
My Corner

You know, I’m getting incredibly confused with the world lately. I’m confused how for every cause, there is someone with a counter cause. You know, the people who go, “Mask on?! What about SEX TRAFFICKING, huh?! DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THAT?!” or “Black Lives Matter?! What about ALL LIVES MATTER, huh?! I MEAN, DO YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT THE STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA?!“
It’s so crazy to me, like homeboy of course we care about all of these things… did you know you can care about multiple things all at the same time? And please, someone stop me here if I’m spoutin’ crazy… but I have more than one passion, I have more than one cause that matters to me… I am proudly a complex human over here.
For example: I think you should really wear a damn mask, you bet your ass Black Lives Matter, sex trafficking is undoubtedly something that needs more media attention, teachers that have in-person classes this fall should be titled as essential workers (hazard pay?!), and we really need to SMASH THE PATRIARCHY!
Oof, maybe got a tad excited at the end.
But do you see what I’m saying? It’s so incredibly ignorant to think that someone only has a one track mind and that they are only capable of caring about one thing at a time. Just because you see them blasting one cause on social media, or photos of them only doing the same two things all the time – a person’s social media is not the sum total of that person. It’s just what you’re currently seeing, it’s their “highlight reel” if you will.
I’ve personally been struggling a lot lately with how people see me, and I have this fear that I’m being pigeonholed into a set personality. Yes, I very much enjoy going out and can probably drink half you readers under the table, but I don’t go out for the soul purpose of getting trashed. I go out because I enjoy the atmosphere, the socializing, the people watching, the dancing, the music, to put it simply – the vibrant hum of nightlife makes me feel alive.
But you know what else makes me feel alive?
Getting so absorbed in a book I accidentally stay up until 5:00 am just to finish it, hot summer days spent in the middle of lake, the minute the plane wheels hit the ground of the tarmac and that reality hits of “I’m here.” I feel alive the first snow of every winter and the turn of the first leaves every fall. I feel alive every time I get to make ricolis with my Papa, and I feel alive that moment of every family gathering when I find my siblings’ hiding spots and we all evade the bulk of the fam and randos together. I feel alive when I’m in a monster vehicle, windows down, flying down backroads, music blaring. I feel alive every time I return to Manhattan.
I am more than what you see, I am more than what you think you know about me – and I always feel the same towards others. I always believe, and at times desperately hope, that they are more than what I see being posted online. People are complex, and it’s time everyone understands this.
“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”
Jonathan Tropper
In all my 25 years of life, I’ve never had my own apartment (excluding my brief semester abroad, but let’s be real I was hardly in that little dorm.) I’ve always had one or multiple roommates; and there’s not one place I’ve lived where I don’t have a crazy story to share – both good crazy and bad crazy. Just to name a few, I’ve had roommates hide under the bed for days at a time, I’ve had roommates accuse the entire apartment of tackling their 5-gallon jar of pickles (gag), I’ve had roommates with no sense of pride in the space we both call home, and I’ve had roommates where we don’t even remotely speak the same language.
Each and every one of my living situations could not only have their own blog post, but I could write a whole series of books, accurately titled: “Emily’s Series of Unfortunate Roommates:The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly”
But this post isn’t a tell-all on past roommates – sorry to disappoint you, you gossip ready scoundrels. Instead, I’m roaming the higher ground here. I’ve decided to share what I’ve learned through these good and bad situations, and most importantly: questions you should ask yourself when in the market for roommate.
This may seem like an obvious question, but clearly not since at 25 – 7 years into the roommate game – I’ve only just learned how to properly answer this when on a roommate search. Let’s breakdown what could be important to you, you just don’t realize it yet:
This is not just finding a cool person to live with, nor the same as simply finding a friend. While the above questions definitely facilitate sorting this question out, below is a breakdown of how to sort out the type of person you’re looking for:
If you understand what your boundaries are, what you are comfortable with and what you’re not, the roommate search will be more fruitful. If you’re not that clean, there’s no point in lying about it just to get the dream apartment with someone. If you need alone time, voice that and most people will respect it.
One thing I casually began doing to better understand what gets under my skin, is starting a “When People…” note on my iPhone. Whenever someone does something that rubs me the wrong way, even slightly, I write it down – just the action, not the person’s name, this isn’t a list of grudges! It has things like “When people interrupt others when they’re speaking,” which equates to the fact that basic manners are incredibly important to me, and another one is “When people flake on responsibilities,” and that one I don’t think I need to explain 😉
Creating a simple list of pet peeves is a great way to understand not only what you don’t like, but also what you do. Ultimately, it’s important to know yourself in order to know what you need from others so that you can flourish.
