buildings of New York and the tawny boulevards of Los Angeles. Something to be loved from a distance? A raindrop streaked across the glass, bowling hurriedly from my touch. I’d forgotten how much I’d hated the rain. I hadn’t seen it in months.
Later, watching my ceiling light flicker, I wondered why this house felt so much smaller than my dorm room.
Distancing yourself from home means resentment riddled with guilty relief; it means confronting anger you never knew you possessed. “Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome,” one of my middle school teachers quoted from Hope Floats. I’d visited them on Monday; my middle school had been one of the happier places of my hometown.
And naturally, there have been many places to which I’ve dreaded returning. Ballet studios, my high school, my violin teacher’s house. And this list isn’t limited to the physical: emotionally, I’ve found myself retracing all the thought patterns that had defined the more harrowing months of 2019. This year has been a year of waiting: waiting for people, for closure, for a future. The cold here bites through more than my three layers of coats and sweaters - it pierces those early winter memories from January and February: college applications, a long-forgotten relationship, a suicide note.
Yet there have been the beautiful moments. I laughed until my stomach hurt as my conglomeration of twelve Monopoly hotels bankrupted my dad. I got Jamba Juice, found thirty-dollar Levi’s at Nordstrom Rack. One night, as my best friend and I sat on my spare mattress, her head on my shoulder, I realized that I had missed this most of all, this trust of casual familiarity.
“Are you glad to be home?” she asked, as the rain banged ceaselessly against my window.
“Yeah,” I said. It was not the answer that surprised me, but its sincerity.
Home is painful. And somehow, as I boarded my flight on the Sunday after Thanksgiving break, a pang of longing shot through me. I would only spend two weeks in California before I returned for winter break, but the idea of leaving felt so heavy. Somehow, I dreaded the next two weeks more than I had ever dreaded the last two months.
But time blew by. Finals, performances, and schoolwork blurred my home into a tangle of sounds, tangible only through my phone calls to my mom.
Surprisingly, and perhaps poetically, it had begun to rain at Stanford. “Disgusting,” I muttered, as the mud splattered my brand-new Converse and every inch of my previously-spotless bike. “Atrocious,” I hissed, as I hurled my mud-freckled jeans and backpack into the wash.
Finals week slammed to a halt. Before I knew it, I was writing packing lists again, wondering whether I could cram three weeks’ worth of clothes into one suitcase. The process was nearly identical to the one I’d followed before Thanksgiving break, yet something felt jarringly different.
I had treated Thanksgiving break like a pit stop. I’d packed lightly, neglecting even moisturizer in the process, and I hadn’t bothered to unpack beyond my needs for a day. I’d walked carefully through my home, as if treading carelessly would root me to a permanence I couldn’t quite afford.
But for winter break, I did the opposite. I emptied out half my closet at school. I brought back three pairs of shoes. And I came prepared for the momentous to happen: the end of a year, the turn of a decade.
In the days before winter break, a series of uneasy dreams plagued me, all of them tied to home. I would wake up weary and dazed and sometimes nauseous, my fingers throttling my blankets. Had I really just seen my brother as a frat boy? Had my house really stood empty, skinned, ablaze?
Perhaps the same had happened before Thanksgiving break, but I’d been too preoccupied with schoolwork to think much of it.
Then the night before my departure, my hands froze over my suitcase. I turned to my roommate.
“I don’t wanna go home,” I said quietly. And I wasn’t being melodramatic: despite my exhaustion after the most hectic and exhilarating ten weeks of my life, despite how the clutter in the room was nothing if not a sign that I needed to leave, I didn’t want to return to Seattle for three weeks.
“Do you wanna talk about it?” my roommate said.
I shook my head. The moment passed. Later that night, tucked beneath two comforters, I dreamed about my dad charming snakes with my grandpa.
Home is a swollen place, bloated with roots turned deadweight.
The next morning, my flight from San Francisco was delayed. I parked myself at a terminal workspace to wait and pulled out my laptop. I wrote. I stared at the fog. I messaged some of my friends. I wrote some more. And I felt safe there: in this muted steel purgatory, I was untethered and unburdened. As the one-hour delay trickled into two, three, and four hours, I mused that perhaps this detachment was what I needed. Among these hassled, red-eyed strangers, I was obligated to no one. Everything feels so impersonal here, I wrote in my journal, but that doesn’t make me feel empty. It kinda does the opposite, actually, and I don’t know why.
My flight finally boarded at 4:30 P.M. The sun began to set as we took off, gold feathering liquidlike over a flock of mellow clouds. The sky burned into a melancholy pink, an undulating periwinkle, a weary indigo. We stand higher than the sun, I thought, a stupid grin overtaking my face, as the last amber threads fizzed into night. Below us, the lights of my city glittered to life.
The plane began to circle. My playlist blared Florence + the Machine, fun, Pink Floyd, Arctic Monkeys, blink-182, Wallows, all artists who could balance a song between the nostalgic and the sardonic, who could lend a certain grace to cynicism. This same playlist carried me all the way out of the terminal and into the baggage claim. This same eloquent bitterness beat in time to the suitcases revolving before me.
I don’t get homesick. I’m always bulldozing forwards, and when I do reflect, I tend to process the rational before delving into the emotional. Still, as I hefted my suitcase from the conveyor belt, yawned to pop my ears, and smiled at my parents in the pick-up zone, I realized that perhaps I’d judged my home too harshly. In my attempt to understand this town, to comprehend how it had shaped and damaged and changed me, I’d overlooked so many nuances, so many contradictions, so many paradoxes. I’d reduced my home to the narrative that had made the most sense to me, a narrative designed according to my terms; I’d labored to contain my home within something linear.
For the first time since elementary school, I have nothing to worry about during break. I have no college apps, no schoolwork, no finals. The days stretch long before me: sometimes, I find myself waiting for my sixteen waking hours to end, startling myself with my passivity.
I haven’t talked about this with my parents or brother. In every one of my essays, I try to come to a resolution on my own, no matter how artificial. But there is no resolution inherent in a home, in a family.
Would it really be home without the tribulations? If I were still at school, my section leader would be challenging me: but what is a home? What do you call home, Ana?
I don’t know, I’d tell him. I don’t know when a place erodes into a home. I don’t know whether the process of home-ifying, for lack of a better word, is a matter of time. I don’t even know whether it’s voluntary.
But I do know that the impossible has happened: I’ve missed the rain.