Roxanne Earley

I still struggle when I tell people what I write about. What do I write about? Everything. How can I be more focused with my voice? I have had to really consider my motivations in writing.

When you love an idea of someone, you don’t love their reality. You love the thing you build them up in your head to be.

Your twenties are marked by significant transition. The first part of the decade is often spent stumbling around in a liquor infused haze, living paycheck to paycheck, heartbreak to heartbreak, and moving from one fast fashion craze to the next.

Everyone old enough remembers where they were. They have discussed it and relived it time and again. The topic has come up on dates where, painfully aware that the way I experienced the event reveals my age, I have shyly declined to comment.

In the summer of 2008 I sought professional treatment for chronic migraines. I had suffered from them since I was a child, and as anyone who has ever experienced them can tell you, they are absolute agony.

“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Romantic Comedies feature hyperbolic parodies of the reality of dating, filled with limited and narrow characters that are often the most outrageously stereotyped of people. What is refreshing about Trainwreck is that it removes many of the traditional rom-com blinders, and allows for the hilarity of a believable situation to amuse its audience (and in some cases, make us uncomfortable with how close to home it hits).

Like many of you, I had a lot of romantic notions about my career; and like a lot of things about romance, the granting of a Masters degree did not suddenly grant these wishes. I enrolled in grad school as a way to make myself more ‘employable’ while also pursuing a field I found deeply fascinating.

Shame has been such an intense part of the abusive relationships that I have found myself in, and perhaps is the most common theme woven between them. I have felt ashamed of not speaking up and being more firm about ‘no’, ashamed at feeling guilty for pursuing things in my life that enrich me and which I love passionately.

There are some things I want to say to her, that I would say to my younger self, if I could. These are things I would say to all young women who are going to be teenagers soon, and much of the advice will be helpful for my younger brothers as well.

Sometimes I am baffled that the same people I get drunk and watch cute animal videos on Youtube with can lay down so much realness when I need it most.

Old habits die-hard and more than once Josh had to remind me that I was on vacation, not a planner, and he had everything under control. Letting go is hard, guys.

What others think of the choices I make for myself. People throwing their two cents my way can keep on walking.

I get bullied and harassed on the street, but when I raise my voice to my aggressors to demand that I be treated as a human being rather than a piece of meat I am told to ‘grow up, stop being rude, learn how to be nice, damn bitch.’

As adults, our parents never sit us down and reassure us that they love us even though they are getting a divorce, and we don’t necessarily want them to. It’s not about being coddled or protected by our parents anymore; for us it is about finding a sense of stability and normalcy that allows us to move forward.

My life has always been divided into sets of two: rooms, toys, clothes, chores, moms, dads, hugs. I am the child of divorced parents.

One of my contributions focused on sexism in academia, particularly the way in which distinguished women academics face increased scrutiny of their appearance. On multiple occasions not only my colleagues, but my students have felt it appropriate to discuss how I look. The entitlement that men feel to comment on my appearance goes beyond the pale of simple “compliments”.

It can be freeing to escape to a place where there is an apparent lack of structure or regulation, particularly in a culture increasingly fraught with overzealous policing and blurred rules on privacy.