DISCLAIMER: While I hope this guide helps you, I think shit roommates are major character building experiences 😉
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PS: the featured photo is that of me and one of my best friends that’s survived many roommate horrors with me ❤
Those moments, you know the ones, where you’re doing something as simple as laughing in the car with friends or reaching for the same can of soup as someone else in the grocery – and you’re hit with a feeling of, “Woah this has happened before, I’ve lived this precise moment once before.“
This is déjà vu, the already seen moments.
I always had believed these moments to be striking and perhaps that I’d simply dreamed them before, but it was a friend in college that enlightened me with a different idea. They told me that these moments are actually when the universe is reinforcing that you are exactly where you’re meant to be right then and there. It’s reaffirming that all of the choices you’ve made, up until that moment, have been the correct moves and you’re still heading the ‘right way,’ or the way the universe has intended for you.
If anyone else’s friend had told them this, I could imagine most folks would blow them off with a “Pft, yeah right, okay.” But I’m not most people. I’ve always had a striking intuition, a curiosity of the unknown, and I’ve always believed the earth is constantly speaking to you – and you could hear it if only you’re listening close enough. Also, to put it simply, I thought my friend’s take on déjà vu was so beautiful I didn’t even want to question it!
But here I am, a few years later, just now wondering if my friend was truly onto something or full of shit.
And after a very brief round of research, the worlds of science and psychology are divided.
Power of Positivity, which solely based on the name, you’d think would embrace my friend’s take on déjà vu – but nope. Their article actually references a study completed by Akira O’Connor and his team at the University of St. Andrews, UK; this study had shown that déjà vu is actually just a ‘healthy memory checking system’. It’s your brain basically trying to trick you by telling you, “Bro you’ve been here before, doing this exact thing…”
You hesitate before thinking, “No, no I haven’t? I totally haven’t but you’d know better than me… right??”
To which your brain laughs, “Totally got you man, you’ve deffo not been here before – just trying to keep you on your toes!“
This is also why people most frequently have déjà vu between the ages of 15 – 25, it’s when memory is the sharpest and your brain is constantly checking for memory gaps or errors.
On another note, an article by Judith Orloff M.D. in Psychology Today, aligns incredibly close to what my friend described déjà vu to be – yay!
“[Déjà vu is] a memory of a dream, a precognition, a coincidental overlapping of events or even a past life experience in which we rekindle ancient alliances. What matters is that it draws us closer to the mystical. It is an offering, an opportunity for additional knowledge about ourselves and others.”
Judith Orloff M.D.
Now this is the fun meaning behind déjà vu that I signed up for – a mystical connection with deep significance. It’s something to be paid attention to and not brushed off as a simple brain-self-check mechanism. This is not only the earth communicating with you, it’s your higher self reaching out and guiding you.
Déjà vu moments are meant to be questioned and observed: Where are you? Who are you with? What are you feeling?
You can essentially interpret déjà vu to mean whatever makes the most sense in your world. I know what I choose to believe – but how about you?
My fiancé left me a week before our wedding day. On a Saturday night last fall, with no apparent reason after nearly 8 years together. (Not to mention a house with a mortgage, two pets and a few thousand dollars in wedding expenses.) I was told, “I need space,” and he left. It’s safe to say my life felt like it was in complete shambles, decimated in the course of three words. Never did I think I’d find myself at a Starbucks at 5 am on a Sunday sending out cancellation emails and texts. Personally, I was wrecked; but professionally, I was in the midst of the busiest and most important weeks of my life.
This is what I learned on this wild healing journey.
While everyone will surely have their own experiences, these were the few ways that I was able to move through my situation a little easier. Rely on those close to you and reach out when you’re feeling down; you are not a burden.
Many of us grew up with like-minded aspirations of falling in love, getting married, starting a family, and making memories with them. This is the story of my first love.
I married my high school sweetheart at the age of 21 and divorced at 24. I lived a life of domestic violence that was somehow disguised as happiness and common place struggles. I spent 9 years of my life dedicated to pleasing him, caring for him, nurturing him, and ultimately enabling him. We had the best times and we had the worst times. I never saw the damage being done to me and my soul until I hit a breaking point. I found myself exhausted from just waking up every morning. It was to a point where I just didn’t want to wake up anymore. I share my story with the hopes that other people that were in my shoes will not wait until it’s too late to see the warning signs of an abusive and toxic relationship.
Fresh out of high school, we both went to college. We had dreams and goals that we shared together and set forth to make happen. Well, life happened instead and we both wound up dropping out and moving in together and took on full time jobs. Things were rocky, but I saw that as typical issues couples go through. I never understood the severity of the yelling, cursing, and occasional abandonment. He always came back and apologized and cried and said he would never do it again. I believed him. Every. Single. Time.
