Some Things I’d Really Rather You Didn’t Know

I’m terrified of eating. The feeling of being full makes me uncomfortable. When I was in preschool, I remember throwing up after drinking a glass of apple juice, so I avoid juice at all costs. Although, I will have orange juice when there’s alcohol in it.

I am that person who has 15,000 unopened emails. I can never just chew one piece of gum at a time. Trident White gum reminds me of my mom, Juicy Fruit reminds me of my brother. I like my legs, but I hate my stomach. I can’t be left alone—I tend to think too much. I have to listen to a podcast as I’m falling asleep and I’ll exercise at the gym downstairs in my building if my roommate is gone. Running on the treadmill always reminds me of when I was my most depressed, but it’s the only thing I can do.

I took French classes for 10 years. I’m terrible at it. But I like the way it feels to speak it—sometimes when I do it for a long time, my throat feels sore and my tongue feels heavy and my jaw feels tight, and I love that feeling. I can never remember the correct direction of the accents when writing in French though.

I really enjoy meeting new people, but I hate that moment when you realize you desperately want to become their friend. It’s frustrating. I wish it were instant—I wish I could just ask someone new, “Do you just want to be friends?” and then we would immediately dive into that stage of long, late-night talks and comfortable silences and small smiles and conversations through eye contact. I want to know everything about them. It takes too long to learn it all.

I think the word “fuck” is super fucking funny. I drank in high school, but I didn’t swear until I got to college.

I write down things people say to me all the time. I’ll write out text conversations in my diary. I’ve printed out emails. I’ve kept notes people left on my locker in high school. I tried to be pen pals with two of my best friends throughout my sophomore year of college and I kept all their letters. I don’t think people ever keep mine.

My mom is left-handed and reads all her magazines starting from the back, so that she can flip the pages with her left hand. Sometimes, I catch myself reading magazines that way too.

My favorite compliment to receive is that I smell good. I can’t do a convincing fake laugh—my actual laugh is really loud and when I pretend to do it, it sounds like I’m in pain. A girl in high school got mad at me once because I never laughed at anything she said—but it’s because she never said anything that was actually funny.

I wear daily contact lenses and always forget to take them out until I’m already under the covers with the lights off, so I have a small collection of dried contact lenses sitting on the shelf above my bed.

One of the first times I realized I wanted to write was when my 11th grade English class had a unit on creative nonfiction. It was the first time we were assigned to write an essay that had to be personal. I remember everyone wrote about their most recent trip to Europe or how much pressure their parents were putting on them to get into a good college, and I wrote a very hate-filled manifesto about my dentist and how I knew that he hated me too because he always mispronounced my name. It was published in the school literary magazine. My parents were unsure how to feel about it.

I feel like I hurt a lot of people, and for really no reason at all. Sometimes I get bored. Most of the time, it’s because I don’t want them to hurt me first. It takes me forever to deal with something like that so I’d rather just avoid it. I like to have power. I like to be the big spoon sometimes because I secretly think about how vulnerable the other person is. I feel trapped when someone’s arms are around me, although that could just be because I usually don’t like the person doing it very much. I feel more comfortable when the other person likes me more than I like them. The first time someone told me they loved me, my first thought was: “You don’t actually even know who I am.” And he didn’t.

A lot of people assume things about me because I write for the internet. A lot of my friends now think they know more about me because of what I write. My parents too. They read everything and they just assume it’s me. I get a lot of “wow, I didn’t know that about you.” They assume it’s authentic and that I would never lie. I love telling stories—I’ll do anything for the sake of a good story—but I hate talking about myself.

And that’s why I don’t.