Last December, I was raped ( Read more... )

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“I also admire people who are capable of living-or who are forced into living-on the edge of things, in a constant state of financial, physical, and mental peril.” -Philip-Lorca DiCorcia ( Read more... )

I am going back home tomorrow morning. Thirteen hours on a red-striped airplane, swooping over the former Soviet Union while I fiddle with the remote and attempt to readjust to my adopted culture. I know that every time I come back, the first thing that hits me, apart from the eerie lack of emotion in the arrivals lounge, is the distinct scent of ( Read more... )

Still ill. Getting worse? Getting better? Not sure ( Read more... )

(a few weeks previously ( Read more... )

I was going to leave in November. I’ve been on the comedown for a while now: cultural adjustment puckered and shriveled those hyper delicious chemicals that had gotten under my skin ( Read more... )

It turns out I don't have some kind of exotic systemic disease. That's the good news. The bad news is that my mind is powerful enough to convince my body that I am dying, and to encourage it to replicate all symptoms. I never thought I'd be the kind of person to have panic attacks; I never understood them. I didn't understand how you could get out ( Read more... )

I feel like i have just stepped out of the gloom; I'm still on the precipice, curling my toes around unsecured pebbles and footholes- but the sun is beginning to shine in, a finger of light at a time ( Read more... )

"The suburb may be the manifestation of a desire to escape, yet the city is itself a traditional response to crisis- a huddling together of humanity, a symbol of natural and intellectual resources.... the metacity puts immense strain on its surroundings, stripping the land of its resources, which ensures further immigration to the centre." - Edwin ( Read more... )