We got married in 2016. The wedding was not ideal. But it wasn’t what mattered to us. We loved each other and we wanted to share it with people who loved us too. This is when the verbal abuse escalated to mental and psychological abuse. There would be days where he would twist stories around and I believed them to be true. I was the perpetrator. I broke him. I never loved him. I used him for his money. I believed I was this monster because he was the one with chronic depression and I was not. At some point, I asked myself, “Then why doesn’t he leave me if I am this way?” I reached out to my good friends who honestly never knew anything behind closed doors; from an outsider’s view, we were the perfect couple. This is when my friends and family started getting concerned. Well, I sometimes listened to them but explained they will never know what it’s like living and loving a person with mental illness. They won’t get it.
I felt alone. I felt isolated. I felt like I was fighting a battle that was never going to end. The days of him attempting suicide were escalating and it seemed to be his shield or defense against me speaking out or retaliating. He was slowly losing his control over me because there was something in my head that clicked one day. I decided enough was enough. I sat him down and had a very deep conversation about respecting me and how he needed to do better and I was no longer tolerating his abuse. He acknowledged his wrongs, like always, and we went about our life together.
In 2018, we split up. We needed space, I needed space really. He did not take it well. He kept blowing up my phone, trying to force himself back into my life. He would get super understanding and be peaceful but then the next day, he was calling me a crazy bitch and that he fucking hated me. When we did see each other, that was the first time he got physically abusive. Sure he’s put holes in our walls and wrecked cars out of anger but never once laid a hand on me. It was the first and last time that happened. It was over. The police were involved and he was gone. That was my wake up call.
My rope was at its end and I was either going to hang from it or swing and jump from it. I chose to jump and take my life back. And boy, I have never looked back, only to reflect on the signs I chose to ignore.
I want people, especially women, who find themselves in my shoes to know lying, cannot be tolerated. Name calling, cannot be tolerated. Using suicide and mental illness as a crutch to manipulate you, cannot be tolerated. Punching holes in walls or destroying property, cannot be tolerated. All these are signs that lead to domestic violence of every variation. We wind up being the enablers but that is what happens when we are THE VICTIMS. However, we aren’t victims forever. We are survivors and there is life after all the chaos. It’s not easy. We will have our fair shares of struggles. Best advice: use the resources given to you: your friends, family, work place, hobbies. Do not deny help as we want to, it’s necessary and will only make the process easier.
My divorce was finalized on a summer day in 2019. This is known as the day I was finally free. I no longer needed saving.
In high school I was big on young adult novels about love and coming of age – some of my favorite authors being Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, and Jennifer Donnelly.
It was one of the novels by Deb Caletti, I don’t remember which novel as I was reading a book a day back then, where a character said something that still sticks with me to this day. It was something along the lines of “There’s a difference between being good and being nice, and what’s important to remember is that not all nice people are good people.“
Even in high school, I understood that this line held depth and that I needed to remember this. And as the years go by, I recognize each and every day that just because someone is nice doesn’t mean they are good and have my best interest at heart, and just because someone is mean doesn’t mean they are bad and terrible.
It’s important to be able to see through to people’s true intentions in order to shield yourself from potential ruin.
If you think that sounds dramatic, then you haven’t met nice, bad people.
Or maybe you’re nice, bad people.
I make it a point to be friendly to everyone I meet and to show kindness, but in conjunction, I’m honest and will bluntly call situations as I see them. Generally speaking, I also prefer to surround myself with similar people. One of my close friends and I had a conversation where he exasperatedly told me, “Emily, I’m not mean or cruel, and it’s annoying when people see me that way.“
Of course I know he isn’t mean or cruel, he just has a blunt way of dealing with people that I can appreciate and relate to.
I think it’s incredibly important to surround yourself with people who gas you up, sure, but also with people who will bring you down to earth – who will tell you when you’re wrong and not let you get away with shitty behavior.
When you surround yourself with people who only gas you up, all that’s happening is you are being lifted high onto a pedestal of sand that is a mix foundation of mock niceties and a fallacious sense of self-righteousness.
All it will take is one thunderstorm of a human to dissolve your pedestal of sand and leave you lying there helpless, clueless, and looking stupid.
Ultimately, what I’m getting at here, is that it’s important to understand that nice and good are not synonymous. Just because you held the door open for an old lady and then smiled kindly at the waiter who took your order – you aren’t guaranteed a sticker labeling you as good people.
Being good is standing up for what’s right, honoring agreements, not always searching for loopholes that screw people over but lift you up, and lastly not using anecdotes of the nice things you’ve done as justification as to why you’re a better person than Joe Shmoe.
Being good is more than a one off deed.
Another way to look at it, is nice people are always looking at situations as win/lose – good people are always looking to create a win/win situation. Even if the win/win entails conflict or uncomfortable conversations along the way, a good person will choose to face that in order for a mutually better outcome.
Good people tend to go that extra mile in a situation which nice people could interpret as “complicating things.”
Being nice is easy, being good is genuine.